Did a quick test last night starting a recording on the 8642 and the 8300 and the 8642 does indeed start recording a few seconds later than the 8300 and after the start of a program.

Thanks for the test. Does the recording end a few seconds later too on the 8642? Again something like CP24 could come in handy.

live in Ottawa and don't get CP24. Tried to find a channel with the time displayed but could not find one. If anybody knows of one let me know.

It appears that none of the news networks have seconds on their time displays like CP24. Perhaps a channel with a "ticker" will help because then you can compare the last words on the ticker. Here are the channels and their numbers (in Toronto)

BNN - 57, CTVN - 62, CNBC - 79.

Did another test last night comparing the 8300 and 8642 and indeed the start is later on the 8642 and it records longer. Theory is that the record time is set for 30 mins and since it starts a bit later it records a little longer. The best I could tell is that it is about 300 frames (pause then hit FF repeatedly). If someone knows what the FF frame advance time is we could get an approximate time.

Using CP24, 30 presses equals 1 second, so looks like 10 seconds...

It's not that much at the beginning at most 3-4 seconds.

I have the 500Gb 8462 and after 3 hrs of HD recording tonight the HDD capacity went from 31% to 33%.

I know I don't have 150 hrs of HD capacity, but is there's a number between that and 60 hrs it says on the tin?

The 31% to 33% may have been from 30.5% to 33.5% and depending on the bitrate of the programme recorded, this estimate is not that far off. Record some more/longer programmes and the % will probably be accurate. Here's the link to the bitrate of various channels:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=104501

The lower bitrate channels will use only about 5 GB/hour, so if you recorded mostly those channels, you'd approach 100 hours with 500 GB. If you recorded only the higher bitrate HD channels (about 8 GB/hour), then you'd get the 60 hours.

^^^&

Of course, the actual amount of data will depend on what's in the picture. An image with lots of detail will have more data. However, compression tends to average it out. With digital video, there are I, P & B frames. The P & B frames are essentially the difference from an I frame. If there's little difference, they won't have much data.

Video compression picture types

Clarification: I don't believe that the link you provide is applicable once the compression has been done from the original material and the signal is roughly 19 kbps (or less OTA) or uncompressed by the service provider. The content is no longer applicable at that stage if a constant bitrate is sent out. Even if they were sending nothing but a black screen, you'd see a constant bitrate at that stage either OTA of full bandwidth service provider.

The exception would be if the service provider is using stat muxing as discussed in my previous link. Rogers compresses some channels, but most are uncompressed.

This is the topic of another thread. IF you wish to discuss further, please do so in another thread.

Cheers 57, The channel bitrate list was informative and instructive, vis a vis the programmes I record, and the HDD capacity at my disposal.

Has anyone heard on when Rogers will enable the ethernet capabilities?

They have just indicated they will enable some of the additional functionality later this year.

Any good information and/or web links regarding what this additional functionality will include? I'm wondering about the ability to share recordings throughout the house (multi-room features) and whether such functionality will require particular models of digital boxes on the other TVs within the house. I doubt the ethernet functionality will allow the saving of recorded programming on the PVR to files on a PC due to copy protection, but I would hope it somehow allows playback of the PVR recordings elsewhere. Problem I foresee though would be if ethernet is the transfer method, I would expect the digital boxes used in other rooms would also need an ethernet port... yes/no?