My East Ky

Tversity has recently released a new version of there great, free media server software. Version 1.0 RC1 has been out a couple of weeks and I recently updated the version I was currently using and have noticed a improvement of stability when streaming videos to a HR 21-700 HD reciever. Plus there is a new sleek looking interface.

As stated in a earlier post I recently upgraded to high definition with DirecTV, and with that comes a new receiver. I previously owned an Rca TiVo model dvr and loved it but the only downfall is it was not high definition capable. There is a high definition capable receiver with TiVo available but it will soon be useless when directv completely converts overt to mpeg 4 I believe.

If you have never used a TiVo unit before you don’t know what you’re missing it completely changed the way I watched TV. I was now able to watch TV on my schedule and not the networks. Once you have it you will never want to go without it.

I was kind of hesitant to get a non TiVo unit but unless I wanted to waste money on a box that was going to be useless a year or so from now I decided to go for the new DirecTV models, you can still get the TiVo units on eBay but all your doing is wasting your money.

First the picture quality, as I said in a earlier post the high definition channels are amazing crystal clear, although some stations are still up converting the signal and are not true hd yet, but only time will help that as new shows will be shot in high definition like the new season of survivor coming up that will be shot in high definition for the first time. The only complaint I have related to picture quality is when a show is not true hd you have to hit a “format” button on the remote to adjust the picture to adjust to the screen. For example my LCD TV is of course a wide screen and when I am switching channels I routinely have to hit the format button on the remote to fill the screen. Kind of annoying but it’s not that bad. After watching high definition programming your standard definition is going to look like crap. Not that the picture quality is bad but your basically going from night to day with the two.

Now on to the audio. Unfortunately I do not have a home theater system (yet) but the Hr21-700 produces sound that is clear and I have no complaints in that department. There was an issue a couple of months ago where the audio would go out of sync but an update by DirecTV resolved that issue.

Coming from a TiVo unit to this was kind of frustrating at first but that quickly disappeared after a week or so learning the functions. Like how to setup a “season pass” to record a entire season of a show. So far the Hr21-700 has not let me down in that department it’s basically a set it and forget thing. Plus as en extra benefit you can now go to directv.com and schedule shows to record on their website. For example say you were on vacation or a business meeting out of town or whatever you could log into directv.com then go to the tv schedule guide and select shows to record there and select which receiver ( if you have more than 1 DVR) to record to and it will record it for you.

Another nice feature that DirecTV is doing to compete with the cable companies is VOD Video on Demand. They are drawbacks as I see this the way DirecTV does it. DirecTV uses your high speed internet connection to download shows to your DVR. So a high speed connection is a definite must, I have 6meg DSL from AT&T and it takes about 15min or so to download a 30min show. The way I usually do it is let it start downloading and let it get to about 2-5% before I start watching it so it’s downloading while I’m watching. Or you could just set it to download overnight or when you’re not home during the day. I would say anything below a 3meg connection would be painful. Now you can certainly bet your ISP provider is not going to like this especially if they are millions of users doing this. As a matter of fact I read the other day that AT&T is going to (trial run) a pay per byte billing this fall. That is where AT&T as your ISP will give you say 100 GB (and that number is just thrown out there by me) and if you go over 100 GB for the month guess what? You will get billed for every byte, megabyte, and gigabyte or however they want to do it you go over. Just like your cell phone. And I think we all know how painful it can be when you go over your minutes. So no more unlimited internet downloading.

For the last part of the review I just wanted to comment on the Media share option that the HR21-700 has. Media share is a great option and for the time being has actually saved my money as I did ave plans to build a HTPC to play videos and music and pictures. If you have the HR21-700 connected to your home network and have a halfway decent Pc you can watch videos, listen to your mp3 collection or watch a slide show of your pictures with music playing. Now I say halfway decent pc because your “main” pc or server is supposed to be a VIV computer. But I can tell you one is not required, my pc is a Intel dual core 2ghz with 2gb of ram in a raid 0 setup. You need a halfway decent pc to Trans code video and music. Also the default setup is supposed to work with windows media player but you are very limited by this, and a great alternative application is Tversity.

I’m not going to go into the details about setting everything up and configuration but with tversity you can play just about every video format out there plus almost every audio codec there is. The HR21-700 is currently limited to only playing mpeg2 ( I believe ) and what tversity does is trans code your original video which maybe in xvid or divx format into mpeg2 on the fly being able to play through your HR21-700. It is a great feature to have available, but it is still in beta so they are some bugs still to be worked out. Tversity is currently free so I recommend everybody grab a copy while you can. This feature alone makes the $300 hit to upgrade to high definition a little easier to swallow.