I hate to even ask a question as I know how resident board members jump on newbies. However, I have read 30 pages worth of posts on here and haven't found the answer to my question. I recently requested a 3250HD with firewire ports from my local cable company (Charter). Instead of getting a 3250HD they gave me a SA 8000HD. It has firewire ports but I am not sure they are activated. I have a Vaio laptop with firewire and all I basically wanted to do was record college football games this fall in HD. I hooked up the 8000HD to my laptop but it did not recognize any new hardware. I changed ports and the same thing occurred. I went into the diagnostics and on the copy protection page I saw where my 1394 was "Unavailable." I called a friend who has a new 3250HD and his 1394 was "Disabled" according to the diagnostics screen. How can I tell if my firewire ports are open or not? I am now at a dead end and was hoping someone with a little more knowledge than myself could help. This seems to be the best place to get said help. Thanks in advance.

After doing a little more research, I realized that my 8000HD outputs the same "unavailable" signal in the diagnostics menu as my 3250HD which doesn't even have firewire ports. I've been on the phone with for the last hour with Charter tech. support with two people who had no idea what I was even talking about. This shouldn't surprise after dealing with the local Charter office yesterday. I went in with my old 3250HD STB. I requested a new 3250HD that was equipped with firewire. I was given a blank look and a response so dumb that I will not even repeat. After opening up a storage cabinet that revealed at least 15 new DVR boxes and 15 3250 boxes, the Charter employee walked to the back and brought out an 8000HD. She said it was the last DVR box they had and asked me if it had the ports I was looking for. I said yes and asked if they were active. Obviously she had no idea. And obviously they were not active. I am about to give up this little experiment and go back to my old 3250HD and just record programs and games the old fashioned way.

If anyone knows more about this, I would be interested in knowing as well ... I'm currently upgrading to an 8000HD (because it's the only HD DVR that Comcast offers with a DVI output, apparently) and it would be nice if it had a working Firewire output on it.

I feel like that might be asking too much of Comcast, though.

Neither the 800HD nor the 8300HD have functional firewire ports. For boxes with the ports on them (required after July 2005), the software needs to be fixed. It has never worked.

I have both STB's- 3250HD, and SA8000HD. The 3250 has active firewire, the SA8000HD physically has the ports but they are inactive, and that's been "the way it is" for over two years now. I'm on Comcast.

Checking the diagnostic screens (press and hold Select until message light flashes, then press INFO, then press PG UP/DN or EXIT), shows that the SA3250 has a couple extra software modules related to firewire installed, that are missing from the SA8000's list.

There are posts from folks that have the SA8300HD with active firewire, but I don't think ANYONE has the SA8000HD with active firewire (SARA anyway). --hourglass

I hate to even ask a question as I know how resident board members jump on newbies. However, I have read 30 pages worth of posts on here and haven't found the answer to my question. I recently requested a 3250HD with firewire ports from my local cable company (Charter). Instead of getting a 3250HD they gave me a SA 8000HD. It has firewire ports but I am not sure they are activated. I have a Vaio laptop with firewire and all I basically wanted to do was record college football games this fall in HD. I hooked up the 8000HD to my laptop but it did not recognize any new hardware. I changed ports and the same thing occurred. I went into the diagnostics and on the copy protection page I saw where my 1394 was "Unavailable." I called a friend who has a new 3250HD and his 1394 was "Disabled" according to the diagnostics screen. How can I tell if my firewire ports are open or not? I am now at a dead end and was hoping someone with a little more knowledge than myself could help. This seems to be the best place to get said help. Thanks in advance.

Have you thought about just getting a HDTV capture card? You can then just plug in the coaxial cable directly into your PC and record perfect HiDef and you wouldn't have to deal with cable boxes or any of that flaky firewire.

Have you thought about just getting a HDTV capture card? You can then just plug in the coaxial cable directly into your PC and record perfect HiDef and you wouldn't have to deal with cable boxes or any of that flaky firewire.

I haven't thought about it until lately. However, wouldn't I only be able to get HD broadcasts from the networks? I anticipate at least 3 or 4 games to be on ESPN this season. I was just under the impression that HDTV capture cards only worked with a signal from an antenna.

8300HD has active output on my TWC system. I however have no use for that connection.

My 8300 has active firewire out but the signal is flakey going to a DVHS deck.

Has anyone gotten an 8300HD or 8000HD to work? I have one of each on the 8000 nothing gets detected by Windows, on the 8300 it gets detected but when I go to MCE -> More Programs the setup is not listed.

Keep in mind, even if you get it working, you won't be able to record content to a PC from 5C-encrypted channels like ESPN. On most cable providers, recording in realtime from Firewire to PC is limited to the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC).