Multi-Room DVR HD Playback Limitation?
MrTantrum
Enthusiast - Level 3

I've been a FiOS TV subscriber for two months now, and I just noticed a possible limitation with HD content playback.  I currently have a Multi-Room DVR and two additional HD set top boxes.  For the first time, I was trying to play recorded HD content on the two set top boxes simultaneously.  The DVR was off since we had guests sleeping in that room, but a HD show was being played on one of the set top boxes.  However, when I tried to start a different HD recording on the second set top box, I received an error stating that the multi-room DVR could only stream HD content to one TV at a time.

I may have missed this in documentation, but is such the case?  This seems quite limited to me given that all I record is HD content given that HD composes about 99% of my family's viewing.  It also seems deceiving given the marketing regarding how a multi-room DVR works.  I assume that I can playback HD content on the Multi-room DVR TV and a second TV at the same time (have not tested, but I'm almost sure that I have done this since I've had this setup), but can someone confirm/deny this capability also?

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Re: Multi-Room DVR HD Playback Limitation?
lasagna
Community Leader
Community Leader

So I found your observation curious and went and tested ...

Sure enough, you can only playback one HD stream on a remote STB at a time.    It appears you can stream two video feeds (one HD to one box and one SD to another) at a time, but you can not do more than two.  I have also confirmed that I can be watching an HD recording on the main DVR and streaming an HD to a remote box simultaneously.

I'm surprised I never ran into that before ... I could have sworn I would have encountered the 2 HD stream issue between watching a recording on the box in my bedroom while our son was watching a recording on the box in his room. 

Re: Multi-Room DVR HD Playback Limitation?
charliebarrett
Contributor - Level 2

That's just one reason I dumped my Multi-Room DVR, and replaced it with two single-room HD DVR boxes.

The other reason I didn't like the Multi-Room DVR was because we couldn't control the Record function from the bedroom - the only way to set a program to record was to either do it in the living room, or so to the DVR web site and set it there. The Internet DVR programming feature was pretty neat, but i don't think I lost that ability - haven't tried it yet on the individual DVR's, since there's no need because now I can record from both rooms without going to the web site.

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Re: Multi-Room DVR HD Playback Limitation?
MrTantrum
Enthusiast - Level 3

I guess you lose something either way.  The only issue that I have with 2 seperate DVR's is that I my family and I often swap watching each of our shows on various TV's depending upon what's going on.

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Re: Multi-Room DVR HD Playback Limitation?
hoopdaddyjjs1
Newbie

I was about to add a 4th TV to my home, one home media DVR, three STBs. Even without the HD issue are you saying that I would not be able to watch recorded shows on the three non DVR machines at the same time?

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Re: Multi-Room DVR HD Playback Limitation?
lasagna
Community Leader
Community Leader

Not simultaneously.   You can play it on each box, just not simultaneously.

You can watch live TV on each box simultaneously obviously, but as for playing the recorded content from the Home DVR -- that's subject to the limitations I outlined previously.    

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Re: Multi-Room DVR HD Playback Limitation?
Hubrisnxs
Legend

I think that is also true for VOD. 

Recommended limits

  • Three Standard Definition VOD requests

or

  • One High Definition VOD request

or

  • One High Definition and Two Standard Definition request  
It's a normal limitation of the network from what I understand.
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Re: Multi-Room DVR HD Playback Limitation?
lasagna
Community Leader
Community Leader

That would make sense if they are delivering content via IP and not allocating a QAM channel as the MoCA 1.1 spec tops out at around 175Mbps (the new MoCA 2.0 spec was only ratified this summer and that has a 400Mb base rate but is slated to support GB rates).    So, it would then be a function of how many bits you could cram down the MoCA channel to the STB's from the ONT and I suspect 2 HD streams would probably just about kill 175Mbs of bandwidth.

Would be nice if someone who knew the specifics could enlighten us.

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Re: Multi-Room DVR HD Playback Limitation?
GaryDoug
Specialist - Level 1

"if they are delivering..." ?? I thought it was a well known fact that all VOD is IP. I seem to be reading that everywhere. Maybe I should write down where i read it the next time. btw, a normal ATSC HD stream is 19 mbs, QAM is 38 but it can carry 2 streams. How does that fill 175mbs?

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Re: Multi-Room DVR HD Playback Limitation?
Hubrisnxs
Legend

I think there is also bandwidth that is being used that is not being talked about here.  maybe normal use bandwidth, for example the guide, the widgets etc and the mrdvr Plus vod all use moca, so we are only talking about 1 or the other in this case, and there are a few other things that are carrying traffic, plus maintaining comm between all the stb's and the network etc...

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