Utilising PVR Features on a Free to Air Satellite Receiver Using an External Hard Drive
With the introduction of Sky+ several years ago in Ireland, people have become used to being able to pause, rewind, record and playback their favourite TV shows at their own convenience. Long gone are the days of VCR video recorders and hoping that you set the time right or if you had to leave early, leaving it taping and hoping that id didn't run out of tape before the TV programme you wanted to record was over.
In past couple of years other TV providers like chorus and NTL have also add this facility to their digital TV packages making sure that you never miss you favourite show again.
Apart from some extra TV channels on their pay TV platforms, this ability to pause, rewind, record and playback was a huge advantage over Free to Air Satellite receivers. This has all changed though in the past year.
Before this, Free to Air receivers all came with a RS232 port but no USB. The RS232 port was used to programme the boxes and update software etc. It was a slow and cumbersome task indeed. With the addition of USB ports to the satellite receivers, initially they were just used for programming the receivers. The average time to programme the box went from five to ten minutes to twenty to thirty seconds. A huge improvement and made like a lot more simpler for installers and sellers alike.
There are a few thing to look out for when buying and external hard drive to add to your Free to Air satellite Receiver though.
1. The size (GB) of the External Hard Drive is the first one. Most receivers will support up to 250GB Hard Drives but larger ones ie 320GB and 500GB can be hit and miss so watch out for this.
2. Some Satellite receivers only support FAT32 so you will have to format the hard drive manually to FAT32 as the vast majority of drives are pre-formatted to NTFS(which by the way is far better for a variety of reasons)
3. If you go above 500GB with an external hard drive (portable or 2.5 inch), then you are in trouble as external hard drives of this type that are larger than 500GB require two USB ports to power them. Pretty much all free to air satellite receivers on the market have only one USB port, so these will not work
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Barry_F
In past couple of years other TV providers like chorus and NTL have also add this facility to their digital TV packages making sure that you never miss you favourite show again.
Apart from some extra TV channels on their pay TV platforms, this ability to pause, rewind, record and playback was a huge advantage over Free to Air Satellite receivers. This has all changed though in the past year.
Before this, Free to Air receivers all came with a RS232 port but no USB. The RS232 port was used to programme the boxes and update software etc. It was a slow and cumbersome task indeed. With the addition of USB ports to the satellite receivers, initially they were just used for programming the receivers. The average time to programme the box went from five to ten minutes to twenty to thirty seconds. A huge improvement and made like a lot more simpler for installers and sellers alike.
There are a few thing to look out for when buying and external hard drive to add to your Free to Air satellite Receiver though.
1. The size (GB) of the External Hard Drive is the first one. Most receivers will support up to 250GB Hard Drives but larger ones ie 320GB and 500GB can be hit and miss so watch out for this.
2. Some Satellite receivers only support FAT32 so you will have to format the hard drive manually to FAT32 as the vast majority of drives are pre-formatted to NTFS(which by the way is far better for a variety of reasons)
3. If you go above 500GB with an external hard drive (portable or 2.5 inch), then you are in trouble as external hard drives of this type that are larger than 500GB require two USB ports to power them. Pretty much all free to air satellite receivers on the market have only one USB port, so these will not work
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Barry_F
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