Maxed out DVR hours

[5 'LIL *TWINKERS*]

Anyone else have their allowed dvr hours maxed out? We have DISH and they only allow 100hrs. of dvr recording--thats not enough time
Between soaps, realitytv, funniest home videos for the kids, great shows on at night and dh numerous hunting shows, we are to the max.

Its crazy trying to get caught up! How do you get caught up? Anyone else dvr as much as we do or are we weird?

 

[lynxstch]

neither do we..we have 2 dvrs..1 was half full..1 was at 89%..but we decided that before the new season started, we would make an effort to watch or get rid of mostly everything..and we did..we had a whole season of Stargate Atlantis on one that was a year old..lol..he finished watching them last week..now 1 is at 22% and the other is at 60%..just with new shows from the last 2 weeks..how did we ever live without dvr's?..now I don't miss anything!

 

[BCV513]

Mine is at about 75% right now. I tape a lot of old movies, so that takes up a lot of space. I've learned the hard way NOT to DVR in HD. I can only tape about 10 hours that way!

 

[daughtersrus]

We have Dish Network and can record 300 hours in standard and 100 hours in HD. We don't record much in HD, generally only sports.

 

[lovetoscrap]

Time to upgrade! We just did and got the DVR with 200 minutes of standard. I never really maxed out out old one but was close sometimes. We also have 2 DVR's--DH's stuff is on one and the kids and I have another.

 

[justhat]

My husband bought an external DVR that holds a lot more than our regular DirectTV one did. You might want to look into that. Of course, I don't think it's a good thing cause it just means there is less incentive for us to watch DVRd stuff. But a lot of our space is taken up by recording kid shows that they watch over and over so we'd never really have all the space to ourselves.

 

[olena]

We upgraded the hard drives in our Tivos for this reason.

 

[Luv2Scrap]

My Tivo is three years old - I might have 60 hours available on it, if I remember right. I've had to lower the recording quality to free up some space, now that I am back in school full time.

I really need to get that upgraded...

 

[AlienBrain]

I catch up on the weekends.

 

[everylastbreath]

Delete shows after you watch them, only record shows that are first run, watch that you don't have a million repeats. Shows that we records for my GS we only keep 2-5 episodes not all. If you have to record the entire season to watch the show, you probably weren't that interested in watching it in the first place. If I set DVR to record a new show and I don't watch the first couple of episodes, I delete the recording.

If your recording old movies, check the dollar store or walmart chances are the DVD is under $5 and you can keep it in your collection forever.

 

[lovemygoofy]

Delete shows after you watch them, only record shows that are first run, watch that you don't have a million repeats. Shows that we records for my GS we only keep 2-5 episodes not all. If you have to record the entire season to watch the show, you probably weren't that interested in watching it in the first place. If I set DVR to record a new show and I don't watch the first couple of episodes, I delete the recording.

If your recording old movies, check the dollar store or walmart chances are the DVD is under $5 and you can keep it in your collection forever.

We have a dvd recorder set up to the TIVO. My husband or his soldiers can TIVO whatever show or movie they want(within reason of course) and I can burn it to dvd.

Once things are deleted go into the deleted file and permanetly delete if need more space. Don't do the two minutes ahead and two minutes after the show unless it's really important as it just takes us more space in the recorder. As others have said record most shows in regular and not HD.

 

[MICKEY88]

Time to upgrade! We just did and got the DVR with 200 minutes of standard. I never really maxed out out old one but was close sometimes. We also have 2 DVR's--DH's stuff is on one and the kids and I have another.

doesn't seem like much of an upgrade...

 

[Cindy's Mom]

Wow - I never knew that HD takes up more space. I'm a fanatic about the space needs on the DVR. I keep it at 50%. Once a week DD and I go through all her recordings and we delete them . One time while on vacation, none of my shows got recorded because of all hers.....never again, never again I tell you.

 

[BibbidiBobbidiBOO]

We have a Comcast HD dvr and with all the new shows on we are at almost 60%!

Of course DS recorded a 4 hour football game in HD on there. That will HAVE to go soon! I think he wants to study something on it . He analyzes and critiques sports a lot!

We can record to the DVD recorder, but rarely do.

 

[FireDancer]

Anyone else have their allowed dvr hours maxed out? We have DISH and they only allow 100hrs. of dvr recording--thats not enough time
Between soaps, realitytv, funniest home videos for the kids, great shows on at night and dh numerous hunting shows, we are to the max.

Its crazy trying to get caught up! How do you get caught up? Anyone else dvr as much as we do or are we weird?

Most DVRs are just small computers with hard drives. They can be removed and ghosted to higher capacity drives. You'll just want to make sure there aren't any BIOS chips on the drive, because then the new drive may not be recognized. Once the DVR is opened you can get the specs off of the board and hunt around online to see if there is any addressing limitations that would keep it from addressing a larger drive. Even if there are sometimes the board has flashable BIOS so they can be upgraded.

Hacking a DVR isn't all that hard, even if you don't know how there are instructions all of the Interwebs.

Wow - I never knew that HD takes up more space.

Higher resolution = more bits/second = larger file. If the file is overly compressed to save space it will lose resolution.

 

[sbell111]

We have two Tivo HD XLs each with a 1TB external drive attached. According to Tivo, we should be good for 580 hours of HD or 5100 of standard-definition recording.

We don't get too stressed out if we haven't gotten around to watching Cake Boss.

 

[ead79]

When we bought a new TiVo HD last year, we bought the least expensive model they had in HD format. It only held 20 hours of HD programming (180 hours of standard def), so we knew right away that wouldn't be enough. So we purchased the Western Digital My DVR Expander hard drive, and now it holds TONS of shows (I think it holds something like 140 HD hours now). Essentially it's just an extra external hard drive, but I liked not having to hack my TiVo to get the extra space.

 

[KAMLEM]

I am disgusted with my Comcast DVR's. For some reason, if I tape a show without taping the entire series, it starts taping and it NEVER STOPS! You can even change the channel and it just keeps on taping whatever channel you are on. If I'm watching I notice this and stop it, but my kids don't. It wiped out almost everything that was taped when this happened the last time because it was an HD channel that was taping for about 24 hours. I have had 3 different DRV's on 3 different TV's and it happens to every one. As long as I tape the series it's fine, though. When I called Comcast the girl acted as if I was crazy.

 

[shortbun]

I have 3 DVRs in the house but I record a lot because I go to bed at 8pm and get up at 4am. One of my DVRs is full of Tavis Smiley, Colbert, Daily and Oprah. the other has enlightened things like "Dancing with the Stars", Mad Men, Fast Forward, Entourage, and the Burns National Parks documentary. I'm in big trouble when Ugly Betty and Big Love come back on, lol!

 

[5 'LIL *TWINKERS*]

We have Dish Network and can record 300 hours in standard and 100 hours in HD. We don't record much in HD, generally only sports.

How does this work? 300hrs?? We have dish too and only have 100hrs.