Wolfpacker96

Does anybody have any info on this DVR time warner has out now? It's available with digital cable in the area, but I can't get an answer from TW about whether or not this unit can record HDTV. I don't even know if it's a separate box than the digital cable box.

__________________
Panasonic Viera TH-50PX80U, DishDVR ViP622

57U

The only cable DVR available that I know is the Scientific Atlanta SD model.

The SA8000 (SD) has been out for several months - testing in some areas and being sold in Montreal by Videotron. Still a bit buggy, but most people say it's "worth it" to have a PVR. There is a similar unit from Motorola - heard nothing about it.

The SA8000HD is not out yet, but is expected later this year. Cable companies have been testing it and a similar unit from Motorola (as well as some other units from other companies).

Rogers (my cable company) wanted a unit with Two tuners, a large HDD, firewire, DVI, etc - for the required copy flags, etc. They have been testing these units and it appears that the SA8000HD is the front runner... It is not even available for customer beta testing from what I can tell, but here's hoping...

These are "combination" boxes (not separate)

__________________
57U - Toronto, Rogers Cable, SA8300HD, 500GB HDD & Hitachi 61UWX10B HDTV, Yamaha RX-V1 A/V Receiver, Martin Logan Speakers. Photos --> 57U's HT

SA8300HD, 250GB HDD & KDL40W3000 (Upstairs)

Please don't PM me with questions that can (and should) be asked in the forum, thanks. Personal Question? Fire away.

kojak light

The Motorola version is the 5200/6200. It is expected to be available in September/October time frame.

The 5200/6200 will have a 40/60/80 GB Hard drive for PVR (cable companies can choose from 3 sizes of hard drives). It will also add a Firewire connection. The 6000 series boxes have 800+ MIPS processing power (vs 300+ in the 5000 series) and 400 MHz clock speed (vs 162 MHz).

The 6400 model will have DUAL PVR capability so you can watch one show and record another and have full PIP functionality.
The 6400 model is due by year end.

__________________
Go Sterling!!
Go- uh, Bears???
<><
----------------------------
Hitachi 51SWX20B (Image by "gambrelw"!)
Motorola DCT 5100
Panasonic RP-62 DVD
Yamaha RX-V995
Klipsch 5-speaker "Quintet" Surrounds with Yamaha Sub

Wolfpacker96

I think that they are using the Scientific Atlantic box. I guess I just need to visit the local office. Here's the website site where they claim it's already up and running, not still in the testing phase.

http://www.twcarolina.com/

Although, looking at it some more, they don't have a price listed in the "packages" yet.

__________________
Panasonic Viera TH-50PX80U, DishDVR ViP622

mhdiab

Wolfpacker,
Where do you go on that site?
I was on that site yesterday since they are my provider and I find about the DVR service for Digital programming, but nothing about it for HD. I emailed them about this issue yesterday as well and haven't got a response yet, but will update as soon I do. I talked to some guys on the HD side at TW about 2 weeks ago and then they were still in the testing face of other SA boxes.

Please prove me wrong - nothing I rather like to have right now

Wolfpacker96

Well, I haven't actually seen definately that it was available yet, but if you click on DVR on that homepage, it takes you to a discription of DVR and gives a price. You'd think that if they give you a price that means it's available, but I guess my assumption was wrong. I, like you, emailed the service dept. three days ago and haven't heard back. I also asked them about the recording HD. I'll let you know if I hear back from them, but I'm not holding my breath! Gotta love cable companies' customer service.

__________________
Panasonic Viera TH-50PX80U, DishDVR ViP622

mhdiab

Wolf - The DVR is available for a fact.
From the Page:

"With the Digital Video Recorder, there’s no expensive electronic equipment to buy. DVR service is avalable for as as low as $6.95/mo*. Plus, for our Digital customers, we will upgrade your Digital Cable box to a DVR-enabled one for free if you pick it up in the lobby with your DVR subscription. With just one low monthly price you can watch what you want to watch on TV, when you want to watch it. "

The last guy they sent to my house said he just checked someone's unit out and it was great.

What I said is - it does not record HD - maybe in a few months, but not at this point.

__________________
51H83 - Thanks Toshiba - P2 - XP50-SAXR10 - HKTS10

dukie1993

I have the DVR Box. It's an SA8000 explorer. I don't know the Hard Drive size, but they claim it will record 50 hours of digital channel programming and 40 hours of analog. It will not record or tune HDTV, you need a 3100HD to tune HDTV. It is an integrated cable box and DVR in one box. I used to have the DISH 501. If it had cost me the same I would definitely have kept the DISH 501.

Differences:

Pro SA8000:
Two tuners - Record 2 shows at once or record one and watch another, or record 2 and watch something you taped earlier.

Record Always Feature - Records a show whenever it's on (e.g. South Park, records Wednesdays at 10pm and Midnight, other days at 9:30.

Cheap! - Montly fee only. No upfront costs.

Con SA8000:

No ability to record something just once per week - For example South Park, you can't record just Wednesdays at 10:00pm, either record once or you get all episodes.

Volume level changes between live and buffered. If you are watching sports live, the hit instant replay, the volume goes way up.

No 30 second skip ahead - Must use fast forward to skip commercials

Slow response - hard to stop precisely at the end of a commercial set.

Forgets posistion when watching recorded show - Dish 501 would remember if you stopped watching a show then went back to the same spot later.

Slower fast forward and rewind. - Dish 501 had 300x.

Good Luck,

Dukie1993

__________________
Dukie1993
Hitachi 57UWX20B 57" TV
YAMAHA RX-V1200 Receiver
SA 3100HD HD Cable Converter
PS2
Panasonic CP-72 DVD Player
Pioneer CLD-D704 LaserDisc Player
Home Theater Master MX-500 Remote
My DVD Collection

Wolfpacker96

Ah, if only everything worked perfectly! The thing that bugs me with the monthly fee is that you're always paying for it. With Time Warner here (unless I'm reading it wrong) you pay $6.95 for the DVR plus $9.71 for the "Navigator" (even though they are in the same box). If you add that up for two years, you've paid almost $400. The Dish 508 only costs $299. Of course the Dish 508 could be obsolete by then. The new Dish 721 has two tuners, but costs $550. But the cable company claims they save you $3.46 a month with the "Digital Variety Package". Flip side is that Dish costs a WHOLE lot less than cable for about the same thing sans the HD. But the cable only carries 3 local HD stations when there are 6 broadcasting. Decisions, decisions!

And why is there a difference in hours for digital and analog? Seems to me that the analog would have to be converted to MPEG and would take the same amount of space.

__________________
Panasonic Viera TH-50PX80U, DishDVR ViP622

mhdiab

Not sure if I misunderstood you or if you don't want Digital. The unit is free in our area with Digital Cable. Then you also get the box and the HD channels for free..............

__________________
51H83 - Thanks Toshiba - P2 - XP50-SAXR10 - HKTS10

Wolfpacker96

Well, we're talking about the DVR. According to this page:

http://www.twcarolina.com/services/...digital_dvr.asp

it costs an additional $6.95 for the box with the DVR in it. As far as the digital cable box being free, it's all in how you look at it I guess. If you look at the pricing page it shows a monthly price for the Navigator which is the digital cable box. If you just got Standard Cable and added the box, it would cost you the $9.71 extra. You could watch the local HD channels (I presume) at that price which is $52.31. If you wanted to add a "Digital Tier" those are $6.95 per month for a total of $59.26. But instead of getting them separate, you can get the "Digital Variety Package" for $55.80. This saves you $3.46 a month over getting them separately. The package includes the box and one tier. It's not free but is a little cheaper than buying them separate.

__________________
Panasonic Viera TH-50PX80U, DishDVR ViP622

keving

I have the SA8000 DVR (they call it a PVR here in Central Florida), and it's been explained to me that, because of the way services are offered, it can't record HD content. Due simply to the fact that, to view any HD content here in Central Florida, you need to subscribe to their HD service and get an HD set top. So, like many others in my area, I resort to splitting my coax in two.

It may be possible to link the two together, but the PVR has no component ins or outs, so I don't know how it would be done. I primarily view content on the PVR, and when I want to watch HD content, I switch inputs to the HD box. Not a bad setup really, but having both devices in the same box would be nice.

Ours has an 80GB HDD, btw, and costs $6.99, 7.99, or 9.99, depending on what service you subscribe to.

Wolfpacker96

Oh jeez, so the DVR box doesn't even have a HD tuner? Oh well, I guess I'll just keep using my set-top box tuner and get analog cable. I'll bet they'll have an HD recorder by this time next year.

__________________
Panasonic Viera TH-50PX80U, DishDVR ViP622

57U

To record HD, you need the SA8000HD, which is not yet available. There is currently no way to record QAM cable with a DVR or HTPC. The SA8000HD is supposed to be released by the end of 2003. You should be able to "trade in" your 8000 for the 8000HD when it becomes available - probably for a few extra $/mo.

Search the forum for "SA8000HD" - lots of threads already... including the earlier posts in this thread.

PS. keving How do you like your SA8000? There were a lot of bugs when it was being tested last year, but I hear it's working "as advertized" (mostly) now... If you can provide a detailed review, that would be most appreciated.

__________________
57U - Toronto, Rogers Cable, SA8300HD, 500GB HDD & Hitachi 61UWX10B HDTV, Yamaha RX-V1 A/V Receiver, Martin Logan Speakers. Photos --> 57U's HT

SA8300HD, 250GB HDD & KDL40W3000 (Upstairs)

Please don't PM me with questions that can (and should) be asked in the forum, thanks. Personal Question? Fire away.

keving

Okay, well, not to sound cliche or anything, but this box has definitely changed the way I watch TV... even with it's faults.

If youre familiar with any products that use the Navigator software, than instantly you know just about everything you need to know to get up and running with this beast. It did take me a few days to get a hang of the multiple tuner aspect and how the PIP works, only because features didn't exist in the previous SA box I had.

I immediately went days ahead in the program guide, found all the programs that I watch, set them to record, and that was that. I can't remember at which point I happened across the series manager, but it allows you to record any instance of the program you want on the channel it initially recorded from, or from ANY channel it happens to air on, or first runs only, or only if you don't currently have other programs recording or etc etc etc. It's pretty powerful.

Aside from the few days it took to get my series recordings in order, I now come home, turn it on, go into my List, and watch any of the things that were recorded overnight and while I was at work. There's generally enough to keep my going for the time between getting home and when I go to sleep, so of all that programming, I skip through each 2-3 minute commercial break in about 15 seconds. It actually took a couple weeks before I unconsciously started fast forwarding through commercials. My roommate would occasionally catch me watching commercials.

And now to it's faults...

Whatever happens on live TV when it's recording is what happens when you play back the recording. As I've mentioned in other posts on this forum, my reception at times is spotty. Occasionally in my playbacks I see skips and black-outs, but I've gotten used to from having it occur on live TV. So no biggie there.

Sometimes, there's some kind of build-up that happens that just totally kills the buffers. It never happens right when I come home from work, but as I start to view programs, it'll get increasingly less responsive to my demands to rewind or fast forward through the buffer. It'll eventually get to the point where if I press any of the vcr-style control buttons, I just get a black screen. So I get up, reset the box, wait for it to reboot, and all is well again. Sometimes it'll start 'building up' again from the reboot, other times it may not come back for a few days.

Also, I've noticed that if I'm recording two programs and trying to view either of them, I get skipping on Live TV. Fortunately, it doesn't buffer THESE skips. I think the processor might be a little lacking in that it gives more priority to the buffers and recording, sacrificing Live TV as a result. Which is no biggie either. I'll just wait for one or the other to finish recording so the box being taxed so heavily when I want to play it back.

Even with all these problems, which I consider to be mildly annoying and really only minor, I still love this box. I'm one of those types that really doesn't watch TV. There's just those certain programs that happen to come on that I don't mind taking a peek at. I really only watch things that are setup in series management, and if I happen across a program that I watch for more than a few minutes that is NOT in series management, I add it. I've got about 20 things in there and it hasn't stopped me from adding yet, so it may not even have a limit for that.

Overall I give it an 8 out of 10. Having these problems totally wiped out would easily net it a 10. Others may experience these same problems and want to throw it out the window, but that just depends on how you watch TV.

keving

Just a follow-up to point out a bonus of the buffering.

First, the way the buffering works, anything that you watch is automatically buffered. From the minute that you flip on the DVR to the minute you turn it off, all that data is being recorded. Not all of it will be saved, but you do have the opportunity to save it. This is good in a Live TV situation where you might not decide you actually want to save something until it's halfway over. So lets say your halfway through a movie you though would suck, when actually it turns out to be the best movie you've ever seen. You press record, and it will 'record' as much of it as you had actually watched, due to the fact that it was being recorded in the buffer all along. By pressing record, you simply tell it to transfer it from the bufer into your saved programs list.

Sometimes when I'm watching live TV, I'll try to fast forward through commercials. Sometimes I'll get so mad at the box because it won't fast forward, and right as I'm ready to wing one of my shoes at it, I realize I'm not watching a saved program and thus cannot fast forward. But, I do pause frequently on live tv. So I might pause for a minute while I go to the bathroom or make myself something in the microwave. So when I get back to start watching again, I might be a minute or two behind live TV. When commercial break rolls around, I just press the Live button to catch up to live TV, and if I spent enough time on Pause, I'm already back to my program, seemingly having skipped an entire commercial break on Live TV.

Another dandy feature of the box has to do with the multiple tuners. When you're not watching anything on a PIP window, the swap button will actually swap the current program with whatevers going on in the other tuner. On the occasion that my recorded programs are low in enjoyment-factor, I'll set one tuner to a live channel that I'm halfway interested in and go on to watch another live program on the other tuner. Both get buffered independantly, so when one becomes boring, I hit the swap button to go to the other tuner, and rewind the buffer to catch up on what I'd missed. Because they are buffered independantly, I can still hit that record button to record either of those programs I had been watching, if I happen to decide that either of them was worth recording.

I LOVE this thing.

57U

Thank you very much for your comments. These boxes have been available from Videotron in Canada for several months. Those people (in Montreal) didn't seem to be as enamoured as you, but that may be because they hated the few bugs, or perhaps some of those bugs have been fixed in the past few months since I read most of their reviews.

I cannot wait until the SA8000HD arives. I've never watched live commercial TV (I only watch stuff recorded on my VCR for the past 25 years). I therefore don't watch much HD, other than the movie channel and PBS programmes and to scan past the HD channels to see what's on and to look at the quality...

I'm pleased to see that the unit does as much as you say - recording live, etc. When the unit originally came out, it had problems with "multitasking". If you asked it to do one thing, OK, but if you asked for many things, like you seem to do, problems would arise. Glad to see that most of the bugs are gone.

__________________
57U - Toronto, Rogers Cable, SA8300HD, 500GB HDD & Hitachi 61UWX10B HDTV, Yamaha RX-V1 A/V Receiver, Martin Logan Speakers. Photos --> 57U's HT

SA8300HD, 250GB HDD & KDL40W3000 (Upstairs)

Please don't PM me with questions that can (and should) be asked in the forum, thanks. Personal Question? Fire away.

Wolfpacker96

Keving,

Thanks for the review. I may just go ahead and get the box even though it doesn't have HD. I can always trade up when the right box comes out. I can still watch all my local HD stations with my rabbit ears. I'd just love to be able to record CSI in HD. That show's picture kicks some major a*s.

__________________
Panasonic Viera TH-50PX80U, DishDVR ViP622

keving

Go ahead and file that under "What is it good for?"

Your best bet is to get whatever you get from your cable company, if they offer it. Replacements aren't a hassle (or a loss) if they break, and you don't have to worry about 'keeping up with the Jonses'. I don't think I would have the service level I have now or the TV that I have now if not for the fact that this can be provided for a relatively small monthly charge.

But actually, I work for Bright House Networks here in Central Florida (formerly Time Warner), so I get it all free.