HD Videos are huge!

[ericscottf]

So i've got my new HDHR hooked up to help out with whatever is available by clearQAM from fios
It is getting things like jeopardy and the popular prime time shows (the office, etc)
So an hour of HD tv off the networks is 5.5 gb! Jeopardy alone cost me 2.42 gigs today.
It is apparent that i can't get the tuner to drop files in of a reasonable size through sage -- I'm assuming the tuner is just dropping the video at whatever bitrate it is broadcast?
Is there anything clever i can do here to save space, or do i have to buy more drives or downconvert?
I've got regular old SD tvs, so i'm not intensely concerned with very high def tv (although i do notice a difference between hd and sd on my ancient tvs)
When i buy new tvs, i'll upgrade the drive array. until then, what should I do?
thanks

[wrems]

IMO, its best and easiest to just buy a bigger hard drive. They're pretty cheap these days too. The extra overhead and complexity you add by transcoding your files can be a lot.

If you're really interested I would check out SJQ and Evil Penguins MediaShrink. In those threads you'll find some scripts to help automate a process for you.

Regardless, I would only do content that has been sitting around on your hard drive for some length of time. I wouldn't get too worried about the other stuff, you'll usually watch and delete it anyway. No sense in encoding a show in that case...

[darcilicious]

You should have multiple recording quality choices. You can set it globally in Setup -> Detailed Setup -> Multimedia -> Recording Quality (choose one of Best, Great, Good, or Fair which are roughly 6GB/hr, 4GB/hr, 3GB/hr, or 2GB/hr respectively)

Or select the quality manually for each recording.

[wrems]

I thought the quality settings were moot with the HDHR... Not sure though...

[darcilicious]

Right, I need to step away from the forums -- I read HD-PVR instead of HDHR, my bad! And good night!

[evilpenguin]

Adding to what wrems said you should also carefully set you favorite options to only save X number of episodes per show. For example, I have mine set to never delete episodes for prime time shows, but then I tell it to only save up to 5 episodes of shows that air often like Seinfeld. That keeps things pretty well in check and ensures that i've always got fresh content.

[ericscottf]

The idea was that the hdhr was supposed to be a nice, cheap upgrade to my kit, so setting up a new, larger raid defeats that rather quickly.

I guess i'll just be more careful about what shows can record an infinite number and lock down ones that would get recorded by the hdhr

[stanger89]

You shouldn't need a RAID array, 2TB drives are only ~$100 these days. Even Caviar Black are only like $110 for a 1.5TB (the 2TBs are like $180).

[ericscottf]

I've lost too many drives to not go with a raid, especially when the gf's TV is concerned.

About a month ago, she told me sage was freaking out and shows were jittery and going black often.
When i got home, i found out that the raid array had discovered one drive was gaining bad sectors -- very fast -- and trying to rebuild and recover. I yanked the drive, popped in the spare and all was well.
Had that been a single drive, i would have lost an awful lot of tv.

Not to mention that my raid 10 array means i can pull at least twice as much data off the drive speed-wise.

[wrems]

You should drop the raid for your active recording drives. Its a waste. So what if you lose recordings they can be recorded again. It's not that important in the grand scheme of things.

[wayner]

Considering what you pay for everything else in your system the answer is to buy more hard drives. When 2TB costs around $100 why not?

[ericscottf]

I'm really not comfortable without a raid. So adding 2tb would be 4 1tb drives = more than i want to spend.

I think i'll turn down the merit on the HD tuners so they're only used in case of conflicts.

I just find it interesting that it is a direct stream transfer, and the user has no control over bitrate. What's more, depending on what the network wants to do at that time, you can have drastically different bitrates from the same network...

[wayner]

For me TV shows are expendable so I don't care about RAID or backups. If I lose the shows I can record them again or download off of various web services. I do have my Video, Photo, Software and Music libraries on multiple drives on WHS and other PCs. For all except Video I also keep an offsite backup.

The full bitrate for HD broadcasts is about 19 Mbps. Some stations have subchannels that use up some of the bitrate which leads to a lower bitrate on the "main" channel. I am not sure how Sage currently treats it but I believe that at one time ATSC tuners and/or PVR software was not smart enough to demultiplex the subchannels so that when they recorded a channel you got all sub-channels as well.

[wrems]

I've never used it but what about using FlexRaid for your recordings if you really feel the need to have some more reliability? That way you can mix and match all your current hard drives...

[ericscottf]

Well, that's interesting (the muxing)

Watching the HD videos on my PC -- amazing quality. I'm always impressed with how much nicer hd video really is.

Still not amazed enough to ditch the fishbowl Tvs, tho.

[ericscottf]

Yeah, i'm looking into software based raid, perhaps on my next system, which should have plenty of cores to make that easy.

[blade]

Originally Posted by ericscottf

So an hour of HD tv off the networks is 5.5 gb!

That's actually a pretty small sized file for a 1 hr HD show. When Comcast first started offering HD most 1 hr shows I recorded were just under 8 GB. Now they're compressing a lot of them more and the drop in quality is very noticeable. 4.2 - 5.5 GB is pretty common for 1 hr shows in my area. I've seen a few as small as 3.5 GB.

In my area Comcast has both SD and HD versions of the local networks in the clear. I assume you don't have that option or you'd have disabled the HD channels. It may be something to keep an eye out for in case they're added at some point.

I agree with some of the other posters that Raid isn't necessary for recordings. At least not to me. I've been using Sage for years and have never lost a single recording to drive failure. If I do they'll simply record again in the future or I'll watch them using Netflix.

It may be true that you are able to pull a single stream of data off the drive twice as fast using your Raid 10 array; however, the way Sage handles multiple drives (especially in v7) multiple individual drives are a much better choice than a raid array from a performance standpoint for a typical multi-tuner/user setup. I can see your raid array having a performance benefit over individual drives if you are moving the recordings.

[ericscottf]

There are SD and HD channels available in the lineup i've got, but many of the HD only channels are unique and don't have an SD counterpart.

[Naylia]

Just wait until you start backing up your Blu-ray discs. I have some that are 40GB for a 2 1/2 hour film.

[ericscottf]

I'd need a blu-ray drive first. :P