Everything to Know About SV360 Elite PVR Functions

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Everything to Know About SV360 Elite PVR Functions

USB DEVICES GENERAL INFO

1. The Elite has three independent USB ports, all capable of the 2.0 high-speed standard. Each can operate an external hard drive or a flash memory stick. There is a "Drive Menu" to help manage the three ports. Sticks are powered from the STB; hard drives should be externally powered.

2. All three USB ports are functionally equivalent, which makes it theoretically possible to connect as many as three devices simultaneously. The physical location of the two ports on the rear makes them ideal for hard drives, whereas the front panel port is best saved for the stick that you will use for firmware updates, but they all work the same, and at the same time thanks to a built-in hub.

3. Hard drives and sticks must be formatted correctly before use. If you are a Windows user, choose FAT32. If you use Linux, choose EXT2. The on-screen prompting implies that FAT32 should be used for data (such as firmware updates) and EXT2 should be used for recording, but I have not found any such distinctions to be significant. You will need to use FAT32 if you intend to transfer video files to a Windows computer for video format conversion and/or editing. Formatting can be done on the STB or on your computer, but it must be done before use. Many USB drives come pre-formatted and ready to use. If a drive needs to be re-formatted for any reason, any data on it is permanently lost.

4. If choosing a new hard drive, make sure it is rated for "USB 2.0" service. The older "USB 1.1" standard is frequently too slow for video service, but there may be exceptions. When trying to size a drive, a rule of thumb is that one hour of non-HD video takes up 1 to 1.5 Gb of space. A 500Gb drive will hold 300-500 hours.

5. If choosing a new USB memory stick, bear in mind that the two jacks in the rear are extremely close together, like most computers. If you intend to plug it into the rear, select a skinny stick or you may find the other jack obstructed. Or you may want to invest in a short USB extension cable to allow you to have the stick physically at the front of the unit even though it is plugged into the rear.

6. MOST IMPORTANT: you must never unplug or power down a USB device without using the "Safe Remove" function in the USB Drives menu. Remember that if you have the Time Shift function set to automatic, the STB is writing data to the device continuously. Interrupting this data stream can definitely do damage to the hard drive's or stick's data. There is one "Safe Remove" function for each connected device, so you can dismount one without affecting the others.

7. Because of the previous point, if you switch off the STB with the rear switch, or if the STB loses power for any reason, you are almost guaranteed to wind up with a drive (or drives) that has a data error when you restore power. This is an incredibly sinister situation, because if you don't notice it and correct it (by using the "Scan Disk" function in the USB Drives menu), your PVR functions will not work and there are no error messages to warn you. Your carefully pre-programmed recordings will simply not work. The only "easy" indication that the drive(s) are off line is that on the Channel Information Bar, there is a "USB" icon (kind of looks like a pitchfork) that should be orange if at least one of the drives is OK, and dark if not. But before you set up to record that "once-in-a-lifetime" event, check the drive status in the USB Drives menu!

8. And because of this potential hazard, anyone who is serious about recording lots of PPV or sports or who wants to set up auto-repeat recordings and such should really invest a few dollars in an Uninterruptible Power Supply or "UPS". The cheapest models (maybe $30) will cause the STB and hard drives to ride out power interruptions of several minutes, and also filter the power coming into the box for higher reliability and protection from power surges. (If you are a real TV fanatic you can buy a larger unit and plug your TV into it too)

9. The "Scan Disk" function is vital, and seems to work very well. Even though I have been forced to use it several times due to all my experimentation, I have not as of yet lost any recorded data. However, you still need to be very cautious when disconnecting and powering down storage devices, as there is no guarantee that "Scan Disk" will be able to restore access. And the more data there is in a drive, the longer it takes to run.

10. External hard drives generate quite a bit of heat, but do not react well to being hot. Be sure to place yours in a well-ventilated place. And the WORST place to put it is on top of the STB, which is already hot.

11. If you are not planning to record hundreds of hours of video but still want to use the PVR functions occasionally (like the time shift -- I LOVE to be able to pause or rewind a live program!), then you might want to consider purchasing a high-capacity memory stick instead of a hard drive. At the time of this writing, an 8Gb stick can be had for only $30, and that will hold about 6-8 hours of video (including both the time-shift file and whatever you choose to record). The stick is so much more convenient to move to your computer if you want to offload a video file for transfer to DVD, and it's pretty much zero maintenance. To optimize the use of space, the maximum size of the time shift file can be controlled from the PVR Settings menu, by altering the "Default Record Time" number.

12. If you use the "Safe Remove" function on a particular USB device, then the only way to put that device back on line is to unplug its USB connection for a few seconds, and then reconnect it. (Yes, I know you can remove the power from a hard drive, but that procedure is really hard on the device.) This is not terribly convenient for devices that are plugged in the rear, but that's the way it is.

PVR FEATURES INFO

1. It has been pointed out that the Elite is like having two PVR boxes in one, and that's very true. I had wondered if that meant that two hard drives were required in order to record two channels simultaneously. It appears that this is not the case -- I have successfully recorded two programs at the same time onto one hard drive, taking advantage of the reason why the Elite has two tuners in the first place. I originally thought that this was a feature I would almost never use, until I wanted to record two movies whose air times overlapped slightly (one ran from 8:00PM to 10:30PM and the second ran from 10:00PM to 12:00AM). Very, very nice.

2. Using the dual tuners effectively will cause you to become very familiar with the SAT button on the remote, because that's one of the ways to select which tuner you are using. For example, in my overlapping-movie scenario above, the two movies had to be selected for recording one on each tuner -- an error message will appear if you try to set up something like that on just one tuner. Another way that tuner selection is accomplished is from the menu associated with the FIND button -- there is a "tuner" icon that appears next to each selection on the menu.

3. For those with multi-TP setups, the dual tuners are a HUGE advantage, but they don't solve it all. For example, if you have three transponders and are performing dual recording on TP-1 and TP-2, then you will not be able to watch live on TP-3: both of your tuners are used up. But you can still watch live on either TP-1 or TP-2. The channel-chooser menus (all of them -- GUIDE, FIND, and OK) will reflect this by restricting your choices to prevent you from trying to make an illegal selection. This is a hugely important feature.

4. The manual warns that the box is capable of, at maximum, two recording streams at any one time. That includes the time-shifting stream, so if you set up two simultaneous recording sessions, the time shift must be disabled. It appears from my experimentation that this happens automatically -- the shifter is disabled during the dual recording, and then re-enabled afterwards. If you don't care about shifting, you can always disable it temporarily or permanently in the PVR menu.

5. The box will always place video recordings into the same folder on the USB device. There is a menu that allows these video files to be renamed, moved to other folders, or deleted. Very handy if you want to improve your organization without having to move the drive to your computer. Trying to search through several hundred titles all in one folder would not be tons of fun. However, I would also love to have the ability to copy video files from one USB device to another. Perhaps in a future firmware update.

6. If you use the "Safe Removal" function to dismount a USB drive that currently has a recording in process (including the time shifter recording) there will be a warning message indicating that the recording will be aborted, and allowing you to cancel out if you wish. Dismounting the drive will of course stop the time shifter recording if it is the last or only USB device, but it does not alter the state of the shifter's auto/manual setting. Thus, if the time shifter is set to "auto", it will restart automatically when the drive is re-mounted.

7. At least sometimes, the time shift and the recording function interfere with one another. Once I had a recording going, and was using the shifter to go through a program that was still in progress. Everything worked fine until the recording ended, and the time shift reset itself. I have not completely defined this but will look into it further. I'm not ready to call it an error yet.

8. Most folks will book their recording times by using the RECORD button while browsing the EPG. It's dead simple and obvious to use. Each click of the button creates an "event" in the Elite, which then controls the actual recording when the time arrives. The Elite also allows you to look at these events and to edit them if you like, through the Advanced Settings menu. It permits the ultimate flexibility in scheduling. For example, you can create an auto-repeating event that will record at the same time every day, or only on weekdays. The box will warn you if you try to set up overlapping events, in which case you can select the other tuner for that booking.

9. Even though you can have as many as three USB devices connected at any one time, there does not appear to be any way to select which drive the recording will occur on. The box makes the decision based on, I believe, which device becomes ready first. I personally consider this a severe limitation and have spent a lot of time looking for a workaround. The only thing that works so far is to re-enable the devices one at a time following a reset or reboot or dismount. More work needed -- tech support is assisting.

10. As of right now, it appears that you cannot use the EPG to book recordings for two programs that follow one another on the same channel and same tuner. The first program records and the second one gets skipped, with no indication of an error. If this is real and not just some weird glitch on my machine, it is a software bug that will need to be fixed. Tech support is looking into it.

NOT PVR, BUT RELATED FEATURES

1. Like some other boxes, the Elite can assist you in setting up a multimedia theater. There are instructions in the manual on how to have the box pick up and use MP3 and JPEG files from your hard drive or stick, and present them. You can create Play Lists that allow you to put up slide shows based on those files. Considering that the box has a digital audio output for connection to high-end audio equipment, that's pretty sophisticated.

2. Once you have a USB device connected, you have access to the CAPTURE function, which takes and stores a screen shot to your drive with just one button press. This is just way too much fun. It is easily combined with the time shift as well. Let's say you are watching a program and there is a sound bite from your fave movie star, and you would love to hang onto that gorgeous close-up shot they did. You can pause the action (provided the time shifter is active), rewind to the shot, and use CAPTURE (in this case you will most likely have to press it twice -- once to clear the shifter menu and once to actually capture). The screen shot is saved as a .BMP file of roughly 750Kb, which is easily transported to a computer for PhotoShopping and/or conversion to a more efficient format like JPEG.

3. And it’s also worth pointing out that the dual tuners make the PIP (picture-in-picture) function a lot more useful because your inserted picture can now be on a different transponder. Activating PIP apparently does not affect PVR recording, but PIP is another function that is disabled when dual recording is in process.