EchoStar has long been a leader in the satellite TV business and once again they are presenting a product that promises to revolutionize the way we watch our TV. The DVR-7000 is a top of the line model which integrates a massive 40GB hard disk drive into the body of a high performance satellite receiver. What is really special though is all the great new functions that they have created which make spectacular use of this hardware platform.
28 hours of digital recording
Describing the uses and performance of the 40GB hard disk drive is more challenging. The main function of the disk is to record TV programs – just like you used to do with your VCR, except that with the DVR-7000 you are making a perfect digital copy of the video and audio. So during playback there is absolutely no distortion at all.
We recorded 28 hours of TV on the hard disk. The technical people at EchoStar told us that was about average. The actual number of hours that you can record depends on the type of content which you are recording as some channels are transmitted at higher bit rates than others. Sports for example is typically transmitted at higher rates and so will take up more space on the disk (and hence allow fewer total recording hours). Animated cartoons are at the other end of the scale and typically transmitted at very low rates so you can record those to your heart’s content without filling up your disk.
Painless Timers
Aside from the quality of the recordings the most striking thing is that it is so easy to do. Just press the record button on the remote and you instantly begin recording the show you are watching. That’s if you want to record what you are watching. Dead easy.
It gets even more impressive when you program it to record something in the future. That was always the Achilles heel of the normal VCR hookup, so it bears some reminiscing about how painful that process used to be: First of all you had to set the time on the VCR – can’t set a timer to record at 8pm if the VCR (sometimes called “the stupid box” or worse) didn’t know that the time right now was 2pm. Then you had to make sure that that time corresponded to the time shown on the satellite receiver. Then you had to make sure that the input channel on the VCR corresponded to the satellite receiver. In most homes this was hardly something to take for granted.
But with the DVR-7000 it is fair to say that all that recording complexity is history. If you want to set a timer to record something in the future just press the “EPG” button on your remote (“EPG” stands for Electronic Program Guide – this is the screen which gives you a very clear overview of all your channels during the coming month.)
Then identify the program you want to record and set a timer to record it. Start and stop times are automatically set for you (or you can adjust them if you wish). You can password protect the program if you want to make sure that others can’t play it back without permission.
Jukebox with 500 songs
Who hasn’t suffered the inconvenience of changing music CDs during a dinner party, or a dance party. Most common is to play one song from one CD, then another song from another CD, and so on. After an hour of music you have a messy stack of CDs which is totally out of order, and the DJ (or the host of the party who has no choice other than to play the role of Mr DJ) is fed up with plopping CDs in and out of the unit.
There is a better way, and it goes under the 1950’s name of “jukebox”, which was the large contraption in hamburger restaurants where you put in a coin to choose the record you wanted to listen to (single 45s back then….). But the world has progressed since the 1950s, and the jukebox on the DVR-7000 has enough capacity to store around 500 songs in digital MP3 format. Music quality sounds great especially when you hook the DVR-7000 up to an external Hi-Fi system.
Using the powerful grouping and sorting functions it is easy to create a playlist with a few hundred appropriate songs – then press play, and leave it alone to play song after song from your list. This is definitely predicted to be the player-of-choice for this season’s New Year’s parties.
And the Sat Receiver ain’t too shabby either . . . .
After writing about digital recording and MP3 playback it is hard not to be enthusiastic about the functions of this satellite receiver. But that is not doing justice to this unit. In fact the DVR-7000 would easily carry off the title of “ultimate satellite receiver” even without the hard disk and MP3 player built in.
We have to admit this as a fact: There is absolutely no other receiver on the market today, which has this many features. So where to start in describing it all to you?
Receives digital and analog and has antenna positioner
In addition to the normal digital satellite tuner, EchoStar has also done a great job of integrating an analog satellite receiver – in addition to the thousands of digital satellite channels there are also many hundreds of analog channels up there as well. The nice thing here is that all channels, whether digital or analog can be received and are listed in the same channel lists so it is not a hassle to switch back and forth between them.
Then there’s the built-in antenna positioner – EchoStar has been well known since the beginning of the satellite TV business as the company which leads all others in terms of ease of use on motorized systems.
Navigation System
We have saved the best for last. Although digital video recording and the MP3 song jukebox are the sexiest bits about this unit, we think the big prize goes for the design of the user interface. Clearly the software guys at EchoStar have put a lot of thought into how people are likely to use this box and what can be done to make it easy to use.
Lists, lists, and more lists
Five thousand TV channels, 2000 radio channels, 100 satellites, 500 songs jukebox, 40 GB worth of recording capacity.
Amazing stuff and it begs the question if things aren’t getting a bit out of control. Out of all those TV and radio channels can you find the one you want? With 500 songs on the jukebox how long will it take you to locate the one you want? You made a great recording of a football match two months ago – can you find the recording and find the key penalty shot in the 64th minute?
The answer is a simply Yes. With a few minutes of practice we found the navigation of the DVR-7000 to be child’s play. Yet, maybe it is better to call it turbo-charged child’s play since there aren’t many other machines out there short of a Pentium PC which offer so much control and power with such a user friendly interface.
EchoStar’s idea is basically to allow you to categorize and group your content, whether TV channels, Radio channels, video recordings, or audio songs, and then to store this content in a list. In fact you get eight separate lists for each “mode”. So for example, you can store you recorded sports programs in a list called “Sports Recordings”, and your recorded children's programs in “Children’s Recordings”. Similarly you can put CNN and BBC and CNBC and other TV channels into a “News TV” list; or put your dance songs into a “Dance Music” list for the next party.
The Video Demo … Coming soon to a shop Near You!
Summing up the features is a literary challenge. EchoStar has saved one final surprise, which should put a smile on the satellite retailers – because there is just so much innovation in this unit they have gone and made a video, which takes you step by step through all of the aspects we’ve tried to describe above. And the kicker is, they will even load this video onto the hard disk drives of a few pieces of DVR-7000 so that shops can play this demo video direct from the hard disk. What fun! Definitely worth heading down to the souk for a viewing.