Question about Dish DVR

[korben_dallas]

Can someone explain to me how Dish DVR works?

I was at my uncle's apt, and they got Dish DVR. We were watching a show, and about half way through, my aunt tells me that we're watching this about 30 minutes behind live tv. It really surprised me, because I had no idea we were watching a recording.

Even with SageTV at its best, I can still eyeball minute artifacts in recordings, but that dvr had me completely fooled.

[Wheemer]

As I understand it, on the integrated DVR/PVR boxes, you are timeshifting the raw digital data. Where with sage it's converting to analog, thet's were you lose the quality.

[stanger89]

It just grabs the bitstream right of the satellite feed. No different than recording OTA HD (in principal).