I dont believe we will ever see a proprietary DVR that will allow to copy to thrid party device content. We might hope for an HD add on to increase the recording capacity, but thats about it.So even if we buy an HD-DVD recorder, or a Blue-Ray recorder, we will not have the ability to record the HD content from the DSR530? What is the point in creating an HD Recorder if you cannot record from any source with it? That really doesn't make sense.

We have always had the ability to copy and backup shows if we were doing it for our own personal use. There is no law against that. I am not sure why there would be a law against recording just because it is HD. Somebody, somewhere will find a way around it anyhow - no matter what they do.

You will probably be able to by pressing "play" on an HD program on the 530, hooking it up to an HD-capable recorder via DVI or component, and pressing "record" on that device.
What you won't be able to do is digitally transfer it from the DVR to another device, IE by transfering an .avi, .mpg, or .wmv file via USB or ethernet from hard drive to hard drive.

I would like to see two more small features:

1. The ability to do a "System Reset" or the equivilant of a "Soft Reboot - Power Button press for 10 secs" from the Options -> System Setup -> System Settinngs. My 530 is not in the same room as my TV and it would be nice to reboot without having to go upstairs to the room where my AV equiment is located. This is useful for those times you can tell that the 530 is starting to misbehave and needs to be reset before it hangs.

2. When displaying the guide, make the header a different colour if there is a Timer for a recording active for a given timeframe. This would allow you to NOT rely on the Timer Conflict screen to determine if there already a Timer pending.

Anyone else think these suggestions might be of value?

I would like to see two more small features:

1. The ability to do a "System Reset" or the equivilant of a "Soft Reboot - Power Button press for 10 secs" from the Options -> System Setup -> System Settinngs. My 530 is not in the same room as my TV and it would be nice to reboot without having to go upstairs to the room where my AV equiment is located. This is useful for those times you can tell that the 530 is starting to misbehave and needs to be reset before it hangs.

It would not work... what happens when the receivers stops responding?
It doesnt accept remote requests and thus open the options menu.


2. When displaying the guide, make the header a different colour if there is a Timer for a recording active for a given timeframe. This would allow you to NOT rely on the Timer Conflict screen to determine if there already a Timer pending.

Anyone else think these suggestions might be of value?

I have already submitted that request.
It would be a great feature.

It would not work... what happens when the receivers stops responding?
It doesnt accept remote requests and thus open the options menu.

I did not suggest for a second that this should work work when the remote is not working ... dah ... read my post again ... it goes without saying that if the remote does not work then I get off my butt and go upstairs to do a reset. I am talking about the cases where I know the unit is going wacky ... and yes there are signs that the 530 is in a downward spiral. The remote is working, but you know that there is going to be a soft/hard reset at some point in the NEAR future.

This would also allow me to, for example, before an evening of heavy use (heavy use tends to cause my unit to hang), perform a reset from the 'lard ass' position prior to starting the marathon recording/watching session to mitigate the effect of the 530's 'hanging' feature. My thinking is that maybe I can enhance the 530's memory environment so that can get through the whole evening without a corrupt recording due to a hang.

IMHO there is some form of memory corruption/leak in the unit that is occuring after running for some period of time and gets cleaned up on a soft reset. This corruption/leak is affected by the users usage pattern and therefore is the reason why some people see more problems than others. Allowing us to easily reboot at OUR convenience instead of when the 530 decides we need a reboot is ultimatly what I am suggesting.

I realize that we should not require a feature like this, but I suspect that it is going to be a while before the 530 is stable so maybe we could have some tools to make it easier for us, the users.

I would like to see two more small features:

1. The ability to do a "System Reset" or the equivilant of a "Soft Reboot - Power Button press for 10 secs" from the Options -> System Setup -> System Settinngs. ...
Anyone else think these suggestions might be of value?
My preference would be to fix the root cause rather than band-aid a workaround, but I see what you mean.

Kinda like storing guide data in flash or hard drive, so when you reboot, you don't have to wait 45 minutes to load again, same thing.

Better to just fix it I say.

Sorry I posted this to the wrong forum.

The big thing I think is missing from the DSR 530 is the lack of a Season Pass and Wish Lists. It's such a pain having to go upstairs and log into Zap2it.com to find when my favourite programmes are on, print out the list, and programme the schedule. Having Actor and Director wish lists, as well as Keyword and Title would be wonderful. Also, add in the ability to log what episodes have been recorded and not record duplicates. The ability to filter only first-run episodes would also be quite handy. And basically, let the user do a text-first search of programme titles, filtered by genre.

For instance, I go to add recording, select by name and a list comes up with a Ouigi board like TiVo and I type in "Comment c'est fait" and then select the programme which will list the next episode to be broadcast and give me the option to records just one episode, or all episodes (a season pass). Then type "Doctor Who" into a Title Wish List and set up a season pass that will record any programme named Doctor Who, be it on BBC Kids or the CBC. And then, set the priority of each recording.

Now THAT would be nice.

For that matter, get the boxes to run Linux so I can run a web server and programme my DVR over the internet. Now THAT would be nice!

Some of those things are in the works apparently.

First though, they need to get more days of guide data.

The remote control sounds neat.
Maybe someday, it will be part of the home network via the USB 2 port and a dongle and they can put some of that functionality in there.

Since the box was introduced as 'vanila', there are lots of things they can do.
Just a matter of time and decide which things to do first.

From what I've seen in the box, the sky's pretty much the limit.
It looks like the coding teams are starting to gel with better stability and some cool new features.

If they can keep that up, WOW!