Tivo V6 Disk usage

cheekyangus · 22-10-2018, 13:50

Hot on the heels of finding that Yellow Button For Channel's +1 Version shortcut the other day I've found something else by accident.

Maybe it's been there for ages but since people keep arguing how much space recordings take up on their VM Tivos I think it's not well known.

To find out how much space recordings take on your VM Tivo V6 (not sure about old VM Tivos but probably the same I'd guess):

My Shows>Select Show You Want & Press OK>Press INFO > Scroll Right Down To Bottom (as all those I've tried have been off screen bottom) and right below "Categories" is "Disk Usage".

It reads like Disk Usage: Less than 1% (4.58GB)
The above example is for a 1h30 film in HD on Film4
Another example says less than 1% (1.71GB) and was for a 1h55 animé film on Vice channel.

Anyway, hope this helps everyone.

Taf · 22-10-2018, 17:55

1%

Mine is at 45% !!

peanut · 22-10-2018, 18:47

The only thing you need to know is the total %age used.

Raider999 · 22-10-2018, 20:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by cheekyangus

Hot on the heels of finding that Yellow Button For Channel's +1 Version shortcut the other day I've found something else by accident.

Maybe it's been there for ages but since people keep arguing how much space recordings take up on their VM Tivos I think it's not well known.

To find out how much space recordings take on your VM Tivo V6 (not sure about old VM Tivos but probably the same I'd guess):

My Shows>Select Show You Want & Press OK>Press INFO > Scroll Right Down To Bottom (as all those I've tried have been off screen bottom) and right below "Categories" is "Disk Usage".

It reads like Disk Usage: Less than 1% (4.58GB)
The above example is for a 1h30 film in HD on Film4
Another example says less than 1% (1.71GB) and was for a 1h55 animé film on Vice channel.

Anyway, hope this helps everyone.

Thanks for that

Tried it on a BTsports4K recording of a rugby match - 2hrs 45mins recording = 4%

Raider999 · 22-10-2018, 23:10

Saturday's football on BTsp4K

3.5 hours recording, 5% 41GB

These figures back up my assertions (denied by others) in a different thread.

RichardCoulter · 28-10-2018, 16:29

My own guestimate is that a 4K recording takes up about 4 times that of an SD recording and an HD recording about twice the amount of an SD recording.

Raider999 · 28-10-2018, 18:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

My own guestimate is that a 4K recording takes up about 4 times that of an SD recording and an HD recording about twice the amount of an SD recording.

More like 4K takes 4 x that of HD.

I expect a HD recording takes 2x that of SD (not entirely sure as I never watch SD)

RichardCoulter · 28-10-2018, 19:04

Cheers, that explains why UHD recordings use up so much space then.

I thought that it would be less than that as the UHD channels use HEVC, which is more efficient than the MPEG4 that HD channels use on VM.

jfman · 28-10-2018, 20:17

It's already been covered in another post - but roughly on average the video on Virgin's HD channels broadcast at 6MB/sec, the Virgin 4K channel averages about 24 Mb/sec and BT Sport 4K is fixed at 27.3MB/sec.

SD averages vary from anything between 1.2 Mb/sec to almost 8 Mb/sec for Sky Sports SD versions.

I'm unsure what assertions Raider999 is alluding to, but the obvious problem is that the percentage on a 1Tb disk has a huge margin of error from rounding.

https://www.cableforum.uk/board/show...postcount=2182

My calculation gave 24.34GB for 2 hours. Multiplied by 1.75 gives 42.5GB. I accept my calculation is for video only (audio is 448kb/sec), and it isn't clear whether Virgin's software defines a megabyte as a million bytes or 1024*1024 bytes.

What Virgin haven't really tested is the lower limit of broadcast 4K as there's been no need to due to the ample capacity they have to maintain high bitrate 4K broadcasts.

Raider999 · 28-10-2018, 20:50

My assertions that a UHD recording of around 3.5 hrs would occupy approx 5% of disk space.

Others disagreed and said it was a much lower figure.

The discovery of the mechanism of obtaining the disk usage as a Gb and a %age used supports my original posts

jfman · 28-10-2018, 21:05

Well another user was using another channel with a 10% lower bitrate, and their upper guess was approx 10GB per hour which does roughly stand up using that channel.

I'd be interested to see what the lower and upper limits of 5% are, because multiplied by 20 the total margin of error could be 200GB, or 20% of the disk space.

Stuart · 29-10-2018, 17:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Taf

1%

Mine is at 45% !!

That means the film is occupying 1% of the disk, not all the shows and films that have been recording.

---------- Post added at 16:11 ---------- Previous post was at 16:07 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by peanut

The only thing you need to know is the total %age used.

Not necessarily. It can help to know how much space an individual recording is taking up if you are prioritising what you can delete so you can fit the latest showing of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy on the Tivo (or another large thing).

Raider999 · 29-10-2018, 19:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by peanut

The only thing you need to know is the total %age used.

Actually that is not true.

Knowing the amount of disk space each recording is likely to use combined with the amount available enables you to decide what you can or cannot record.

When you are going away for a few days this is particularly important.

---------- Post added at 18:14 ---------- Previous post was at 18:08 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by jfman

Well another user was using another channel with a 10% lower bitrate, and their upper guess was approx 10GB per hour which does roughly stand up using that channel.

I'd be interested to see what the lower and upper limits of 5% are, because multiplied by 20 the total margin of error could be 200GB, or 20% of the disk space.

I have always said I was recording from BT4K channel

I would have thought that anything from 4.50 to 5.49 would be shown as 5 (general mathematics) however that may not be the case.

With disk sizes such as 1Tb and above it would be good to have these %ages given to 1 decimal place.

I would also like to know if the whole 1Tb is available for recording or if, as I suspect, some is used to store the EPG and software (if so how much) - someone must know the answer to this!

spiderplant · 29-10-2018, 20:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raider999

I would also like to know if the whole 1Tb is available for recording or if, as I suspect, some is used to store the EPG and software (if so how much) - someone must know the answer to this!

874GB is available according to this. But that's only based on a sample of one.

jfman · 29-10-2018, 20:20

Raider999 my point wasn’t to prove you right or wrong, but to the lay person who believed that their experience with Virgin’s UHD channel would be representative they weren’t being dismissive of your point.

Mathematically it’s irrelevant if 4.01 rounds up to 5, or 4.50 to 5.49 rounds to 5. The margin of error is still the same (1% wide). It’s only in one direction if solely rounding up tho.