I don't necessarily plan to fill up the DVR... I just want the option to go on a trip for 10 days without having to either record everything in SD or have most of it deleted by the time I get home.

The reason I chose the 750 gig hard drive, as opposed to a larger or smaller one, was that it appeared to be the sweet spot in terms of pricing (you could get a significantly smaller one and save a little money, or get a somewhat bigger one and spend a lot more money).

I also don't see having a lot of stuff saved as unmanageable, necessarily. Either I'll watch it or eventually I'll delete it. I also love the Winter Olympics and plan to record a lot of it this time out, something I couldn't do last time with the Cox DVR.

To me, a DVR is about flexibility, and the size of the Cox hard drive meant that my flexibility was very limited. If they had a DVR with 40-50 hours I'd probably never have switched to TiVo, but less than 20 hours is just too small.

A friend has a DISH 2-tuner '722' receiver with a 500 GB drive. Each of the 2 TV's in the house can access the one drive to set programing as well as access all recordings. The 722 also has a USB port for an external hard drive of your choice ($40 enable fee) - I assume that includes fairly inexpensive 1TB or 2TB drives.

Why would anyone want to buy an expensive Tivo box, to supplement a severely deficient Cox box, and worse yet buy 2 Tivos to do the same thing? And also still pay Tivo's monthly fees? I don't get it at all. Help me out here - am I missing something?

Thanks.

Well I just checked again and the On Demand channels are still scrambled and non viewable on PC. So it would seem this is an intentional thing Cox has implemented to screw the customers yet again. I think its about time I email verizon begging them to bring there FIOS to our area again.

Well I just checked again and the On Demand channels are still scrambled and non viewable on PC. So it would seem this is an intentional thing Cox has implemented to screw the customers yet again. I think its about time I email verizon begging them to bring there FIOS to our area again.

It probably won't do much good, but I'm glad you are trying to speak up to Verizon. Tell them I want it, too. ;)

So you were able to receive and record (on your computer, of course) the On Demand movies that those with a Cox DVR would normally pay for, or are you not speaking of any of the for-pay parts of On Demand? Assuming the former for a moment, while I am sympathetic to your situation, unless I am missing something, I wouldn't assume that Cox would give those away for free forever. Perhaps I misunderstood what you were saying, though??

A friend has a DISH 2-tuner '722' receiver with a 500 GB drive. Each of the 2 TV's in the house can access the one drive to set programing as well as access all recordings. The 722 also has a USB port for an external hard drive of your choice ($40 enable fee) - I assume that includes fairly inexpensive 1TB or 2TB drives.

Why would anyone want to buy an expensive Tivo box, to supplement a severely deficient Cox box, and worse yet buy 2 Tivos to do the same thing? And also still pay Tivo's monthly fees? I don't get it at all. Help me out here - am I missing something?

Thanks.

At least in my case, you are missing something? I have said a few times that I would love to switch to satellite, but due to the nature of my condo (first floor, no roof access, and tile floors), my wife would never go for running cables all through the house. Further, I'm not even sure if I have direct access to the satellite. And lastly, I currently have cable in about six locations, of which only two have cable boxes. The others are just raw cable. You can't do that with satellite.

That said, at least with DISH, there are a couple things to look out for.

* At least in the past, their HD programming has been a little soft. Sure, it's HD, but resolution is only part of the picture (so to speak). I'm sure the signals are compressed and the bitrate is probably fairly low. Of course, that is the case with Cox, too, but thought I'd point it out.

* DISH has lost the TiVo lawsuit and will have to pay out a great deal of money in royalties, fees, or whatever is decided in that case. My understanding is their new DVRs have not violated TiVo's patents, so they will be fine, but old DISH DVRs will have to be shut off - at least the DVR part.

* If you are going to go with any satellite service, I would recommend you go with DirecTV, particularly if you are a mainline sports fan. DirecTV is the king as far as sports programming packages go.

* There is also a chunk of up-front costs with satellite and to get the few promotions they offer, you have to commit to one year with DirecTV and as many as two years with DISH. With Cox, there are little-to-no up-front costs and no long-term commitments.

* Most importantly, if you want decent internet access speed, you will have to stick with Cox. Yes, you can just get the internet access through Cox, but it's more costly without cable TV and/or local telephone service.


I'm sure others may want to chime in, particularly about picture quality, but those are my comments off the top of my head.

What I really want is Verizon's FiOS. Now that's a game changer for me! :cool:

It probably won't do much good, but I'm glad you are trying to speak up to Verizon. Tell them I want it, too. ;)

So you were able to receive and record (on your computer, of course) the On Demand movies that those with a Cox DVR would normally pay for, or are you not speaking of any of the for-pay parts of On Demand? Assuming the former for a moment, while I am sympathetic to your situation, unless I am missing something, I wouldn't assume that Cox would give those away for free forever. Perhaps I misunderstood what you were saying, though??

I am talking about all On Demand material in general. Until recently everything was viewable when you scanned the QAM signal. I personally was only interested in the free stuff or material from pay channels like Showtime that I currently subscribe to. I would select a program on my DVR then scan for the signal with my PC QAM tuner. I am not talking about stealing on demand pay per views or anything like that. Just the basic stuff that I pay for every month with my subscriptions. Now everything (Freezone, showtime, starz) has been blocked.

I am talking about all On Demand material in general. Until recently everything was viewable when you scanned the QAM signal. I personally was only interested in the free stuff or material from pay channels like Showtime that I currently subscribe to. I would select a program on my DVR then scan for the signal with my PC QAM tuner. I am not talking about stealing on demand pay per views or anything like that. Just the basic stuff that I pay for every month with my subscriptions. Now everything (Freezone, showtime, starz) has been blocked.

Well then that does really suck.

A friend has a DISH 2-tuner '722' receiver with a 500 GB drive. Each of the 2 TV's in the house can access the one drive to set programing as well as access all recordings. The 722 also has a USB port for an external hard drive of your choice ($40 enable fee) - I assume that includes fairly inexpensive 1TB or 2TB drives.

Why would anyone want to buy an expensive Tivo box, to supplement a severely deficient Cox box, and worse yet buy 2 Tivos to do the same thing? And also still pay Tivo's monthly fees? I don't get it at all. Help me out here - am I missing something?

My TiVos are not "supplementing" a Cox box -- I no longer have a Cox box at all, so my bill is now ~$17 less per month. (Cable cards are $1.99 each.)

I did not want to switch to satellite with all the wiring and installation hassles that entails. I'm comfortable with TiVo and like what it can do, including Amazon on Demand, Netflix, etc.

I'm not claiming it's the right solution for everybody, but so far it is working for me.

Hello all, been awhile since I last visited, interesting reading the last 6 pages! News yesterday from Cox, my Cable has bumped up to 12.5MBps IIRC....don't remember if the up speed improved.

Also, if anyone has be using the Win7 RC (I love it! And that's on an real old gaming box I built years ago running a very overclocked AMD Athlon XPM CPU!) the Win7 RTM has a much improved Media capabilities!

http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/07/27/windows-7-media-center-review/


Also, push Cox for BBC_HD....I want Topgear and Dr Who in HD! (if you like cars and have not seen Topgear you are missing something! Its a family event at my house when its on!)

Hello all, been awhile since I last visited, interesting reading the last 6 pages! News yesterday from Cox, my Cable has bumped up to 12.5MBps IIRC....don't remember if the up speed improved.


You just got the increase? Moyekj reported on that (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=14305502&postcount=4231) over a year ago. In any event, that is the Preferred package speed - 10 Mbps down, 768 Kbps up, and 12.5 Mbps down with PowerBoost. I have that same package, but I actually get closer to 15 - 20 Mbps down and 1.8 - 2.2 Mbps up, depending on the time of day.


Also, push Cox for BBC_HD....I want Topgear and Dr Who in HD! (if you like cars and have not seen Topgear you are missing something! Its a family event at my house when its on!)


Unfortunately, it doesn't look like BBC HD will be included in tomorrow's channel additions. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=16766260&postcount=5167

Also, push Cox for BBC_HD....I want Topgear and Dr Who in HD! (if you like cars and have not seen Topgear you are missing something! Its a family event at my house when its on!)

Sorry to disappoint you, but Top Gear isn't even filmed in HD. Well, there was the Polar Special - the only HD episode. But even the current season is still in SD....

Nothing better than my 3 year old saying "Daddy, let's watch Top Gear!" :)

I have been able to learn a lot about our Cox system here, and appreciate all of the posts. I have several questions: Cox HD DVR,
Why can't I pause a show [like a Vcr] while recording it live?? IE NFL game would only use 2 hours of recording time vs 3. Is Cox's build out complete yet??? USA, NFL, Disc. HD Theatre etc. [which I pay extra for!!] and others look bit starved with heavy macro-blocking . Direc looks much better head to head live.
I'm very annoyed by the DVR's hard drive's small capacity, can we add on a unit and easily access and use it??? Dish allows it with a one time $40.00 activation fee.
I've heard about the Moxi HD DVR, it will apparently record 75 hours of HD standard, and allows an add-on Hard Drive if needed. I know it needs a M Cablecard which Cox has, right??? Does it also need a computer hook-up??? I don't have that at my system currently. Anyone have one, or used the Moxi in the past??? Lots of questions, appreciate any responses. Thanx!!

Does anybody know what the latest status is on the Tuning Adapter for Orange County?

You just got the increase? Moyekj reported on that (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=14305502&postcount=4231) over a year ago. In any event, that is the Preferred package speed - 10 Mbps down, 768 Kbps up, and 12.5 Mbps down with PowerBoost. I have that same package, but I actually get closer to 15 - 20 Mbps down and 1.8 - 2.2 Mbps up, depending on the time of day.



Unfortunately, it doesn't look like BBC HD will be included in tomorrow's channel additions. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=16766260&postcount=5167


Hmm...I remember the email last year, prob still have it. Wonder why they sent out a new one. Will take a better look at it when I get home.

While Topgear may not be filmed in HD, the Euro SD is better then ours and you can see the improvement when its coming through the larger HD Pipe. Like the TDF the past 3 weeks, it wasn't HD (even though they kept saying it was!!!) but it still looked much better then previous years watching it on Versus SD......Though the trees were still green blobs most of the time...

Anybody get the new channels today. We don't yet and are in Aliso Viejo.

as of this morning, no for me in irvine 92602

Anybody get the new channels today. We don't yet and are in Aliso Viejo.

as of this morning, no for me in irvine 92602

Just checked via slingbox. Still no new channels in 92602...

I have been able to learn a lot about our Cox system here, and appreciate all of the posts. I have several questions: Cox HD DVR,
Why can't I pause a show [like a Vcr] while recording it live?? IE NFL game would only use 2 hours of recording time vs 3.]

You can. You should only have to hit pause.


Is Cox's build out complete yet???


Yes, they finished the infrastructure improvements over a year ago now.

USA, NFL, Disc. HD Theatre etc. [which I pay extra for!!] and others look bit starved with heavy macro-blocking . Direc looks much better head to head live.

All you need to do is read through the last few weeks of posts and you will see we are all very frustrated with the picture quality.:) Call or fill out the online form (https://www.cox.com/support/ocpv/emailchat/emailus.asp) to complain. Many of us have.


I'm very annoyed by the DVR's hard drive's small capacity, can we add on a unit and easily access and use it??? Dish allows it with a one time $40.00 activation fee.
I've heard about the Moxi HD DVR, it will apparently record 75 hours of HD standard, and allows an add-on Hard Drive if needed.


Unfortunately no. There's no technical reason we know of that prevents it, but Cox chooses not to enable it, at least here in the OC. In San Diego, where they use Scientific Atlanta DVRs with SARA, it is enabled.


I know it needs a M Cablecard which Cox has, right??? Does it also need a computer hook-up??? I don't have that at my system currently. Anyone have one, or used the Moxi in the past??? Lots of questions, appreciate any responses. Thanx!!


I haven't used the Moxi box, but many here have been discussing what we consider the best solution, TiVo. You can get the TiVo HD XL DVR and record up to 150 hours of HD. I opted for the lesser TiVo HD ($200 refurbished), which gets about 20 hours of HD, but is easily upgraded to a larger internal HD or, to avoid voiding the warranty, an add-on external drive. Yes, the M-card is required, but the TiVo/Cox solution is slightly less per month than the Cox DVR solution. The payback period is longer, though, as their is an upfront cost with TiVo that you won't have with Cox.

Review the last few pages of posts and you'll see lots of discussions about TiVos.

I checked here in laguna niguel at noon and had several new HD channels.

Interesting, I guess they've done it this way before - one zone at a time. Perhaps it requires a reboot?

My TiVos now think 717 is FX-HD, but I am still getting Versus.

No new channels here in Mission Viejo at 4:49pm. Might try a box reset.

Rebooted my box. Still no new channels.

I called cox and they are saying that they received an internal email that the roll-out date was incorrectly given and that it is now Aug. 4th. Sounds like B.S to me. Anybody else get the same response from a CS rep.

Well, they sent the change into Tribune, just as they were listed in post 5167 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=16766260&postcount=5167). So TiVo now thinks all the changes/new channels are in place.

...it is broken. So much for a refurbished unit. It works for a while, but then reboots. Anyway, they are sending me a brand new one this time and I should have it in a few days. Patience is not my strongest quality. ;)

Email from Cox dated 7/22/09

Cox High Speed Internet Just Got Even Faster

Just when you thought you knew what fast was, we made it even faster.
Save time with faster speeds that allow you to download and upload photos, music, movies, games and more in a flash. Hold on tight for increased Internet speeds up to 12.5 Mbps with PowerBoost®.

Get more from Cox High Speed Internet
• Cox Security Suite powered by McAfeeTM - Top ranked security suite to protect your home computers, a $69.99 value... FREE with all our packages.
• Cox Rhapsody - Get access to millions of songs for the price of one CD.
Try 25 songs for FREE!
• MyNoggin - Nickelodeon's educational online service that adapts to your preschooler's learning style... free with all our packages.

As we continue to be the leader of the pack, so do you. Start enjoying
Cox High Speed Internet's increased speeds today – it's on us, seriously!
Need even more speed?
Upgrade to Premier Cox High Speed Internet with speeds up to
25 Mbps with PowerBoost®.




And this is the one from 7/16/08


Just when you thought you knew what fast was, we made it even faster.
Save time with faster speeds that allow you to download and upload photos, music, movies, games and more in a flash. Hold on tight for increased Internet PowerBoost speeds up to 12 Mbps (from 7Mbps).

PowerBoost® – it's not just for downloads anymore
For those moments when you need a little extra boost, PowerBoost will
blast you into a world of instant gratification – FREE. And with its recent enhancement, you can now enjoy doubled upload speeds and up to 33% faster downloads.
Ahead of the race
Considering this is the 5th year in a row we've enhanced our speed, you can bet it won't be the last. Our amazing Internet speed is just one of the many reasons we are Orange County and Palos Verdes #1 Internet provider, with more customers than all other Internet providers combined!
Get more from Cox High Speed Internet
• Cox Security Suite powered by McAfeeTM - Top ranked security suite to protect your home computers, a $69.99 value... FREE with all our packages.
• Cox Rhapsody - Get access to millions of songs for the price of one CD.
Try 25 songs for FREE!
• MyNoggin - Nickelodeon's educational online service that adapts to your preschooler's learning style... free with all our packages.
• Cox High Speed Internet's blazing-fast speeds are the perfect match for streaming hours of live coverage of 25 Olympic events from Beijing. Access NBC's on-line coverage via www.cox.net beginning August 8th.


As we continue to be the leader of the pack, so do you. Start enjoying
Cox High Speed Internet's increased speeds today – it's on us, seriously!

So it looks like we gained .5MBPS....


LOL!

So it looks like we gained .5MBPS....


Yes! :rolleyes:

I expect the new channels are there now for at least some of you guys using a cable box. (TiVo users get nothing.)

still nothing 92602

if its really going to happen by aug 4th ill be ok with that. but knowing cox it will be jan 1st, 2010

still nothing 92602

if its really going to happen by aug 4th ill be ok with that. but knowing cox it will be jan 1st, 2010

Nothing here in 92620 either. Do we know if the new channels are SDV or not yet?

Nothing here in 92620 either. Do we know if the new channels are SDV or not yet?

I can't get them on my TiVo, so unless there is some other reason that would be true, yes, they are SDV.

Time to start bugging Cox regularly about a tuning adapter.

I checked here in laguna niguel at noon and had several new HD channels.

Nothing here in 92620 either. Do we know if the new channels are SDV or not yet?

I can't get them on my TiVo, so unless there is some other reason that would be true, yes, they are SDV.

Time to start bugging Cox regularly about a tuning adapter.

I'm not even sure anyone in the OC has the new channels yet. rick1946 is the only one who claims to have them, and even then he only says the above. He may just be looking at guide data. rick1946, have you (or anyone else reading this) actually seen the new channels - not just the guide data?

Interestingly enough, my Tivo deleted those channels today from the guide....

phdeane, I'm basing my guess that my area has them on the fact that the channels that were supposed to move (Uni HD, Versus, CNBC & Palladia) have moved to their new channels (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=16766260&postcount=5167). It would be very weird if those moved yet they left the old channels empty.

I guess that's possible, and if it turns out to be true and I actually get those channels, I'll be really happy :)

phdeane, I'm basing my guess that my area has them on the fact that the channels that were supposed to move (Uni HD, Versus, CNBC & Palladia) have moved to their new channels (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=16766260&postcount=5167). It would be very weird if those moved yet they left the old channels empty.

I guess that's possible, and if it turns out to be true and I actually get those channels, I'll be really happy :)

It seems likely that they changed, then, but is it possible that TiVo (via Tribune) has somehow mapped the channels to what they are supposed to be? Do you still have a Cox DVR to test? If I recall you don't, but perhaps someone else in your area does. What zip are you in?

I have 2 cox dvr's and no new channels.

Lets storm the gates at the cox offices. :D

It seems likely that they changed, then, but is it possible that TiVo (via Tribune) has somehow mapped the channels to what they are supposed to be? Do you still have a Cox DVR to test? If I recall you don't, but perhaps someone else in your area does. What zip are you in?

I don't, I'm in 92606, Walnut/Harvard.

Now you have me wondering. Some of the new (I think they are new) channels I get in Laguna Niguel are:

Travel HD 753
Bravo HD 755
AMC HD 766
A&E HD 767

Maybe I just think they are new?

Those aren't new.

OOPs. Never mind.

So I sent an email to Cox yesterday:

When can TiVo users expect a tuning adapter? We are apparently being locked out of this entire new batch of HD channels, which is quite disturbing, especially as to FX, which I've been waiting for for a long time. In other Cox markets, TiVo users have a tuning adapter to resolve this issue. When can we expect it here? If it needs further testing, how can someone volunteer to beta test?

Here is the response:

Hello Lynn,

Thank you for your email. The new channels were scheduled to be added on 7/28. That has changed to 8/4. Here is a list of the channels you will be able to receive with yout CableCard Tivo:

Channel Action Ch # HD Service Level
FX HD New 717 4523 - HD Expanded
CNBC HD Move 744 4523 - HD Expanded
BET HD New 748 4523 - HD Expanded
MTV HD New 749 4523 - HD Expanded
VH1 HD New 750 4523 - HD Expanded
Spike HD New 752 4523 - HD Expanded
CMT HD New 759 328 - Variety Tier
Comedy HD New 760 4523 - HD Expanded
Versus HD Move 765 327 - Sports & I Tier
Nickelod HD New 770 4523 - HD Expanded
Cartoon HD New 771 4523 - HD Expanded
Universal HD Move 788 4523 - HD Expanded
Palladia HD Move 789 4523 - HD Expanded

The tuning adaptors are tentatively scheduled to roll out this quarter.

We hope that we have been able to provide you with the information you requested. If we have not, or if we can be of any additional service to you, please do not hesitate to contact us again.

Sincerely,
Kenneth
Cox Communications - Video/Telephony Tech Support
Online Support Team

This is interesting, because as I said, on my system, the "move" channels are already in their new slots. If it turns out that TiVo users can get the new channels next week, well, that will be awesome, but I'm not holding my breath.

"This quarter" is the firmest answer I've ever heard on the tuning adapters, even if it's "tentative."

(Where is kevin? Did he go on vacation? Who said he could go? :)

So I sent an email to Cox yesterday:
When can TiVo users expect a tuning adapter? We are apparently being locked out of this entire new batch of HD channels, which is quite disturbing, especially as to FX, which I've been waiting for for a long time. In other Cox markets, TiVo users have a tuning adapter to resolve this issue. When can we expect it here? If it needs further testing, how can someone volunteer to beta test?
Here is the response:
Hello Lynn,

Thank you for your email. The new channels were scheduled to be added on 7/28. That has changed to 8/4. Here is a list of the channels you will be able to receive with yout CableCard Tivo:

Channel Action Ch # HD Service Level
FX HD New 717 4523 - HD Expanded
CNBC HD Move 744 4523 - HD Expanded
BET HD New 748 4523 - HD Expanded
MTV HD New 749 4523 - HD Expanded
VH1 HD New 750 4523 - HD Expanded
Spike HD New 752 4523 - HD Expanded
CMT HD New 759 328 - Variety Tier
Comedy HD New 760 4523 - HD Expanded
Versus HD Move 765 327 - Sports & I Tier
Nickelod HD New 770 4523 - HD Expanded
Cartoon HD New 771 4523 - HD Expanded
Universal HD Move 788 4523 - HD Expanded
Palladia HD Move 789 4523 - HD Expanded

The tuning adaptors are tentatively scheduled to roll out this quarter.

We hope that we have been able to provide you with the information you requested. If we have not, or if we can be of any additional service to you, please do not hesitate to contact us again.

Sincerely,
Kenneth
Cox Communications - Video/Telephony Tech Support
Online Support Team
This is interesting, because as I said, on my system, the "move" channels are already in their new slots. If it turns out that TiVo users can get the new channels next week, well, that will be awesome, but I'm not holding my breath.

"This quarter" is the firmest answer I've ever heard on the tuning adapters, even if it's "tentative."

(Where is kevin? Did he go on vacation? Who said he could go? :)

Thanks for the update. Good news on the tuning adapters. Now that I am TiVo-ized (well, soon anyway (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=16905917&postcount=5276)), I'm relieved, too.

As I suspected, TiVo (via Tribune) made the changes, but the underlying channels have not changed. It now looks like no one in the OC got the new channels yet, and Cox appears to be confirming that.

The channel listing appears to be in line with what I suspected. My understanding was that there were three HD channels on SDV, Science Channel HD, Travel Channel HD, and Animal Planet HD. It looks like that won't change for now and we'll get the new channels (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=16766260&postcount=5167).

Kevin is on vacation (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=16812772&postcount=5202) I believe.

http://gadgetress.freedomblogging.com/2009/07/30/cox-delays-roll-out-of-new-hd-channels-one-week/18021/

For the astute readers who noticed that Cox Communications failed to roll out 9 new HD channels to Orange County customers Monday, there indeed has been a one-week delay. Obviously, the launch date of July 28 has come and gone (see earlier post “Cox Cable adding 9 HD channels in Orange County“).

Lana Ong, a spokeswoman for Cox’s Orange County operation, said the company is having some technical difficulties.

“We know that our customers were eager for the new HD channels however, we had to push back the launch to August 4th because we had trouble getting the feeds from our corporate office in Atlanta,” Ong said.

The new channels will appear starting Aug. 4.

I called cox and they are saying that they received an internal email that the roll-out date was incorrectly given and that it is now Aug. 4th...

So I sent an email to Cox yesterday: Here is the response: "...the new channels were scheduled to be added on 7/28. That has changed to 8/4."

Lana Ong, a spokeswoman for Cox’s Orange County operation, said "...we had to push back the launch to August 4th because we had trouble getting the feeds from our corporate office in Atlanta."

Imagine that, conflicting information from Cox. Well, at least they are being responsive. :eek:

A friend has a DISH 2-tuner '722' receiver with a 500 GB drive. Each of the 2 TV's in the house can access the one drive to set programing as well as access all recordings. The 722 also has a USB port for an external hard drive of your choice ($40 enable fee) - I assume that includes fairly inexpensive 1TB or 2TB drives.

Why would anyone want to buy an expensive Tivo box, to supplement a severely deficient Cox box, and worse yet buy 2 Tivos to do the same thing? And also still pay Tivo's monthly fees? I don't get it at all. Help me out here - am I missing something?

Thanks.
My TiVos are not "supplementing" a Cox box -- I no longer have a Cox box at all, so my bill is now ~$17 less per month. (Cable cards are $1.99 each.)

I did not want to switch to satellite with all the wiring and installation hassles that entails. I'm comfortable with TiVo and like what it can do, including Amazon on Demand, Netflix, etc.

I'm not claiming it's the right solution for everybody, but so far it is working for me.

Thank you, but I'm still trying to find out how a 2-Tivo system with Cox cable and its costs compares with a one DISH 722 box (2 TVs) system with its costs.

For your house, you save ~$17/mo on Cox cable with no boxes. But how much is it to buy 2 Tivos that have 250GB each and also are capable of HD recording? Next, how much is it /mo to pay Tivo fees? Finally, how much grief is it to link together the two Tivos to share program setups and playback?

I know for a fact that DISH does not charge upfront equipment purchase fees. And with their 2-tuner 722 box w/500GB drive, there is no extra interconnect wiring necessary.

About satellite wiring hassles, it is my understanding that there might be some grief if you have to stick with Cox for internet. (my friend with DISH was pretty p.o.'ed when the cox internet installer cut off all the DISH connection connectors.) But if you go with ATT's DSL (albeit a difference in performance for power hungry uploaders/downloaders) then its no sweat at all.

True - if you don't have a "view" for the dish, you are indeed stuck with Cox. But hopefully their semi-monopoly totally disappears when ATT's UVERSE eventually arrives in all ATT served neighborhoods. Then we can see some real competition on quality/value of product. From what I see in Cox demos in various stores (BestBuy etc), it looks pretty poor. The box operation is miserable. But thats their reputation, their equipment, and their problem.

Thanks,

Quote:
Originally Posted by jlstang95
I called cox and they are saying that they received an internal email that the roll-out date was incorrectly given and that it is now Aug. 4th...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Whitearrow
So I sent an email to Cox yesterday: Here is the response: "...the new channels were scheduled to be added on 7/28. That has changed to 8/4."

Quote:
Originally Posted by nocturne1
Lana Ong, a spokeswoman for Cox’s Orange County operation, said "...we had to push back the launch to August 4th because we had trouble getting the feeds from our corporate office in Atlanta."

Imagine that, conflicting information from Cox. Well, at least they are being responsive. :eek:

Reminds me of the airlines. The airport desk check-in clerk sez it'll be arriving a few minutes late. The airport flight display sez its arriving on-time. And the captain on the arriving plane is saying to the passengers. "we have no landing assignment and don't know when we will get one." Cox: spare me.

For your house, you save ~$17/mo on Cox cable with no boxes. But how much is it to buy 2 Tivos that have 250GB each and also are capable of HD recording? Next, how much is it /mo to pay Tivo fees? Finally, how much grief is it to link together the two Tivos to share program setups and playback?


The price for the hardware depends on whether you want to buy the cheapest model and upgrade the hard drive yourself, or whether you want to have it done for you by a company like Weaknees or DVRUpgrade. You can find the prices on their sites. I bought one non-upgraded unit from TiVo for $199.

The service fees also vary depending on how you choose to pay and if you already have a TiVo unit. I chose the lifetime service as I already had a S2 unit. You can find all the prices listed on TiVo's site.

The TiVos do not "share program setups" (actually, I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I don't think they do it). They are able to "see" each other on a network and you can transfer shows between them (except premium cable, which doesn't transfer). I had no problem at all getting this set up, it was merely a matter of connecting both boxes to my home network.

Again, I want to make it clear that I am not advocating TiVo as either the cheapest or the best solution for everyone. It is the best for me personally, as I have absolutely no desire to change to satellite.

We have the new channels on here in Irvine (92602). The logos are a little off (some channels have wrong logo), but guide data appears to be okay.

Just got my replacement TiVo HD, but haven't even plugged it in yet, so not sure if any channels are on SDV. Perhaps someone else can confirm.

I forced a connection this morning, but TiVo doesn't have the new channels added yet. I hope that doesn't get overlooked by Cox. I'll try again when I get home.

Comedy Central HD, Nickelodeon HD, and Cartoon Network HD, so far that's 3 channels I've been waiting on. However, it looks like Cartoon Network (or CN or whatever) is sort of stretching, not sure, could just be the particular art style in whatever cartoon this is (i miss the older cartoons)

We have the new channels on here in Irvine (92602). The logos are a little off (some channels have wrong logo), but guide data appears to be okay.

same, also in 92602

TOON HD appears to be a zoom and stretch, but they're upscaling the content very nicely.
I did see something on COM HD that was in HD, and the PQ was okay, a lot of artificting, but it's better than the SD signal.
NICK HD (as well as regular NICK) appear to not even match what the guide says at all, maybe a 3 hour delay or something like that, but the HD picture is actually decent.

I noticed 6 more channels, CMT HD, SPIKE HD, MTV HD, VH1 HD, BET HD, and FX HD. Spike HD actually looks really good, very clean. I didn't check out the others.

Strange, a few of the channels have been on and off today. When they are off, they say "Temporarily Off Air." Anybody else have this? Right now Comedy Central HD is off, as is Nick HD.

We have the new channels on here in Irvine (92602). The logos are a little off (some channels have wrong logo), but guide data appears to be okay.

FX data seems to be off by 3 hours (717 is showing same programming as 17 but data for 717 is east coast time)

I had the temporarily off air message early in the day. I then rebooted the box and now they are all viewable. Speaking of which...

BET Currently not showing HD material
MTV Currently not showing HD material
VH1 Currently not showing HD material
Comedy Central Currently not showing HD material
Spike Showing HD material
Nickelodian Currently not showing HD material
Toon Looked stretched although it filled the screen and looked good
CMT Currently not showing HD material
FX Showing HD material

So of all the new channels we received only 2 of 9 were actually showing HD material for sure when I viewed them. Still nice to see the additions. Really happy about Comedy Central and FX.

Like others have said, the guide listings on some are incorrect.

MTV Currently not showing HD material
VH1 Currently not showing HD material


You're not the only one with that complaint.

http://www.engadgethd.com/tag/mtvhd

New channels show up on my cox box...nothing on the TiVo's, even if I try and tune directly to the channel. Are the new channels are possibly on SVD?

Does anyone know if you need the guide data, tivo to update, etc...in order to tune to a new channel?

bubu, I'm not 100% positive, but I'm pretty sure TiVo has to know about the channel before you can tune it.

I already submitted a lineup change this evening after forcing another connect. I suspect things have snafued because TiVo did know about the original lineup change date last week, and moved the channels that were supposed to move, then it deleted the 'added' channels. Hopefully this will poke them to re-add them.

TiVo should add the channels even if they are SDV. All the other SDV channels are present on TiVo.

ETA: I just checked Zap2It. Tribune doesn't have the new channels yet, either, although they do have the moved channels in their proper slots, just like TiVo. So hopefully TiVo will update soon.

New channels show up on my cox box...nothing on the TiVo's, even if I try and tune directly to the channel. Are the new channels are possibly on SVD?

According to this post (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=16915287#post16915287), they shouldn't be.


Does anyone know if you need the guide data, tivo to update, etc...in order to tune to a new channel?


I would think you would, but it's been a while. If I just had the time to hook up my new TiVo HD... In any event, last week some were reporting that the TiVos already got the new channels (guide data, not actual channels though). Tribune or TiVo must have rescinded the new channels if you are not seeing them now.

I guess I was writing while whitearrow posted.

...just got off the phone with cox, confirmed these new channels won't come in without a tuning adapter.

Tech said they will be available to the public mid september per an e-mail sent out today.

...just got off the phone with cox, confirmed these new channels won't come in without a tuning adapter.

Tech said they will be available to the public mid september per an e-mail sent out today.

So they sent out an email? Did anyone get it? If so, please post the content. Getting the tuning adapter in mid-September would be great. I'll just keep my cable DVR until then - just run it alongside my new TiVo.

...just got off the phone with cox, confirmed these new channels won't come in without a tuning adapter.

Which, unsurprisingly, contradicts what they told me in an email last week.

...just got off the phone with cox, confirmed these new channels won't come in without a tuning adapter.

Tech said they will be available to the public mid september per an e-mail sent out today.

Which, unsurprisingly, contradicts what they told me in an email last week.

It will probably end up being a combination - some on SDV, some not.

The price for the hardware depends on whether you want to buy the cheapest model and upgrade the hard drive yourself, or whether you want to have it done for you by a company like Weaknees or DVRUpgrade. You can find the prices on their sites. I bought one non-upgraded unit from TiVo for $199.

The service fees also vary depending on how you choose to pay and if you already have a TiVo unit. I chose the lifetime service as I already had a S2 unit. You can find all the prices listed on TiVo's site.

The TiVos do not "share program setups" (actually, I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I don't think they do it). They are able to "see" each other on a network and you can transfer shows between them (except premium cable, which doesn't transfer). I had no problem at all getting this set up, it was merely a matter of connecting both boxes to my home network.

Again, I want to make it clear that I am not advocating TiVo as either the cheapest or the best solution for everyone. It is the best for me personally, as I have absolutely no desire to change to satellite.

Thanks for the information - albeit I still have no clue what it would cost me for Cox cable (say 250 std (non-premium) channels plus all local HD channels) and 2 Tivos and 2 cable cards and 2 Tivo monthly fees and digital gateway fees, guide fees etc etc etc and no internet or phone fees.

For a Dish 722 box, each of two TVs can set program timers for the one single 500GB drive. Each one can also access all the programs saved on the one drive. No home network is necessary. The TV coax cable that is already installed in the home is the entire network by default. No need to transfer files. Besides that, my home network is all wireless WiFi with one PC and a wireless router. I certainly am not interested in tearing the place apart to install ethernet cables everywhere just because a Tivo box needs it.

So I assume that if I had a DISH 722 box and I add an inexpensive 1TB external USB drive (Seagate ~$120) and enable it (Dish's $40 enable fee), then I'm all set for quit a bit of program storage on 2 TVs. No extra monthly fees. I can buy a 2nd inexpensive drive and swap connect it in 2 seconds. The only thing I'm not sure of is if it uses std Winblows NTFS format so I can hook it up to the PC and access it there too.

It all sounds pretty easy and cheap to me. Alot better than cox cable and 2 expensive Tivos, cable cards and monthly fees. But as one writer previously mentioned, if you have no dish view or you are a power PC user and can't live without blazing fast internet access (to mostly slow sites all around the world), then DISH might not be for you.

Thank you.

Thanks for the information - albeit I still have no clue what it would cost me for Cox cable (say 250 std (non-premium) channels plus all local HD channels) and 2 Tivos and 2 cable cards and 2 Tivo monthly fees and digital gateway fees, guide fees etc etc etc and no internet or phone fees.

For a Dish 722 box, each of two TVs can set program timers for the one single 500GB drive. Each one can also access all the programs saved on the one drive. No home network is necessary. The TV coax cable that is already installed in the home is the entire network by default. No need to transfer files. Besides that, my home network is all wireless WiFi with one PC and a wireless router. I certainly am not interested in tearing the place apart to install ethernet cables everywhere just because a Tivo box needs it.

So I assume that if I had a DISH 722 box and I add an inexpensive 1TB external USB drive (Seagate ~$120) and enable it (Dish's $40 enable fee), then I'm all set for quit a bit of program storage on 2 TVs. No extra monthly fees. I can buy a 2nd inexpensive drive and swap connect it in 2 seconds. The only thing I'm not sure of is if it uses std Winblows NTFS format so I can hook it up to the PC and access it there too.

It all sounds pretty easy and cheap to me. Alot better than cox cable and 2 expensive Tivos, cable cards and monthly fees. But as one writer previously mentioned, if you have no dish view or you are a power PC user and can't live without blazing fast internet access (to mostly slow sites all around the world), then DISH might not be for you.

Thank you.

It sounds like you've made up your mind. You should go with DISH. I had DISH quite a few years ago. They have a great service and offer many more HD channels.

BTW, for the above, you'd pay about $75/month for cable (including 3 tiers and the HD tier) and about $19 a month to TiVo (assumes two annual pre-pays, the second being only $99/annually). There will probably be a charge for the tuning adapter, too, but it shouldn't be much. Thus total is about $94/month plus tuning adapter, plus a setup fee for the m-cards. The TiVo HD boxes are $299/each, although you could get the second for $199, so that's $500 total. That's only about 20 hours of HD for each box. You'd pay another $150 each to upgrade the HD.

For you Tivo folks, no for QAM channels the Tivo does not require guide listings to be able to tune the channels. It looks like Cox has intentionally left these new HD channels out of the CableCard channel map (which is different/separate from non-CableCard channel map). So while it could be an oversight, much more likely is that these new channels are all Switched Digital Video.

If/when Tuning Adapter is made available (which BTW Cox has repeatedly claimed will be free and that is indeed the case for Cox in Phoenix area) the standard channel map will be used and of course SDV channels will be available. But it's possible there will be some side effects to using tuning adapter such as non-premium channels having CCI bit set thus rendering TTG/MRV useless for those channels. Hope I'm wrong about the latter, but judging by TheRock's findings that firewire extraction has stopped working for many of these channels that would appear to be the case.

EDIT: I missed the posts above confirming these new channels are indeed SDV - not at all surprising...

Thanks for the information - albeit I still have no clue what it would cost me for Cox cable (say 250 std (non-premium) channels plus all local HD channels) and 2 Tivos and 2 cable cards and 2 Tivo monthly fees and digital gateway fees, guide fees etc etc etc and no internet or phone fees.

For a Dish 722 box, each of two TVs can set program timers for the one single 500GB drive. Each one can also access all the programs saved on the one drive. No home network is necessary. The TV coax cable that is already installed in the home is the entire network by default. No need to transfer files. Besides that, my home network is all wireless WiFi with one PC and a wireless router. I certainly am not interested in tearing the place apart to install ethernet cables everywhere just because a Tivo box needs it.

So I assume that if I had a DISH 722 box and I add an inexpensive 1TB external USB drive (Seagate ~$120) and enable it (Dish's $40 enable fee), then I'm all set for quit a bit of program storage on 2 TVs. No extra monthly fees. I can buy a 2nd inexpensive drive and swap connect it in 2 seconds. The only thing I'm not sure of is if it uses std Winblows NTFS format so I can hook it up to the PC and access it there too.

It all sounds pretty easy and cheap to me. Alot better than cox cable and 2 expensive Tivos, cable cards and monthly fees. But as one writer previously mentioned, if you have no dish view or you are a power PC user and can't live without blazing fast internet access (to mostly slow sites all around the world), then DISH might not be for you.

Thank you.

Dish uses a Linux FS format and you can't access the recordings on a computer since they're encrypted. They're also tied to that DVR.

So they sent out an email? Did anyone get it? If so, please post the content. Getting the tuning adapter in mid-September would be great. I'll just keep my cable DVR until then - just run it alongside my new TiVo. Likely that was an internal email the CSR was talking about. I don't think Cox will go out of their way to advertise Tuning Adapter availability for TiVo users. More likely we will have to harass the living daylights out of CSRs to get hold of them... I just hope they can be picked up like regular set top boxes and don't require a tech visit + potential installation charges. (I don't think that will be the case but you never know...)

Moyekj, with tuning adapters, are broadcast HD channels (702, 704, 705, 707, etc.) still able to use MRV?

Ooooh, I sense that us TivoHD/cablecard users are getting screwed out of those new HD channels...

So what do I win? :mad:

Moyekj, with tuning adapters, are broadcast HD channels (702, 704, 705, 707, etc.) still able to use MRV? Local Broadcast channels by FCC mandate are not allowed to be copy protected by Cable Company so those should always be safe.

It sounds like you've made up your mind. You should go with DISH. I had DISH quite a few years ago. They have a great service and offer many more HD channels.

BTW, for the above, you'd pay about $75/month for cable (including 3 tiers and the HD tier) and about $19 a month to TiVo (assumes two annual pre-pays, the second being only $99/annually). There will probably be a charge for the tuning adapter, too, but it shouldn't be much. Thus total is about $94/month plus tuning adapter, plus a setup fee for the m-cards. The TiVo HD boxes are $299/each, although you could get the second for $199, so that's $500 total. That's only about 20 hours of HD for each box. You'd pay another $150 each to upgrade the HD.

OK, thank you very much. Your comments have been very helpful. The cox cable approach does seem awfully expensive in light of the alternatives. Investing in your own Tivo boxes for $500-$650 seems a bit much. And investing in wiring for your own private LAN is also a bit outrageous. Why not just get 2 or 3 cox dvr boxes per TV cable outlet in order to increase storage? Aren't they just $5/mo rental? I know that they generally are poor quality compared to ATT, Dish, Direct TV boxes. Based on the demos I've seen, the cox program guide is awfully jerky hit/miss and its response times are pretty slow. But - they basically do work. Cox boxes must be using outdated very slow cpu technology.

I've also heard that cox internet service data rides on the same cable as the TV and that your house shares its coax cable with lots of other houses in the neighborhood. Who knows how many houses cox tries to squeeze a nickel out of at once. So maybe it isn't the boxes, maybe its just that cox is trying to cram too much data down their one skinny pipe. Then cox has their crazy interactive beck-n-forth private data which loads it up even more.

So if the problem is cox's cable bandwidth limitations, I guess one way out for them is to route fiber all the way up to your house. Coax existing inside your house wouldn't interfere with the neighbor and your own coax would support all the bandwidth you would ever need inside your own house. Satellite clearly has none of these issues.

Thank you again

Dish uses a Linux FS format and you can't access the recordings on a computer since they're encrypted. They're also tied to that DVR.

Very interesting. Probably the same old DRM issue that plagues Mister Softy, DVDs, CDs or anything else that hollywood, the networks and the greedy (in general) wants to "protect". But being able to add a cheap external drive to the main DISH box is definitely a big plus anyway. I assume that either of the 2 TVs can access the add-on drive. Although, maybe not simultaneously.

Thanks very much.

OK, thank you very much. Your comments have been very helpful. The cox cable approach does seem awfully expensive in light of the alternatives. Investing in your own Tivo boxes for $500-$650 seems a bit much. And investing in wiring for your own private LAN is also a bit outrageous. Why not just get 2 or 3 cox dvr boxes per TV cable outlet in order to increase storage? Aren't they just $5/mo rental? I know that they generally are poor quality compared to ATT, Dish, Direct TV boxes. Based on the demos I've seen, the cox program guide is awfully jerky hit/miss and its response times are pretty slow. But - they basically do work. Cox boxes must be using outdated very slow cpu technology.

I've also heard that cox internet service data rides on the same cable as the TV and that your house shares its coax cable with lots of other houses in the neighborhood. Who knows how many houses cox tries to squeeze a nickel out of at once. So maybe it isn't the boxes, maybe its just that cox is trying to cram too much data down their one skinny pipe. Then cox has their crazy interactive beck-n-forth private data which loads it up even more.

So if the problem is cox's cable bandwidth limitations, I guess one way out for them is to route fiber all the way up to your house. Coax existing inside your house wouldn't interfere with the neighbor and your own coax would support all the bandwidth you would ever need inside your own house. Satellite clearly has none of these issues.

Thank you again

The bottom line is that one shouldn't decide TiVo over a Cox DVR or satellite service for financial reasons. Moyekj, Whitearrow, and others (including me now) have pointed out that the TiVo DVR and all it's bells and whistles are reason enough for them. If you haven't experienced a TiVo, you haven't used a great DVR in my opinion.

By the way, it is $5.50 for the Cox HD DVR, but it's another $11.95 for the Digital Video Recorder service, so $17.45 total. Most of us already had a LAN, so that wasn't an extra cost.

OK, thank you very much. Your comments have been very helpful. The cox cable approach does seem awfully expensive in light of the alternatives. Investing in your own Tivo boxes for $500-$650 seems a bit much. And investing in wiring for your own private LAN is also a bit outrageous. Why not just get 2 or 3 cox dvr boxes per TV cable outlet in order to increase storage? Aren't they just $5/mo rental? I know that they generally are poor quality compared to ATT, Dish, Direct TV boxes. Based on the demos I've seen, the cox program guide is awfully jerky hit/miss and its response times are pretty slow. But - they basically do work. Cox boxes must be using outdated very slow cpu technology.

I've also heard that cox internet service data rides on the same cable as the TV and that your house shares its coax cable with lots of other houses in the neighborhood. Who knows how many houses cox tries to squeeze a nickel out of at once. So maybe it isn't the boxes, maybe its just that cox is trying to cram too much data down their one skinny pipe. Then cox has their crazy interactive beck-n-forth private data which loads it up even more.

So if the problem is cox's cable bandwidth limitations, I guess one way out for them is to route fiber all the way up to your house. Coax existing inside your house wouldn't interfere with the neighbor and your own coax would support all the bandwidth you would ever need inside your own house. Satellite clearly has none of these issues.

Thank you again

The COX DVR boxes are over $17 each. I have 3 of them right now.

And I don't think it's outrageous to have a home network. I put CAT5e to most of the rooms in my house about 10 years ago, even in the family room. I've got an Apple TV plugged in right now, and if I add a few Tivo's they will just plug right in.

I'm still trying to figure out if Tivo is the best solution for me. I could probably eliminate one box with Tivo and just have two since the 3rd TV has a computer hooked up, and I've heard it's easy to transfer shows to the PC from a Tivo.

If the COX box offered more storage, and multi-room viewing, I would likely stay with them. But since they don't, I'll likely be switching to something else.

Ultimately you get what you pay for. With Dish and satellite in general there is no way to offload recordings to your PC which is a deal breaker for me right there, plus you are stuck with whatever DVR the satellite company provides since they don't have separable security. As has been stated many times up front Tivo is more expensive compared to cable/satellite solutions, but since monthly costs are lower overall you offset the initial cost over time. Even then while you can argue it's more expensive overall, the benefits of having best DVR available are worth the price of admission to me. I can no longer watch TV without DVR - the DVR is the most critical component for my TV watching, so I want to have the best solution out there even if it does cost a little more overall.

Ultimately you get what you pay for...

...the DVR is the most critical component for my TV watching, so I want to have the best solution out there even if it does cost a little more overall.

Well said!

I am in Costa Mesa and can't get FOX 11 with my digital antenna I just bought. I have an HDTV and get 2,4,5,7,9,13 etc lots of HDTV and it looks great but Fox will not come in at all no matter where I put the antenna or even if I try to manually put fox 11 in. Am I sol for Fox? Help!

I am in Costa Mesa and can't get FOX 11 with my digital antenna I just bought. I have an HDTV and get 2,4,5,7,9,13 etc lots of HDTV and it looks great but Fox will not come in at all no matter where I put the antenna or even if I try to manually put fox 11 in. Am I sol for Fox? Help!

Right now Fox is the most difficult channel for me to receive over the air. It has the lowest signal strength of all the major channels I receive with my antenna. I would suggest getting a friend to help you find the money spot (best angle for superior reception) for your setup. Less than an inch pointed in the wrong way can make a HUGE difference. If you have tried that already you might want to try a signal booster/amplifier.

I just wanted to let you guys know that Cox is making there own rules as far as copy protection is concerned. I contacted HDNET MOVIES in regards to them using CCI 0x02 and DRM 0x01. They told me and I quote "we don't copy protect HDNet Movies so this is an issue with either Cox or with your DVR. If you haven't already, you may want to speak to someone in their technical group about this issue."

So I played email tag with Cox for a long time. And ultimately this is the extremely short cliff notes version:

Emailed Cox telling them that I contacted HDNET and they said the above information regarding copy protection.

Cox responds in there generic we will send this to our Technical Operations Team and get back to you.

Cox gets back to me by asking for the original email between me and HDNET.

I send Email

Cox responds with "I thought this was in regards to an HDMI connection. I don’t think there will be anything we are going to do here as we do not support the firewire connection."

At no time to I mention ANYTHING about HDMI. Obviously they read the original letter closely. :rolleyes:

I send addition questions and information mostly asking why does it matter what connection I am talking about? The settings are incorrect. The connection is irrelevant at this point. The settings are what matter. HDNET themselves said these settings are incorrect.

They respond by saying that the broadcasters don't decide the settings and that I should try changing settings on my end. Contradicting EVERYTHING they have told me in the past. Where they claimed to have ZERO control over these settings.

I email them back saying several things. Asking them for one final bit of help. I ask them for a phone number or email address were I can cancel all of my Cox television services. Again proving they indeed read what we send them here is there response :rolleyes::

"Hello ,

Thank you for your email.

We hope that we have been able to provide you with the information you
requested. If we have not, or if we can be of any additional service to
you, please do not hesitate to contact us again. "





I was extremely eloquent in my emails to Cox. I expressed my point clearly and gave precise information. I did the homework. I even contacted the station in question. It wasn't enough. They proved yet again that they know nothing about there own product and all they care about is power and my money.

F*ck Cox. I will stay with them for the time being. But the first moment something even close to decent pops up I am going to switch. Please Verizon. For the love of everything holy. Please come to Mission Viejo.

One of our local video specialists has investigated this issue and I have been advised there was a difference between HDNET Movies and HDNET. HDNET Movies was mistakenly set to copy once and has since been corrected and set to copy freely. Let me know if you still have problems.

--CoxTech1

Cox is, in theory, coming out on Saturday to install the cable cards. Cox CS didn't give me too much of a hassle, other than making sure I couldn't use OnDemand, etc. They quoted me $4 a month for the 2 cable cards, which is fine (plus the truck roll fee, bleh).

Okay, I got my replacement TiVo HD (new one this time) a few days ago and have it setup for CableCard service, but don't have the M-CARD installed yet. I'm loving Netflix streaming on it, such a better user interface compared to my PlayOn / PS3 solution. The HD streams are not bad either, although I look forward to when they beef up the content. MRV is great, too, not to mention all the other add-ons since I last used my Series 2 about 2 1/2 years ago.

I just got off the phone with Cox. The tech is coming tomorrow morning to install what I hope to be an M-CARD (you never know). I just wanted to mention for those contemplating the switch to a TiVo box that I was able to get them to waive the $54.95 "one-time installation" fee. I spoke with a great CSR, Frank, who first told me that the fees are hard-coded into their system and they cannot be altered. I reminded him that I have been with Cox for nearly ten years and I know they can (and do) waive fees from time-to-time - not to mention how much money I spend with them. I asked about his supervisor and Frank said it would be the same issue - hard coded in system. I asked him to check anyway. He did, and they waived it! Anyway, I was very pleased with Frank's service, and, of course, the resolve. I'm looking forward to getting my M-CARD installed tomorrow morning. I'll keep the Cox DVR, too, at least for the foreseeable future.

Next up is a hard drive upgrade/replacement on my Series 2 (it freezes up once a week or so) and then an external drive for my TiVo HD. It's so good to hear the TiVo sounds again...

Thanks to whitearrow, moyekj, and others for your help. It took me a while, but I'm fully on the TiVo train (again) now!

CoxTech1, while you're here, is there any way for us to be on some sort of list for the tuning adapters? I'm sure that everyone here would be more than happy to help out with testing/feedback/etc...

Or why the cable card map hasn't been updated for the new channels? Even if they are SDV, they should still be in the TiVo Guide Information, just like the current SDV channels. Otherwise even once the tuning adapters are available we won't be getting guide data, etc.

Or why the cable card map hasn't been updated for the new channels? Even if they are SDV, they should still be in the TiVo Guide Information, just like the current SDV channels. Otherwise even once the tuning adapters are available we won't be getting guide data, etc.

Hah, or for that matter, why us cablecard users don't get some of the non-SDV HD channels (Animal planet HD, travel channel hd, etc)

Or why the cable card map hasn't been updated for the new channels? Even if they are SDV, they should still be in the TiVo Guide Information, just like the current SDV channels. Otherwise even once the tuning adapters are available we won't be getting guide data, etc. The missing guide data is a Tribune/Tivo problem not a Cox problem. When using Tuning Adapter Tivo uses it for channel map instead of CableCard. The CableCard channel map can't include channel mapping for SDV channels since the frequency assignments are dynamic.

So I wrote Cox again, enclosing last week's email that said TiVo users would get the new channels:

So we're hearing that people with Cox boxes are getting the new
channels, but we are not getting them on TiVo. According to one
technically inclined user, the cable card map has not been updated
with the new channels. Is what you told me last week still true,
specifically that TiVo users will be able to get the new channels this
week?

Thank you.

The response:

Hello Lynn,

Thank you for your reply.

We do apologize for the email regarding the channel problems. TiVo
users should be able to receive the channels that were listed by the
previous technician. The channels should already be showing up on your
channel lineup. There were even some cable card devices that were
showing the changes in their guide even before the change took place.
If you cannot see the channel changes on your TiVo unit already then
there is definitely a technical problem there. What you may want to do
is reset your TiVo device. Please disconnected the screw on cable line
that is going into your TiVo unit for the cable signal and then remove
the power cord. Once the power cord is removed reconnect the screw on
cable and reconnected the power cord. You will need to go through the
TiVo initial setup again as the TiVo would have been rebooted. When the
initial setup has been completed you should see the new channels listed
on your guide. If you still cannot see the new channels please respond
to this email or call our 24 hour technical assistance team at
888-222-7743.

We hope that we have been able to provide you with the information you
requested. If we have not, or if we can be of any additional service to
you, please do not hesitate to contact us again.

Sincerely,
Christian
Cox Communications - Video/Telephony Tech Support
Online Support Team

There are so many things wrong with this that I'm not sure I know where to start. Are they seriously telling me that the new channels will appear if I physically disconnect the cable, unplug the TiVo, reboot it, and then re-run guided setup? Seriously? (Even if I do need to re-run guided setup, why on earth would I need to physically disconnect the cable and plug first? Is it magic or something?)

I do not claim to be Ms. Techie, but this contradicts pretty much everything I know about how TiVo gets channel data... and the statement "You will need to go through the TiVo initial setup again as the TiVo would have been rebooted" is just plain WRONG. Not to mention that this is basically saying no, the channels aren't SDV, TiVos should get them... which directly contradicts what bubu was told on the phone the other day. Which contradicted what I was told last week. Is it possible for two people to get the same answer to the same question?

I don't really feel I ask all that much of Cox... in 10 years, I have probably contacted them less than a dozen times. On those rare occasions when I do need help, it would be nice to have someone who actually knows what they're talking about, and to get straight answers!

Right now Fox is the most difficult channel for me to receive over the air. It has the lowest signal strength of all the major channels I receive with my antenna. I would suggest getting a friend to help you find the money spot (best angle for superior reception) for your setup. Less than an inch pointed in the wrong way can make a HUGE difference. If you have tried that already you might want to try a signal booster/amplifier.

I have the Philips SDV2740/27

Whitearrow, yes that's a pretty scary/wrong response if anyone were to take it seriously. Obviously the collective wisdom here is that these new channels are indeed SDV so there is really nothing you can do at the moment sans Tuning Adapter. I would say fire off another email asking about Tuning Adapter, but I have a feeling that would perhaps yield either confusion, denial or an even worse answer. At least you seem to get responses via email - the last couple of emails I sent to Cox went to a black hole and never got answered...

One of our local video specialists has investigated this issue and I have been advised there was a difference between HDNET Movies and HDNET. HDNET Movies was mistakenly set to copy once and has since been corrected and set to copy freely. Let me know if you still have problems.

--CoxTech1

Well thank you very much for the information. I just wish some of this... Nay, any of this was said to me in the vast amounts of emails I have received from Cox regarding the problem. The final email Cox sent me essentially said that I was out of luck and that they had no intentions on doing anything further. Well I must say that I am extremely thankful that's not the case. You going out of your way to tell me here is also a very nice surprise and very appreciated. Although a bit frustrating. I had given up on Cox. I was extremely close to canceling all of my Cox services after that final email. It shouldn't have come to that. I do thank them for FINALLY doing the right thing. HDNET Movies is indeed viewable over firewire again. :D Thank you for the information and help.

CoxTech1, while you're here, is there any way for us to be on some sort of list for the tuning adapters? I'm sure that everyone here would be more than happy to help out with testing/feedback/etc...

Or why the cable card map hasn't been updated for the new channels? Even if they are SDV, they should still be in the TiVo Guide Information, just like the current SDV channels. Otherwise even once the tuning adapters are available we won't be getting guide data, etc.

Hah, or for that matter, why us cablecard users don't get some of the non-SDV HD channels (Animal planet HD, travel channel hd, etc)

Could be a while...;)

http://i972.photobucket.com/albums/ae203/phdeane/screen%20shots/Fullscreencapture862009100815PM.jpg

So when is comedy central HD actually going to air shows (daily show etc) in HD? What's the point of upgrading your studio and having an HD channel with no HD?

So when is comedy central HD actually going to air shows (daily show etc) in HD? What's the point of upgrading your studio and having an HD channel with no HD?

I was thinking pretty much the same thing. I could have sworn I heard that The Daily show and The Colbert Report had been offered in HD for awhile. The only thing I have seen so far in HD on Comedy Central HD was an episode of South Park.

Okay, Cox service guy was supposed to be out between 8 - 10 this morning, but he stopped by to say he forgot the CableCard and would return. Well, he came later and got it all going. I'm glad he brought two cards, as the first one would not receive the expanded channels - weird. Anyway, he did the typical replacing cables all over the place and testing the signal, so I feel like my system got a tune-up. :)

It's probably just the tune-up or the newness of the whole thing, but even HD seems to look better on the TiVo. SD definitely does, but others have mentioned that in the past.

I don't know why I waited so long. TiVo is just a better DVR solution, period!

And I don't suppose he did a magical unplugging/replugging to get you the new channels :)

Anyway, welcome to TiVo :)

And I don't suppose he did a magical unplugging/replugging to get you the new channels :)

Anyway, welcome to TiVo :)

LOL, but no, he was actually a pretty knowledgeable guy and fortunately did not go down that path. I imagine he won't stick with Cox for too long. ;)

Hmmm. Well it looks like the new switched HD channels have a downside. I can no longer have the one tuner viewing a channel and then go to it later. In the past I would go to Comedy Central or something and then hit the swap button. Then I would watch other shows on different channels. After awhile I would hit the swap button again and be able to have an hour of the Comedy Central programs in the buffer. Allowing me to fast forward during commercials. When I try to do this now the screen is black and unviewable.

Hmmm. Well it looks like the new switched HD channels have a downside. I can no longer have the one tuner viewing a channel and then go to it later. In the past I would go to Comedy Central or something and then hit the swap button. Then I would watch other shows on different channels. After awhile I would hit the swap button again and be able to have an hour of the Comedy Central programs in the buffer. Allowing me to fast forward during commercials. When I try to do this now the screen is black and unviewable.

Have you tried setting the two tuners to non-SDV channels? This still works on my TiVo, which, as you know, does not currently work with SDV. I'm curious to know if it is indeed an SDV issue or a separate change Cox introduced to decrease traffic use. Either way, the ability to buffer two tuners is an important feature. I suppose you could just set both tuners to record, but what a pain.

Have you tried setting the two tuners to non-SDV channels? This still works on my TiVo, which, as you know, does not currently work with SDV. I'm curious to know if it is indeed an SDV issue or a separate change Cox introduced to decrease traffic use. Either way, the ability to buffer two tuners is an important feature. I suppose you could just set both tuners to record, but what a pain. No that's part of SDV compliance. There is bidirectional communication between headend and set top box which determines if an SDV channel is "active" or not. As you suggested, setting a DVR to record a SDV channel should then mark it as "active" at least the duration of the recording. I would expect even if the foreground tuner is tuned to an SDV channel that it would eventually mark the channel as inactive as well. There were reports earlier in this thread related to this indicating a popup would come up asking if you were still watching a channel, but that seems to have gone away so not sure what the status of that is.

No that's part of SDV compliance. There is bidirectional communication between headend and set top box which determines if an SDV channel is "active" or not. As you suggested, setting a DVR to record a SDV channel should then mark it as "active" at least the duration of the recording. I would expect even if the foreground tuner is tuned to an SDV channel that it would eventually mark the channel as inactive as well. There were reports earlier in this thread related to this indicating a popup would come up asking if you were still watching a channel, but that seems to have gone away so not sure what the status of that is.

I assume the tuning adapter that is forthcoming for the TiVos (and other non-Cox DVRs) will still allow both tuners to buffer the 30 minutes, but perhaps you know differently.

I assume the tuning adapter that is forthcoming for the TiVos (and other non-Cox DVRs) will still allow both tuners to buffer the 30 minutes, but perhaps you know differently. I would expect very similar behavior to the Cox DVR - it's likely SDV channels will timeout after a while unless you explicitly record them so I wouldn't count on relying on live buffer being available for an SDV channel. A Tivo with tuning adapter would not be SDV compliant otherwise.

The missing guide data is a Tribune/Tivo problem not a Cox problem. When using Tuning Adapter Tivo uses it for channel map instead of CableCard. The CableCard channel map can't include channel mapping for SDV channels since the frequency assignments are dynamic.

Okay, just checked zap2it.com and they (Tribune) still have the incorrect guide data. They had the guide data at one point; how long does it normally take to get it updated?

Okay, just checked zap2it.com and they (Tribune) still have the incorrect guide data. They had the guide data at one point; how long does it normally take to get it updated? I've experienced all over the map. When I personally reported some lineup changes in the past some happened within a couple of days, 1 case to get FSN HD properly mapped took 3 months and 8 phone calls to TiVo to get it changed. If you haven't already you have to call in a lineup change request to TiVo. Used to be easier since it was available online, but now you are stuck having to call it in.

I've experienced all over the map. When I personally reported some lineup changes in the past some happened within a couple of days, 1 case to get FSN HD properly mapped took 3 months and 8 phone calls to TiVo to get it changed. If you haven't already you have to call in a lineup change request to TiVo. Used to be easier since it was available online, but now you are stuck having to call it in.

That's too bad, but I guess they figure they'll have less people call than they would email, but then they have to spend more labor $ for the phone time. :rolleyes:

I filled in the form on the TiVo site more than a week ago. Still haven't heard anything. If anyone else wants to submit the form, you can find it here:
http://www.tivo.com/setupandsupport/contactsupport/lineup_tool.html

They only give room for three channels, I put the rest in the notes.

I filled in the form on the TiVo site more than a week ago. Still haven't heard anything. If anyone else wants to submit the form, you can find it here:
http://www.tivo.com/setupandsupport/contactsupport/lineup_tool.html

They only give room for three channels, I put the rest in the notes.

Thanks, I did the same and also bookmarked the link.

I can no longer have the one tuner viewing a channel and then go to it later. In the past I would go to Comedy Central or something and then hit the swap button. Then I would watch other shows on different channels. After awhile I would hit the swap button again and be able to have an hour of the Comedy Central programs in the buffer.

Well, at least it's not the box' hard drive beginning to fail (which I thought was happening here when this happened to me).

Everyone here has been amazingly helpful with problems I've had in the past, so I hope you can help on this one...

I have a Samsung DLP and Cox Digital STB (non-DVR) -- it's connected via component, b/c the non-DVR boxes don't have HDMI. Recently, the TV has started freezing or "rolling" (those of you old enough to remember old-school TVs know what I mean). This is especially bad if the screen is white or mostly white, but it can happen any time. Often it goes black and says "Mode Not Supported" -- some preliminary research I did here suggests that it's the output settings on my STB that need to change.

When I checked via "menu" on the remote, it said that SD channels convert to 480i. According to the Samsung forum here, I'd have better luck with 480p. I tried to change the setting to 480p (which is an option). However, after exiting the menu and re-entering, all settings had changed back to 480i. How do I get the changes to stick? And dare I really hope this might help?

Thanks in advance!

Everyone here has been amazingly helpful with problems I've had in the past, so I hope you can help on this one...

I have a Samsung DLP and Cox Digital STB (non-DVR) -- it's connected via component, b/c the non-DVR boxes don't have HDMI. Recently, the TV has started freezing or "rolling" (those of you old enough to remember old-school TVs know what I mean). This is especially bad if the screen is white or mostly white, but it can happen any time. Often it goes black and says "Mode Not Supported" -- some preliminary research I did here suggests that it's the output settings on my STB that need to change.

When I checked via "menu" on the remote, it said that SD channels convert to 480i. According to the Samsung forum here, I'd have better luck with 480p. I tried to change the setting to 480p (which is an option). However, after exiting the menu and re-entering, all settings had changed back to 480i. How do I get the changes to stick? And dare I really hope this might help?

Thanks in advance!

it's HD box or SD box?

Okay, the new channels are added to Tribune/TiVo, and as expected, they are all SDV.

it's HD box or SD box?

It's the HD box.

Okay, the new channels are added to Tribune/TiVo, and as expected, they are all SDV. Anyone bugged them about Tuning Adapter yet? Last posted in this thread supposedly September is when they will be available for use. They are probably sick and tired of hearing from me on this subject...

Everyone here has been amazingly helpful with problems I've had in the past, so I hope you can help on this one...

I have a Samsung DLP and Cox Digital STB (non-DVR) -- it's connected via component, b/c the non-DVR boxes don't have HDMI. Recently, the TV has started freezing or "rolling" (those of you old enough to remember old-school TVs know what I mean). This is especially bad if the screen is white or mostly white, but it can happen any time. Often it goes black and says "Mode Not Supported" -- some preliminary research I did here suggests that it's the output settings on my STB that need to change.

When I checked via "menu" on the remote, it said that SD channels convert to 480i. According to the Samsung forum here, I'd have better luck with 480p. I tried to change the setting to 480p (which is an option). However, after exiting the menu and re-entering, all settings had changed back to 480i. How do I get the changes to stick? And dare I really hope this might help?

Thanks in advance!

Since your system was working fine before, I think either your tv or the STB is acting up. Cox does have the newer non-DVR STB with both component and HDMI outputs. It is called DCH3200. I think you should just go swap out your old STB and see if your problem would go away.

I believe the STB you have is either the DCT6200 or earlier. I used to have the DCT6200 for a few years without problems. Then it started to freeze up once in a while, so I exchanged it for a DCH3200. I wished I could have done it earlier. The new STB runs cooler and the PQ is better even for the SD channels.

Anyone bugged them about Tuning Adapter yet? Last posted in this thread supposedly September is when they will be available for use. They are probably sick and tired of hearing from me on this subject...

Yep, sent an email off on Tuesday afternoon. I got the typical "...a CSR will be responding to you shortly."

For me the final kick was simply capacity. As much as I like all the other things that TiVo can do (and I've been using many of them regularly) it all came down to the fact that I was able to buy a pre-upgraded TiVo that fit 117 hours of HD, as opposed to the less than 15 hours I was getting on my Cox DVR.

Okay, realizing I am in the minority, I have to ask. How do you find time to watch the 117 hours of programming? I find if I don't watch my programming often, it grows in to an unmanageable beast.


I'm a convert. Just got my 1TB external drive. It was running in minutes and I didn't lose any of my shows on the internal hard drive - cool! I now have 165 hours of HD! TiVo suggestions is going to go crazy. ;)



...I sent the cable box back with the cable card guy. I haven't missed the cable box for a second. (Well, I take that back. I do miss the clock. But that's it.)


On that note, went to Target tonight and got a nice, blue LED clock to replace the DVR clock. The wife insisted on it. It's funny how much we rely on that silly clock.

Since your system was working fine before, I think either your tv or the STB is acting up. Cox does have the newer non-DVR STB with both component and HDMI outputs. It is called DCH3200. I think you should just go swap out your old STB and see if your problem would go away.

I believe the STB you have is either the DCT6200 or earlier. I used to have the DCT6200 for a few years without problems. Then it started to freeze up once in a while, so I exchanged it for a DCH3200. I wished I could have done it earlier. The new STB runs cooler and the PQ is better even for the SD channels.

Thanks! I'll give it a try!

I hope it's not the TV...just replaced the color wheel and bulb about 6 months ago, and I don't want to dig around in this thing's guts again!

This was response from Cox OC from my query related to SDV Tuning Adapter availability. In summary: release date for SDV adapters not yet known.

Hello Kevin,

Thank you for your email regarding your cable services.

We do apologize for the email regarding the switched digital video
conversion. You are correct in saying that we are working in deploying
the tuning adaptors but we have as of yet set a scheduled release date.
When we are prepared to release the devices we will most likely be
notifying customers that are impacted. A release date for September is
a bit inaccurate at this point as we do not have a scheduled release
date as of yet so in saying that September being the release date I
would have to say this is not correct. We had initially received
information that this may be deployed during the second quarter of this
year but this has been pushed back since it has not occurred just yet.
Committing to a time this year would be something that we cannot do at
this point as it may be delayed again.

We hope that we have been able to provide you with the information you
requested. If we have not, or if we can be of any additional service to
you, please do not hesitate to contact us again.



Sincerely,
Christian
Cox Communications - Video/Telephony Tech Support
Online Support Team

This was response from Cox OC from my query related to SDV Tuning Adapter availability. In summary: release date for SDV adapters not yet known.

These are classic - some highly educated Cox employees writing these responses:


A release date for September is a bit inaccurate at this point as we do not have a scheduled release date as of yet so in saying that September being the release date I would have to say this is not correct.



We had initially received information that this may be deployed during the second quarter of this year but this has been pushed back since it has not occurred just yet.



Committing to a time this year would be something that we cannot do at this point as it may be delayed again.



At least they replied, which is more than I can say.

...As you suggested, setting a DVR to record a SDV channel should then mark it as "active" at least the duration of the recording.

Ah, if only it were working that way. Here's the message I just submitted to Cox. :mad:

I am a long-time Cox customer who subscribes to your cable, internet and phone services. For cable, we subscribe to a large number of channels, plus the HD package, and we have two HD DVRs from Cox.

I appreciate the addition of several new HD channels to the Orange County line-up in early August. However, the technical implementation of these new channels has created a significant problem that dramatically reduces the usability of the DVR service. The net result is that we cannot use any of the new channels. I have detailed the problem below in the hope that you can find a technical solution soon and we can enjoy the HD line-up we are paying for.

The DVR has two tuners, and is supposed to allow us to watch one channel while recording another, or to record two channels at once. This is how the Cox DVRs have worked since the beginning, and this is how your promotional materials still say they work.

However, if the DVR is tuned to any of the new HD channels:

717, 748, 749, 750, 752, 759, 760, 770, 771

then the other tuner can only show or record these 37 channels:

2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13,
702, 703, 704, 705, 706, 707, 708, 709, 710, 711, 713,
717, 748, 749, 750, 752, 759, 760, 770, 771 (the new channels)
804, 808, 809, 810, 811
(plus radio 949-969)

and CANNOT show or record these 200+ channels:

14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 95, 96, 97, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 115, 116, 117, 119, 200, 201, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 220, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 246, 247, 260, 261, 280, 281, 282, 283, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 350, 351, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 360, 361, 362, 363, 364, 365, 366, 367, 368, 369, 370, 372, 714, 715, 716, 718, 721, 722, 723, 724, 725, 727, 727, 730, 731, 732, 733, 736, 739, 740, 741, 744, 753, 754, 755, 756, 757, 758, 761, 762, 763, 764, 765, 766, 767, 772, 781, 782, 788, 789, 790, 791, 792, 793, 805, 807, 808
(and MusicChoice 901-946)

Both DVRs behave the same way: Tuning to one of the new channels prevents the other tuner from showing/recording more than 200 other channels, giving us only a black screen, no sound and, eventually, a message that the channel is off the air.

Let me give you some examples to help you better understand the problem:

1) I tune to 760 (one of the new channels) to record a show. I swap tuners to watch 714 live. 714 never appears. 760 continues to show/record just fine.

2) I am recording a program on 301. During that time, I change the other tuner to 717 (one of the new channels) for 5 minutes. When viewing the recording of 301 later, there is a 5-minute freeze in the recording, corresponding to the time the other tuner was on 717.

Note: There is also a significant variation of this problem:

Start with both the DVR tuners on new HD channels, say, 717 on one and 760 on the other; both appear OK.
Now change the channel on one tuner from 717 to 68 (one of the 200+ channels identified above); 68 appears OK.
Now swap back to the other tuner to see 760; that new HD channel is now blank.
Now change 760 to a different (not new) channel, then back to 760. 760 now appears OK, but 68 on the other tuner is now blank.


Due to this problem, we can only watch or record a new channel if we are absolutely sure that there are no recordings scheduled during that time on any of the 200+ affected channels, and that we will not want to watch anything live on any of those 200+ channels.

Likewise, if we schedule a recording on one of the 200+ affected channels, and someone changes the other tuner to one of the new HD channels during that time, then the recording will be frozen for whatever time the new HD channel was on the other tuner.

As far as I can tell, my only option until Cox fixes this problem is to add the new HD channels to my list of “skipped channels”, so they don’t show up in the program guide and there is less chance that someone will tune to them.

What is the point of giving us new channels that we can’t use? Please get this problem fixed soon, as alternative TV services are starting to look attractive.

That's a pretty serious bug in Cox DVR if that is indeed the behavior. To further summarize your findings it appears that when you tune to SDV channel on 1 tuner then you are only able to tune to another SDV channel or an unencrypted channel on the other tuner. i.e. Authorization (needed for encrypted channels) on the other tuner is failing.
I'll be curious to know if that behavior is the same for others using Cox DVR as it appears to be an authorization problem of some sort.

I just confirmed what Steve is seeing. I'm in Irvine (92602) and my DVR is DCH3416. It is amazing that they didn't catch it.:rolleyes:

And I filed a complaint - pretty much just cut-and-pasted Steve's message (it was very thorough, so thanks, Steve).

This was response from Cox OC from my query related to SDV Tuning Adapter availability. In summary: release date for SDV adapters not yet known.

Here's the response they gave me:



Dear Valued Cox Customer:

To better assist you in your area please call our technical support at 850-862-4142 in regards to your question.

Thank you for choosing Cox Communication for your cable and internet provider.



Not sure what is so complicated about my question that it requires me to contact technical support:


I have heard from other subscribers that the tuning adapters for switched digital video are coming soon. Please let me know when they will be available for install. Thank you. By the way, I'm not referring to the CableCARD, but the tuning adapter that allows us TiVo users to tune in the switched digital video (SDV) channels.

Here's the response they gave me:



Not sure what is so complicated about my question that it requires me to contact technical support:

I could be wrong but I think the laws are more lax when it comes to verbal statements compared to ones in print. You can talk to someone on the phone and the company can always say the person you talked to was incorrect or that you simply misinterpreted what they said. When they submit that statement in print it carries more meaning. That's why food companies (like milk) can make a bunch of BS statements in there commercials but have to offer full disclosure on the products label.

I just confirmed what Steve is seeing. I'm in Irvine (92602) and my DVR is DCH3416. It is amazing that they didn't catch it.:rolleyes:
"Me three", on this- my DVRs tend to be quite active and I'd noticed some strange behavior with unrecordable channels a couple of weeks ago, almost like the old bug was back; I'd bring up an allegedly-recorded show and there's nothing there, and eventually it would return back to the show-list screen (or stop and return to Live TV).

WOW. Unbelievable. :mad:

Hey guys, whats the All digital (no analog) model DVR box again that Cox carries here in the OC. My many year old 6416 is acting up at times....I'm get sound and picture drops offs, it's messing up recordings sometimes.

So I'm trying to watch the stuff on it, and then probably trade it in for the cooler running (prob less watts too) all Digital box.

Thanks!

Motorola DCH3416

Anyone bugged them about Tuning Adapter yet? Last posted in this thread supposedly September is when they will be available for use. They are probably sick and tired of hearing from me on this subject...

Bugged them today. Same response from Tech Support: "No idea when it will be available. Keep an eye out for a mailer."

I just finished installing a surround sound system in my family room and I'm looking at all the other awzy gawzy stuff that's out there before I hang drywall.

Right now I'm using Cox digital cable and 3 DVR boxes (DCH 3416) in my home with a couple of HBO channels. It's pretty pricey!!

I'm thinkin' of using Windows Media Center which would require me to add a digital tuner card to my PC, a Cable Card, and a media extender in my A/V closet.

I have alot of music, photos, home videos, etc. and thought WMC looked pretty cool! Does anyone have this setup and is it worth the switch?

Any comments.....chime on in!!

From my understanding there's actually very few PCs that support CableCard. You can't just add any old digital tuner that supports CableCard to any PC - you have to buy the whole certified system and that can be an expensive proposition. Also, I don't think there is any solution for Switched Digital Video channels for a PC tuner - i.e. they don't support Tuning Adapters.
So that turns out to be an expensive solution out of the gate with some channels missing and you are still stuck with a noisy PC system which you then have to hook up to your main AV/HDTV setup for optimum viewing. So I still see Tivo as a better/easier solution compared to a media center assuming you want to be able to record encrypted channels (with CableCards).

Fingers crossed, the new HD channels seem to be behaving themselves now.

Just know that Win 7 Windows Media Center is MUCH improved from everything I've read. Hope you ordered it during the $49.99 special. (we ordered 4 copies) I don't know if it addresses any of the issues mentioned, but it is a worth upgrade.

Saw a Twit from one of the two MV Twitter's I follow (MViejoDispatch) and they tweeted today this today:

AT&T Installs First Controversial TV Boxes /Mission Viejo Dispatch/ - AT&T's U-Verse system will ... http://*******.com/n3xbth

This is the Story:

AT&T’s U-Verse system will compete with Cox Cable in Mission Viejo after it installs large boxes in selected neighborhoods. The ‘Lightspeed’ boxes will each be able to serve about 100 homes with TV, internet, and other features using fiber optic connections.

AT&T says the huge electronic boxes cannot be installed underground, causing conflict with cities like Mission Viejo that are concerned about aesthetics. Last year the City Council adopted an emergency moratorium against above ground installation, but was sued by AT&T under the Federal Communications Act. A settlement was reached permitting the above ground installations.

Mission Viejo’s largest homeowners assocation, MVEA, complained about one of the first installations. An MVEA board member sent a letter to the City Attorney stating AT&T’s installation damaged the pipe and wiring of the HOA’s irrigation system, stressing or killing landscape plants. He also reported AT&T was not coordinating work with the association as previously stipulated, turning down water flow on the association’s valves without permission. AT&T cited potential damage to its box, especially by the reclaimed water mandated for irrigation, according to the letter.

Mission Viejo’s Planning Department told the Register it has issued permits for 35 boxes and 3 have been installed. AT&T originally stated an intention to place 107 boxes in town. Since then the Company announced it would reduce the national rollout from 11 million boxes to 5 million, and it has halted seeking permits in seven OC cities, including Irvine, which have refused to issue approvals for the underground installations.

I tweeted them back something like - ATT's system is ok but won't move many from Cox, what us power users want is Verizon Fios....ain't no better HD etc right now....

No reply from them of course....LOL!

for the last few hours I am getting no reception on channels below 700 (700 and above work fine). Anyone else having this problem? (internet access ok).

for the last few hours I am getting no reception on channels below 700 (700 and above work fine). Anyone else having this problem? (internet access ok).

Yes, same here in Irvine (92602), but I'm having problems with above 700, too.

Yes, same here in Irvine (92602), but I'm having problems with above 700, too.

the other channels are back now (in my area, north Tustin)

the other channels are back now (in my area, north Tustin)

Yes, mine are back, too. Let's hope it stays, as they were back briefly a bit earlier.

Same thing here MV I think, my 8yr old told me the kitchen and his room tv's had not picture, I was watching HD and it was fine and by the time I remembered to check his out it was ok....

Yesterday all of my locals went out at 7:30 AM and we're still out at 9:30 in both SD and HD. Missed all of the Sunday News shows. I also do not get CMT and Com HD in HD, just a constant black screen at all times. Anyone else seeing this issue???

Yesterday all of my locals went out at 7:30 AM and we're still out at 9:30 in both SD and HD. Missed all of the Sunday News shows. I also do not get CMT and Com HD in HD, just a constant black screen at all times. Anyone else seeing this issue???

9:30 PM or AM? In any event, all channels seem okay to me in Irvine (92602), but I'm at work and my Slingbox is hooked up to my TiVo, so I cannot confirm the two SDV channels you mention.

Just an update on viewing On Demand stuff through QAM. Still not working. Looks like that's another perk of the past that we will reminisce about as Cox takes more and more away from us while increasing there prices.

It also appears that NBC has started to do there BS advertising again. Constant text promoting other shows by the logo. :mad:

Locals went out for me on Sunday morning at 7:30 AM, both SD and HD. When I checked again at 4:30 pm they we're back. On CMT and Com HD all I ever get is a black screen. The new HD adds [FX HD etc.] seem buggy, lots of freeze ups etc. All of them look bit starved to me, when the camera moves they break up. I can tell you this Head to Head, same Ch., same TV, same time, vs. Directv, hands down Direc wins on HD picture quality. My 2 cents....

On CMT and Com HD all I ever get is a black screen. The new HD adds [FX HD etc.] seem buggy, lots of freeze ups etc. All of them look bit starved to me, when the camera moves they break up.

Makes me not too upset about the lack of tuning adapters...at least for now. :rolleyes:

...while I'm very happy with the internet service I've been on the fence about keeping cox for TV.

I run 2 TiVo's and the new SDV HD channels along with the horribly bit starved picture delivered is pushing me into DTV's arms. I was originally going to wait for the next gen DTV TiVo HD MPEG4 receiver & judge the switch merits, but now I don't know if I should'nt just drop COX, TiVo or no TiVo.

Has anyone done any comprehensive side by side PQ analysis of cox oc feed vs. dtv?

...while I'm very happy with the internet service I've been on the fence about keeping cox for TV.

I run 2 TiVo's and the new SDV HD channels along with the horribly bit starved picture delivered is pushing me into DTV's arms. I was originally going to wait for the next gen DTV TiVo HD MPEG4 receiver & judge the switch merits, but now I don't know if I should'nt just drop COX, TiVo or no TiVo.

Has anyone done any comprehensive side by side PQ analysis of cox oc feed vs. dtv?

I'm not sure about "comprehensive," but it has been stated anecdotally numerous times that DirecTV is superior in PQ. So the TiVo's will just be OTA or do yours work with satellite?

The current "old" DTV TiVo is MPEG 2 & OTA ...so you get a very limited number of channels.

I'd be ebay'n my S3's if I switched to DTV.

DTV & TiVo announced last year that they are renewing their relationship and will have a DTV HD TiVo available late this year...Last I heard on it was that its now looking like sometime next year. Not quite vapor ware but close...kind of like our tuning adapters :)

As things stand with Cox currently, it would be a no brainer to jump to DTV if their new MPEG4 TiVo was available, at least from my point of view. I read horror stories very similar to what cox subjected us too with their DVR's over the years...only about the DTV DVRs. Apparently they are "much" improved but DTV is a 2 year contract so hopping over to them is not a light decision...not to mention you have to at least partially invest in hardware if you want DVR's on most of your TV's etc...and god only knows if they wont mysteriously "cancel" their TiVo project.

AT&T has been marketing extremely aggressively in my neighborhood, but again their DVR's & receivers are a disaster.

...anyway, anyone else got an opinion on any of this?

I've also pondered running a htpc setup, windows media center...myth tv...whatever. Anyone here dabble with any of it? I read somewhere about inserting multiple video capture cards into the htpc (or back end server) and using serial cables to control channel swaps on the DTV receiver which feed the cards via component @ 720p/1080i. Doubt it would work in WMC, but I've heard it runs on Myth TV well.

I was bumping around the DTV web-site and you can add an extra hard Drive up to 1 tera-byte, for lots of HD recording capacity, and no extra charge or set-up fee. They also tell you how to do it. [Why doesn't Cox support that??] D also has more HD channels, including multiple Movie Ch.'s in HD. I do have both, although not a DVR from D and the HD quality, and quantity is just better on Direc. The main issue is D no longer makes their HD equipment with the OTA tuners built in. They do offer all the main locals in HD though. My 2 cents.

Yes, unlike Dish, DirecTV does not charge you a 1-time $40 "activation fee" to enable esata port for external drive expansion. If the new Tivo/DirecTV solution does indeed materialize next year (which Tivo confirmed recently is on track for 2010) and has Tivo To Go and Multi Room Viewing capabilities, that will start to look like an extremely attractive alternative to Cox.

Cox is moving some clear QAM channels around. They aren't putting out a PSIP for 4-1, which used to be around 86, but now is at 101-450 (hope they start providing the 4-1 PSIP again). 4-2 also no longer has a PSIP and is now showing up at 101-315. 13-1, another lost PSIP, is at 99-686. Newly added is 94-8, "This", OTA 5-2.

Locals went out for me on Sunday morning at 7:30 AM, both SD and HD. When I checked again at 4:30 pm they we're back. On CMT and Com HD all I ever get is a black screen. The new HD adds [FX HD etc.] seem buggy, lots of freeze ups etc. All of them look bit starved to me, when the camera moves they break up. I can tell you this Head to Head, same Ch., same TV, same time, vs. Directv, hands down Direc wins on HD picture quality. My 2 cents....

After reading the last 6 wks of forum messages extolling grief with all aspects of Cox cable, it looks pretty clear that Cox cable is on a path of self-destruction. Defective equipment, poorly designed equipment (ugh Moto box operation) untrained personnel, bad solutions for more HD channels, 'switched video' fiasco, reducing HD bit-rate sampling, anti-Tivo attitude - just to name a few - will ultimately kill this company.

Besides that, cox is stuck with limited cable bandwidth until they fully route fiber directly to everyone's home. Being that cox is a privately held company with no money and deaf management and a dwindling subscriber base, it looks pretty bleak for Cox on the technology front. I think they must be waiting for somebody to buy them out - except that their bottom line must be in big trouble.

I finally signed up with DISH Satellite TV. Its great! Cox vs DISH is like comparing cat food vs filet mignon. DISH has more channels and more HD than most will want.

It all works flawlessly well. No drop outs, no freezes, high quality HD, no local channels issues, external antenna input (can have ALL local channels), external DVR Hard Drive ($40 one time fee), easy menus, easy setup, 4 extra programmable favorites lists, easy DVR operation, 500GB DVR drive, can access recordings from either of 2 tuners (1 per room).

Whats not to like? I can not grasp why anyone would stay with Cox.

Thanks.

Whats not to like? I can not grasp why anyone would stay with Cox. Well, if you find a way to offload your DVR recordings natively to your PC let us know... Maybe you don't care for that feature but that's something I use every day with Tivo.

Also a question - does Dish DVR support HD multi-room viewing? AFAIK only SD programs can be viewed remotely but it's been a while since I checked on that in Dish forums.

Also, I'm not sure where you picked up on 'anti Tivo attitude'. So far Cox has worked pretty well with Tivo and even SDV channels will be available to Tivo users for no extra charge sooner or later.

After reading the last 6 wks of forum messages extolling grief with all aspects of Cox cable, it looks pretty clear that Cox cable is on a path of self-destruction. Defective equipment, poorly designed equipment (ugh Moto box operation) untrained personnel, bad solutions for more HD channels, 'switched video' fiasco, reducing HD bit-rate sampling, anti-Tivo attitude - just to name a few - will ultimately kill this company.


I'm glad you found a solution you like; I was with Dish once upon a time and enjoyed the service. :) That said, keep in mind the vast majority of posts on AVS are people with issues. Most Cox subscribers are either completely fine with their service, don't have the quality and quantity demands we techies do, or aren't totally thrilled but don't care to express their issues on a public forum. Further, other than satellite, they really have no choice.

I'm pretty happy with Cox internet and digital telephone. Yes, I have considerable issues with the bit-starved HD, but I'm not archiving anything, so if I really want higher quality, I have my pristine Blu-ray (PS3). Of course, I'll keep pushing for better quality, but having TiVo has made me a very happy camper again.

Well, if you find a way to offload your DVR recordings natively to your PC let us know... Maybe you don't care for that feature but that's something I use every day with Tivo.

Also a question - does Dish DVR support HD multi-room viewing? AFAIK only SD programs can be viewed remotely but it's been a while since I checked on that in Dish forums.

Also, I'm not sure where you picked up on 'anti Tivo attitude'. So far Cox has worked pretty well with Tivo and even SDV channels will be available to Tivo users for no extra charge sooner or later.

To Moyekj: -- Yes, it would be nice to directly connect the external disk to the PC. But someone else wrote awhile back that DISH uses a proprietary format.

The DISH box has an HD tuner, an SD tuner, and an external antenna input. Overall, it supports 2 TVs. Both TVs get channels from both tuners, but TV-2 gets an SD quality RF signal from both tuners. Only TV-1 gets access to the external antenna channels. (not a deal breaker, but acceptable). The DISH box sends HDMI or component signals to TV-1 and sends ordinary analog coax SD quality to TV-2. The box cleverly merges the analog output onto the original digital input cable from the dish's amplifier.

Either TV-1 or -2 can set DVR programs and playback any program no matter which TV selected the program.

If you don't need two TV rooms, you can do PIP etc. on the one TV. I generally don't care about PIP, but I know lots of people do.

The great part about the external antenna is that the DISH box automatically scans the skies and numerically merges all found DTV channels into their own channel list. For example, DISH offers one ch-58 (klcs) channel. But the antenna offers CH-58.1, .2, .3, and .4. The resulting menu shows 5 channels: CH-58-00, -01, -02, -03, and -04. The oo and 01 are duplicates of 58.1

DISH additionally offers ordinary analog for nearly every local channel in the LA/OC area. They also offer analog CH-24 from Riverside. My antenna can't pickup HD Ch-24 so I live with just the analog. Ch-24 offers alot of great PBS stuff that is way different from the run-of-the-mill Ch-28 and Ch-50. "I remember Television" has been showing the old and great NBC "Victory at Sea" stuff from the 50's.

Please let me know if you want any more info on the DISH stuff. It sure does work alot better than anything cox has.

Thanks

I cannot get Closed Captioning to work on SyFy HD for Warehouse 13 recordings and perhaps some others. My Tivos show that there are DTVCC1 captions available but yet does not display any text at all when I turn on captions. During some of the commercials the captions do display, but I suspect those are analog born captions.

I posted in Tivo forums and others in different markets stated they had no problems with Warehouse 13 on SyFy HD. So this is either a local Cox problem or a Tivo problem.

Can someone with Motorola set top box or DVR check if you can get captions, specifically for Warehouse 13 on SyFy HD (761)? For other Tivo users here if you can confirm the problem I'm reporting with your Tivos that would be good to know as well.

(I tend to watch a lot of programs very late at night and keep volume low or muted with captions displayed so as not to wake anyone in the house).

I cannot get Closed Captioning to work on SyFy HD for Warehouse 13 recordings and perhaps some others. My Tivos show that there are DTVCC1 captions available but yet does not display any text at all when I turn on captions. During some of the commercials the captions do display, but I suspect those are analog born captions.

I posted in Tivo forums and others in different markets stated they had no problems with Warehouse 13 on SyFy HD. So this is either a local Cox problem or a Tivo problem.

Can someone with Motorola set top box or DVR check if you can get captions, specifically for Warehouse 13 on SyFy HD (761)? For other Tivo users here if you can confirm the problem I'm reporting with your Tivos that would be good to know as well.

(I tend to watch a lot of programs very late at night and keep volume low or muted with captions displayed so as not to wake anyone in the house).

Thank God for my Slingbox. I'm watching Warehouse 13 right now and I do see the CC fine on my TiVo HD. I love that show, by the way.

Thank God for my Slingbox. I'm watching Warehouse 13 right now and I do see the CC fine on my TiVo HD. I love that show, by the way. Interesting, thanks for the post. Looks like perhaps another thing the S3s are not as good as compared to THDs (the other major one being H.264 & WMV decoding).

Interesting, thanks for the post. Looks like perhaps another thing the S3s are not as good as compared to THDs (the other major one being H.264 & WMV decoding).

Time for an upgrade...although, I believe you mentioned previously some of the things you like better about the S3s.

The S3s are a little faster for general GUI use, quite significantly faster for Tivo To Go and MRV transfers (more dedicated RAM available for that functiontality) and of course have the front panel with clock which also shows in writing what is recording as well as having a better aesthetic look (subjective). Oh and of course it comes with the better Glo Remote. Aside from those I think THDs are generally as good or better in most other aspects.
The biggest advantage of THDs I ran into was better H.264 & WMV decoders (they have the next generation Broadcom hardware decoding chipset).
(I had the THDXL for several months in my house so I was able to personally experience the differences).

...and of course have the front panel with clock which also shows in writing what is recording...

Thanks, I wish I had that.

Thank God for my Slingbox. I'm watching Warehouse 13 right now and I do see the CC fine on my TiVo HD. I love that show, by the way. Update. Turns out the latest 3 episodes of Warehouse 13 do indeed have proper captions and they are working fine on my S3s after all, so it must have been a transmission problem for earlier episodes.

Update. Turns out the latest 3 episodes of Warehouse 13 do indeed have proper captions and they are working fine on my S3s after all, so it must have been a transmission problem for earlier episodes.

Good to hear; yes, I looked at the latest episode. Glad TiVo has the Recently Deleted feature.

Did anyone else have that annoying EAS on their cable box? and then instead of showing an actual emergency they just showed lame infomercials for like 15 minutes.

I noticed something like that several days ago. It was pretty late at night, I think after 1am or so though I was still watching a show on my Tivo when the EAS kicked in. I waited a couple of minutes to see if it would go away, and then got fed up and turned off TV and went to bed. As long as they do EAS outside of primetime recording I guess it could be a lot worse...
BTW for those with Tivos you can actually prevent Tivos going into EAS mode if you put Tivo on standby when not using it - in that mode it will record what it's supposed to without interruption. This is about the only real value of standby mode.

The last EAS warning I saw (several days ago) refused to go away. I had to change the channel and switch the tuner. Even then if I remember correctly I had to reboot my box to regain the normal functions. Shame Cox cant do what my sisters cable company does. The warnings are simply onscreen overlays (like when you hit the info button for us) that can simply be clicked away. They don't interrupt the programming. I have lost several recordings and had many movies ruined because it goes to that EAS screen.

On a totally unrelated topic.... It looks like the Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson has finally gone HD.

And update on Tivo, SDV, and tuning adapters from the OC Register (http://gadgetress.freedomblogging.com/2009/09/02/cox-oc-will-be-first-to-test-tivo-adapters-from-motorola/20165/):
[...]Cox is working with Motorola to develop an adapter and Cox customers in Orange County will be the first in the nation to test the equipment, said Lana Ong, a Cox spokesperson.
“Our current plan is to begin beta-testing the product in September and launch to Cox customers free of charge once testing is complete,” Ong said.

I'm irritated I can't watch S2 of Sons of Anarchy on FXHD but maybe I'll catch the season finale at this rate.

It would be nice to see Cox provide information regarding how to volunteer to beta test. They'd certainly be idiots if they didn't sign moyekj up.

And update on Tivo, SDV, and tuning adapters from the OC Register (http://gadgetress.freedomblogging.com/2009/09/02/cox-oc-will-be-first-to-test-tivo-adapters-from-motorola/20165/):


I'm irritated I can't watch S2 of Sons of Anarchy on FXHD but maybe I'll catch the season finale at this rate.


It's interesting she said "...Cox customers in Orange County will be the first in the nation to test the equipment..." as I am pretty sure that at least some Cox customers in the US already have the tuning adapters. Nevertheless, thanks for the update and this is good to hear. Let's just hope the beta testing doesn't turn out to be a lengthy process.

It's interesting she said "...Cox customers in Orange County will be the first in the nation to test the equipment..." as I am pretty sure that at least some Cox customers in the US already have the tuning adapters. Nevertheless, thanks for the update and this is good to hear. Let's just hope the beta testing doesn't turn out to be a lengthy process.

I wish I could say something, but I'm under NDA...... ;)


.
.
.
.
just kidding. I unfortunately don't have anything, and am in the same darn boat as the rest of you. :(

It's interesting she said "...Cox customers in Orange County will be the first in the nation to test the equipment..." as I am pretty sure that at least some Cox customers in the US already have the tuning adapters. Nevertheless, thanks for the update and this is good to hear. Let's just hope the beta testing doesn't turn out to be a lengthy process. She's correct. So far all deployed Tuning Adapters have been for Cisco systems. This will be the first Motorola Tuning Adapter deployed publicly AFAIK. TWC and others (including Cox in Virginia and Phoenix) deploying SDV thus far have all had SA/Cisco based headends, so Cox OC will be blazing the trail for Motorola TAs.

She's correct. So far all deployed Tuning Adapters have been for Cisco systems. This will be the first Motorola Tuning Adapter deployed publicly AFAIK. TWC and others (including Cox in Virginia and Phoenix) deploying SDV thus far have all had SA/Cisco based headends, so Cox OC will be blazing the trail for Motorola TAs.

Got it. I guess the important word was "Motorola."

FYI, Cox AZ already has DOCSIS 3.0 in place and is offering 28/2.5 Mbps HSI:
http://ww2.cox.com/residential/arizona/internet/premier-plus-internet.cox

Still, that's a lot of money per month ($80) for only 2.5 Mbps upstream speed... It should be at least 5 Mbps at that price.

FYI, Cox AZ already has DOCSIS 3.0 in place and is offering 28/2.5 Mbps HSI:
http://ww2.cox.com/residential/arizona/internet/premier-plus-internet.cox

Still, that's a lot of money per month ($80) for only 2.5 Mbps upstream speed... It should be at least 5 Mbps at that price.

yes, definitely too much, particularly for me, as I still fairly consistently get 2.2 to 2.5 Mbps upload speeds.

yes, definitely too much, particularly for me, as I still fairly consistently get 2.2 to 2.5 Mbps upload speeds. Rub it in won't you. ;) As you know I get average below 800 Kbps which is pretty worthless for Slinging.

Rub it in won't you. ;) As you know I get average below 800 Kbps which is pretty worthless for Slinging.

Maybe the farther north one lives in the OC, the higher one's upload speed? :eek:

...actually, cox hsi performance really depends on the age & subscriber density of your neighborhood. Cox has nodes in OC which are 100% utilized 24/7...they split the node, a week later both nodes are 100% utilized again...There are neighborhoods like University Park that cox network engineers jokingly refer to as "the black hole of data".

I don't think any telecom, much less cox really projected how much home bandwidth demand would go up in the past 5 to 7 years.

Anyway, a close friend of mine living in north park (irvine) gets maybe 500kbps downloads from 4pm till 2 am...where as myself living in Portola Springs I can pull down 2800kbps...24/7 with my speed never even dipping when hitting a newsgroup server.

...actually, cox hsi performance really depends on the age & subscriber density of your neighborhood. Cox has nodes in OC which are 100% utilized 24/7...they split the node, a week later both nodes are 100% utilized again...There are neighborhoods like University Park that cox network engineers jokingly refer to as "the black hole of data".

I don't think any telecom, much less cox really projected how much home bandwidth demand would go up in the past 5 to 7 years.

Anyway, a close friend of mine living in north park (irvine) gets maybe 500kbps downloads from 4pm till 2 am...where as myself living in Portola Springs I can pull down 2800kbps...24/7 with my speed never even dipping when hitting a newsgroup server.

I live in Northpark and get 2.2 to 2.5 Mbps (sorry moyekj) very consistently, but am well aware it is a "shared" resource. The good news for me is that my neighbors must be busy doing other things - they are so misled. :)

Just out of curiosity can some of you post your Cable Modem signal readings using:
http://192.168.100.1/RgSignal.asp
Mine currently are:

Downstream
Frequency=561MHz
SNR=37dB
Power Level=-4.0dBmV

Upstream
Channel ID=3
Frequency=26MHz
Power=53dBmV

My upstream power level seems a little on the high side (probably because of 8-way amp/splitter - there is no upstream amplification for this amp).

Lock Status Operational
Modulation 256QAM
Channel ID 149
Provisioned Rate 23000 kbps
Symbol Rate 5360.537 Ksym/sec
Downstream Power -14.3 dBmV
SNR 34.5 dB

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Upstream Channel

Lock Status Operational
Modulation 64QAM
Channel ID 1
Provisioned Rate 1725 kbps
Symbol Rate 2560 Ksym/sec
Upstream Power 55.2 dBmV

I got rid of my moto box and have go to a windows media cable card based system...much much better

I got rid of my moto box and have go to a windows media cable card based system...much much better Interesting. Please post an update once you have played with it some more. I guess no SDV channels for you though... Also what was the approximate cost of the system if you don't mind me asking?

Does anybody know what qam channel the NBC HD feed. I can't seem to find it on my tv tuner.

Does anybody know what qam channel the NBC HD feed. I can't seem to find it on my tv tuner. Looks like it moved to RF channel 101 (657 MHz) based on my Tivo diagnostics screen.

Interesting. Please post an update once you have played with it some more. I guess no SDV channels for you though... Also what was the approximate cost of the system if you don't mind me asking?

I bought 1 tuner to start out with and have been using it the end of April on Windows 7. I have had 0 problems with it since install. And I mean zero.

You are correct that I can't view sdv stations...when I tune to 732 for example and I am on 707, it shows 707 's video with 732's guide info.

I just purchased another tuner and is arriving on Tuesday. Later next week I'll have cox come back out and install the 2nd card.

I have not used and media extenders as I do not own one nor need to us one. I still live with my parents while I complete college and they just use the plain old moto dvr. Hopefully later this year or early next year I will get a HTPC for them to use with one of these 6-tuner cards (http://www.cetoncorp.com/ProductsWMC.php) so they will stop complaining about not being able to record 3 shows..

The only downside to this whole media center thing is the inability to remove commercials with the current format (wtv). Once a program comes out to remove comercials for that I will be very happy and able to save about 25% of my space.

Just out of curiosity can some of you post your Cable Modem signal readings using:
http://192.168.100.1/RgSignalMine currently are:


That links doesn't work for me, but I can go to that IP address, login, and select Downstream (and Upstream).


Downstream
SNR=36.6 dB
Power Level=-7.7 dBmV

Upstream
Channel ID=3
Power=57.3 dBmV

Mine:

Downstream
SNR = 37dB
Power Level = -1 dBmV

Upstream
Channel ID = 3
Power = 50 dBmV

OK thanks guys, I guess my upstream power level is around same level as yours. From Googling around specs say 55 dBmV or less is needed (lower being better) and downstream power should be ideally between -8 to 8 dBmV.

OK thanks guys, I guess my upstream power level is around same level as yours. From Googling around specs say 55 dBmV or less is needed (lower being better) and downstream power should be ideally between -8 to 8 dBmV.

So if one has say, 57.3 dBmV, what does that mean?

So if one has say, 57.3 dBmV, what does that mean? Potential packet loss I suppose. Here's one page with some info on the various numbers and normal operating ranges:
http://www.dslreports.com/faq/5862
Signal levels not within the specifications listed above can cause slow speeds, connection problems, and connection loss due to packet errors, packet loss, and/or constant packet retransmission.

That sure explains why you get better upload speeds than me now doesn't it. :eek: :confused:

Potential packet loss I suppose. Here's one page with some info on the various numbers and normal operating ranges:
http://www.dslreports.com/faq/5862


That sure explains why you get better upload speeds than me now doesn't it. :eek: :confused:

I am getting 1.6-1.8mbps to Mozy, and I can get a steady 20-25mbps down from Microsoft.

Curious to know if Windows Media Center will support tuning adapters...since its all software I don't see why it would not be possible...

Curious to know if Windows Media Center will support tuning adapters...since its all software I don't see why it would not be possible... Possible yes, but to date there have been no indications anyone is working on it. Tivo is the one that pushed for need for Tuning Adapters in first place and is only one actively working to support it AFAIK. It's possible that once tru2way is rolled out that this issue will be taken care of.
Remember that total number of UDCP CableCard users is very small as a percentage of the whole. Tivo is some percentage of that and CableCard HTPC users an even smaller percentage of that, so there is not overwhelming demand for it to the point it may push someone like MSFT to support it.

Potential packet loss I suppose. Here's one page with some info on the various numbers and normal operating ranges:
http://www.dslreports.com/faq/5862


That sure explains why you get better upload speeds than me now doesn't it. :eek: :confused:

Well, I'm not within the "normal operating range," so not sure if being above such a range is going to give me higher upload speeds, but I'm certainly not going to mess with it.;) Could the Cox-provided amplifier at my MPE be causing this? If so, not sure what I can do other than put an inline attenuator on the output of the amplifer.

Potential packet loss I suppose. Here's one page with some info on the various numbers and normal operating ranges:
http://www.dslreports.com/faq/5862


Would this (http://www.dslreports.com/faq/3692) be a better link as it is Cox specific? I'm within range (barely) for upstream.


Downstream power level (Receive): -15dbmV to +15dbmV
A value of -15 or worse indicates a poor downstream signal path. A tech would aim for a value close to the optimal 0 dBmV, but a good cable modem should be capable of working within the broader range of -15 to +15 dBmV, provided the downstream Signal to Noise Ratio remains good enough.

Upstream (Transmit): +8dbmV to +58dbmV.
A value within the range +25 to +55 dBmV is within spec with 40's the most common. The lower this figure is, the better the upstream path to the UBR. If the cable modem is going offline, and the upstream signal strength is at +58dBmV, then a poor upstream path is probably the problem.

Carrier/Noise Ratio: 30dB to 36dB .
The downstream Signal to Noise Ratio must be 23.5 dB or higher, and should ideally be 30 dB or higher. The lower ratio the more noise and the poorer the performance. The Cable Modem will have to keep requesting retransmissions of packets with uncorrectable errors.

Cox is moving some clear QAM channels around. They aren't putting out a PSIP for 4-1, which used to be around 86, but now is at 101-450 (hope they start providing the 4-1 PSIP again). 4-2 also no longer has a PSIP and is now showing up at 101-315. 13-1, another lost PSIP, is at 99-686. Newly added is 94-8, "This", OTA 5-2.

Rescanned today and the 4-1, 4-2, and 13-1 PSIPs are back. Wonder when they will provide a PSIP for 28-1 (127-915).

Originally Posted by mkpl
Cox is moving some clear QAM channels around. They aren't putting out a PSIP for 4-1, which used to be around 86, but now is at 101-450 (hope they start providing the 4-1 PSIP again). 4-2 also no longer has a PSIP and is now showing up at 101-315. 13-1, another lost PSIP, is at 99-686. Newly added is 94-8, "This", OTA 5-2.

Rescanned today and the 4-1, 4-2, and 13-1 PSIPs are back. Wonder when they will provide a PSIP for 28-1 (127-915).

Why does COX constantly keep changing the mapping of their channel numbers around? Is it just to annoy people? It seems like they do it just to frustrate subscribers who use cable cards or Tivo or those that won't use their clumbsy Moto boxes.

How complex can it be to just choose numbers and then stick with it? One would think that Cox is experiencing biiiig changes in their system technology. (Looks all downhill for the last year or two). Or maybe Cox does it because their techies have nothing else to do or management is in constant chaos.

Why does COX constantly keep changing the mapping of their channel numbers around? Is it just to annoy people? It seems like they do it just to frustrate subscribers who use cable cards or Tivo or those that won't use their clumbsy Moto boxes. FYI, changing frequency assignments does not affect Tivo users at all. It only affects users with clear QAM tuners.

FYI, changing frequency assignments does not affect Tivo users at all. It only affects users with clear QAM tuners.

:)

Originally Posted by LN-Antenna
Why does COX constantly keep changing the mapping of their channel numbers around? Is it just to annoy people? It seems like they do it just to frustrate subscribers who use cable cards or Tivo or those that won't use their clumbsy Moto boxes.

FYI, changing frequency assignments does not affect Tivo users at all. It only affects users with clear QAM tuners.

ie those who have cable cards and don't want Cox's poor Moto box. I can see having to autoscan my DTV every day with Cox service unless I were to give in to using their poor STB technology or spending a fortune to buy Tivo boxes.

ie those who have cable cards and don't want Cox's poor Moto box. I can see having to autoscan my DTV every day with Cox service unless I were to give in to using their poor STB technology or spending a fortune to buy Tivo boxes. No you still misunderstand. CableCards provide 2 main functions: decryption and channel mapping (frequency to channel mapping). So CableCard devices don't have to re-scan when frequency changes are made since the channel mapping info is updated and sent down the wire automatically, so CableCard devices don't have to do anything manual when frequency assignments change.
If you add a Tuning Adapter to the mix (currently only Tivos support it) then that takes over the channel mapping task from the CableCards, but again everything is still automatic, so changes in frequency assignments are normal and happen all the time both for Cable and Satellite providers. So the only ones that suffer are clear QAM users, something you can't even do in the satellite world since pretty much everything is encrypted there.
(In case it's still not clear, "clear QAM" refers to tuners WITHOUT CableCards and thus no means for automatic channel mapping).

Why does COX constantly keep changing the mapping of their channel numbers around? Is it just to annoy people? It seems like they do it just to frustrate subscribers who use cable cards or Tivo or those that won't use their clumbsy Moto boxes.

How complex can it be to just choose numbers and then stick with it? One would think that Cox is experiencing biiiig changes in their system technology. (Looks all downhill for the last year or two). Or maybe Cox does it because their techies have nothing else to do or management is in constant chaos.

My guess is Clear QAM users are at the bottom of their priorities, since we aren't paying extra each month for their equipment or "digital gateway".

I finally caved tonight and ordered Dish. The lack of FX HD on my TiVo with Sons of Anarchy premiering was the final straw. While I love COX HSI, I despise their TV service :)

I've been disgusted with the quality of the cox hd feeds...and even when the mythical tuning adapter materializes, I doubt the HD quality will improve. If they gave any sort of credible ETA on availability, I'd have stayed. I've been a TiVo fanatic for a decade and it really pains me to have to drop TiVo. With DirecTV being tight lipped about the status of their new TiVo project, its just vapor ware...and who knows when it will materialize. I was holding out for the promised "late 2009" release.

I chose dish because as it stands the DirecTV DVR's suck...while they may be functional, their GUI lags...and after playing with one of the new HR23's @ Costco I was very unimpressed. To call Uverse receivers "beta" would be overstating the fact, more like a dev alpha that crashes on a semi daily basis.

..So...that left Dish, their DVR's while not TiVo's are pretty good. The quality of their HD signal is excellent...and even if you want to bail out of that 2 year commitment early its 15 bucks for every month left on the contract...If the DirecTV TiVo ever materializes ...I can stomach paying $180 or $200 to swap...the promo's from DTV would probably subsidize the switch over costs anyway

...so that's that, my install is tomorrow. Will report on the experience and who knows if COX cleans up their HD feeds I just might be back with that tru-2-way Series 4 TiVo :)

Thanks for the update bubu and best of luck with Dish. Please do check back in here after you have a chance to evaluate. I'm mostly interested in picture quality as that is one of the most important factors to me aside from DVR. Content wise I'm OK with Cox with channels we have now, but quality is far from where I like it to be. I think aside from FIOS, DTV is the best in quality at the moment. I still think probably the national feeds Cox OC is getting are over-compressed and bit starved before they even get here so I don't think SDV and associated bandwidth is going to do anything to improve picture quality - all it does is allow Cox to add more channels to try and keep up with competition, but it doesn't look like QUALITY is a priority anymore with Cox. I'll stick with Cox at least until DirecTV/Tivo DVR is out (supposedly next year some time now) and then evaluate then to see if Cox has improved at all by then.

EDIT: Forgot to mention about DVR. From my understanding Dish DVR does not (at least for current boxes) have HD multi-room viewing and definitely does not have ability to offload any recordings to a PC. Both of those are deal breakers to me as I rely on those capabilities pretty much every day. I will have to wait and see if DirecTV implements those features.

Good news for Windows Media Center + CableCard users. Looks like a free update that allows Windows Media Center to use Tuning Adapters so as to be able to tune Switched Digital Video channels is coming after all:
http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2009-09/sdv-support-coming-to-windows-media-center/

This also appears to be good news since to date DRM has been very tight for all recordings on these DRM infested PC CableCard solutions:
There will also be an additional change that allows for “less DRM on non-flagged CableCard recordings.”

Seems to be even better for Windows Media Center users:
http://mynetworkproject.blogspot.com/2009/09/windows-media-center-press-event-live.html
7:24 pm – DIGITAL CABLE EVOLUTION – SDV support is official!!!!!

Integrators and enthusiasts can now add Cable Card to ANY PC!!!!!!!!!!!

Firmware update to ATI Tuners (1.19) that will relax DRM is official. No release date on the firmware yet.
If some of this stuff really pans out then putting together your own CableCard based HTPC may potentially be a viable alternative to Tivo and cable co. DVRs. Perhaps it can be a reality for example to have a single 6 tuner system that supports recording of encrypted channels and is not too DRM crippled.

I just saw the post on Microsofts website. This is very, very exciting!!!!!
http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2009/sep09/09-09MSWinMCCEDIAPR.mspx

...back with COX, for now anyway.

The install was clean, the tech even fished 4 lines through existing conduit. Very impressed overall with the quality & attention to detail.

I received the VIP 612 HD DVR receivers. The receivers were "refurbished"...but more like used, with cosmetic damage. One of the four receivers was permanently rebooting. The receivers were decently built, but had major drawbacks which made me "weasel" out of the 24 month contract (more on how that was done later).

The Good:
Solid, quiet, good ergonomics, RF Remote, Crisp channel guide (on an HD TV)
Very responsive UI. The HD quality was miles above COX, but varied quite a bit from channel to channel. No pixilation of any kind. Video On demand was very good...and last but not least HD channel GALORE! Probably 3x the amount COX is currently offering. Built in Sling functionality! Lots of HD HBO's...Showtime's, etc...not just the East & West feeds.

The Bad:
The DVR is atrocious. The "Dish Pass" recording scheduler rivals that of what cox offered 5 years ago in their first gen UI. Its only saving grace is that you can bypass it completely and use a web interface @ dishnetwork.com to schedule all your recording. It is actually a fairly slick web interface. The hard drive expansion option which they charge $40 to activate per receiver is really an archiving solution. You can only record to the 30 hour HighDef hard drive in the DVR itself. You have to off-load shows from the DVR's drive to the external hard drive for extra storage, if you want to play a recording on the external hard drive...you have to first copy it back to the built in DVR hard drive. Permanently locks you into using either 480p, 720p, or 1080i...no "native" feed support.

If you do not need DVR functions, then DISH is a great deal, not to mention the enormous international channel content Dish Networks saving grace on the DVR scene is a new receiver due out any month now...the VIP 922 which won "best of show" @ CES 2009. After watching demo videos I can honestly say it will rival TiVo in terms of the UI, functionality, etc...rumor mill is that its been delayed 6 months already because of potential patent violation concerns in the never ending echostar vs. tivo lawsuit.

As of right now I've reconnected my HD TiVo's, and I am shipping the dish receivers back to DISH. I successfully argued that bringing non functional used equipment, and charging hundreds for it, is unprofessional and a deal breaker...not to mention promising an unreleased receiver, the VIP 922 @ sign up. Dish retentions tried offering the barn to keep the subscription, including a promise of upgrading to the VIP 922 when available @ off-contract upgrade rates. Not worth the risk of being stuck in a 24 month contract hopping for a receiver which may never materialize DirecTV MPEG-4 TiVo anyone ;)

Still pray'n for that Motorola tuning adapter soon!

Very exciting news indeed on the cable card front with windows media center. With the easing of DRM restrictions & tuning adapter support I really feel its a contender for the ultimate DVR crown

The downside as I see is in the sharing of shows...you'd have to have multiple media center pcs throughout the house. The 360 is noisy...and restricted to 100mbit ethernet. Then again, I guess it would not cost much more than a HD TiVo if you went the scrooge route...and potentially eliminate the need for a bluray player, some kind of media extender, etc.

...on a side note I've been using multiple PS3's as media extenders in my home setup. The 1000mbit ethernet port allows you to have crazy transcoding bitrates on high def content streaming from a PC, while being able to fast forward reliably! Truly loss-less transcoding! Really blows TiVo's "pyTiVo" homebrew away despite the advantage of being able to record to the TiVo's hard drive. The UI is ultra slick compared to the 360 & wmc, and those are nothing to complain about either. Built in bluray... It really leaves me impressed with the PS3 as a media home theater device. I've been using an app called PS3 Media Server, the developer who is working on it really should make it commercial, its that good...another interesting side note is that the PS3 is a DVR, at least in europe anyway. They have an off-the-air HDTV USB tuner/dvr plug in available.

If sony ever truly entered the DVR market with a PS3 like GUI...I know they made first gen TiVo's...as well as their own DVR, but sony's DRM driven schizophrenia killed that business.

Wow that was a quick turnaround bubu! Didn't have much chance to really evaluate picture quality I guess... I'm not surprised about DVR - going from Tivo to something else is usually rough. I think (based purely on anecdotal posts not personal experience) that DTV is a better choice than Dish for both picture quality and possibly DVR once/if Tivo software materializes and has most of TivoHD features + more.

I just wish I could get an M-Card for my tuners and recieve a few stations on one tuner. That is the only downside. All we can hope for now is a newer cablecard tuner that can support it.

I got my second tuner in the mail yesterday and should have it up and running by Saturday.

Very exciting news indeed on the cable card front with windows media center. With the easing of DRM restrictions & tuning adapter support I really feel its a contender for the ultimate DVR crown

The downside as I see is in the sharing of shows...you'd have to have multiple media center pcs throughout the house. The 360 is noisy...and restricted to 100mbit ethernet. Then again, I guess it would not cost much more than a HD TiVo if you went the scrooge route...and potentially eliminate the need for a bluray player, some kind of media extender, etc.

...on a side note I've been using multiple PS3's as media extenders in my home setup. The 1000mbit ethernet port allows you to have crazy transcoding bitrates on high def content streaming from a PC, while being able to fast forward reliably! Truly loss-less transcoding! Really blows TiVo's "pyTiVo" homebrew away despite the advantage of being able to record to the TiVo's hard drive. The UI is ultra slick compared to the 360 & wmc, and those are nothing to complain about either. Built in bluray... It really leaves me impressed with the PS3 as a media home theater device. I've been using an app called PS3 Media Server, the developer who is working on it really should make it commercial, its that good...another interesting side note is that the PS3 is a DVR, at least in europe anyway. They have an off-the-air HDTV USB tuner/dvr plug in available.

If sony ever truly entered the DVR market with a PS3 like GUI...I know they made first gen TiVo's...as well as their own DVR, but sony's DRM driven schizophrenia killed that business.

thanks, bubu, for your comments in this post and your DISH comments. We may have to wait, but it sound like we will have more options (DISH, DirecTV, WMC, etc.) down the road. I just wanted to jump in with regard to PS3 Media Server. I use it, too, and I love it. I have a lot of 720p home video .mov files (QuickTime container, MPEG-4 codec) for which PS3 Media Server transcodes them on the fly and sends to my PS3. I literally have hundreds of these video files, and to recode them to something the PS3 could read would have taken forever.

...back with COX, for now anyway.

The install was clean, the tech even fished 4 lines through existing conduit. Very impressed overall with the quality & attention to detail.

I received the VIP 612 HD DVR receivers. The receivers were "refurbished"...but more like used, with cosmetic damage. One of the four receivers was permanently rebooting. The receivers were decently built, but had major drawbacks which made me "weasel" out of the 24 month contract (more on how that was done later).

The Good:
Solid, quiet, good ergonomics, RF Remote, Crisp channel guide (on an HD TV)
Very responsive UI. The HD quality was miles above COX, but varied quite a bit from channel to channel. No pixilation of any kind. Video On demand was very good...and last but not least HD channel GALORE! Probably 3x the amount COX is currently offering. Built in Sling functionality! Lots of HD HBO's...Showtime's, etc...not just the East & West feeds.

The Bad:
The DVR is atrocious. The "Dish Pass" recording scheduler rivals that of what cox offered 5 years ago in their first gen UI. Its only saving grace is that you can bypass it completely and use a web interface @ dishnetwork.com to schedule all your recording. It is actually a fairly slick web interface. The hard drive expansion option which they charge $40 to activate per receiver is really an archiving solution. You can only record to the 30 hour HighDef hard drive in the DVR itself. You have to off-load shows from the DVR's drive to the external hard drive for extra storage, if you want to play a recording on the external hard drive...you have to first copy it back to the built in DVR hard drive. Permanently locks you into using either 480p, 720p, or 1080i...no "native" feed support.

If you do not need DVR functions, then DISH is a great deal, not to mention the enormous international channel content Dish Networks saving grace on the DVR scene is a new receiver due out any month now...the VIP 922 which won "best of show" @ CES 2009. After watching demo videos I can honestly say it will rival TiVo in terms of the UI, functionality, etc...rumor mill is that its been delayed 6 months already because of potential patent violation concerns in the never ending echostar vs. tivo lawsuit.

As of right now I've reconnected my HD TiVo's, and I am shipping the dish receivers back to DISH. I successfully argued that bringing non functional used equipment, and charging hundreds for it, is unprofessional and a deal breaker...not to mention promising an unreleased receiver, the VIP 922 @ sign up. Dish retentions tried offering the barn to keep the subscription, including a promise of upgrading to the VIP 922 when available @ off-contract upgrade rates. Not worth the risk of being stuck in a 24 month contract hopping for a receiver which may never materialize DirecTV MPEG-4 TiVo anyone ;)

Still pray'n for that Motorola tuning adapter soon!

Thanks for the very detailed update, even though it does make me sad. I was all set to jump to Dish, but your review of the DVR is a deal-breaker for me. I have had Tivo's from Gen 1 through TivoHD and I don't think that I could go back to such a lousy interface.

I guess that I am stuck in a holding pattern with Cox until the VIP 922's arrive or the DirecTV Tivo receiver or the Cox/Tivo receiver or (most likely) the Cox Tuning Adapters.

Thanks again.

...I actually had the COX fed Series 3 HD TiVo running side by side with the dish receiver on identical TVs and I can 100% say the picture quality on dish put COX to shame. I focused on the HBO & Showtime east/west feeds as well as FOX 11 & ABC on the locals.

The only complaint I could place against the DISH picture quality would be that it came off a tad soft on the HBO feed. On the locals DISH looked amazing...I did rely on "pausing" the live stream both on the DISH & the TiVo and going back and forth examining the same 10 minute clips via the buffers.

I really wanted to believe that it was the networks that provided poor quality feeds with COX passing on what they get, but its fairly obvious they are almost completely responsible for the bit starvation based pixilation we get. Bottom line after seeing DISH HD picture quality I cringed hooking COX back up. I'm really curious what the DISH vs DirecTV picture quality would be like.

Unless COX makes drastic changes before those high quality DVR options we keep dreaming about become available with DISH & DirecTV...they are going to loose all of us as customers.

On a side note, the wife was less than happy when she tried to use the dish dvr :)

...I actually had the COX fed Series 3 HD TiVo running side by side with the dish receiver on identical TVs and I can 100% say the picture quality on dish put COX to shame. I focused on the HBO & Showtime east/west feeds as well as FOX 11 & ABC on the locals.

The only complaint I could place against the DISH picture quality would be that it came off a tad soft on the HBO feed. On the locals DISH looked amazing...I did rely on "pausing" the live stream both on the DISH & the TiVo and going back and forth examining the same 10 minute clips via the buffers.

I really wanted to believe that it was the networks that provided poor quality feeds with COX passing on what they get, but its fairly obvious they are almost completely responsible for the bit starvation based pixilation we get. Bottom line after seeing DISH HD picture quality I cringed hooking COX back up. I'm really curious what the DISH vs DirecTV picture quality would be like.

Unless COX makes drastic changes before those high quality DVR options we keep dreaming about become available with DISH & DirecTV...they are going to loose all of us as customers.

On a side note, the wife was less than happy when she tried to use the dish dvr :)


Thanks, bubu. I agree that DISH probably looks a great deal better than Cox. I will point out, though, that there are times when Cox HD PQ is pretty darn good. A test at a given time will certainly reveal noticeable differences, but multiple tests at different times would be even better. So just give that DISH guy a call, have him come back and reinstall, and this time keep the system for a while. :p

I do have a question about the install. Did DISH run their own dedicated (RG6, I presume) cables to your locations, or did they just tap into existing wiring? If existing, is it RG6 or RG59? I've posted about this before, but one of my main deterrents to going with DirecTV (or even DISH for that matter) is that I have a first story condo with all-tile floors, so running new cables is out of the question. If D* could merely tap into the cable minimum point of entry (MPOE), I would be closer to switching to DirecTV when they get a TiVo DVR again. My other deterrent is that I have three locations in which I use raw cable. To add D* boxes at those three locations would be pretty costly. Dang, if Cox would just improve their PQ, so many of us would stick around, particularly with our TiVos. :mad:

...I actually had the COX fed Series 3 HD TiVo running side by side with the dish receiver on identical TVs and I can 100% say the picture quality on dish put COX to shame. I focused on the HBO & Showtime east/west feeds as well as FOX 11 & ABC on the locals. From past comparisons Cox and OTA HD feeds of locals were pretty much identical in size, bit rate, resolution, etc. so I don't believe Cox is degrading FOX & ABC and the other locals. As I've pointed out in the past ABC recently added another HD sub-channel OTA which really affected quality of its primary HD channel, so unless Dish is not using OTA feeds for the locals I don't see how those could be better than Cox.

The other factor to keep in mind is if you were using different inputs to same TV then you have to calibrate each input individually. Most modern HDTVs have individual settings for each input so when doing A/B comparisons you have to keep that in mind.

Only other thing I can think of is FOX & ABC are 720p, so depending on output settings on Tivo and Dish the upscaling (if output is set to 1080i) could be better on Dish hardware than TivoHD. So you are better off having 1080i selected on both and comparing 1080i channels such as CBS & NBC to eliminate upscaling differences.

Dish is probably getting the Sat feed that is sent to New York. I think cox is pulling directly from the OTA feed

Hi there,

Yesterday I purchased the ESPN Gameplan package through Cox as I want to see my alma mater Florida Gators football games that we don't get in OC. Once purchased, the games are on channels 601-606.

Today I added these channels to the channels I receive and then connected to the TiVo network for an update. The channels show in the channel guide, but I do not see any programming info for Saturday other than a generic "ESPN Gameplan Programming" label.

My questions:

1) Will I truly receive these channels through my cablecard equipped TiVo HD?

2) If yes, will the game times and descriptions ever show up in the programming guide.

Many thanks in advance to the Cox/TiVo gurus out there!

To answer the install question first...

It really depends on what kind of installer you get, most are lazy and will want to drill holes in your walls and use the simplest quickest method to dumping the cables to where the tv's are. I was very firm with my installer...flat out told him how I wanted the cables run and helped him do it. Dish went on the roof, mounted to a chimney. Four RG6 cables were then dropped through a vent on the roof into the attic. My inside wiring box has 3 conduit "fish" lines run to it (one from the outside cable feed box, another from the attic, and honestly not even sure where the last one leads, possibly the living room). The installer wound up running the cables in the attic to the conduit, which in turn dropped to my inside wiring box. From there, they are/were connected to a multi-switch/splitter, and my RG59 cables leading to individual outlets were hooked up to the switch from there.

As long as you are firm with the installer and have an idea on how to run the cabling ahead of time you should be ok. End goal obviously is to get the lines feed into your inside wiring closet/box without drilling walls etc. Another option to consider is to mount the dish as close as possible to the outside wiring box, and fishing the sat dish cables through the existing conduit between there and your inside wiring box. If you are in older construction where there are no conduit fishing lines run...or don't have an inside wiring box it can get messy. Make the installer use your inside wiring if at all possible...if you have a wiring switch box you can still keep your cable modem & tv on individual outlets throughout the house. I guess it all depends how your condo is wired, and how firm & savvy you are on fishing cables. As I mentioned earlier, I was really impressed with the quality of the install but I have doubts that this is the kind of install my wife would have gotten if she was babysitting the installer.

...on to the picture quality discussion. The Series 3 TiVo was running in native rez... and I switched the the dish receiver back & forth to what I believed to be the native rez for the individual channels, 720p for ABC & FOX...and 1080i for HBO & Showtime. I was comparing the same content @ the same time. The TV's used for the comparison are identical and were built within minutes of each other (the serial #'s are nearly identical down to the last digit)...identical picture presets (since both ran & run HD TiVo's), HDMI inputs...etc. Room lighting was not a factor as my comparisons were done in very similar lighting after sunset. I would have ran more comparisons but dish turned off their receivers the instant I managed to get them to accept the cancellation...I admit all the comparisons were done on only 1 or 2 actual shows per channel...and I did depend on the recording buffer but I really don't think it was any factor at all.

I stand behind my observations, the commercials on Dish vs COX for the ABC & FOX comparison were different 60% of the time which leads me to believe the source of the feed is not identical...granted both cox & dish could be inserting their own commercials into the same feed, but the picture quality of the actual shows varied quite a bit. The difference was very obvious...there was micro-blocking on COX with ABC, where there was none on DISH when the bitrate would jump due to rapid movement, etc. I did not really compare color saturation or anything beyond the factors of pixilation and overall perceived sharpness. As I mentioned before COX did not look better on any channel I glanced at. Dish did seem less sharp on certain channels, but the PQ overall was far superior to my eye...It's very possible that the feed DISH was using is not the OTA feed that COX is rebroadcasting...the HBO & Showtime feeds have to come from the same place. The HBO & Showtime PQ difference was night & day in DISH's favor...the locals, fox was very close...abc looked much better on dish.

I know that a lot of the cable channels now provide their provider feeds via MPEG-4...its quite possible that the PQ loss we see on HBO etc is related to COX having to transcode the MPEG-4 feeds into MPEG-2...there is bound to be quality loss there, and bitstarving their feeds can't help either :)

...on the bright side cox gave me $30 off my service for 6 months to stick around, on top other freebies like HBO in Showtime so my cable TV bill should only be around $45 total for the next 6 months! Their retention reps are fully aware of how upset cable card users are and will offer free motorola receivers with DVR service + discounts to keep the sub. One interesting tid-bit dropped by the retention rep is that COX will be expanding their HD channel offering to over 100+ channels before the end of q4. I just pray that they'll focus on the picture quality of their existing channels before subjecting us to MTV3 Espaniol HD.

One interesting tid-bit dropped by the retention rep is that COX will be expanding their HD channel offering to over 100+ channels before the end of q4. I just pray that they'll focus on the picture quality of their existing channels before subjecting us to MTV3 Espaniol HD.


Thanks for the thorough response, bubu. Having worked for Genesis Home Systems (a few years back) installing systems in high-end homes, I would consider myself quite savvy. My condo is only a few years old, but I am currently renting and do not want to tear into walls. Since I have RG6 from the MPOE to my in-house distribution box, and then RG6 to all locations in the house, I'm confident D* could simply connect to my MPOE (there are actually two RG6 cables at the MPOE).

Interesting on the extra channels. Hopefully we will all be tuning adapter installed by then, and the channels won't adversely affect PQ as they have in the past. On a similar note, I noticed that for channel 736, Telemundo HD, it is actually not HD. I realize many (including me) have spoken of the poor quality of this channel, but I'm not just talking quality. When switching from any HD channel to 736, my TV actually takes a moment to tune in the channel, just like it does when I switch to any regular SD channel (those below 700). I'm guessing the resolution is 480i, but haven't gone so far as to confirming it. I'm just surprised they would stick an SD channel in the HD lineup, but then again, this is Cox. :rolleyes:

...I have 2 cables from the MPOE to the inside wiring box as well. DirecTV won't be able to split of multiple HD receiver signals from 1 cable as far as I know. I'm pretty sure they can use a switch/splitter to inject signal and that requires a minimum of two cables from the dish to the switch...not sure what the ratio is, but I'm pretty sure you'd loose your cable modem etc if they did not pull cable into your inside wiring closet.

...just my thoughts.

...I'm pretty sure you'd loose your cable modem etc if they did not pull cable into your inside wiring closet.

forgot about that; you're right :(

...you could always fish the cables through yourself. Go to home depot and buy a fishing tape. As long as you got a fishing line/conduit between the MPOE & inside wiring closet it should be a 5 minute job. You can do it yourself with the installers cable if he refuses, have him cut the cable to length of the spool & terminate the ends :)

...you could always fish the cables through yourself. Go to home depot and buy a fishing tape. As long as you got a fishing line/conduit between the MPOE & inside wiring closet it should be a 5 minute job. You can do it yourself with the installers cable if he refuses, have him cut the cable to length of the spool & terminate the ends :)

Not a bad idea. I didn't even think about that there probably is conduit. I have a fishtape, but it may not be a long enough. Well, no hurry since I'm not switching anytime soon anyway. Even though I was with DISH once upon a time, I would rather switch to DirecTV, if I switch at all.

On a different subject, the NBC HD PQ of Monday Thursday Night Football looks pretty good.

On a different subject, the NBC HD PQ of Monday Thursday Night Football looks pretty good. Yeah ain't that a shocker? NBC has never been that good historically and via Cox even more chance of macro blocking, but I didn't see much of any of that though admittedly I watched the game using 30 sec skip between snaps the whole way through (sure makes watching a game much quicker).

...but I didn't see much of any of that though admittedly I watched the game using 30 sec skip between snaps the whole way through (sure makes watching a game much quicker).

That alone is worth having a TiVo! I cannot believe how quickly I can watch an entire game. The game was a little slow going, but I'm glad it wasn't a blow-out. You don't get much closer than tied at the end of both halves. :eek:

Bubu: Very interesting comments, a friend of mine here in L.F, has the whole Dish HD set-up with the 722 HD DVR, 2 Sat. tuners and off-air tuner, and has had it for well over a year. He seems to never run out of space and the unit seemed very easy to use with great video quality. I am fed up with Cox's quality, the constant freeze-ups, macro-blocking when the camera pans left or right etc. They rolled a truck last week and said my levels are good. The tech said the new bigger hard drive DVR is due "next year". I know the Directv HD quality is better head to head, I also have it for the Sunday Ticket and Hockey Subs.

...i think the DISH VIP 722's have larger hard drives than the 612's I was given. Even if it recorded 50 hours of HD its not enough for me. I tend to timeshift what I watch by 9+ months. I refused to start on a show which will get canned after the 1st season (which 85% of shows wind up being) so I tend to have in some cases 20+ episodes of a show before I start watching...that and cliff-hangers suck :)

I really think you will be disappointed going from an HD TiVo to any other currently available DVR from any provider. I really hope that the VIP 922 from DISH & DirecTV's HD TiVo materialize sooner rather than later...as it stands COX has me hostage because of my TiVo...and it only erks me more now that I know how superior the HD quality was on DISH.

...on a side note for us disenfranchised cablecard TiVo users. I got my cable bill down to $103 a month after complaining on several angles (new hd channels not on cable cards, hd picture quality, overall number of channels)
It breaks down as $59.99 for the internet portion, no telephone,...and $43.00 for cable with HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, and Starz + all the digital tiers except family & HD theater tiers, 3 cable cards, + 1 motorola receiver. I think every cablecard TiVo user should call retentions and squeeze them on the pricing while threatening to go elsewhere...the complaints we have are extremely valid and the retention reps know it. Granted that $103 price will go away for me by March of next year...but meh, its a couple of hundred dollars in savings. Maybe with enough discounts being handed out for these reasons someone @ COX may take notice, after all the quickest way to get a faceless corporations attention is to hurt their bottom line.

I am having my 2nd cable card installed this week...have to spend $50 for someone to come out that probably has never installed one before...

I am having my 2nd cable card installed this week...have to spend $50 for someone to come out that probably has never installed one before... So which CableCard tuner(s) do you have and how many programs can it record at once? Are you using Windows 7 Media Center software?

I am having my 2nd cable card installed this week...have to spend $50 for someone to come out that probably has never installed one before...

Depending on how much you are spending and how long you've been a Cox customer, they may waive the install fee. They did for me.

For those considering a move from a Cox DVR to a CableCARD DVR( TiVo or PC tuner), ask them to waive the setup fee at the same time you order the CableCARD. Once installed, you can then cancel the Cox DVR. If the level 1 CSR says no, ask for his/her supervisor or a level 2 CSR.

A couple of random thoughts: Can't both the Dish and Direc HD DVR's be enhanced with separate hard drives??? I think Dish charges a one time $ 40.00 charge, Direc shows how to do it on their web-site, no extra charge. Tivo...I can barely figuire out the Cox Moto box, and mne is very buggy, but with a larger hard drive I would be happy. Another problem with Cox and Tivo is the monthly fees, they really add up , I think the Cox is over $17.00 per month for everything, wow!! Been checking out Moxi, high up-front cost, big hard drive standard, expandable to 1 terabyte, no monthely fees, and an HD interface. They do a comparision on their web-site with Cable and Tivo. It does require a Cable Card and ???
I also have Direc HD and looked forward to ALL of the Nfl games in Hi D yesterday right up until my H20 receiver died during the pre-game. Ran down to Costco to buy a new one, of course they we're out....GRRR. Back to Cable. Does anyone else think Cox is beginninng to shave bandwidth on Kcbs??? Maybe it's just me... Thought I'd throw out some ideas and see what everyone else thinks. Thanx!!

This morning I went through the HD channels and updated my frequency spreadsheet to see where HD channels are located by Cox currently. The trend of adding >2 1080i per QAM continues but not for any of the HD local channels. The 2 ABC "HD" channels (720p) + FOX HD channel (720p) + another SD channel are all crammed into 1 QAM however, though being 720p 3 per QAM is usually fine. So overall it looks like the HD locals are still spared from much bit rate shaping by Cox OC. I would guess for cases when there are more than 2 1080i channels per QAM that the bit rate of those channels Cox is getting from satellite feed are already degraded anyway, but that's just speculation on my part.
(Then of course there are several HD SDV channels which I can't currently map out without a Tuning Adapter, but those must be on separate QAMs from the linear channels anyway).

For completeness here's some groupings of HD channels on same QAM most likely resulting in bit rate starved picture and artifacting at times: (boy the list seems to have grown since last I checked and remember this doesn't include all the SDV channels)
RF 31: KABCDT,KTTVDT,KABCDT2,KABCDT3
RF 83: USAHD,CNBCHD,BETHD
RF 89: TLCHD,HGTVD,HDT
RF 120: SHOWHDP,LIFEPHD,STZHDP
RF 121: DSCHD,AETVHD,UHD
RF 122: NFLHD,AMCHD,PLDHD
RF 123: GOLFHD,FOODHDP,HSTRYHD
RF 125: GRNHD,BRAVOHD,SYFYHD
RF 128: SCIHD,PRIMHD,FOXHDWE

For completeness here's some groupings of HD channels on same QAM most likely resulting in bit rate starved picture and artifacting at times: (boy the list seems to have grown since last I checked and remember this doesn't include all the SDV channels)...


Do you think Cox will move more HD channels to SDV once we get the forthcoming tuning adapter? If so, perhaps that would allow them to squeeze less into a given QAM. Of course, with the rumored additional channels coming (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=17156182#post17156182), I suppose they could also just cram more and more in.

One interesting tid-bit dropped by the retention rep is that COX will be expanding their HD channel offering to over 100+ channels before the end of q4.

Do you think Cox will move more HD channels to SDV once we get the forthcoming tuning adapter? If so, perhaps that would allow them to squeeze less into a given QAM. Of course, with the rumored additional channels coming (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=17156182#post17156182), I suppose they could also just cram more and more in. I have to assume they will be "smart" about SDV and only add least popular HD channels to the mix - it doesn't make sense for channels that will be watched most of the time by a lot of people. Also continuing my speculation that the national feeds they are getting are already over-compressed there really is no reason for them not to cram > 2 1080i feeds together since each of those 1080i feeds are consuming way less than 19Mbps each most of the time anyway. (Remember they have ~38 Mbps available per QAM 256).
Of course I could be wrong and the national feeds being received are full quality and the local headend is choosing to degrade them. That would actually be a good thing if that is the case since then that means they could take actions to improve quality of some HD channels by using SDV and moving things around.
But as I posted a link a while back I believe Cox is getting a lot of these national feeds from Comcast and they are already bit starved before they even get here, in which case there is little to no reason to believe picture quality will get better any time soon...

I have to assume they will be "smart" about SDV and only add least popular HD channels to the mix...


Great overview, thanks.

Checked to see if On Demand is viewable over QAM again but sadly its still not working. Looks like those pleasures and freedoms are a thing of the past. Guess the 3 people who utilized this feature were enjoying it too much and Cox couldn't have that.

Speaking of On Demand. Cox has changed the Menu. They added several categories to the main page. I thought it was new stuff that us Cox customers would get for free. Nope. Its the pay stuff. Just moved. It's now much easier to accidentally order a pay program. The prices are still insanely high as well. I don't know what world Cox lives in but I think these menu adjustments may have been done to trick people into ordering stuff. Nobody in there right mind would spend $2.99-8.99 on a movie. The wow factor of being able to watch it immediately has worn off. I saw several old and terrible movies (that are free on Netflix's view instantly) on Cox On Demand asking for $5.99. Crazy. And the movie companies wonder why people download stuff illegally. :rolleyes:

Speaking of On Demand. Cox has changed the Menu. They added several categories to the main page. I thought it was new stuff that us Cox customers would get for free. Nope. Its the pay stuff. Just moved. It's now much easier to accidentally order a pay program. The prices are still insanely high as well. I don't know what world Cox lives in but I think these menu adjustments may have been done to trick people into ordering stuff. Nobody in there right mind would spend $2.99-8.99 on a movie. The wow factor of being able to watch it immediately has worn off. I saw several old and terrible movies (that are free on Netflix's view instantly) on Cox On Demand asking for $5.99. Crazy. And the movie companies wonder why people download stuff illegally. :rolleyes:


I'm not at home, but wonder if the change is the big pending change Cox has been touting of late. My understanding was that the interface was going to change substantially, not just moving menus around. You are right about wondering who will spend that kind of money. Recent studies have shown that the Netflix-type streaming model is cost effective, while PPV, at least at current pricing, is not as effective. This pricing issue is not just Cox; it's similar for amazon and other downloading services, as well as cable providers. In time, they will understand this. For now, I'm just glad Netflix gets it. :)

The Netflix streaming model is much more cost-efficient but I guess the price you pay is lower quality than you can get otherwise with the pay per movie model. I'd say the Netflix "HD" titles are slightly better than DVD video quality though of course the audio is stereo only currently. In contrast with Amazon you can get true HD quality and good audio but at the price of having to pay $5-8/movie (I got one trial Amazon HD title download to my Tivo and can confirm it was EXCELLENT quality). Not sure what the quality of Cox VOD is but from past posts here doesn't sound like there is much available in HD yet and somehow I would think it's not real good quality HD anyway.
Still, I think the Netflix model is the best value right now especially if you also have Blu Ray option via snail mail for those titles for which you want best available quality.

TheRock, perhaps they finally got encryption working for VOD stuff when they implemented SDV which works on a similar principal to VOD.

The Netflix streaming model is much more cost-efficient but I guess the price you pay is lower quality than you can get otherwise with the pay per movie model. I'd say the Netflix "HD" titles are slightly better than DVD video quality though of course the audio is stereo only currently. In contrast with Amazon you can get true HD quality and good audio but at the price of having to pay $5-8/movie (I got one trial Amazon HD title download to my Tivo and can confirm it was EXCELLENT quality). Not sure what the quality of Cox VOD is but from past posts here doesn't sound like there is much available in HD yet and somehow I would think it's not real good quality HD anyway.
Still, I think the Netflix model is the best value right now especially if you also have Blu Ray option via snail mail for those titles for which you want best available quality.


Yes, for about the price of two amazon HD titles ($10-16), one can get unlimited streaming (selection limited, though) PLUS 1-2 (depending on plan) BDs per month. I choose BD for those movies where PQ really matters (mostly blockbusters and other "big-screen" quality movies), and then streaming for those movies where quality is less important.

Further, if I really want a quality BD movie quick, I can go across the street to redbox for about $1. I can even order the movie online, thus no concern over availability. I simply cannot justify nearly any PPV model working for me, save perhaps something that I MUST see and cannot get elsewhere. I wish, for example, I could pay a fee to get Entourage titles within a day or two of their broadcast, as I cancelled HBO. I suppose I could have ordered HBO for a couple months, but my concerns is doing too much of that may preclude me from other discounts I constantly push Cox to give me. I would even be willing to pay for some live events that are not broadcast locally (NFL games, for example, but that may never happen with DirecTV's lock).

Wow, didn't realize Redbox had BD titles and at very low cost? Interesting...

Wow, didn't realize Redbox had BD titles and at very low cost? Interesting...

Not at all locations, but I ran into a Redbox manager a few weeks back. She said they do offer Blu-ray for the same price as regular DVDs, but availability is mostly in south county. She wasn't positive they would keep BDs at $1, but would for the foreseeable future. IIRC, you have to go to the kiosk to check for BD availability. A quick glance online didn't show any way to sort by type. In any event, she said they are moving towards carrying BDs in all locations.

DVDPlay also offers BDs, but you cannot reserve any of their DVDs or BDs online.

And since Redbox and DVDPlay rent movies for $1, why can't the download services? No kiosk, no distribution? Seems it could be economical. I'd do a fair amount of downloads for $1 - $1.50 for HD.

Excuse all if I sound like a newbie here.. but this thread is simply overwhelming.

I have plain Cox TV cable service, no Digital Package, no DVR, nada. Just a Vizio LCD panel wired into the wall that was getting a number of Clear QAM channels.

We don't use that one TV that often, This morning I found out that several of the "network" channels are gone. I did a re-scan but they did not reappear. We did notice there used to be a "free" HD movie channel but that's also gone.

What's the deal with Cox? If they're going to be screwing like this I'll wire the Vizio to the TV antenna and tune it to the OT channels. Unfortunately it only has a single RF input so I got to choose between cable and OTA and I'd like to mix them.

Our other TV uses an LG for OTA HD tuning. But I also noticed that Channel 11 HD went MIA after the "digital transition".

What a mess.

Lastly, I'm planning to build an HDPC PVR that will tune HD. Likely a Hauppage tuner card, hopefully tuning clear QAM. Anyone tried that?

Cox... yuck.

BTW, I'm in the 92603.

Excuse all if I sound like a newbie here.. but this thread is simply overwhelming.

I have plain Cox TV cable service, no Digital Package, no DVR, nada. Just a Vizio LCD panel wired into the wall that was getting a number of Clear QAM channels.

We don't use that one TV that often, This morning I found out that several of the "network" channels are gone. I did a re-scan but they did not reappear. We did notice there used to be a "free" HD movie channel but that's also gone.




The HD channels probably aren't gone, just relocated
I have a panasonic TV w/qam tuner ( no cable box attached )
(In our house we already have 2 DVR's from Cox and another tuner, just didnt want to pay anymore for the panasonic bedroom tv)

My HD channels jump around from time to time
Sometimes they are in nice numerical order, other times a mess
A couple days ago a few of the HD channels, 9.1, 11.1, etc disappeared

I found some at 31.x and 85.x
I suspect Cox likes to mess with sets with qam tuners but no Cox box

Just try rescanning your channels a few times, I usually get the channels back in order after a few days

The HD channels probably aren't gone, just relocated
I have a panasonic TV w/qam tuner ( no cable box attached )
(In our house we already have 2 DVR's from Cox and another tuner, just didnt want to pay anymore for the panasonic bedroom tv)

My HD channels jump around from time to time
Sometimes they are in nice numerical order, other times a mess
A couple days ago a few of the HD channels, 9.1, 11.1, etc disappeared

I found some at 31.x and 85.x
I suspect Cox likes to mess with sets with qam tuners but no Cox box

Just try rescanning your channels a few times, I usually get the channels back in order after a few days

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

I'd love to have a unit that allows me to assign the channel, that is, take 31.x to 7.1.

Cox is really a Pain... but they always have been, ever since the Community Cablevision days in Irvine.

thanks again

My Motorola DCT3416 DVR has a video output option to preserve 4:3 content in 480i or 480p. When I select either of these, I'm getting a stretched SD display on my Samsung LN52B630. When I press the "info" key on the TV remote, the display indicates that I'm receiving a 1080i signal from the DVR. Only if I choose "4:3 with side bars" on the DVR will I get a preserved 4:3 display on the TV.

Does anyone know how I can preserve the 4:3 format while choosing the "4:3 480p" mode on the DVR? I'd like to have the highest quality while preserving the original program format.

Thanks for any guidance.

Excuse all if I sound like a newbie here.. but this thread is simply overwhelming.

I have plain Cox TV cable service, no Digital Package, no DVR, nada. Just a Vizio LCD panel wired into the wall that was getting a number of Clear QAM channels.

We don't use that one TV that often, This morning I found out that several of the "network" channels are gone. I did a re-scan but they did not reappear. We did notice there used to be a "free" HD movie channel but that's also gone.

What's the deal with Cox? If they're going to be screwing like this I'll wire the Vizio to the TV antenna and tune it to the OT channels. Unfortunately it only has a single RF input so I got to choose between cable and OTA and I'd like to mix them.

Our other TV uses an LG for OTA HD tuning. But I also noticed that Channel 11 HD went MIA after the "digital transition".

What a mess.

Lastly, I'm planning to build an HDPC PVR that will tune HD. Likely a Hauppage tuner card, hopefully tuning clear QAM. Anyone tried that?

Cox... yuck.

BTW, I'm in the 92603.

I also have my set connected directly to the wall. A couple of weeks ago Cox moved KNBC, KCOP, and a couple of other channels. Also, sometimes they don't move them at all but mess up the PSIPs that identify the channel.

OTA 11 went from UHF to high VHF after the transition, so if your antenna was UHF only, that channel (along with 7, 9, and 13) may be hard to receive.

Regarding the PVR, I have a Hauppauge PVR1600 card that I use with the GBPVR software. It works great, but it is good to check the channels before you have a scheduled show to record, in case Cox moved things around again. I'd use my antenna for it, but don't want to split it any more since I'm in somewhat of a fringe area (92688).

My Motorola DCT3416 DVR has a video output option to preserve 4:3 content in 480i or 480p. When I select either of these, I'm getting a stretched SD display on my Samsung LN52B630. When I press the "info" key on the TV remote, the display indicates that I'm receiving a 1080i signal from the DVR. Only if I choose "4:3 with side bars" on the DVR will I get a preserved 4:3 display on the TV.

Does anyone know how I can preserve the 4:3 format while choosing the "4:3 480p" mode on the DVR? I'd like to have the highest quality while preserving the original program format.

Thanks for any guidance.

Your TV shows 1080i because that is the resolution you chose on the DVR. If you want a 480i/p resolution, you must select that resolution on the DVR (480p Std or 480i Std). It really comes down to which you want to do the upscaling and deinterlacing. If you want the TV to do it, then choose 480i/p on the DVR. If you want the DVR to do it, set it to 1080i Wide, Stretch 4:30 Pic or Sidebar 4:3 Pic.

I have mine set to 1080i Wide, Stretch 4:3 Pic, as that yields the best for my situation. I don't watch a lot of 480i/p content on that TV. By the way, I have the DCH3416 and it does a good enough job of upconverting and deinterlacing.

Before the "digital transition" with a cheap indoor amplified UHF/VHF antenna in the garage I pulled in all the OTA UHF stations without issue with 75-95 signal strength. After the transition and movement of some channels to VHF I could no longer pull in any VHF channels. So last night I moved antenna up to upstairs balcony with line of site NW to Mt Wilson and was easily able to pull in all major OTA stations with good strength with the exception of KTTVDT (Fox). Probably with a proper roof top antenna I could pull in Fox as well and perhaps with some more tweaking I could get Fox along with the others with existing antenna on the balcony. Anyone else using OTA struggling with Fox? I'd heard some reports that KABCDT was a tough one, but that was coming in around 90 signal strength reliably so no issues for that one.

EDIT: Never mind, by shortening the VHF poles quite significantly I now get KTTVDT fairly strongly along with all the others I care about.

EDIT: Never mind, by shortening the VHF poles quite significantly I now get KTTVDT fairly strongly along with all the others I care about.
Great, then we'll be looking forward to more side-by-side (figuratively, not literally, of course) comparisons of OTA network HD feeds and Cox network HD feeds. :D

Great, then we'll be looking forward to more side-by-side (figuratively, not literally, of course) comparisons of OTA network HD feeds and Cox network HD feeds. :D Unfortunately it's not a permanent setup since there's no way to get coax from balcony to inside without leaving balcony door open (unless I drill through the wall which ain't gonna happen). Mostly I was trying to see if it is still possible to get OTA reception here reliably in case in extreme case I need to go OTA only. I also took the opportunity however to take Windows Media Center Edition (which cam standard with Vista Home Premium on my laptop along with an OTA tuner) for a test drive to get an idea of how a future possible HTPC with CableCard tuners may be. No Tivo of course but it looks like an OK solution. Sure would be nice to have a single 4-6 tuner system where conflict resolution would never be an issue.

Your TV shows 1080i because that is the resolution you chose on the DVR. If you want a 480i/p resolution, you must select that resolution on the DVR (480p Std or 480i Std). It really comes down to which you want to do the upscaling and deinterlacing. If you want the TV to do it, then choose 480i/p on the DVR. If you want the DVR to do it, set it to 1080i Wide, Stretch 4:30 Pic or Sidebar 4:3 Pic.

I have mine set to 1080i Wide, Stretch 4:3 Pic, as that yields the best for my situation. I don't watch a lot of 480i/p content on that TV. By the way, I have the DCH3416 and it does a good enough job of upconverting and deinterlacing.

Thanks for the response. What I do is choose a channel on the DVR, such as 14, that I know to be SD. In the DVR video output options there are 4 choices. The one I'd like to use is the 1080 wide: 480p option. In the DCT3416manual, it seems that this option should give me a 480p output from the DVR when it is outputting SD 4:3 content (4:3 override). But when I choose this option I get a wide display on my Samsung ln52b630. When I press the info button on the Samsung it says it's receiving a 1080i signal from the DVR, not 480p. The only DVR setting that gives me a 4:3 display with SD programming is the 1080 wide: 4:3 with black side bars option on the DVR.

On my other TV, an LG that is hooked up to a DCX3200 HD receiver, setting the receiver to 480p for SD programming does give me a 4:3 display on the TV.

Do you think the problem is that the DCT3416 isn't outputting 480p for SD programming or is it that the Samsung isn't allowing a 4:3 display when I've chosen 16:9 in the picture settings menu?

Thanks for the help.

Thanks for the response. What I do is choose a channel on the DVR, such as 14, that I know to be SD. In the DVR video output options there are 4 choices. The one I'd like to use is the 1080 wide: 480p option. In the DCT3416manual, it seems that this option should give me a 480p output from the DVR when it is outputting SD 4:3 content (4:3 override). But when I choose this option I get a wide display on my Samsung ln52b630. When I press the info button on the Samsung it says it's receiving a 1080i signal from the DVR, not 480p. The only DVR setting that gives me a 4:3 display with SD programming is the 1080 wide: 4:3 with black side bars option on the DVR.

On my other TV, an LG that is hooked up to a DCX3200 HD receiver, setting the receiver to 480p for SD programming does give me a 4:3 display on the TV.

Do you think the problem is that the DCT3416 isn't outputting 480p for SD programming or is it that the Samsung isn't allowing a 4:3 display when I've chosen 16:9 in the picture settings menu?

Thanks for the help.

Okay, I did a little more testing. On my DCH3416, when I set the video to 1080i Wide, Preserve 4:30 Pic - 480i (or 480p), my TV does show 480i (or 480p) when watching SD channels. Therefore, I would assume it has something to do with your television. My TV is a 55" Hitachi 720p plasma, and I'm connected via HDMI if that helps.

Honestly, I don't see that much of a difference in upscaling/deinterlacing between my TV and the Cox DVR, hence my reason for choosing Stretch 4:3 Pic. Further, the quality of SD is just plain annoying, at least in comparison to HD, so I avoid SD like the plague - except for Fox News, that is.