sgc
join:2011-11-02
Naperville, IL | USB on Cable Boxes I was just wondering...
Why is it that (nearly) every cable box has been manufactured with USB ports on it? I have never once heard of these ports being provisioned for use or even planned to be provisioned. Every manufacturer and provider will basically say these ports are for future use. Generally this would be for a USB keyboard possibly, but I know that the SARA interface does not have any use for QWERTY text input, and i-Guide (the last time I really interacted with it was 2007 at a relative's) had a very limited search function that also was not very useful. (those are the two I have any experience with). Also, I have never seen USB enabled for external HDDs.
Another possible use could be a USB WiFi dongle (I think TiVo uses this) but the other software probably wouldn't really be able to support it (besides, you wouldn't really get good performance with this anyway).
Basically, has anyone seen the USB port provisioned? I feel like it would make a lot more sense not to include them, since they are never used.
Right now, I actually use it to power my USB-powered speakers that I use for the speakers for my computer-monitor-turned-TV, but that is just because the ports are powered, and there is no information shared between it and the box. |
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mogamer
join:2011-04-20
Royal Oak, MI | Probably because cabelcos don't want to support any extras connected by usb. They have enough problems supporting existing features on their boxes. |
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| reply to sgc
said by sgc:Why is it that (nearly) every cable box has been manufactured with USB ports on it? Because when the boxes were designed, they envisioned possible uses for the USB ports. And since the cost of including them is so negligible, it's better to have them and not use them than to not have them and wish you did. |
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 boop
@wideopenwest.com | Used to have my phone charger plugged into it since as you mentioned they are powered. |
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 GooberPremium
join:2000-12-17
Naperville, IL
kudos:4 | reply to sgc
said by sgc:Also, I have never seen USB enabled for external HDDs.
Then you don't look around enough. People have talked about doing that on this WOW forum for years. I was doing it, which was one of the reasons I stayed with WOW for so long. Putting a 1 TB external drive (originally started with 500GB) on the cable box was great. One of the most useful features in our household. |
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sgc
join:2011-11-02
Naperville, IL | Adding a USB hard drive causes the box to malfunction. |
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GooberPremium
join:2000-12-17
Naperville, IL
kudos:4 | I don't know about the new boxes. But I used to have the older silver colored SA HD box and it worked great. |
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| Thats because usb isnt for anything, its the esata port that gets used for an external hard drive |
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GooberPremium
join:2000-12-17
Naperville, IL
kudos:4 | Ooops. You're right. My apologies. |
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sgc
join:2011-11-02
Naperville, IL | eSATA works great for expanding storage. I just bought a new hard drive (2TB $59) for the upcoming DVR but the company I am dealing with is being kind of difficult - I have to reorder the drive next week but they will give me free expedited shipping (I ordered it originally two weeks ago).
It would be very useful to be able to use USB hard drives, but perhaps they are not fast enough for effective DVR use, or less reliable? I realize they get 480 M(B/b)ps transfer speeds but you rarely get anything close to that.
My SA 8300HDC uses around 1.25-1.5 GB for a one-hour SD recording. I recently cataloged all the recordings, of which none were mine, to decide which ones everyone wanted transferred. We had about 430 hours recorded, and it was near-full. We use a 500GB external drive paired with the 160GB internal.
That is approximately .5 MB per second. An HD recording uses 6 times that, so 3 MB per second would be required per recording. If you are recording 2 and playing back 1 then you would need 9 MB per second, plus operating system stuff. I guess USB could handle the speed, but perhaps it is less reliable or there is some other reason providers do not want users to have USB HDD's connected. |
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| said by sgc:It would be very useful to be able to use USB hard drives, but perhaps they are not fast enough for effective DVR use, or less reliable? There is nothing inherent to USB hard drives that makes them ineffective for DVR use. Dish Network fully supports them. It's simply a software matter. |
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sgc
join:2011-11-02
Naperville, IL | said by Jeremy W:said by sgc:It would be very useful to be able to use USB hard drives, but perhaps they are not fast enough for effective DVR use, or less reliable? There is nothing inherent to USB hard drives that makes them ineffective for DVR use. Dish Network fully supports them. It's simply a software matter. Really? That's interesting. That's the first I have heard of any company actually provisioning the use of the USB ports on the boxes.
By support, do you mean that they, like WOW! with eSATA, allow you to use them, but will not really help you if something goes wrong since they are not an official accessory, or do they offer full tech support with the USB drives? |
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| said by sgc:By support, do you mean that they, like WOW! with eSATA, allow you to use them, but will not really help you if something goes wrong since they are not an official accessory, or do they offer full tech support with the USB drives? It's fully supported and advertised: »www.mydish.com/upgrades/products···storage/
They even allow you to add a USB hard drive to a non-DVR receiver to convert it into a DVR. |
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sgc
join:2011-11-02
Naperville, IL | said by Jeremy W:said by sgc:By support, do you mean that they, like WOW! with eSATA, allow you to use them, but will not really help you if something goes wrong since they are not an official accessory, or do they offer full tech support with the USB drives? It's fully supported and advertised: » www.mydish.com/upgrades/products···storage/They even allow you to add a USB hard drive to a non-DVR receiver to convert it into a DVR. I think I briefly remember a tech saying something about that. I was too busy trying to deal with his rude and condescending behavior, as well as his abuse of the equipment to actually care about the things he was saying (half of the things were about illegal and barely legal sites for new release movies...).
With Dish, do you own the boxes? If you rent them, it really doesn't make economical sense for them. If you own them, it still doesn't make economical sense but it makes quite a bit more. |
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| said by sgc:With Dish, do you own the boxes? If you rent them, it really doesn't make economical sense for them. If you own them, it still doesn't make economical sense but it makes quite a bit more. It's all leased, but I don't see how that matters. |
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sgc
join:2011-11-02
Naperville, IL | said by Jeremy W:said by sgc:With Dish, do you own the boxes? If you rent them, it really doesn't make economical sense for them. If you own them, it still doesn't make economical sense but it makes quite a bit more. It's all leased, but I don't see how that matters. They make more money from giving you a DVR instead of a standard set-top box, so it is a bit odd to allow you to circumvent their billing. It's nice, but a bit odd.
EDIT: I see that there is a one-time fee of $40 for non-DVR adding a drive, but that is still way cheaper than paying monthly. |
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| said by sgc:They make more money from giving you a DVR instead of a standard set-top box, so it is a bit odd to allow you to circumvent their billing. It's nice, but a bit odd. No no no. It's not that simple. I'm not going to touch the accounting aspects, which are important, but just know that you have to pay to enable USB hard drive capability. |
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