I've been having an odd/new problem today with the Guide both of my 8300HD MDN boxes. The Guide is not recognizing most of my scheduled series recordings. The Guide's search by keyboard function is also not recognizing most shows in the programming schedule (like they don't exist even though I can see they are there on the screen). I can see the shows listed in the Guide, but if I search for one using the keyboard and then click on the show in the list it says 'no upcoming shows scheduled for that program' - even though programs I've searched for air daily and I can see them listed in the Guide. Oddly, I can still select a show from the Guide to make an individual recording. But, I've tried deleting and re-entering a series recording, and the upcoming airings still do not appear in the scheduled recordings (and none of the scheduled shows are highlited red in the Guide).

We had some storms last night, so it could be some sort of outage - but cable is otherwise fine, and so is phone and roadrunner. I've done a hard reboot and there was no change. I called customer service and the phone rep down in Florida had not heard of any such problems (although he seemed fairly clueless regarding Navigator in general). He sent a signal that resulted in another reboot, but still no change. He reported a trouble call, so we'll see if I get a call back.

Hopefully it will resolve itself soon. Until then, I'll set up individual recordings.

Update: As of 4am Sunday morning, as I was heading off to bed, I checked the scheduled recordings and things looked to be OK again. But, when I checked again on Sunday afternoon, only about 1/2 of the scheduled recordings showed up for each upcoming day.

Around 9:30 pm Sunday night, when I brought up the Guide, it was completely blank (from current time forward). It said loading data for a few seconds, but loaded nothing (note: neither tuner was busy recording). I checked again a few times over the next half-hour, but still nothing. Around 10pm the Guide came back, and I could extend/load the next 7 days, but roughly half of the series programs still did not appear under the scheduled recordings list. (I spoke with a friend accross town last night and she reported similar guide and series recording problems this weekend.)

This morning, everything appeared to be back to normal on my main STB (I didn't check the other one). Over the weekend, I was still able to record shows individually. However, I did find one series program from Saturday night that I forgot to set individually and it did fail to record. The recording log said "program not recorded due to episode not available." That was the same message it said a couple weeks ago when it failed to record 'The View' that one time, so now I'm pretty certain that previous failure was a Navigator issue and not that the program did not air that day.

I'm hopeful that this weekend's problems were just a one time issue due to some software engineering work, but I'm obviously going to have to keep a close eye on things and resume not trusting Navigator to do what it's told to do.


PS: Hey, RDO CA: I laffed pretty hard at your joke about The View! :D
But, DaveHancock, your Rosie joke was a real groaner. :rolleyes:

If you google "8550HDC specification" you can find them on Cisco's site (here (http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/video/ps8611/ps8612/ps8613/7009273.pdf)). One interesting thing is that they've gone from using a pair of 250 MHz main processors to a single 600 MHz one.
Actually quite a few processors:
Application/CPU - 600 MHz (800 MIPS)
Video Graphics - Dual 400 MHz VLIW CPUs
Audio - Dual 250 MHz DSP CPUs
DOCSIS - 200 MHz CPU

I had a strange bug. While recording a show and rewinding a Music Choice Channel, a Diagnostic Screen came up. I just hit Exit. If something gets messed up on the diagnostics, (mine was 34 pages long) how would you reset it to the factory default? I assume this involves more than booting the box?

Jack

SA8300 HD DVR Box
MDN Navigator

If something gets messed up on the diagnostics, (mine was 34 pages long) how would you reset it to the factory default? I assume this involves more than booting the box?

I've been trying to change anything in the diagnostics and my button presses have had no effect. It would appear to be pretty hard, if not impossible, to change those settings by accident.

If you google "8550HDC specification" you can find them on Cisco's site (here (http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/video/ps8611/ps8612/ps8613/7009273.pdf)). One interesting thing is that they've gone from using a pair of 250 MHz main processors to a single 600 MHz one.

More flies in the ointment - memory is only 192 MB, hard drive is still only 160GB

We need to push these up a lot, say, 1G/1T as a minimum (1 Gig RAM, 1 Terabyte disc).

That's what the external eSATA (and/or USB) port is for...
You attach your own choice...1 or 2 TB now.....4-8 TB's a couple years from now...

More flies in the ointment - memory is only 192 MB, hard drive is still only 160GB

We need to push these up a lot, say, 1G/1T as a minimum (1 Gig RAM, 1 Terabyte disc).

More hard drive space is obviously a good thing.

More RAM is not going to help much at all. It might be able to cache more recompiled code, but what really is needed is a better CPU.

The CPUs in most televisions and set top boxes before the 2007 FCC deadline that required cable companies to support generic set top boxes generally did not need to execute many branches, or decision making instructions that force the CPU to decide between jumping to a new location in the code or executing the instruction after the branch like if the branch was a NOP (an instruction that does nothing except waste a CPU cycle). Branches are problematic because CPUs are like factories with assembly lines also known as pipelines, and the branch cannot be decided until late in the pipeline. Therefore, the spots after any branch must be filled with something. They are filled with instructions from one of the two paths. The instructions selected are guesses that when are wrong must be replaced with NOPs to prevent the wrong instructions that were loaded from doing any harm to the CPU state. Since these CPUs executed few branches, the CPU designers did not implement branch prediction units which are big hardware units that would almost always predict those guesses correctly, cutting immense costs from the CPUs. This is okay for native code on a DVR because DVR programs rarely require decisions compared to other operations.

Thanks to the requirement for generic set top boxes, we now needed a write-once run-anywhere language. The only two options that solve this problem are BASIC and Java. Java is the obvious choice because BASIC's designers made bad compromises that made it easy to write buggy code in an effort to make it easy to program.

Java execution is a different type of program execution because the CPU must execute large numbers of branches to interpret Java bytecode and recompile the bytecode that is frequently executed. Now, the branch prediction unit makes a lot of sense here due to the sheer number of branches encountered. Computer engineers have noticed that branches often are almost always taken or almost never taken, so this allows the past encounters with a branch to predict the instructions to be loaded. These branch predictors will keep everything from stalling up in the pipelines.

I am guessing that the 85xxHDC boxes have branch predictors because ATI Xilleons used in previous SA designs like the 3250HD have MIPS processors in them, and the MIPS 24K CPUs, which are MIPS' current lowest end CPU with a worst case frequency of at least 600MHz, have been advertised as having branch predictors in the press release announcing them.

In short, I am pretty certain that the CPUs that can really execute Java quickly in the 85xxHDC boxes, while the CPUs in the previous designs do not have the hardware to execute Java well.

Here's a new bug that I noticed on my TWC SA-8300HDC running Navigator.

At 8pm Monday my wife wanted to watch BONES on FOX, I was flicking thru the channels using the TWC remote and got to the Hockey Game on CBS.

But then the channel 'froze' on that broadcast and even though the remote/Navigator banner was showing that I was changing channels, the image was still CBS live on the Hockey game.

So, I turned off the STB and I was still seeing the game!

I turned it back on and was still seeing the game, and turned it off again - still seeing the game.

I recycled power to the AVR and the TV and turned off the STB again - turned everything back on and still saw the #%$%# game!

I had to unplug the STB (again - 3rd time this week - typically, it is because the STB looses handshake or sync or something and the AVR display has every light indicator on the front blinking and the picture flashes in and out and the f#$%# STB has to be unplugged/plugged back in to get a stable picture) to get back to 'normal'.

Anyone see that before?

Erik
San Diego TWC

Anyone see that before?


What brand and model is your TV? I'm assuming your STB is connected to your TV via HDMI? You may want to try using component cables and see if the problem still exists. If not, then you'll know your TV doesn't handshake well with the STB, and TWC won't help you because they do not support HDMI.

Here's a new bug that I noticed on my TWC SA-8300HDC running Navigator.

At 8pm Monday my wife wanted to watch BONES on FOX, I was flicking thru the channels using the TWC remote and got to the Hockey Game on CBS.

But then the channel 'froze' on that broadcast and even though the remote/Navigator banner was showing that I was changing channels, the image was still CBS live on the Hockey game.

So, I turned off the STB and I was still seeing the game!

I turned it back on and was still seeing the game, and turned it off again - still seeing the game.

I recycled power to the AVR and the TV and turned off the STB again - turned everything back on and still saw the #%$%# game!

I had to unplug the STB (again - 3rd time this week - typically, it is because the STB looses handshake or sync or something and the AVR display has every light indicator on the front blinking and the picture flashes in and out and the f#$%# STB has to be unplugged/plugged back in to get a stable picture) to get back to 'normal'.

Anyone see that before?

Erik
San Diego TWC

I once had this happen to me with my 8240HDC, but a reboot solved the problem. When I went to the diagnostics before the reboot, it was clear that the software was trying to change the channel, but kept logging failures to change the channel. Either there is a bug, or the hardware is being crappy again. I also noticed some really warm spots above the left side of the top ventilator of my 8240HDC box. Is your box in the open or surrounded by something and therefore cooking itself?

The CPUs in most televisions and set top boxes before the 2007 FCC deadline that required cable companies to support generic set top boxes........................jnv11. Some good observations in your posting. However, I would like to comment on your comment on the FCC deadline that you referred to. That deadline related ONLY to "separable security" and thus cable companies had to start deploying only cable boxes with CableCARDs. The deadline, in itself, did not require cable companies to support generic set top boxes. However, that deadline, was one, of many working towards the objective of "Commercial Availability of Navigation
Devices" as stated in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. While the initial roll-out of CableCARDs was thought to satisfy that act, the advent of services such as On-Demand, SDV, etc. revealed that the original agreements did not produce the desired results. There currently is NO FCC regulations that demand the support of generic STBs - beyond uni-directional support of CableCARDs.

The FCC has yet to fulfill the requirements of that 1996 act, and FULLY support generic boxes. They did issue a THIRD FURTHER NOTICE OF PROPOSED RULEMAKING (http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-07-120A1.pdf) almost a year ago towards that end. The cable industry has been pushing their solution ("tru2way", aka OCAP) while the CE industry wanted a lower cost approach (DCR+). Not much has been heard from the FCC on this matter since then, but with Sony's defection to the "tru2way" side last week, it looks like "tru2way" will end up with FCC endorsement. And then, and only then, will the FCC be able to effectively mandate support of functional generic STBs.

Actually quite a few processors:
Application/CPU - 600 MHz (800 MIPS)
Video Graphics - Dual 400 MHz VLIW CPUs
Audio - Dual 250 MHz DSP CPUs
DOCSIS - 200 MHz CPU

Actually, those video graphics VLIW CPUs remind me of NVIDIA's PureVideo, which uses a VLIW architecture to perform video decompression and postprocessing (although it sometimes has too much to do and therefore must spill some of that work over to the shaders). I wonder if these VLIW CPUs are AMD Xilleons, or something licensed from NVIDIA. If so, bring on the AVIVO HD goodness or the PureVideo goodness!

If my guesses are true, the true videophile will want Navigator to have the controls to tell the box what postprocessing we want. For example, in MPEG-2 decoding does not use a deblocking filter, but using one on an overly compressed video as a postprocessing option will improve its appearance. This postprocessing cannot occur in the TV, so it must take place in the cable box. H.264 and VC-1 already require a deblocking filter, so using it to postprocess MPEG-2 video can improve the video quality of overcompressed MPEG-2.

I noticed that the box was crashing in the middle of recording Good Morning America again this morning, which it has done three times total. Tonight, while I was trying to watch Obama's victory speech on my own personal SDTV I bought for my undergraduate college years because I could not afford any better, my mother called me down and asked what that stink around the family television was. It was the smell of overheating or burnt electronics. It quit smelling like that after I put it on a couple of two-by-fours, but will swap it out tomorrow anyways because I do not trust once-fried electronics to last long.

I will place the new box on top of the two-by-fours after swapping the old one out.

Maybe a good way to keep these boxes from crashing is to place them on some two-by-fours so that there is less restriction to the air entering from the underside, allowing more air to flow through. However, I do not know how to make two-by-fours look good on top of a rear-projection CRT television.

It was the smell of overheating or burnt electronics.The last couple of times you mentioned "the overheating problem", I checked the heat over and around my box. I'm afraid I've got to say that my DVR is surprisingly cool; just a slight warmth above the left side. I've followed this thread for a long time, and I can't recollect much (if any) discussion from others about overheating. It makes me believe that you may have an isolated situation.

Why is it that every nite I turn on TV, I have to re-load the 6t days of programming again. The old system would keep 5 days and all I would have to load is the new 6th day..Now, 99% of time, I have to redo all 6 days,,once or twice it kept 2 days,,but NEVER has it kept 5 days worth,,

There is no way in hell the Techies in TWC wanted this POS software,,this had to be the execs getting some POS software for some ungodly cheap rate..

The last couple of times you mentioned "the overheating problem", I checked the heat over and around my box. I'm afraid I've got to say that my DVR is surprisingly cool; just a slight warmth above the left side. I've followed this thread for a long time, and I can't recollect much (if any) discussion from others about overheating. It makes me believe that you may have an isolated situation.

If you searched for variants of the word "overheating" like "overheat" and "overheats" using the Search this Thread tool at the upper right area of the thread, you will find posts from others who complained about overheating boxes.

If you searched for variants of the word "overheating" like "overheat" and "overheats" using the Search this Thread tool at the upper right area of the thread, you will find posts from others who complained about overheating boxes.At the risk of sounding argumentative, I again have to recommend that you approach your overheating as an isolated problem. I have read literally all 4766 postings on this thread and, although there are occasional references to DVRs running hot, I don't get the impression that it is epidemic. I've had a lot of problems with the HDC box (I'm on my 3rd one now), but none of my DVRs ever ran hot. I tend to believe that after smelling burnt electronics, you could convince TW to replace your box and stand a pretty good chance that the new one won't have the same problem.

At the risk of sounding argumentative, I again have to recommend that you approach your overheating as an isolated problem. I have read literally all 4766 postings on this thread and, although there are occasional references to DVRs running hot, I don't get the impression that it is epidemic. I've had a lot of problems with the HDC box (I'm on my 3rd one now), but none of my DVRs ever ran hot. I tend to believe that after smelling burnt electronics, you could convince TW to replace your box and stand a pretty good chance that the new one won't have the same problem.

I guess that I must have been unlucky. I guess that this is what the warranty is for. My box must have been one of those that fit into the infant mortality category (e.g. it was not built right, but it slipped through quality control and therefore broke in a customer's location soon after it was delivered). I got the box swapped out today with an 8300HDC whose label states that it was manufactured some day in April 2008. I am putting it up on some two-by-fours to make sure it does not overheat. This box now feels a little warm on the left side of its top ventilator, but it is nowhere near as hot as the 8240HDC. However, it might not have had the time to warm up, so what I wrote may be garbage in a few hours.

Just got the Navigator downgrade from Passport as I moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Is there no way to set up a series recording to save until I delete? I don't see this in the options and have only been able to change the saving status after a show is already recorded. For someone who travels a lot, this is a major deal breaker for me.

Just got the Navigator downgrade from Passport as I moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Is there no way to set up a series recording to save until I delete? I don't see this in the options and have only been able to change the saving status after a show is already recorded. For someone who travels a lot, this is a major deal breaker for me.

It is in the options, it's just worded differently. I believe it is now called "keep all episodes" where the selection can also keep 1, 3, 5, or 7 episodes before they get deleted.

Just got the Navigator downgrade from Passport as I moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Is there no way to set up a series recording to save until I delete? I don't see this in the options and have only been able to change the saving status after a show is already recorded. For someone who travels a lot, this is a major deal breaker for me.

The current configurations for Navigator in my Milwaukee market are "Do Not Delete" as the default for all shows. For Passport, the default was "Save Until Space is needed.

I do not use the Series Manager, but I would check that first. My understanding is that you have to take action on individual show episodes. In other words, if you record a series you have to select the episode that is a part of the series scheduled for recording. Than highlight "Record Series With Options" and than change the default to "Do Not Delete." If the "Do Not Delete" option is already highlighted under Record Series With Options, than you don't have to change anything.

The Second Option is to find the Series that you want to Record, (Options might be under Series Manager.) and find Record Series With Options. Than for your Options, see if there is an option called "Keep All Episodes" and select that. Keep All Episodes means that each recording will be saved and will not be overwritten until you change the options for that recording.

Another Option that (I hope) is there under Record Series With Options would be Keep New Episodes. However, there is great ambiguity as to how Navigator defines a "New" episode.

What I do to get around this mess, is to treat EVERY SHOW and series as an individual episode. Series Recording sucks in Navigator, and it is still too risky to know what you are going to get that is New, when it isn't New, what you are going to get on duplicate channels, and how many episodes of a series it saves. I have heard this can change based on the version of Navigator you have and the type of box you have (OCAP) "The new C-models or (MDN) the non-C Models." People even have somewhat different options and menus I am finding out even based on where they live!

Try my suggestions above, or at least let us know what type of menu prompts you get for Series Recording.

Sorry that I can't be of more help!

Jack

It is in the options, it's just worded differently. I believe it is now called "keep all episodes" where the selection can also keep 1, 3, 5, or 7 episodes before they get deleted.I don't know what version you have, but on ODN, when you select the recorded program then Record Options, you have a choice for "Change Save Time" between "Until space is needed" and "Do Not Delete". This also works for Scheduled Recordings but, unfortunately, can't be preselected in the series recording options.

Nope.

Here in KC, TW attributes the reboots to a poor signal in a certain frequency. My system did have that bad signal (now fixed), but still crashes and I do use Closed Captioning a lot. If you have not had a tech out to check your signal, you might try that.

The phone tech can check your signal, but cannot check by frequency, which my tech said is important. Apparently, they can if you are on the right channel, but I do not know what it is. My tech said most of the phone techs will not know the correct channel either.

Here in KC, TW attributes the reboots to a poor signal in a certain frequency. My system did have that bad signal (now fixed), but still crashes and I do use Closed Captioning a lot. If you have not had a tech out to check your signal, you might try that.

The phone tech can check your signal, but cannot check by frequency, which my tech said is important. Apparently, they can if you are on the right channel, but I do not know what it is. My tech said most of the phone techs will not know the correct channel either.

If you "use Closed Captioning a lot", I think that there is some sort of bug that caused my old 8300HD running MDN 2.4.1-92 to crash a lot with closed captioning. Try trading it in for an 8300HDC or 8240HDC. The ODN software that runs on these boxes is rock-solid when dealing with closed captioning. However, ODN reportedly crashes with eSATA, and you need to remember to put the box out in the open and to place some two-by-fours under the box to allow the hot power supply area on the left side of the box to get enough air to cool down. My 8240HDC that I had until yesterday cooked itself to overheating even though it was out in the open, but without any two-by-fours lifting it up to make it easy for air to come in by way of convection. Also, since the CPUs probably do not have the branch prediction unit needed to execute the branches that are encountered when interpreting Java bytecode, ODN runs slowly on these boxes.

To get the frequency on an MDN box, press select until the mail icon lights up on the front panel, and then press down while the mail light is on or flashing. Somewhere in all those pages, there is an area that shows you the channel frequency. The diagnostics on an ODN box does not report the frequency, so you cannot do this on an ODN box.

some people on other threads claim they can tell a difference in PQ between the 2 but i cant and neither can anyone i know. even if your TV is 1.3 compliant for deep color, I'm pretty sure the 8300 isn't. so you're not getting deep color if thats what you're after. both are capable of transmitting 1080


it's easy enough to try yourself.

Well, last night I did try it and to say the least something didn't go right. I plugged in the component cables (all five of them) from the 8300 to my Samsung xA650 TV. I switched the Source to Component and got picture and sound. But awful sound. I must have done something wrong. I had to push the volume to max just in order to barely hear it.

Ignoring that, I tried the PIP function and got the same result I was getting with HDMI: the rest of the screen remains black and I only see the small PIP window when I'm done. Since that's why I was trying component, I fail to see the point.

However, since I'm new to all this, I suspect I did something wrong. I'm already plugging component cables into my TV from my Wii, so I only have one other set of component inputs to use. It seemed obvious which connections to make, especially color-coded the way they are, but maybe I did something wrong. Still, unless I got it just right, wouldn't I have no sound or no picture? What could I have done that caused it to have extremely muffled sound?

Analog Stereo Sound. The five cables in the standard beige component video bundle:
Red (video)
Green (video)
Blue (video)
Red (stereo audio)
white (stereo audio)

May still be an audio volume setting in NAVIGATOR. I'm still on SARA, but there could be a separate volume control/setting in the STB...


v/r,
C-F

Oh, so you're thinking there could be a software setting I need to change to tell the box to use component for sound even after I make the physical cable connections? (and yes, those five cables are the ones I connected)

Oh, so you're thinking there could be a software setting I need to change to tell the box to use component for sound even after I make the physical cable connections? (and yes, those five cables are the ones I connected)

No, just go to the box itself and max out its internal volume control.

also , try changing audio range to narrow after maxing out the boxes volume control.

this still leaves you with "got the same result I was getting with HDMI". maybe someone else has more ideas. i dont know. every post i've seen here ,changing to component has fixed that problem. i know it fixed it for my cousin.

OK, I'll try that (audio range since I already tried maxing out the internal volume control), but why would HDMI volume work just fine with a narrower range but component needs a wider range?

For subs in TWC-Milwaukee market:

Hi All,

Could someone check this out for me please? Go to your Navigator Guide and look up listings for any show on TV Land or Food Network. (Search for any known title show like Emeril Live on Food Network or The Andy Griffith Show on TV Land.) There are two guide numbers, one is listed for TV Land as something like 1880 and the other one is listed at something like 1898. I know that there is a legit Food Network station in the 1900's as a part of the Family Choice Package. The problem is that the channel in the 1800 range does not exist! TV Land is channel 61 and Food Network is channel 67.

On two occasions, when recording shows on TV Land and Food Network I have LOST the recordings about 10 minutes into the show. The Recording Log says that both shows could not record because the recording was not authorized. My theory is that there is a conflict, because somehow the software thinks that the bogus channels in the 1880's are legit, but there is nothing there, resulting in the conflict in the listing. The 1800 channel numbers should not be in the system. Earlier I had contacted TWC about when new features and updates are coming to Navigator, and will post a reply about this bug when I get an e-mail response back. What I would like anyone to do is check your listings for TV Land and Food Network, and if you have channel duplicate numbers in the 1800's for those channels, to report this bug to TWC.

This is a bug. I am sure the duplicated channel numbers are causing the conflict about unauthorized recordings. TCM also has duplicate channel numbers, but I have not recorded anything on that station.

All other recordings work great, so I know this is not a box issue. It is only with those two channels, and related to the non-existent channels above. The more people that report this, I hope the faster this bug can be fixed. Also, report any responses back from TWC. Thanks!

Jack

OK, I'll try that (audio range since I already tried maxing out the internal volume control), but why would HDMI volume work just fine with a narrower range but component needs a wider range?

mines MDN not ODN. i've never used HDMI on it. my cousins is ODN. on my recommendation he changed to component and told the TV to use that input. he didnt have to do anything else. he had no sound problems as a result and it fixed his PIP problem. i'm not really sure what could be causing your sound problem with component unless the cable is bad.
i know i had a problem where the sound on a recorded show was 1/2 the volume of a live show. after a spontaneous reboot i was able to change it to narrow and the problem was solved. thats why i suggested to try changing the audio range.
you are going from the cable box to the TV straight, and not through an AVR. right?
also (im not too familiar with ODN) is there anywhere in the boxes software to tell it to output through component and turn off HDMI?.... just reaching a little, trying to help.

I got the typical rhetoric response back from TWC that was about 80% form letter. There was one constructive thing in it. I had asked if they could offer a time-line for subscribers as to when we might see Navigator updates at specific intervals: (i.e next month, end of the year, etc.) They said they would like to do that, but they only get information about Navigator updates and version changes within a few DAYS of them actually taking place. In other words, a change has to be happening within about a week before they know about it.

Maybe they already know, but they can't release it to the public until a few days before it happens. You can ask as well if you want and see what answers you get. I stated again my top 3 requests:

1.) A Keyword Keyboard Search (i.e Content Theme Word Search) and letter-wrap.

2.) A prompt to "View This Channel Now" when taking action on a future show.

3.) An expanded Sports category list.

Jack

Maybe they already know, but they can't release it to the public until a few days before it happens. You can ask as well if you want and see what answers you get. I stated again my top 3 requests:

1.) A Keyword Keyboard Search (i.e Content Theme Word Search) and letter-wrap.

2.) A prompt to "View This Channel Now" when taking action on a future show.

3.) An expanded Sports category list.

Jack

Mine would be:

1.) Fix the rewind button!! It's ludicrous for it to jump forward up to 30 seconds, depending on the speed, from the last frame you saw during rewind. We've been trying for weeks to train ourselves to use the three-button REW, PAUSE, PLAY method to avoid this but just hitting play again when you've backed up far enough is a hard habit to break. Point is, we shouldn't have to substitute a 3 button press for what should be a 1 button press. It looks like they mirrored the "jump back" function of the FF button onto the REW button where it doesn't belong. This is just a couple lines of code and is too damn easy to fix. Should have been caught in beta testing.

2.) Fix the 8-second jump-back button so that it actually backs up 8 seconds. Currently, it's about 3 seconds. Again, this is too easy to fix and another bug that should have been caught and addressed in beta.

3.) Give us a fourth REW and FF speed that doubles the 3x speed. Passport had this as well and it's extremely useful.

4.) Give us a decent guide with more than 2 lines of information about programs. Passport gave us up to 4 pages of information.

The first three are simple software fixes, a few lines of code, and need to be addressed immediately. Is anybody from TWC listening?

you are going from the cable box to the TV straight, and not through an AVR. right?
also (im not too familiar with ODN) is there anywhere in the boxes software to tell it to output through component and turn off HDMI?.... just reaching a little, trying to help.

Right, straight from the cable box to the TV.

I can tell it to output through component, but I don't know any way to tell it to turn off HDMI other than just unplugging the HDMI cable.

I'm going to experiment a bit on Saturday and report back. I'll try a different cable too. I got two from Time Warner Cable and maybe the one I used was bad.

Thanks for everyone's suggestions so far.

4.) Give us a decent guide with more than 2 lines of information about programs.


It would be nice if they actually finished some of those lines as well.

A lot of shows I record have a synopsis that usually doesn't get that far so you are left with something like "Jack and Jill head to the source of the echo and discover that ali"

It would be nice if they actually finished some of those lines as well.

A lot of shows I record have a synopsis that usually doesn't get that far so you are left with something like "Jack and Jill head to the source of the echo and discover that ali"


I am not sure, but I think that you might be able to see the rest of the synopsys by pressing the info button on the remote. However, I am about to leave and have no time to test this out.

I am not sure, but I think that you might be able to see the rest of the synopsys by pressing the info button on the remote. However, I am about to leave and have no time to test this out.

the info button on Navigator is pretty much useless. All it usually does is swap the synopsis from the inset window and put it in the main box. That's where the cutoff usually happens.

I've got an odd thing happening with my new Navigatored SA8300. I actually have two of them, one with an expansion drive hooked up. This issue is with the other one, the one I use solely for time-shifting. If I turn it to the "off" position at night, the next day when I turn it on, I have no picture or sound. But if I change channels I get the banner, I can display the program guide and my programming list; just no picture or sound. If I then do a hard reboot (pulling the plug and plugging it back in), then it goes through the reboot process and everything comes back just fine. Anybody else seeing this? Any idea what's going on?

For subs in TWC-Milwaukee market:

Hi All,

Could someone check this out for me please? Go to your Navigator Guide and look up listings for any show on TV Land or Food Network. (Search for any known title show like Emeril Live on Food Network or The Andy Griffith Show on TV Land.) There are two guide numbers, one is listed for TV Land as something like 1880 and the other one is listed at something like 1898. I know that there is a legit Food Network station in the 1900's as a part of the Family Choice Package. The problem is that the channel in the 1800 range does not exist! TV Land is channel 61 and Food Network is channel 67.

Thanks!

Jack


Your correct Jack. It does show a channel 1898. Definately a bug.

I've got an odd thing happening with my new Navigatored SA8300. I actually have two of them, one with an expansion drive hooked up. This issue is with the other one, the one I use solely for time-shifting. If I turn it to the "off" position at night, the next day when I turn it on, I have no picture or sound. But if I change channels I get the banner, I can display the program guide and my programming list; just no picture or sound. If I then do a hard reboot (pulling the plug and plugging it back in), then it goes through the reboot process and everything comes back just fine. Anybody else seeing this? Any idea what's going on?
This was happening to me but it just went away and has not happened for quite a while. Also reboots that were happening do not happen near as often. I also use to have the message about HDCP and have not for a while. Is there a learning function in these boxes?

This was happening to me but it just went away and has not happened for quite a while. Also reboots that were happening do not happen near as often. I also use to have the message about HDCP and have not for a while. Is there a learning function in these boxes?

One thing I forgot to mention in that post was that while I get no picture or sound on any channel, any previously recorded show I have in my list plays just fine. Took 3 cold re-boots this morning to finally bring the picture & sound back on live TV.

Anybody else out there seeing this?

I've had a reoccurrence of an odd problem. It first happened maybe a month ago and started again today. While watching a program, the picture will just freeze. You have to switch to another channel and then back again to unfreeze it. The other odd thing is that it would freeze like that every 10 minutes like clockwork.

And apparently I've been under the mistaken impression the box has been stable recently. My wife mentioned this morning that she's had to pull the plug 3 times this week due to various recording problems (as in it would refuse to even while she was watching the show).

I've had a reoccurrence of an odd problem. It first happened maybe a month ago and started again today. While watching a program, the picture will just freeze. You have to switch to another channel and then back again to unfreeze it. The other odd thing is that it would freeze like that every 10 minutes like clockwork.

This has recently happened to me too ... not "every 10 minutes like clockwork" ... but it's still annoying.

I was answering someone's ask for alternatives to Navigator, and TiVo is a viable alternative.

Thanks Mike... I've been a happy TWC cable user for almost 10 years now and never really paid much attention to the compitition, so I had no idea what my options were.

I might give over the air reception a shot since TiVo supports that as well. There's a few digital channels I would miss, but I'm not sure they're worth $100/month now that I will have my own DVR hardware/software.

I'm not sure if it's been posted yet, but you can press Exit on the remote to get rid of banner while searching, paused, or using slow motion. The TWC FAQ says there’s no way to get rid of them.

Passport would tell you how much space was left, but it was on another channel and it told you in GBytes. I like that Navigator does the math and puts it on the DVR menu, but not at the cost of all the other usability features Passport had.

Supposedly TWC is using Navigator as a cost savings measure. I would have paid more to have kept Passport. I bet they contracted development out to India with a set of requirements. I don't see how any of the developers could actually use the software they wrote and have it work this poorly. They have "features" that defy common sense.

I'm not sure if it's been posted yet, but you can press Exit on the remote to get rid of banner while searching, paused, or using slow motion. The TWC FAQ says there’s no way to get rid of them.

Passport would tell you how much space was left, but it was on another channel and it told you in GBytes. I like that Navigator does the math and puts it on the DVR menu, but not at the cost of all the other usability features Passport had.The feature of Passport of which you speak was a mini-diagnostic and wasn't really intended for use by end-users. It was there for CSR to ask you to turn to the channel and read the numbers off to them.
Supposedly TWC is using Navigator as a cost savings measure. I would have paid more to have kept Passport. I bet they contracted development out to India with a set of requirements. I don't see how any of the developers could actually use the software they wrote and have it work this poorly. They have "features" that defy common sense.Navigator was something that was being developed by a start-up in the suburbs of Denver; TWC bought the company. There was no TWC provider in the area and still isn't, though I'd imagine that it would be possible to "bridge" one of their networks to a remote locale. Then again, maybe not.

I've had a reoccurrence of an odd problem. It first happened maybe a month ago and started again today. While watching a program, the picture will just freeze. You have to switch to another channel and then back again to unfreeze it. The other odd thing is that it would freeze like that every 10 minutes like clockwork. +1 here. I have had these same freezing problems lately, but not on a regular 10-minute interval, plus recordings not working properly and the guide not updating, etc. When I have tried to play several recordings lately, they show nothing, just a blank screen. No note in the recording log of any problem except for one, where I got a #7 error message: "the set-top was unable to record this program." This is not the kind of reliability and performance I expect. I rebooted it and will see how it goes today. I am on a 3-month free trial of the DVR, but if they don't get it working better than this, I will certainly consider other options. TIVO is looking better all the time, especially since I don't use the On Demand features much at all.

TT

I've had a reoccurrence of an odd problem. It first happened maybe a month ago and started again today. While watching a program, the picture will just freeze. You have to switch to another channel and then back again to unfreeze it. The other odd thing is that it would freeze like that every 10 minutes like clockwork.

And apparently I've been under the mistaken impression the box has been stable recently. My wife mentioned this morning that she's had to pull the plug 3 times this week due to various recording problems (as in it would refuse to even while she was watching the show).

Sounds like a hardware issue. Since the CPUs in the 8300HDC/8240HDC boxes seem to run Java slowly due to their lackluster branch handling performance, it would be foolish to put the branch-heavy first stage of MPEG-2 decoding on the CPUs. Therefore, I think that Navigator has nothing to do with this problem, but I think that you have a bad box. Cisco basically rushed this box out the door to allwo cable companies to meet the FCC deadline. First check to see if the box seems to be overheating before you replace it, so you can know if you need to find a better location for the box that will replace your failed box, or if you need to put some two-by-fours under the box. When I last got a box swap, I was given one less than two months old and had a rather high hardware revision number. (The hardware revision number and the date of manufacture are listed on a sticker on the bottom of the box.)

Here in KC, TW attributes the reboots to a poor signal in a certain frequency. My system did have that bad signal (now fixed), but still crashes and I do use Closed Captioning a lot. If you have not had a tech out to check your signal, you might try that.

The phone tech can check your signal, but cannot check by frequency, which my tech said is important. Apparently, they can if you are on the right channel, but I do not know what it is. My tech said most of the phone techs will not know the correct channel either.

The frequency thing is interesting because it seems to reboot on the same channel all the time (Ch. 217, NBC17 in Raleigh). Both the engineer for NBC17 and the techs I've talked at TWC both say that can't be it but after a week of behaving itself it rebooted twice last night on 217.

Right, straight from the cable box to the TV.

I can tell it to output through component, but I don't know any way to tell it to turn off HDMI other than just unplugging the HDMI cable.

I'm going to experiment a bit on Saturday and report back. I'll try a different cable too. I got two from Time Warner Cable and maybe the one I used was bad.

OK, I did experiment and this time I got component working. What I did was move the Wii to Component 2 instead of 1 where it had been. Then I plugged the TV into Component 1 and this time it worked, sound and all. I had to unplug the HDMI cable before it would work, but it works.

Yes, the picture quality seems the same. The PIP issue seems solved. But there is one other issue that bugs us: We used to be able to swap to the other channel with PIP and then rewind the show. Then you swap back and rewind the other show. With this new box, you can swap, but you cannot rewind unless you have kept the PIP window open the entire time.

Is there a workaround for this?

Have a new issue with Navigator. Recently UNC-TV in my area moved "Danger Rangers" from UNCKids (one of their digital subchannels) back up to the main UNCTV channel. And the Guide in Navigator is correctly updated.

But the series recording was not, and it recorded four episodes of some new "Kids Fit" show instead. Basically anything it had already planned to record was still scheduled to record even when the Guide showed that the show was changed.

OK, I did experiment and this time I got component working. What I did was move the Wii to Component 2 instead of 1 where it had been. Then I plugged the TV into Component 1 and this time it worked, sound and all. I had to unplug the HDMI cable before it would work, but it works.

Yes, the picture quality seems the same. The PIP issue seems solved. But there is one other issue that bugs us: We used to be able to swap to the other channel with PIP and then rewind the show. Then you swap back and rewind the other show. With this new box, you can swap, but you cannot rewind unless you have kept the PIP window open the entire time.

Is there a workaround for this?

There is a workaround: tell the box to record both of them. This way, the box will not delete the buffers when you swap channels.

Suddenly my SA8300HD has started to reboot frequently when I am watching TV. Are these reboots applying firmware updates? Why is there no warning of a reboot? I was watching the Brewer game so I missed about 5 minutes of it!

Suddenly my SA8300HD has started to reboot frequently when I am watching TV. Are these reboots applying firmware updates? Why is there no warning of a reboot? I was watching the Brewer game so I missed about 5 minutes of it!

Welcome to the wonderful world of Navigator!

How do I clear the recording log? I haven't been able to find a solution for this for some time now. I've tried rebooting the DVR, but that failed. Any suggestions?

+1 here. I have had these same freezing problems lately, but not on a regular 10-minute interval, plus recordings not working properly and the guide not updating, etc. When I have tried to play several recordings lately, they show nothing, just a blank screen. No note in the recording log of any problem except for one, where I got a #7 error message: "the set-top was unable to record this program." This is not the kind of reliability and performance I expect. I rebooted it and will see how it goes today. I am on a 3-month free trial of the DVR, but if they don't get it working better than this, I will certainly consider other options. TIVO is looking better all the time, especially since I don't use the On Demand features much at all.

TT
Currently you will be giving up a lot more than just On-Demand features. You will be giving up many of the new HD channels that are now sent via Switched Digital Video which requires bi-directional communication. There is a fix coming but it isn't available yet.

Currently you will be giving up a lot more than just On-Demand features. You will be giving up many of the new HD channels that are now sent via Switched Digital Video which requires bi-directional communication. There is a fix coming but it isn't available yet.Tom's here in San Diego--we don't have any SDV channels yet, though they've got the hardware and software installed to start. I expect that the next wave of new HD channels will be provided that way.

One cable provider (Cox in Phoenix) has announced that they're rolling out SDV services and that they'll be making the Tuning Adapter available to TiVo users later this year at no charge (see this (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6336627#post6336627) post at TCF).

Have a new issue with Navigator. Recently UNC-TV in my area moved "Danger Rangers" from UNCKids (one of their digital subchannels) back up to the main UNCTV channel. And the Guide in Navigator is correctly updated.

But the series recording was not, and it recorded four episodes of some new "Kids Fit" show instead. Basically anything it had already planned to record was still scheduled to record even when the Guide showed that the show was changed.

Greg,

My understanding is that with the Series Recording Manager, if a channel number on which that series was originally set to record is changed by the cable company, the Recording Manager may be "grandfather clausing" the old data so the Series Recording Manager, which is not updated when a channel change occurs, isn't synchronizing with the correct series/channel number in the program guide time grid.

This is why when so many people were converted to Navigator, their individual shows survived the transition better than their Series Recordings. Because if the database can not find that same series that a user has scheduled to record from the old guide to the new guide, it often comes back, "Could not record because channel was not available."

I also understand that the "look ahead time for Navigator's Time Grid is 7 days in advance, not 14 days as deceptively advertised. (At least that is how it is in my Milwaukee-Wisconsin region.)

The best workaround I would say is to go to Series Manager, Delete the series that was being shown on the old channel. After that is cleared, go back to select, Record This Series With Options on the new channel. Don't forget to review your options for Start Time/Stop Time, and how many episodes to record under the Record Series With Options category.

After this point, the Series and channel number should be properly synchronized and set for recording.

Jack

Suddenly my SA8300HD has started to reboot frequently when I am watching TV. Are these reboots applying firmware updates? Why is there no warning of a reboot? I was watching the Brewer game so I missed about 5 minutes of it!

Time for a box swap. My experience with the SA 8300HDC/8240HDC has been that the ODN software running on these boxes is more stable as long as you keep the box cool, but slower than the MDN software your legacy box runs that seems to be fast but unstable.

Tom's here in San Diego--we don't have any SDV channels yet, though they've got the hardware and software installed to start. I expect that the next wave of new HD channels will be provided that way.

One cable provider (Cox in Phoenix) has announced that they're rolling out SDV services and that they'll be making the Tuning Adapter available to TiVo users later this year at no charge (see this (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6336627#post6336627) post at TCF).
Thanks Mike. I assumed the last wave of channels were SDV. Surprised they had enough bandwidth. I lived in San Diego for a long time before moving to Hawaii. Hence my continued interest in the SD TWC situation.

OK, I did experiment and this time I got component working. What I did was move the Wii to Component 2 instead of 1 where it had been. Then I plugged the TV into Component 1 and this time it worked, sound and all. I had to unplug the HDMI cable before it would work, but it works.

Yes, the picture quality seems the same. The PIP issue seems solved.

glad to hear you worked it all out.

It seems that my accusation that the 8300HDC and 8240HDC are not OCAP compliant need to be modified. It seems that these boxes are OCAP 1.0 compliant up to OCAP 1.0 version I10. Versions I11 and above of the OCAP 1.0 standard introduced the requirement of 960x540 internally-generated graphics on all HD boxes. Some later version of OCAP 1.0 changed that requirement to one that requires all boxes to be capable of generating at least 960x540 and 640x480 resolutions. Therefore, we can call the 8300HDC compliant to an obsolete version of OCAP 1.0.

However, this does not mean that these boxes are any better. They really need to be replaced by the 8550HDC and 8552HDC boxes soon so that they can run their programs much faster. (The 8540HDC is not OCAP compliant because it is an all-digital box, and the current OCAP specs require that the box be capable of tuning NTSC.)

Well, it finally happened. TW switched us from passport over to Navigator last night. So far, no technical problems, but I don't like it. I guess I will get used to it though. I'm not a big fan of change, mainly b/c I was so accustomed to passport. It definitely looks more modern than passport, as passport had a 90's look and feel to it. Hopefully I don't have some of the typical problems that come w/ using navigator.

http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/1192/strawberrypicking19mos0ve2.jpg

Well, it finally happened. TW switched us from passport over to Navigator last night. So far, no technical problems, but I don't like it. I guess I will get used to it though. I'm not a big fan of change, mainly b/c I was so accustomed to passport. It definitely looks more modern than passport, as passport had a 90's look and feel to it. Hopefully I don't have some of the typical problems that come w/ using navigator.



Well $h!t... I take that back. 10 minutes after posting this initial message, I managed to freeze up the box and it rebooted. That never happened with passport. Hopefully it won't be a regular occurrance.

TW upgraded my SA 8300HD box last night to Navigator. I was impressed that they managed to do it without losing any of the recordings on the drive. The scheduled recordings are all in place as well.

Time for a box swap. My experience with the SA 8300HDC/8240HDC has been that the ODN software running on these boxes is more stable as long as you keep the box cool, but slower than the MDN software your legacy box runs that seems to be fast but unstable.

Well, my understanding is that eSATA does not work reliably with the SA8300HDC so I guess the time is coming to sh%t can TWC!

Welcome to the wonderful world of Navigator!

I have been running Navigator for at least a couple months with no reboots until now :mad:

Well $h!t... I take that back. 10 minutes after posting this initial message, I managed to freeze up the box and it rebooted. That never happened with passport. Hopefully it won't be a regular occurrance.

HA! Get used to it!

I had to reboot my POS TWC 8300HDC 3 times last week
1 time for the channel being frozen on the hockey game even though the STB was turned OFF
2 times for the typical loosing sync when changing channels and the display flashing signal/no signal.

But I am running blue jeans HDMI cables and HDMI is not supported by TWC...hmmm...gee.....wonder why.....

Erik
TWC San Diego

Well, my understanding is that eSATA does not work reliably with the SA8300HDC so I guess the time is coming to sh%t can TWC!

One more possibility that I just imagined is that your power cable may be loose. Have you checked that? A bad connection to power will cause loads of reboots.

I got upgraded over night here in Cincinnati. Took a look this morning and was pleasantly surprised that I could actually choose my output's via hdmi. The old software was locked at 1080i. Also, no more grey pillars! Will have to see about this freeze/reboot business. Will run it through its paces tonight. One thing to note, I did have to set my TV to fill for 480i material as it was smashed to a skinny box. Other than that everything seemed to be fine with my 10 minutes or so of tinkering.

Hi Folks,

As you may have read, there's been a mass update to the 8300HD boxes in Cincinnati.

We've got a 8240HDC, a 8300HD and a Pace HD set-top.

I was fearing the upgrade to the new Navigator on our 8300HD after experiencing just how slow it runs on our 8240HDC.

Surprisingly, it runs much FASTER on the old 8300HD than the 8240HDC - it's actually usable. The response time between button click and menu movement on the 8240 is a joke.

Actually, they updated our Pace HD box to the new software 2 weeks ago and it also runs faster than the 8240HDC.

Anyone know if there is an update coming for the 8300HDC/8240HDC boxes? I noticed, for instance, that the newly updated 8300HD's "List" page has more options at the bottom (by date, by title, scheduled recordings, series manager, recording log, recently viewed). The 8240 only has (by date, by title).

How can I check the software version of the box?

Thanks!

Edit: I should also add we've had a couple 8300HDCs as well that acted the same way, so I doubt it's an isolated hardware issue with this one box.

Another Edit: I figured out how to get into diagnostics and find software versions. The 8240 is driving me nuts with its molasses response.

Howdy.

My 8300 is stuck in a reboot loop since I went from Passport to Navigator last night. I have a SATA drive attached. If I unplug the external drive, Navigator boots up fine. With the drive connected, it reboots in a loop. I tried a trick from another thread but it's not working.

Any help is very appreciated.

Now that TW has upgraded the SA 8300HD units in Cincinnati, does anyone know which cable boxes remain to be upgraded? I assume we won't see out HD lineup substantially improved until TW can start to use switched channels (which requires Passport to go away first).

Now that TW has upgraded the SA 8300HD units in Cincinnati, does anyone know which cable boxes remain to be upgraded? I assume we won't see out HD lineup substantially improved until TW can start to use switched channels (which requires Passport to go away first).

My SA2000 box still has Passport if that's any indication. We got zapped 6 weeks ago.

My SA2000 box still has Passport if that's any indication. We got zapped 6 weeks ago.I'm fairly certain that the Navigator roll-out status in areas of North Carolina is irrelevant to Cincinnati. Several months back, TWC was known to have rolled-out SDV channels in 9 or 10 markets. They add them one at a time.

My SA2000 box still has Passport if that's any indication. We got zapped 6 weeks ago.

I guess the big question is,

Since VisionOn's SA 2000 box still has Passport, what states need to finish the transition to Navigator, and what states have yet to be converted to Navigator?

As a side note, we still don't know what TWC plans to do with the Motorola boxes. Recall that they scrapped the idea of changing them over to Navigator. It is also unknown what will happen to Sara software boxes, which we know are already SDV compliant.

Jack

I had the opportunity to talk to a TWC rep today.The lady was at my neighbors selling her the triople play.She seemed very knowlegable about TWC.I asked her if she had heard when sara users might be receiveing Navigator.She stated that to her knowlege it was at least a year away.The company had caught o much flack with the 25% of customer who have(had) Passport that they want it to be greatly improved before the 75% who have Sara are Navigated,I do not know if she was blowing smoke or really knew about what she spoke but just putting it out there. SARA 1.89.17.1 Greensboro NC

On Sunday night both of our digital cable boxes (Scientific Atlanta Explorer 2000 and Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000) were running fine, they were both using Passport.

Sunday night we had to disconnect our Explorer 8000 because we were having wood floors installed Monday/Tuesday. But Monday morning our Explorer 2000 box which wasn't unplugged was acting strange. When I turned on the TV, the on-screen guide would appear, but there would be no picture or television station broadcasting.

We attempted to call Time Warner on Monday afternoon but were unable to get a hold of a representative because apparently they are having glitches with their night phone system. My mom called on Tuesday who spoke with a rep who said that they were transitioning to Navigator and that the transition should be complete by 12 noon on Tuesday. Well when we attempted to turn on our Explorer 3000 box it rebooted and then said :"ATTENTION: Loading Channel information. When it finished that, the guide would appear again but there was no picture and when you turned it on a channel again no picture.

Is this a glitch with the navigator system? It's very frustrating not being able to access our digital cable. Do you think this is a problem because we aren't using HD? We don't have any HDTV's yet so there is no need for an HD box.

If anyone has any information or can help me with this problem, I would really appreciate it. Thanks.

If you "use Closed Captioning a lot", I think that there is some sort of bug that caused my old 8300HD running MDN 2.4.1-92 to crash a lot with closed captioning. Try trading it in for an 8300HDC or 8240HDC. The ODN software that runs on these boxes is rock-solid when dealing with closed captioning. However, ODN reportedly crashes with eSATA, and you need to remember to put the box out in the open and to place some two-by-fours under the box to allow the hot power supply area on the left side of the box to get enough air to cool down. My 8240HDC that I had until yesterday cooked itself to overheating even though it was out in the open, but without any two-by-fours lifting it up to make it easy for air to come in by way of convection. Also, since the CPUs probably do not have the branch prediction unit needed to execute the branches that are encountered when interpreting Java bytecode, ODN runs slowly on these boxes.

To get the frequency on an MDN box, press select until the mail icon lights up on the front panel, and then press down while the mail light is on or flashing. Somewhere in all those pages, there is an area that shows you the channel frequency. The diagnostics on an ODN box does not report the frequency, so you cannot do this on an ODN box.

I have tried both the ODN and MDN boxes. For now, I am staying with the MDN box for my eSATA, the ability to change series priority, and the better general "feel" of software. I have not had a reboot with closed captioning off for about two weeks. I miss the closed captioning though!

The last time the tech was here, I gave him a print of your post on how to make the box crash with closed captioning and demonstrated it on my 8300HD. He said he would present it to his bosses. I'm hoping they contact you and give you a huge contract to fix the problem, but I'm not counting on it.

The frequency thing is interesting because it seems to reboot on the same channel all the time (Ch. 217, NBC17 in Raleigh). Both the engineer for NBC17 and the techs I've talked at TWC both say that can't be it but after a week of behaving itself it rebooted twice last night on 217.

I don't claim to understand the frequency problem, but I think the tech guy was saying that some data (like the Guide data) is transferred on a certain frequency. If that data has a problem, it will cause the box to reboot. Some channels are in the same frequency range, but they were not channels I generally watch.

On Sunday night both of our digital cable boxes (Scientific Atlanta Explorer 2000 and Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000) were running fine, they were both using Passport.

Sunday night we had to disconnect our Explorer 8000 because we were having wood floors installed Monday/Tuesday. But Monday morning our Explorer 2000 box which wasn't unplugged was acting strange. When I turned on the TV, the on-screen guide would appear, but there would be no picture or television station broadcasting.

We attempted to call Time Warner on Monday afternoon but were unable to get a hold of a representative because apparently they are having glitches with their night phone system. My mom called on Tuesday who spoke with a rep who said that they were transitioning to Navigator and that the transition should be complete by 12 noon on Tuesday. Well when we attempted to turn on our Explorer 3000 box it rebooted and then said :"ATTENTION: Loading Channel information. When it finished that, the guide would appear again but there was no picture and when you turned it on a channel again no picture.

Is this a glitch with the navigator system? It's very frustrating not being able to access our digital cable. Do you think this is a problem because we aren't using HD? We don't have any HDTV's yet so there is no need for an HD box.

If anyone has any information or can help me with this problem, I would really appreciate it. Thanks.

What is happening with your box today? (Wednesday, June 11th.) If your box is now working, you can stop reading. If your box is still not working, read on:

If you still do not have the Guide on your screen, or your box is acting strange, unplug your box for about 10 minutes. Than plug it back in. It may take from 10-30 minutes to boot up. If it's a lesser time-great! Let the box do it's thing for up to 30 minutes without intervention from you. See if a loading message or a message similar to something that says, "Your system is being transferred to a new video format...." appears on the screen during this up to 30 minute check time. If you still do not have a functioning cable guide or system after 30 minutes, call TWC.

Whether or not you have an HD set, will not affect the download of Navigator one way or the other. It just means that if you have an SD set, your only output for ANY box will always be 480i.

Jack

Is your SA 8000 DVR box running Navigator now?

Howdy.

My 8300 is stuck in a reboot loop since I went from Passport to Navigator last night. I have a SATA drive attached. If I unplug the external drive, Navigator boots up fine. With the drive connected, it reboots in a loop. I tried a trick from another thread but it's not working.

Any help is very appreciated.
Bump.

Does anyone know how to get an eSATA external drive to function properly after switching from Passport to Navigator? I'm in Cincinnati. See quoted post please.

Thanks.

Bump.

Does anyone know how to get an eSATA external drive to function properly after switching from Passport to Navigator? I'm in Cincinnati. See quoted post please.

Thanks.

Don't use your drive.

Please don't bump posts that are only a day old. Either someone will respond with an answer when they've caught up with unread posts or they don't know. Try using the thread search button.

You're in trial and error territory here. There's no guarantee that anybody else's solution will work with your Navigator box.

On Sunday night both of our digital cable boxes (Scientific Atlanta Explorer 2000 and Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000) were running fine, they were both using Passport.

Sunday night we had to disconnect our Explorer 8000 because we were having wood floors installed Monday/Tuesday. But Monday morning our Explorer 2000 box which wasn't unplugged was acting strange. When I turned on the TV, the on-screen guide would appear, but there would be no picture or television station broadcasting.

We attempted to call Time Warner on Monday afternoon but were unable to get a hold of a representative because apparently they are having glitches with their night phone system. My mom called on Tuesday who spoke with a rep who said that they were transitioning to Navigator and that the transition should be complete by 12 noon on Tuesday. Well when we attempted to turn on our Explorer 3000 box it rebooted and then said :"ATTENTION: Loading Channel information. When it finished that, the guide would appear again but there was no picture and when you turned it on a channel again no picture.

Is this a glitch with the navigator system? It's very frustrating not being able to access our digital cable. Do you think this is a problem because we aren't using HD? We don't have any HDTV's yet so there is no need for an HD box.

If anyone has any information or can help me with this problem, I would really appreciate it. Thanks.

Well TWC is pretty much buying hd boxes. So you pretty much have no control. The 2000 is an old box like my Pioneer BD-V1100. Same with the 8000. Maybe a reboot is needed by unplugging or resetting the vram. Hope this helps.

How do I set a series recording to always save the recording with Navigator? I could have sworn that we used to have this option?

How do I set a series recording to always save the recording with Navigator? I could have sworn that we used to have this option?

When setting up a series recording, select "Record Series with Options". There, you can tell it to keep all shows recorded instead of keeping the last three, five, or seven episodes.

You can get into the same menu through the series manager if you need to modify a series that has been set up. To get to the series manager, press the list button on the remote, and press left or right enough times to highlight "SERIES MANAGER". From there, you can modify the series to not to delete. Of course, unless you explicitly lock a show from deletion, an episode will be deleted if the hard drive fills up, forcing it to delete the oldest unlocked recording.

When setting up a series recording, select "Record Series with Options". There, you can tell it to keep all shows recorded instead of keeping the last three, five, or seven episodes.

You can get into the same menu through the series manager if you need to modify a series that has been set up. To get to the series manager, press the list button on the remote, and press left or right enough times to highlight "SERIES MANAGER". From there, you can modify the series to not to delete. Of course, unless you explicitly lock a show from deletion, an episode will be deleted if the hard drive fills up, forcing it to delete the oldest unlocked recording.

Apparently, the latest software update for my 8300 HD DVR has removed the option to “Save until manually erased” when you modify a series recording! The option still exists when you create a series recording. However, it disappeared this week when trying to modify a series recording.

This is a horrible bug! Does anyone else have this problem!

What is happening with your box today? (Wednesday, June 11th.) If your box is now working, you can stop reading. If your box is still not working, read on:

If you still do not have the Guide on your screen, or your box is acting strange, unplug your box for about 10 minutes. Than plug it back in. It may take from 10-30 minutes to boot up. If it's a lesser time-great! Let the box do it's thing for up to 30 minutes without intervention from you. See if a loading message or a message similar to something that says, "Your system is being transferred to a new video format...." appears on the screen during this up to 30 minute check time. If you still do not have a functioning cable guide or system after 30 minutes, call TWC.

Whether or not you have an HD set, will not affect the download of Navigator one way or the other. It just means that if you have an SD set, your only output for ANY box will always be 480i.

Jack

Is your SA 8000 DVR box running Navigator now?

Jack

Thanks for the response. As of today Thursday June 12, 2008 this is what is happening with our cable boxes. The SA Explorer 2000 according to a TWC rep. was not a part of the navigator update but will be in a few weeks. They have re-booted our box from their system and still no success. This morning when I woke up on the clock is said TR 09 instead of a time. I unplugged the box from the wall and let it re-boot back up. As I was drying my hair this morning, I heard a television program playing, so I went out and looked, yes a channel was playing however the picture was snowy. I went back to finish drying my hair and 5 minutes later when I went back to the tv, it was no longer showing a picture and I hit the INFO button and the guide did appear at the bottom of the screen, but again no picture. Then I hit the GUIDE button and all of a sudden a message came up that said "an update is currently running do not disconnect the cable box." then it closed and rebooted again, at this point the Passport program began loading and then the same message appeared "ATTENTION: Loading Channel Information, Please Wait." I had to leave for work but this was the status of that box.

As for the Explorer 8000 box, it had been unplugged when the supposed update was sent because we were having floors installed. I spoke with a rep. from TW yesterday and she said that when we reconnected the box it would probably go through an update and it could take a while. Well I plugged the box in and those four little lines appeared across the box where the time usually is. Then the time appeared so i turned on the TV and cable box and the Mystro system was loading. Once it was loaded I could hit info and only the channel number would appear on the bottom left hand corner of the screen in a light blue box, but the rest of the information panel didn't show up with the name of the show etc. I then hit GUIDE and the guide appeared but nothing was loaded. So I hit INFO again and then where the show information is supposed to be listed, it said loading. That is where we left it at last night. This morning when I woke up the box had those four little lines across the time screen again. So I turned on the TV and box and it started the rebooting process again and was still rebooting when I left for work.


I have no idea what is happening with it and all the TW cable representatives can say is that they can reboot our boxes from there, and otherwise we will have to have a technician come out. Well the earliest they can get a technician out is June 17. They also said that currently all of the customer service centers in the Cincinnati area are out of all boxes. And apparently they have been recieving about 800 calls per minute.

OH and the Rep also said we could check to make sure it's not our cable jack by plugging the cable directly from the wall into the TV (like basic cable without a converter box, which we have in 2 bedrooms in the house, which currently are working fine.) We did this on the basement television which is set-up with the SA Explorer 2000 and we got a picture and sound but again the picture was snowy. The rep said our problem with that box not working properly could be associated with a bad jack, since we are receiving a snowy picture.

We haven't tried plugging from the wall directly into the TV on the set that is hooked up to the SA Explorer 8000 box but I plan to try that tonight. But I still think it's a little weird, that the boxes don't work in two separate locations on two separate floors, yet, our basic cable tvs in 2 of the bedrooms one on the lower level right next to the room with the Explorer 2000 jack works just fine, and the other one is upstairs where the Explorer 8000 is set up and that tv with basic cable is recieving a fine signal.

I'm at a loss for what could be causing this, but I do know that we will not be paying for our digital cable and dvr services for the time that we haven't been able to use it.

So with this update does anyone have any suggestions or has anyone else ran into this problem?

I got upgraded over night here in Cincinnati. Took a look this morning and was pleasantly surprised that I could actually choose my output's via hdmi. The old software was locked at 1080i. Also, no more grey pillars! Will have to see about this freeze/reboot business. Will run it through its paces tonight. One thing to note, I did have to set my TV to fill for 480i material as it was smashed to a skinny box. Other than that everything seemed to be fine with my 10 minutes or so of tinkering.

I am in Cincinnati, have the 8300 HD box, and can not get a picture via HDMI (which goes from the box to an Onkyo receiver and then to a Samsung LCD HD TV. "Mode not supported" is the message. I am watching now by running RCA cables from the box to the inputs on the TV, receiver is out of the loop.

There are no Settings choices in the new Navigator that will allow me to select HDMI output, in spite of the TWC tech trying to lead me to one--it is not there. Other forum msgs speak of an advanced setting screen which the techs can use (press Info and Guide with power off (or on)) but these do not work for me). How can I set up HDMI output from the 8300HD box?

I have been reading scores of pages in this thread but never really saw specific advice for HDMI setup, with Navigator, in a 8300HD box, with HDMI running to a receiver vs direct to the TV. Can someone offer either a message number or specific things I can try to get my HDMI back up and running.

Thanks,
Ken45140

another bug???

Before the navigator, my TWC remote's MUTE button shut off TV and Surround Sound volume...
Now, when i hit Mute, it still leave sthe Surround sound volume on,,
What changed in setup that made this happen???

Why is it that every nite I turn on TV, I have to re-load the 6 days of programming again. The old system would keep 5 days and all I would have to load is the new 6th day..Now, 99% of time, I have to redo all 6 days,,once or twice it kept 2 days,,but NEVER has it kept 5 days worth,,

There is no way in hell the Techies in TWC wanted this POS software,,this had to be the execs getting some POS software for some ungodly cheap rate..

anyone else having this issue????

Navigator running on 8300HD, build number unknown:

Message after past message refers to a "Devices" submenu off of the Quick Settings. The Settings Menu on my Navigator screen has NO DEVICES choice anywhere. I understood that I could select HDMI from the Devices menu, but I have no Devices choice. I guess this is an "improvement" (gag) of the latest Navigator built (can't have too much choice in the hand of users).

Can someone tell me specifically about Devices and setting/selecting HDMI output with the Navigator.

I realize this might overlap a message I posted above but I have wondered why so many past messages refer to a menu choice (Devices) that I do not see.

Thanks for any ideas.

anyone else having this issue????

yep.

Jack

Thanks for the response. As of today Thursday June 12, 2008 this is what is happening with our cable boxes. The SA Explorer 2000 according to a TWC rep. was not a part of the navigator update but will be in a few weeks. They have re-booted our box from their system and still no success. This morning when I woke up on the clock is said TR 09 instead of a time. I unplugged the box from the wall and let it re-boot back up. As I was drying my hair this morning, I heard a television program playing, so I went out and looked, yes a channel was playing however the picture was snowy. I went back to finish drying my hair and 5 minutes later when I went back to the tv, it was no longer showing a picture and I hit the INFO button and the guide did appear at the bottom of the screen, but again no picture. Then I hit the GUIDE button and all of a sudden a message came up that said "an update is currently running do not disconnect the cable box." then it closed and rebooted again, at this point the Passport program began loading and then the same message appeared "ATTENTION: Loading Channel Information, Please Wait." I had to leave for work but this was the status of that box.

As for the Explorer 8000 box, it had been unplugged when the supposed update was sent because we were having floors installed. I spoke with a rep. from TW yesterday and she said that when we reconnected the box it would probably go through an update and it could take a while. Well I plugged the box in and those four little lines appeared across the box where the time usually is. Then the time appeared so i turned on the TV and cable box and the Mystro system was loading. Once it was loaded I could hit info and only the channel number would appear on the bottom left hand corner of the screen in a light blue box, but the rest of the information panel didn't show up with the name of the show etc. I then hit GUIDE and the guide appeared but nothing was loaded. So I hit INFO again and then where the show information is supposed to be listed, it said loading. That is where we left it at last night. This morning when I woke up the box had those four little lines across the time screen again. So I turned on the TV and box and it started the rebooting process again and was still rebooting when I left for work.


I have no idea what is happening with it and all the TW cable representatives can say is that they can reboot our boxes from there, and otherwise we will have to have a technician come out. Well the earliest they can get a technician out is June 17. They also said that currently all of the customer service centers in the Cincinnati area are out of all boxes. And apparently they have been receiving about 800 calls per minute.

OH and the Rep also said we could check to make sure it's not our cable jack by plugging the cable directly from the wall into the TV (like basic cable without a converter box, which we have in 2 bedrooms in the house, which currently are working fine.) We did this on the basement television which is set-up with the SA Explorer 2000 and we got a picture and sound but again the picture was snowy. The rep said our problem with that box not working properly could be associated with a bad jack, since we are receiving a snowy picture.

We haven't tried plugging from the wall directly into the TV on the set that is hooked up to the SA Explorer 8000 box but I plan to try that tonight. But I still think it's a little weird, that the boxes don't work in two separate locations on two separate floors, yet, our basic cable TVs in 2 of the bedrooms one on the lower level right next to the room with the Explorer 2000 jack works just fine, and the other one is upstairs where the Explorer 8000 is set up and that tv with basic cable is receiving a fine signal.

I'm at a loss for what could be causing this, but I do know that we will not be paying for our digital cable and dvr services for the time that we haven't been able to use it.

So with this update does anyone have any suggestions or has anyone else ran into this problem?

Thanks for the detailed response. It sounds like something didn't take the upgrade well. You might want to check tonight to see if anything has changed. The snow on the picture could be a bad connection or cable that needs to be replaced. Bad cables can cause spontaneous reboots excessively, especially with the Navigator boxes.

Did you make an appointment for the 17th? Let us know how that goes if you did plus any other Navigator developments that arise.

Jack

Went through the TW Cinci Navigator "Downgrade" :mad: on my 8300hd the other day with a few small issues. A couple of reboots and freezes. Nothing too major, but then last night I was trying to watch a movie on HD Net and noticed that the sound was different than usual. Hit the display button on my Onkyo receiver and it said PCM instead of the standard Dolby 5.1 that I normally get through that channel. I went into the audio setting on the 8300hd and it had Dolby selected. I tried to switch it to PCM and then back to Dolby but it would not change the output. I have the DVR ran through component and toslink to my Onkyo receiver and then component back to my TV. Anybody have any ideas how to get this to work? Their customer service reps are horrible and they can't get a tech out for over a week. I searched the forums but only found people with similar issues using HDMI.

Went through the TW Cinci Navigator "Downgrade" :mad: on my 8300hd the other day with a few small issues. A couple of reboots and freezes. Nothing too major, but then last night I was trying to watch a movie on HD Net and noticed that the sound was different than usual. Hit the display button on my Onkyo receiver and it said PCM instead of the standard Dolby 5.1 that I normally get through that channel. I went into the audio setting on the 8300hd and it had Dolby selected. I tried to switch it to PCM and then back to Dolby but it would not change the output. I have the DVR ran through component and toslink to my Onkyo receiver and then component back to my TV. Anybody have any ideas how to get this to work? Their customer service reps are horrible and they can't get a tech out for over a week. I searched the forums but only found people with similar issues using HDMI.

Press the settings button on your remote. Scroll to the audio options menu. Somewhere in there, there is a setting to tell it what format you want the audio output to. "HDMI" means to follow the HDMI spec . Therefore, if your TV can accept Dolby Digital, your box will output Dolby Digital. Otherwise, it outputs PCM. "Dolby Digital" forces a Dolby Digital out. If your TV cannot handle Dolby digital while connected via HDMI, it might output garbage audio or be silent. "Other" forces a PCM signal out.

Note that how to get this setting on your legacy boxes and the newer CableCARD-based boxes are vastly different. On the newer boxes, you will find this setting in the Devices menu item in the Quick Settings menu in the control panel.

Press the settings button on your remote. Scroll to the audio options menu. Somewhere in there, there is a setting to tell it what format you want the audio output to. "HDMI" means to follow the HDMI spec . Therefore, if your TV can accept Dolby Digital, your box will output Dolby Digital. Otherwise, it outputs PCM. "Dolby Digital" forces a Dolby Digital out. If your TV cannot handle Dolby digital while connected via HDMI, it might output garbage audio or be silent. "Other" forces a PCM signal out.

Note that how to get this setting on your legacy boxes and the newer CableCARD-based boxes are vastly different. On the newer boxes, you will find this setting in the Devices menu item in the Quick Settings menu in the control panel.
That was there on the old Passport software but on the new Navigator software the only option is Audio Coding, and I have that selected as Dolby Digital instead of PCM. Also I do not have the 8300hd hooked up using HDMI. It is hooked up using component. Thanks for trying though.

That was there on the old Passport software but on the new Navigator software the only option is Audio Coding, and I have that selected as Dolby Digital instead of PCM. Also I do not have the 8300hd hooked up using HDMI. It is hooked up using component. Thanks for trying though.

Try rebooting. I got Dolby Digital out of my old 8300HD when I set it up in the same menu. (I eventually changed this box out because it would crash when mixing the DVR, HDTV, and closed captioning together a certain way. My mother needs closed captioning due to her not being a native English speaker, so this combo was common in our house.) If that does not work, apparently the software change got corrupted in transit, forcing you to get a newer box.

Press the settings button on your remote. Scroll to the audio options menu. Somewhere in there, there is a setting to tell it what format you want the audio output to. "HDMI" means to follow the HDMI spec . Therefore, if your TV can accept Dolby Digital, your box will output Dolby Digital. Otherwise, it outputs PCM. "Dolby Digital" forces a Dolby Digital out. If your TV cannot handle Dolby digital while connected via HDMI, it might output garbage audio or be silent. "Other" forces a PCM signal out.

Note that how to get this setting on your legacy boxes and the newer CableCARD-based boxes are vastly different. On the newer boxes, you will find this setting in the Devices menu item in the Quick Settings menu in the control panel.I think that one of the problems with the HDMI spec (rather, with the VESA Enhanced Extended Display Identification Data--E-EDID--spec) is that it's a description of the device's personal capability. Lot's of people would love to hook HDMI into their display and have Dolby D flow through HDMI and out of their display's S/PDIF output, but there's no way for a display to get Dolby D sent to its HDMI input without either lying or actually being capable of dealing with Dolby D. Most displays with built-in digital tuners probably are capable of dealing with it, but few seem to say that. For the most part, they tell the upstream HDMI source that they can do 2.0 or 2.1 sound and that's how that device ends up mixing its sound. That's why Passport Echo and SARA added sound setting which inhibit transmission of sound through HDMI. People would hook HDMI from the STB directly to their televisions and suddenly there wouldn't be any surround sound available from the box, either through HDMI or S/PDIF. Set the setting to "Dolby D" (or something like that) and no sound would flow through HDMI and Dolby D would come out of the S/PDIF outs; set it to HDMI and 2.1 or 2.0 PCM would be produced through HDMI and S/PDIF (unless the downstream device--AVR or television--stated that it could handle Dolby D or surround LPCM formats in its E-EDID).

I am in Cincinnati, have the 8300 HD box, and can not get a picture via HDMI (which goes from the box to an Onkyo receiver and then to a Samsung LCD HD TV. "Mode not supported" is the message. I am watching now by running RCA cables from the box to the inputs on the TV, receiver is out of the loop.

I don't think this will work, but may be wrong. Instead, run HDMI directly to your TV, and then use the audio out (digital or optical) to the Receiver.

There are no Settings choices in the new Navigator that will allow me to select HDMI output, in spite of the TWC tech trying to lead me to one--it is not there. Other forum msgs speak of an advanced setting screen which the techs can use (press Info and Guide with power off (or on)) but these do not work for me). How can I set up HDMI output from the 8300HD box?

Once the HDMI "handshake" is complete, the selection may become available (shown).

Last night at midnight, both of my 8300HD's with MDN spontaneously rebooted. One box was on, and one was off. The box that was on was recording Leno, and the recording resumed after the reboot was completed.

I checked the stats and found no changes to the software version, so I have no idea why they sent down a reboot. :confused:

Last night at midnight, both of my 8300HD's with MDN spontaneously rebooted. One box was on, and one was off. The box that was on was recording Leno, and the recording resumed after the reboot was completed.

I checked the stats and found no changes to the software version, so I have no idea why they sent down a reboot. :confused:Looks like it might be on TW's end. Mine did the same thing; right at midnight. I noticed that it started to stutter and pixelate just before the reboot. Also, the boot didn't go well; failed at E-13 and I had to cycle power.

My random thoughts about Navigator...

I've had Navigator for 3 days, here are things I like/dislike.

Like
1) I can see how full my dvr is w/o having to access the diagnostics menu.
2) Gray sidebars are gone on SD programming!! (Sweet!)
3) The music channels are buffered now... you can rewind them!
4) Ummmmm....

Dislike
1) Can't pause a show then swap tuners and expect swapped tuner to remain paused.
2) Can't choose PIP size
3) When changing channels, it swaps tuners. This is annoying if you care what's currently on your 2nd tuner.
4) Rewind kicks you forward in time much like the fast forward kicks you back. This is not a cool feature. It's very annoying. I had to rewind something 6 times to finally see what I wanted.
5) The "replay" button only goes back 7 seconds. (Should at least be 10)
6) I've had Navi for 3 days and it's already spontaneously rebooted my box twice.
7) When your box spontaneously reboots, anything that was recording is completely gone, even if the reboot happened if the show was almost over.
8) Takes exactly 5 seconds to change the channel when punching in a number.
9) I can't organize my Recordings how I see fit. The "keep longer" option is gone! I like to organize my list by more than just "by date" or "by time".
10) It just feels clunky. I'm sure there are more things I dislike, but it's late and that's enough. I will be providing TWC with my feedback.

Good night.

5) The "replay" button only goes back 7 seconds. (Should at least be 10)


Not quite; I've tested this extensively. As I've previously reported, the "instant replay" button only goes back 3 seconds, not 7, which would be fine, and not 8 which is what it claims to be in the published material put out by TWC on Navigator. Either way, it's an easy bug to fix and should have been addressed in beta. Apparently they really didn't have a beta testing program, or we'll all the guinea pigs in one now.

Mr Wolf: thanks for the ideas. Bummer. I bought the Onkyo because it was the only receiver (at the time) with switched HDMI inputs. I run cable box into 1 input, DVD into other, single output cable to TV. Then I can switch between cable and DVD without worrying about changing a cable or using component. If what you say is true, then thanks TWC, you have just screwed up my system.

On my non HD TV, i have a 3250 box,,just got navigatored,,and here is bug..

you load the 6 days, and then when you get out to watch TV, and if you go back to Guide, the days are unloaded already...even if you load the days and go backward after loading, they dissapear..

Is this normal for 3250 box, or is it a bad box? I unplugged box for 30 minutes, didnt help.

Mr Wolf: thanks for the ideas. Bummer. I bought the Onkyo because it was the only receiver (at the time) with switched HDMI inputs. I run cable box into 1 input, DVD into other, single output cable to TV. Then I can switch between cable and DVD without worrying about changing a cable or using component. If what you say is true, then thanks TWC, you have just screwed up my system.It should work and if it doesn't it's a bug on the part of the cable STB. We have one of these DVRs in the house where I live but I believe that it's connected to the television (in the family room) via component video.

I share a house and have a separate set-up in my room with a 46" 1080p LCD panel and 5.1 sound (I'm using the panel as a monitor for my laptop as I type this). I have seven devices from seven different OEMs interconnected via HDMI: Mits LCD panel, Onkyo AVR, Belkin 3-into-1 HDMI switch, TiVo Series3, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Toshiba HD DVD. It all works fine with no other cabling involved, just HDMI for both audio and video.

Not quite; I've tested this extensively. As I've previously reported, the "instant replay" button only goes back 3 seconds, not 7, which would be fine, and not 8 which is what it claims to be in the published material put out by TWC on Navigator. Either way, it's an easy bug to fix and should have been addressed in beta. Apparently they really didn't have a beta testing program, or we'll all the guinea pigs in one now.

Actually, this seems to vary. I've had it only go back a couple of seconds at times when at others it clearly did go back 8 seconds (it's obvious with sporting events that have a running clock on the screen). I don't know what the pattern is if any as to why it works sometimes and not others. Is it more prone to be short on HD vs. SD content, for example.

Actually, this seems to vary. I've had it only go back a couple of seconds at times when at others it clearly did go back 8 seconds (it's obvious with sporting events that have a running clock on the screen). I don't know what the pattern is if any as to why it works sometimes and not others. Is it more prone to be short on HD vs. SD content, for example.

Huh, that's interesting. All we ever watch is HD material (worthy exception: BSG on SciFi SD - I'd watch it on a cell phone if I had to). And every time I've tested it, using on-screen clocks as you mention as well as a stopwatch, it always comes in at 3 seconds back - not nearly enough to make the button useful.

Apparently, the latest software update for my 8300 HD DVR has removed the option to “Save until manually erased” when you modify a series recording! The option still exists when you create a series recording. However, it disappeared this week when trying to modify a series recording.

This is a horrible bug! Does anyone else have this problem!

Any thoughts on this one? Does everyone still have the option to set a series as do not delete when they create the series?

Huh, that's interesting. All we ever watch is HD material (worthy exception: BSG on SciFi SD - I'd watch it on a cell phone if I had to). And every time I've tested it, using on-screen clocks as you mention as well as a stopwatch, it always comes in at 3 seconds back - not nearly enough to make the button useful.
If you press the replay button 3 times, will that give you 9 seconds? It's cumulative on my Sara Software. Each press goes back an additional 8 seconds.

Apparently, the latest software update for my 8300 HD DVR has removed the option to “Save until manually erased” when you modify a series recording! The option still exists when you create a series recording. However, it disappeared this week when trying to modify a series recording.

This is a horrible bug! Does anyone else have this problem!

It still exists, but the option is called "Keep all episodes" instead of “Save until manually erased”. I am using ODN 2.4.1_93. What is your version number?

To get your version number, press and hold select until the mail light flashes on the front screen. Then press down. Somewhere in the huge number of pages, find the ResApp version. I think that this is on page 14 of the diagnostics. It was on page 14 when I used to use MDN.

MDN is the Navigator software that is designed to run on the boxes without CableCARDs, and ODN is the port of the MDN software that runs on the boxes with CableCARDs.

MDN is written in C and compiled down to native machine language. C is a language that was designed to compile down to very fast native machine code and offers little in the way of error checking except to make sure that an object or function actually exists before trying to use this, and most of this checking is done at compile time.

ODN is written in Java, a language is translated on the fly into native machine code. This offers some advantages and disadvantages. The advantages include the ability to run on any architecture with enough resources to do so and easy runtime error-checking of the code. The disadvantages include more memory usage and slower execution because executing Java code requires a translation step before it can be run. This runtime error checking allows the Java virtual machine (JVM) which is the program that executes Java code, to report the module of code that triggered the crash when one occurs, and it also prevents a Java program crash from bringing down the operating system as long as the JVM is properly written. This is in contrast to C, where a badly written program can crash an operating system that fails to provide memory protection. This reporting allows the programmers to quickly determine the error that caused the crash and fix it.

On my non HD TV, i have a 3250 box,,just got navigatored,,and here is bug..

you load the 6 days, and then when you get out to watch TV, and if you go back to Guide, the days are unloaded already...even if you load the days and go backward after loading, they dissapear..

Is this normal for 3250 box, or is it a bad box? I unplugged box for 30 minutes, didnt help.

mine does this as well.

MDN is the Navigator software that is designed to run on the boxes without CableCARDs, and ODN is the port of the MDN software that runs on the boxes with CableCARDs.The significance of ODN is not that it's written in Java per se, but that it's written for a specific Java execution environment called "OCAP" (where the "O" in "ODN" comes from, "OCAP Digital Navigator"). The Open Cable Application Platform is something not exclusive to leased cable boxes. OCAP + OpenCable Host Interface 2.0 are collectedly referred to as "<tru2way>" (with or without the "angle brackets") and will be featured eventually in a variety of retail products (just as Unidirectional CableCARD was briefly common in televisions). You will be able to buy televisions, which, with an M-Card inserted, will be able to download OCAP apps like ODN and run them with no external box. Samsung has been demonstrating ODN running on prototype televisions at product shows for the past few years.

It still exists, but the option is called "Keep all episodes" instead of “Save until manually erased”. I am using ODN 2.4.1_93. What is your version number?These are not the same thing. Keep all episodes refers only to the number of series episodes to accumulate; it has nothing to do with the retention duration.

Unfortunately, the Series Manager does not allow you to automatically protect the recordings from deletion. You must do it on each individual recording, either in the Scheduled Recordings List or the Show List. Select the show, then Record Options. For Change Save Time, select Do Not Delete.

So today I had the day off and simply wanted to enjoy some cable digital radio.

When I turn on my POS 8300HDC, with the plasma OFF, I get my typical intermittent sound thru my avr (if I had the plasma on, the picture would be flashing on and off as well).

No amount of turning off and recycling and altering the power on sequence of devices would fix the problem.

So, as usual, I have to unplug the 8300HDC and wait and wait and wait for the reboot to complete.

Except this time I get stuck on L-13 and then the dreaded E-13 on Friday the 13th!!! :(

So, I unplug the POS 8300HDC, again, and wait 10 minutes, then plug back in and it decides to honor me with a successful reboot.

Now, after 20+ some minutes I can finally start to enjoy my day off with some cable music.

Happy Friday 13th!

Erik

These are not the same thing. Keep all episodes refers only to the number of series episodes to accumulate; it has nothing to do with the retention duration.

Unfortunately, the Series Manager does not allow you to automatically protect the recordings from deletion.

Yes it does. JNV is correct, Keep all Episodes will prevent deletion and indicate each episode in the list with a vague green symbol in MDN. Any other recording will use that space for the deletion alert.

If you get info on any show in the list or upcoming list it will state "do not delete" in the lower right corner if you have KAE optioned.

Yes it does. JNV is correct, Keep all Episodes will prevent deletion and indicate each episode in the list with a vague green symbol in MDN. Any other recording will use that space for the deletion alert.

If you get info on any show in the list or upcoming list it will state "do not delete" in the lower right corner if you have KAE optioned.Perhaps another difference between MDN and ODN?

7) When your box spontaneously reboots, anything that was recording is completely gone, even if the reboot happened if the show was almost over.

Hmmm...I haven't had that problem. Are you sure you were recording and not just buffering? So far, each time there's been a reboot while recording, my boxes have saved the first part of the program (pre-boot) and then re-started recording after the boot was completed (just like Passport would).

Is your box an 8300HDC or 8300HD? (Your profile says HD, but some folks have missed the extra letter). There could be a difference in how both versions of Navigator handle the recording/reboot events.

Let’s help them make it better and see if they do.

All operating systems and applications have bugs or features that make one ask, “What were they thinking”. Navigator has been rolling out to Time Warner customers in other major cities over the past year and some of the bugs I’ve seen should never have made it out of user testing. Stability issues and screen loops, sometimes take a bit of time to flush out so an occasional reboot is expected (provided it doesn’t happen when my show is recording). Does anyone know what language Navigator was written in?

I suggest we begin submitting Bug Reports to Time Warner’s navigator/feedback site. Write down the problem, how you arrive at the problem, and are you able to duplicate the problem? If you go see the doctor and say that you hurt and the doctor asks, where, you can’t say “All over”. Time Warner’s developers have to know where the bugs are in order to fix them. If Time Warner is slow to acknowledge and resolve the issues then we have a right to begin turning the screw.

Bugs I’ve found with my 8300HD DVR since Navigator installed. I listed them from serious to cosmetic.

1. When recording a show and selecting “Save until Space is needed,” system is telling me that it will be deleting the show in 48 hours. System reports 20% of disk is used.
2. System gets stuck and can’t exit loop while taking option B in On Demand shows. Reproduce problem every time. Press “B” And find some On Demand Content. When finished, press “C” to exit as explained in documentation. I am only able to exit as far as the channel guide. The only way to exit is to access another channel. The on demand stuff should work using the second turner and when finished with your on demand usage, you should be able to return to normal programming.
Lock ups and reboots seem to occur the most while in the “A, B” menus.
3. If your press “Play” a second time while watching a channel, the DVR will begin broadcasting at half speed (Slo-mo). The on screen icon remains as a play and should switch to a slow play icon.
4. Hardware info panel (where the clock is located). When the 8300 is powdered down, the I/O power light extinguishes, however the resolution and HDTV lights remain lit. All lights but the clock should turn off when the unit is switched to low power mode.

Hmmm...I haven't had that problem. Are you sure you were recording and not just buffering? So far, each time there's been a reboot while recording, my boxes have saved the first part of the program (pre-boot) and then re-started recording after the boot was completed (just like Passport would).

Is your box an 8300HDC or 8300HD? (Your profile says HD, but some folks have missed the extra letter). There could be a difference in how both versions of Navigator handle the recording/reboot events.

My 8300HD will restart the recording after one of it's spontaneous reboots.

Jim

My 8300HD will restart the recording after one of it's spontaneous reboots.

Jim

We had to pull the plug on our 8300HDC while it was recording a show. After the reboot, it resumed recording.

Hey, all. Great thread. Thanks for all the useful info. I just discovered something very exciting on my Navigator here. Maybe.
Summary:

In Series Recording Options, the "Save At Most - Last 7 Episodes" setting may actually be "Save Until Space is Needed" [Update - nevermind. I was wrong about this. "Keep Last 7 Episodes" = "Keep Last 7 Episodes"]

(See pics here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/28244199@N00/sets/72157605611109476/). These show the Navigator screens involved, my diagnostics pg14, and my diag SDV screen)


More details:

I am in Cincinnati, OH with Time Warner Cable. My SA 8300HD box was flashed to use the Navigator software this past Tuesday. (Since then it appears to have been flashed a 2nd time. Evidence for this: 1- The word 'Maestro' is no longer listed anywhere in the diag screens and 2- the 'Info' button is now usable on the DVR show list and when searching.) One of my main gripes has been that for *series* recording, there was no longer an option to "Save until space was needed". This option is the default for *individual show* recording, so I know Navigator understands the idea still.

I was looking at the series recording options and noticed the 'Save At Most' items were arranged oddly. Keep All was default. If you press left, you have several options of number of episodes. If you press right, you have only "Last 7 Episodes" listed which you expect to be on the left after the entry for 5 or 6. I wondered if this was actually my missing option for "Save until space is needed".

My Test: I added 'Spongebob' as a series to "keep last 7 eps". Waited for an episode to *finish recording*, I see "save until space is needed" and no green icon by the shows name in the dvd list. That looks promising for right now... But to test this fully I will have to see if this will record 8+ episodes of Spongebob. If it auto-erases the earliest one, then it is truly "keep last 7 eps" and not the "save until space needed" that good ole Passport had.

--

Navigator Version (Page 14 of diag screen): Res: 2.41-92-ptv (Mt. Huron)
"MDN" listed here as well

---

P.S.1 - Also, I wanted to note that I have been successfully using my external SATA drive with Navigator this week. When Navigator was loaded on the system, it went into the cycle of reboots described in this thread. I figured I'd start with a fresh drive, so I loaded it into my PC and formatted it to NTFS. Then I put it back on the 8300 HD and it is working like it used to. HD space went from 83% to 23%. Diagostic screen lists on the WDC drive in the DVR though. It doesn't list the name of my Seagate external 400gb.

P.S.2 - As far as reboots, I have had 2-3. They did not appear related to CC'ing.

P.S.3 - I have been reading about Switched Digital Video recently. I have to remind myself that this is why Passport became Navigator and this is how TW will be able to offer more HD channels. I was interested to see it listed in my diag screen as "SDV NOT ENABLED". Nice to know it really is in there. Hopefully they will begin using it this summer.

P.S.4 - Note on my recorded shows (visible in the pics linked above): I was simply curious how bad Jake Gyllenhall was in that movie. Don't judge me. :P

Actually, this seems to vary. I've had it only go back a couple of seconds at times when at others it clearly did go back 8 seconds (it's obvious with sporting events that have a running clock on the screen). I don't know what the pattern is if any as to why it works sometimes and not others. Is it more prone to be short on HD vs. SD content, for example.Huh, that's interesting. All we ever watch is HD material (worthy exception: BSG on SciFi SD - I'd watch it on a cell phone if I had to). And every time I've tested it, using on-screen clocks as you mention as well as a stopwatch, it always comes in at 3 seconds back - not nearly enough to make the button useful.Could it be jumping back to a certain type of frame, like frame advance works when paused? I forgot if PASSPORT worked that way, but here the frame advance works by "frame" forward, but reverse jumps back to some [pre-]defined spots and not to the previous "frame".

v/r,
C-F

I have posted a detailed message about what I have tried to get a picture via my Onkyo Receiver into a Samsung after the Navigator download. The HDMI from the box seems fine if fed directly to the Samsung, bypassing the Onkyo receiver. But no picture no matter what I try if I route the video through the receiver (either HDMI, component, or RCA).

If you would have an idea about such a situation or have experienced it yourself, could you click over to my other message at 1039765 for details on what I have tried and what the results were.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1039765

I have a TWC technician coming tomorrow but I bet he will say the box and the software are fine (because I get a great picture with direct input to the TV from the SA8300HD box). Only problem is that I do not have any surround sound.

I fear my only other option is to try and get a home theater technician out to investigate the entire system (and hope he does not point his finger at the TWC box and software---a real circular battle).

I hope and wish that someone here has a suggestion or two for me to try as I am stuck in the water so to speak.

Thanks,
Ken

PS this is the Cincinnati market for Navigator and all things TWC.

....I have a TWC technician coming tomorrow but I bet he will say the box and the software are fine (because I get a great picture with direct input to the TV from the SA8300HD box). Only problem is that I do not have any surround sound.

I fear my only other option is to try and get a home theater technician out to investigate the entire system (and hope he does not point his finger at the TWC box and software---a real circular battle)...

Ken, I feel for you. I'm sure there is a reason for your desired setup that I'm unaware of.

I'm not sure why you'd want to go through the Receiver with Video as an extra hop, and then to the TV. When going directly, your 8300HD should recognize the HDMI handshake, and then using the coax or optical audio out to the Receiver you'll get Dolby or Surround Sound. Use "Settings" then "More Settings" etc.

I'm describing my setup, but I don't have HDMI on my Receiver. It's still all good.

I have posted a detailed message about what I have tried to get a picture via my Onkyo Receiver into a Samsung after the Navigator download. The HDMI from the box seems fine if fed directly to the Samsung, bypassing the Onkyo receiver. But no picture no matter what I try if I route the video through the receiver (either HDMI, component, or RCA).

If you would have an idea about such a situation or have experienced it yourself, could you click over to my other message at 1039765 for details on what I have tried and what the results were.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1039765

I have a TWC technician coming tomorrow but I bet he will say the box and the software are fine (because I get a great picture with direct input to the TV from the SA8300HD box). Only problem is that I do not have any surround sound.

I fear my only other option is to try and get a home theater technician out to investigate the entire system (and hope he does not point his finger at the TWC box and software---a real circular battle).

I hope and wish that someone here has a suggestion or two for me to try as I am stuck in the water so to speak.

Thanks,
Ken

PS this is the Cincinnati market for Navigator and all things TWC.There had been problems in the past with old versions of SARA software going through Denon receivers to most any display (my experience was with Samsung). It was due to HDCP handshake issues with the Denon and the SARA software. That was fixed with a SARA update over a year ago, but it does illustrate that there have been issues with some receivers. Could well be the same case with you.

As other's suggest, you are probably better off connecting direct to the Sammy anyway.

I realized tonite that I can swap tuners without first turning in PIP. Not sure when that feature changed, but it's definitely recent.

I'm not sure why you'd want to go through the Receiver with Video as an extra hop, and then to the TV. When going directly, your 8300HD should recognize the HDMI handshake, and then using the coax or optical audio out to the Receiver you'll get Dolby or Surround Sound. Use "Settings" then "More Settings" etc.


Mr. Wolf: After rereading your previous post, I realized I had missed your point. I went out and hooked Cable Box to TV via HDMI, then ran a coax cable from Audio Out of cable box to audio in on receiver---presto, surround sound plus HD picture. And it took a device input button I had not used before to connect the audio correctly.

Seems I am back in business and it is too bad it took me so long to realize/understand your point from the beginning.

Ken

Yes we did schedule a maintenance call for the 17th, hopefully when they come tomorrow they will be able to fix the problem. We have plugged in the cable directly from the wall into the TV on both floors. Both televisions are transmitting snowy pictures and both of the cables are brand new. So the conclusion is that we must have some interference with the line. However, it is odd that our other 2 basic cable ready televisions work and the picture is clear.

I'm very frustrated and fed-up with TWC. Hopefully, they will resolve this issue without any problems tomorrow. I will kepp you updated on the status.

Thanks for the detailed response. It sounds like something didn't take the upgrade well. You might want to check tonight to see if anything has changed. The snow on the picture could be a bad connection or cable that needs to be replaced. Bad cables can cause spontaneous reboots excessively, especially with the Navigator boxes.

Did you make an appointment for the 17th? Let us know how that goes if you did plus any other Navigator developments that arise.

Jack

Perhaps another difference between MDN and ODN?

Speaking of which, does this mean I can go back to TWC and ask for a different type of Navigator box? I'm tired of the sluggishness of the one I have, so I guess I have the Java one. Actually, I know I have the Java one because I see its logo upon boot up. Feels like a Java one too. Uggh!

Is this something I can get from my cable company, or do they tend to give out only one version of the 8300HDC at a time?

Chances are you would end up with another HDC box. Unless they have older HD boxes laying around. MDN was the version for people who already had the HD box deployed got it downloaded to. ODN was the OCAP version for "c" boxes with integrated security. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to ask.

...I went out and hooked Cable Box to TV via HDMI, then ran a coax cable from Audio Out of cable box to audio in on receiver---presto, surround sound plus HD picture...

Sent you a PM about this.
Sgooter

Speaking of which, does this mean I can go back to TWC and ask for a different type of Navigator box? I'm tired of the sluggishness of the one I have, so I guess I have the Java one. Actually, I know I have the Java one because I see its logo upon boot up. Feels like a Java one too. Uggh!

Is this something I can get from my cable company, or do they tend to give out only one version of the 8300HDC at a time?

As slow as ODN is, it is much more stable than MDN. As long as you keep the box from overheating and do not use eSATA, the ODN boxes do not crash. I do not recall any crashes after I propped up my replacement 8300HDC on some two-by-fours except for one caused by a power failure that lasted for a few seconds yesterday. Getting an 8300HD is a bad move in my opinion. (Not that I think that the hardware in the 8300HD is bad, but the MDN software running on it is garbage. The 8300HDC never overheated in my house, but it constantly crashed in my house when MDN was loaded and it was asked to mix DVR, HDTV, and Closed Captioning. This combination is frequent in my house, so I had to gamble on a box swap.)

If you are certain that your box is not in an environment that wil cause it to overheat, then you will want to swap it out with another 8300HDC. Cisco keeps developing new revisions to iron out the bugs in the earliest revisions of this box and to hopefully solve the overheating problems and other crashes that earlier revisions are known for.

As for the speed issue, we will need to wait for the next generation of cable boxes: either the Cisco 8550HDC or 8552HDC boxes (the 8540HDC boxes are not OCAP compliant because they cannot tune analog), or Samsung's newest OCAP DVRs that Time Warner Cable commissioned. I think that the CPUs in these boxes are optimized for Java, while the CPUs in the 8300HDC do not have the expensive hardware needed to run Java quickly. This is because the 8300HDC is basically a hack to add a CableCARD to the 8300HD. This hardware would hardly get used when running native code that the 8300HD was expected to run, so not including it resulted in immense savings. The engineers at Scientific Atlanta were forced to come up with a box for deployment after the July 1, 2007 deadline when integrated security was banned, so they could not afford to change anything that did not absolutely need to change in order to meet the deadline and allow the cable boxes to get some testing. This included not swapping out the CPU, becuase I think that the CPUs were integrated with the Xilleon video decoders from ATI. Swapping out the CPU would have been a major redesign that S-A did not have the time for. Because the 8550HDC was a new design from the ground up, S-A could specify a new CPU that had the needed hardware to run Java quickly.

CORRECTION:In the first paragraph of my response, I accidentally wrote "The 8300HDC never overheated in my house,...". It should be "The 8300HD never overheated in my house,...".

As slow as ODN is, it is much more stable than MDN. As long as you keep the box from overheating and do not use eSATA, the ODN boxes do not crash. I do not recall any crashes after I propped up my replacement 8300HDC on some two-by-fours except for one caused by a power failure that lasted for a few seconds yesterday. Getting an 8300HD is a bad move in my opinion. (Not that I think that the hardware in the 8300HD is bad, but the MDN software running on it is garbage. The 8300HDC never overheated in my house, but it constantly crashed in my house when MDN was loaded and it was asked to mix DVR, HDTV, and Closed Captioning. This combination is frequent in my house, so I had to gamble on a box swap.)


I'd have to disagree. I had an 8300HDC with ODN for several months, and it often failed to record series programs (to me, that's a major stability issue). And ODN was so very, very slow. I replaced that box with an 8300HD, and it's much faster and has only failed to record one program in the 6 weeks I've had it. I don't use the box in that room much, so I never noticed any overheating problems with either model.

I've had only 2 'crashes' on my 8300HD with MDN since the conversion in early May. One was on the first day, so it hardly counts.

As slow as ODN is, it is much more stable than MDN. As long as you keep the box from overheating and do not use eSATA, the ODN boxes do not crash. I do not recall any crashes after I propped up my replacement 8300HDC on some two-by-fours except for one caused by a power failure that lasted for a few seconds yesterday. Getting an 8300HD is a bad move in my opinion. (Not that I think that the hardware in the 8300HD is bad, but the MDN software running on it is garbage. The 8300HDC never overheated in my house, but it constantly crashed in my house when MDN was loaded and it was asked to mix DVR, HDTV, and Closed Captioning. This combination is frequent in my house, so I had to gamble on a box swap.)

.

i've had my box, which is now MDN, for about 2 years. all that time its been in the same spot inside a stand under the TV, directly on a solid wood shelf with another component on top of it. the box is always powered on. i have never had any overheating problems. if i touch the box it is just warm. i definitely have never smelled the smell.
i know you had a problem but i don't think its justified continually posting the same info making it sound like all the boxes overheat without 2x4's under them.
i have had the reboot issue when using CC. my work around is to turn CC off until after the recording has started playing then turn CC back on. i haven't had a reboot since.
i have played around with a friends ODN box quite a bit. its irritatingly slow, and has caused him loads of headaches.
the original posters concern was with the sluggishness of his box.
i think the OP should try and get an MDN box. if he prefers it keep it, if not swap it back for an ODN. it doesn't cost a thing to swap boxes.

i've had my box, which is now MDN, for about 2 years. all that time its been in the same spot inside a stand under the TV, directly on a solid wood shelf with another component on top of it. the box is always powered on. i have never had any overheating problems. if i touch the box it is just warm. i definitely have never smelled the smell.
i know you had a problem but i don't think its justified continually posting the same info making it sound like all the boxes overheat without 2x4's under them.
i have had the reboot issue when using CC. my work around is to turn CC off until after the recording has started playing then turn CC back on. i haven't had a reboot since.
i have played around with a friends ODN box quite a bit. its irritatingly slow, and has caused him loads of headaches.
the original posters concern was with the sluggishness of his box.
i think the OP should try and get an MDN box. if he prefers it keep it, if not swap it back for an ODN. it doesn't cost a thing to swap boxes.
The smell only came from an overheating ODN box. The MDN box I used never overheated. Only badly built ODN boxes overheated. This is one of the few positives I know of on MDN besides stable eSATA support and speed.

I'd have to disagree. I had an 8300HDC with ODN for several months, and it often failed to record series programs (to me, that's a major stability issue). And ODN was so very, very slow. I replaced that box with an 8300HD, and it's much faster and has only failed to record one program in the 6 weeks I've had it. I don't use the box in that room much, so I never noticed any overheating problems with either model.

I've had only 2 'crashes' on my 8300HD with MDN since the conversion in early May. One was on the first day, so it hardly counts.

I understand that ODN is slow, and this is a gripe I have.

As for the failed recordings, the failed recordings quit happening after I put some 2x4s under the box's feet. Therefore, I feel that you need to go to extremes as I had to keep the box cool as I had to do with my 2x4s. This is unpleasant, and we need to pressure TWC to quickly roll out newer cable boxes that are engineered from the ground up to support OCAP.

The next gen TWC DVR is being deployed. Don't know which location. It's made by Samsung but compatible with SA/Cisco networks. I believe it's the SMT-H3050 or some other new box. It looks like Cisco/SA won't be getting it this time. Maybe they will have both Cisco and Samsung. The new Samsung HD DVR will be OCAP compliant and will probably have a 960x540 IPG. That way you get a widescreen IPG. Don't know when it's coming out though. It must be in testing. Hope this helps.

Thank you, jv11, for that detailed response. Maybe I will just wait for those newer boxes.

I just realized that the crashes could be caused by an overloaded power supply. I realized that the area that gets the hottest contains components you would expect to find in a power supply and not in a computer motherboard. It is also in the area nearest the power input. I also know that computer power supplies can stably support higher loads at lower temperatures.

Could it be that the power supply was originally designed for the 8300HD is not designed to take on the additional load a CableCARD adds to the power supply, and therefore is producing bad power due to being overloaded? If so, Cisco needs to replace the power supply with a beefier one that can put out stable power and more watts at higher temperatures safely. Also, when my 8240HDC started smelling like burnt electronics, the smell came from the power supply area.

Also the box that TWC could be using is the SMT-H3090 or SMT-H3092 instead of the 3050. Next gen boxes are coming out but the SA boxes are a possibility.

The next gen TWC DVR is being deployed. Don't know which location. It's made by Samsung but compatible with SA/Cisco networks. I believe it's the SMT-H3050 or some other new box. It looks like Cisco/SA won't be getting it this time. Maybe they will have both Cisco and Samsung. The new Samsung HD DVR will be OCAP compliant and will probably have a 960x540 IPG. That way you get a widescreen IPG. Don't know when it's coming out though. It must be in testing. Hope this helps.
Based on the "new & improved" 8300HDC + Navigator, something tells me that new box is a boat I do not want to sail on for a long, long time. Being on the bleeding edge with TWC just means paying for a lot of TV that you don't actually get to watch. But thanks for the info. As Mr. T used to say "I pity the fool..."

Based on the "new & improved" 8300HDC + Navigator, something tells me that new box is a boat I do not want to sail on for a long, long time. Being on the bleeding edge with TWC just means paying for a lot of TV that you don't actually get to watch. But thanks for the info. As Mr. T used to say "I pity the fool..."

Well not really. This new Samsung box is compatible with SA networks but it's not built on the 8300HDC. It has a broadcom chipset and is made for OCAP and Java. This new box has MPEG-4 capabilities. The widescreen guide is required for OCAP. Samsung has literature on this new SMT-H3090. I doubt they will use the SMT-H3050 now. They have tried it but the 3090 will replace the 8300HDC. They have an OCAP non DVR as well. Time Warner signed a deal with samsung to provide the SMT-H3090. This box will be much better than the 8300HDC. It will still run Navigator but should be better.

Well not really. This new Samsung box is compatible with SA networks but it's not built on the 8300HDC. It has a broadcom chipset and is made for OCAP and Java. This new box has MPEG-4 capabilities. The widescreen guide is required for OCAP. Samsung has literature on this new SMT-H3090. I doubt they will use the SMT-H3050 now. They have tried it but the 3090 will replace the 8300HDC. They have an OCAP non DVR as well. Time Warner signed a deal with samsung to provide the SMT-H3090. This box will be much better than the 8300HDC. It will still run Navigator but should be better.
I hope you're right. It's just that these guys have really made me unhappy over the years. Even if the Samsung box did nothing but allow Navigator to run faster, that would still do a lot to improve users' perception of the product. For example, slowly clunking through the program guide on the SA8300HDC or pressing a button and waiting a full second to see a response on the screen makes the system feel junky even if it works.

What benefit would MPEG-4 give me as the end-user?

Thanks,
-Marty

What benefit would MPEG-4 give me as the end-user?NONE, for quite awhile. When widely implemented, MPEG-4 will provide more bandwidth through more efficient compression. But they will need to deploy quite a few MPEG-4 boxes before it is practical to start using it.

It has been suggested that it could be used for SDV - if the edge QAM at your neighborhood node detects a MPEG-4 capable receiver, it could use MPEG-4 instead of MPEG-2. The benefit here would be marginal however.

I hope you're right. It's just that these guys have really made me unhappy over the years. Even if the Samsung box did nothing but allow Navigator to run faster, that would still do a lot to improve users' perception of the product. For example, slowly clunking through the program guide on the SA8300HDC or pressing a button and waiting a full second to see a response on the screen makes the system feel junky even if it works.

What benefit would MPEG-4 give me as the end-user?

Thanks,
-Marty

MPEG-4 would allow for more HD channels. Some HD channels like Starz and HBO are using MPEG4. MPEG4 is a more efficient and more modern codec than MPEG4. Supposedly is better in quality. It maintains that HD quality while using less bandwidth Time Warner won't have to transcode the MPEG-4 to MPEG-2. Mystro does suck pretty badly but the MDN version is much better than the ODN version. I can't imagine running the ODN version on my old Pioneer box that can't run OCAP. MDN runs on my old pioneer box but slow.

However there have been Samsung spottings in New York but thats the SMT-H3050. The 3090 might be coming out later this year. The 3020 is the HD non DVR version.

Hope this helps.

Supposedly is better in quality.Not really. It maintains that HD quality while using less bandwidthTrue. BUT........
Time Warner won't have to transcode the MPEG-4 to MPEG-2.As I pointed out before, it will be quite some time before TW can switch to MPEG-4. They still need to service all those MPEG-2 only STBs. So it will be quite sometime before TW can drop transcoding.

I've had only 2 'crashes' on my 8300HD with MDN since the conversion in early May. One was on the first day, so it hardly counts.

I've had zero crashes, no freezes, no reboots, nothing unexpected, since being Navigated in Early may.

However ...

I just received another upgrade call which means one of two things. Either my 2000 box is getting the treatment or it's an upgrade to the 8300 Nav.

If the latter is the case then my good hardware run might be about to end.

Here is a PDF containing the Samsung SMT-H3090 specifications (http://www.samsung.com/us/system/consumer/product/2008/05/09/smt_h3090twc/SMT-H3090_080205.pdf). I am not happy that they are using a dual core 400MHz processor instead of a single core 600MHz processor the 8550HDC promises, because set top boxes do not have much opportunity for parallelism, except where one or more recordings are being managed in the background. This means that the Samsung box will not be as fast as the newer Cisco boxes when running OCAP, except on maybe a multithreaded game or when a recording is being managed in the background. However, Samsung is willing to sell this box with up to a 320GB hard drive, which is a step up from the 160GB drive the 8550HDC and the 8300HDC promise.

As for how these are Scientific Atlanta compatiable, this is achieved through the CableCARD sold by Scientific Atlanta that does the PowerKEY descrambling. They cannot run legacy Scientific Atlanta software because they use Linux as their underlying OS instead of Scientific Atlanta's PowerTV operating system.

There's no way of predicting whether the Samsung box will be faster or not--you certainly can't predict it based on number of processors and their clock-speed without knowing something about the internal architecture of both the hardware and software. The OCAP-compliant Java platform running on the Samsung product could run the same line of Java code 15 times faster clock-for-clock than what Scientific Atlanta is using, which is their own product. Samsung has been working on this stuff with TWC for the past few years, bringing prototype OCAP-compliant televisions to product shows running TWC's ODN IPG without an STB. If their Java VM is optimized for the demands of any application, it's TWC's OCAP Digital Navigator.

Perhaps they may have made a custom version running PowerTV OCAP middleware. Interested to see these boxes. There are press releases pertaining to this stuff.

I doubt that the middleware that they're using in their boxes has anything to do with Scientific Atlanta (whose OCAP platform is called "Axiom" and has nothing to do with PowerTV and so far as I can tell is its own independent RTOS, though they call it "middleware"). To be useful, the ODN IPG has to be hardware independent. Any box or television running a standards-complaint OCAP execution platform should run it, just as almost any cellphone that you buy from Sprint will lrun Java applications that you purchase and download from their network, though the Java environments that individual models are running may have come from any of a half dozen or so mobile platform middleware providers.

That's the whole point of Java--"write once, run anywhere (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_once,_run_anywhere)".

There's no way of predicting whether the Samsung box will be faster or not--you certainly can't predict it based on number of processors and their clock-speed without knowing something about the internal architecture of both the hardware and software. The OCAP-compliant Java platform running on the Samsung product could run the same line of Java code 15 times faster clock-for-clock than what Scientific Atlanta is using, which is their own product. Samsung has been working on this stuff with TWC for the past few years, bringing prototype OCAP-compliant televisions to product shows running TWC's ODN IPG without an STB. If their Java VM is optimized for the demands of any application, it's TWC's OCAP Digital Navigator.

As for this comment about comparing processors, you are right. I could have been entirely wrong on the processor speeds and how much work each processor does per clock. However, I feel that a single high-speed core would perform better than two medium-performance cores in a set-top box because there is not much parallelism to exploit. Better yet, since Java bytecode interpretation and recompilation involves lots of branches, a single core with symmetric multithreading (of which Intel's Hyper-Threading Technology on the Pentium 4 is the most famous example) would be better because you can use multiple threads to reduce or eliminate the instructions that must be guessed at before the branch finally resolves, exploiting what little parallelism there is to mitigate or completely hide a major problem in dealing with software architectures which interpret and recompile instructions.

I doubt that the middleware that they're using in their boxes has anything to do with Scientific Atlanta (whose OCAP platform is called "Axiom" and has nothing to do with PowerTV and so far as I can tell is its own independent RTOS, though they call it "middleware"). To be useful, the ODN IPG has to be hardware independent. Any box or television running a standards-complaint OCAP execution platform should run it, just as almost any cellphone that you buy from Sprint will lrun Java applications that you purchase and download from their network, though the Java environments that individual models are running may have come from any of a half dozen or so mobile platform middleware providers.

That's the whole point of Java--"write once, run anywhere (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_once,_run_anywhere)".

Axiom OCAP middleware is probably just a middleware and not an RTOS at all. It runs on top of PowerTV, much like how Windows 3.1 ran on top of MS-DOS. I am pretty sure that if Axiom OCAP was its own OS, there would not be any black PowerTV logo on top of a magenta background when the box first boots, and that the Axiom OCAP middleware will display the PowerTV and the Scientific Atlanta logos on it. I think that what happened is that Time Warner Cable knew about the deadline and commissioned Esmertec to create an OCAP middleware according to this press release (http://www.esmertec.com/fileadmin/Files/Press_releases/2005/2004/040406_pressrelease_Esmertec_TWC.pdf). Scientific Atlanta apparently was impressed by this or did not want to write its own middleware, so it either bought or licensed the rights to this middleware from either Time Warner Cable or Esmertec, and then named it the Axiom OCAP middleware. Therefore, you see the Scientific Atlanta: A Cisco Company, PowerTV, Java, and Esmertec logos on the OCAP splash screen that shows up when your box boots up.

Don't count of Cisco. It appears that the 8552 DVR is going to be the next DVR for TWC. Sorry about posting samsung rumors. Samsung has a DVR that appeals to TWC but the 8552HDC has everything time warner wants. It has Whole Home capability. Time Warner signed up with MoCA. This new SA box does have MPEG-4 capabilities which takes up less bandwidth. There is a very small chance of the SMT-H3092 which can do everything TWC wants it to do. OCAP TV's are coming out some time this year but Tru2Way/OCAP will be implemented next year on TV's except Panasonic.

Don't count of Cisco. It appears that the 8552 DVR is going to be the next DVR for TWC. Sorry about posting samsung rumors. Samsung has a DVR that appeals to TWC but the 8552HDC has everything time warner wants. It has Whole Home capability. Time Warner signed up with MoCA. This new SA box does have MPEG-4 capabilities which takes up less bandwidth. There is a very small chance of the SMT-H3092 which can do everything TWC wants it to do. OCAP TV's are coming out some time this year but Tru2Way/OCAP will be implemented next year on TV's except Panasonic.

Could you please provide a source? I found a press release (http://www.alticast.com/pressroom/pressroom_release_read.html?years=2007&num=347) corroborating the rumors of Samsung building OCAP DVRs for Time Warner cable. Also, Samsung advertises multi-room DVR on its SMT-H3092 with this advertisement (http://www.samsung.com/sec/business/network/download/samsung_settop_070618.pdf) for various set-top boxes. My guess is that Time Warner Cable wants to go multi-supplier so that if someone builds a bad DVR like the 8300HDC series with its apparently overloaded power supply, TWC can switch providers to enforce minimum acceptable quality standards and to limit cost per box.

EDIT:I found a source here (http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=154649&site=cdn). Just don't count Samsung out.

Well it seems to be obvious. If TWC goes Cisco then they will pick the 8552HDC. That box has the capabilities TWC wants. I'm not some insider though. I think a dual supplier is fair.

Well not really. This new Samsung box is compatible with SA networks but it's not built on the 8300HDC. It has a broadcom chipset and is made for OCAP and Java. This new box has MPEG-4 capabilities. The widescreen guide is required for OCAP. Samsung has literature on this new SMT-H3090. I doubt they will use the SMT-H3050 now. They have tried it but the 3090 will replace the 8300HDC. They have an OCAP non DVR as well. Time Warner signed a deal with samsung to provide the SMT-H3090. This box will be much better than the 8300HDC. It will still run Navigator but should be better.

Looks like a sweet STB (a RTOS!). But I am sure TWC will screw it up as they do everything. But why do I need a STB? All I should need is a HDTV, CableCard 2-way in the TV, and an eSATA hard drive.

As for this comment about comparing processors, you are right. I could have been entirely wrong on the processor speeds and how much work each processor does per clock. However, I feel that a single high-speed core would perform better than two medium-performance cores in a set-top box because there is not much parallelism to exploit.I think that there's a fair amount of paralellism. Passport recorded streams from both tuners almost constantly, maintaining playable hour-long buffers for both, while processing one of them for display at all times (it would stop recording the unviewed tuner if you didn't switch to viewing it or use it for recording for several hours). From what I can tell, MDN seems to do something very similar.Axiom OCAP middleware is probably just a middleware and not an RTOS at all. It runs on top of PowerTV, much like how Windows 3.1 ran on top of MS-DOS. I am pretty sure that if Axiom OCAP was its own OS, there would not be any black PowerTV logo on top of a magenta background when the box first boots, and that the Axiom OCAP middleware will display the PowerTV and the Scientific Atlanta logos on it. I think that what happened is that Time Warner Cable knew about the deadline and commissioned Esmertec to create an OCAP middleware according to this press release (http://www.esmertec.com/fileadmin/Files/Press_releases/2005/2004/040406_pressrelease_Esmertec_TWC.pdf). Scientific Atlanta apparently was impressed by this or did not want to write its own middleware, so it either bought or licensed the rights to this middleware from either Time Warner Cable or Esmertec, and then named it the Axiom OCAP middleware. Therefore, you see the Scientific Atlanta: A Cisco Company, PowerTV, Java, and Esmertec logos on the OCAP splash screen that shows up when your box boots up.I actually now think that I'm wrong about this--sorry for disseminating misinformation. I'd been thinking that Axiom had its own RTOS layer because I can find no evidence of a PowerTV RTOS version in the ODN diagnostic pages, whereas the MDN pages do show PTV versions. Also I'd run across references to the phrase "Axiom middleware and operating system" in the literature about it. Now, with a little more digging, I've found some evidence that Axiom runs on PowerTV (a company called itaas has an education program for STB applications developers called "istart"--see this (http://www.itaas.com/istart/istart.html)--their program for Axiom developer education apparently includes access to PowerTV).

I'd always assumed that they bought the Axiom middleware from someone else and bought out the company (just as TWC did with Navigator). It's a common strategy for expansion and diversification of a conglomerate. I've worked for a few divisions of companies which were buy-outs (the last was the cellular phone handset R&D division of a CDMA chipset maker, bought out by a Japanese conglomerate who wanted a toe-hold in the US cellphone market).

Most MSOs commit to having tru2way in ALL HEADENDS by 1 July 2009 (NEXT YEAR):
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=156273&site=cdn
Note link to recently signed tru2way MOU (Memorandum of Understanding).

This is an important step to supporting user owned tru2way STBs, DVRs, HDTVs and PCs
no matter where the buyer relocates in the future....

"Common Reliance" principal (MSOs and CE Manufacturers SHARE THE PAIN) is also explained....
Actually, we're the ones who are FEELING THE PAIN....

Another factor pacing schedule for lower cost tru2way devices is DCAS
(Downloadable Conditional Access System), eliminating costly M-Card/CableCARD.

Cisco and Motorola have taken over the execution, with minimal assistance from PolyCipher:
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=155749&site=cdn
The embedded chip design is still being revised, so don't expect anything until sometime NEXT YEAR.....

================================================
Meanwhile, BBT, the "other" DCAS continues development and trials:
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=156395

However, note that PolyCipher has support from most MSOs, including TWC.

Note Cisco doesn't plan roll-out of MoCA (Whole Home NxtGen DVR) until NEXT YEAR:
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=154649&site=cdn
They could still roll the 8550HDC w/o MoCA this year.....

Note Cisco doesn't plan roll-out of MoCA (Whole Home NxtGen DVR) until NEXT YEAR:
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=154649&site=cdn
They could still roll the 8550HDC w/o MoCA this year.....I thought that MoCA was some sort of home netoworking through out-of-band transmission on the cable TV coax running through your home, with nothing specific to do with DVRs? This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoCA) Wikipedia article would seem to confirm that (though the MoCA Alliance site (http://www.mocalliance.org/en/index.asp) would stress that the primary envisioned purpose is for networking home entertainment equipment).

If you have a MoCA enabled HDTV (or a MoCA enabled STB connected to TV/HDTV),
you'll be able to playback programs from your DVR in the other room:
http://www.mocalliance.org/en/industry/white_papers/Cable-DBS_White_Paper-Final%5B1%5D.pdf
MoCA also can be used to distribute from PC to MoCA HDTV...or MoCA enabled STB,
so you can playback downloaded videos or your own photos on your TV/HDTV.

Cisco DRG2800 appears to be the PC to MoCA/Internet interface (IP HUB):
http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2008/prod_010708e.html

Looks like a sweet STB (a RTOS!). But I am sure TWC will screw it up as they do everything. But why do I need a STB? All I should need is a HDTV, CableCard 2-way in the TV, and an eSATA hard drive.

Well You will have to wait until the Tru2way TV's. Thats if Tru2way TV's have an ESATA port for DVR. I'm sure TWC will charge you for the t2way cards every month.

My point was that MoCA is a general facility for networking over the cable TV coax in your house (a bit like PNA) and not something with specific ties to DVRs, though the impetus for developing it was multimedia-transport-centric. Sure, it could be used to access video stored on a DVR, but that's just one of dozens of potential applications. It could just as easily be used to transport audio or video stored on HDDs on your PCs for playback by some device in your HT or entertainment center.

Here is a PDF containing the Samsung SMT-H3090 specifications (http://www.samsung.com/us/system/consumer/product/2008/05/09/smt_h3090twc/SMT-H3090_080205.pdf). ... However, Samsung is willing to sell this box with up to a 320GB hard drive, which is a step up from the 160GB drive the 8550HDC and the 8300HDC promise.
I think our So Cal area is being upgraded to 1000MHz as we speak. This says it covers to 864MHz.

Also, just because they offer 320MB drives does not mean TW will change from their magic 160MB drive size. I suspect TW/SA/Cisco are the only buyers of 160MB drives anymore and the sellers are wringing their hands getting rid of those at good prices. Wish they would just add $1/mo. to rent one with a bigger drive as an option. They added a $1 for HD machines now.

Dan

the 2000 box got updated last night with the same MDN as the 8300.

If you think Navigator looks bad on a DVR unit you haven't seen it on one of the older boxes.

The text is horribly bitmapped. It's like looking at a DOS interface on a blue and gray screen. Especially on a larger TV. The guide takes literally 20 seconds to populate one day of information.

the 2000 box got updated last night with the same MDN as the 8300.

If you think Navigator looks bad on a DVR unit you haven't seen it on one of the older boxes.

The text is horribly bitmapped. It's like looking at a DOS interface on a blue and gray screen. Especially on a larger TV. The guide takes literally 20 seconds to populate one day of information.

20 seconds? Even the 8300HDC with a CPU not designed to handle OCAP is speedier than that! Time for a box swap for that 2000.

20 seconds? Even the 8300HDC with a CPU not designed to handle OCAP is speedier than that! Time for a box swap for that 2000.

I have the Pioneer BD-V1100 which has the DOS style MDN. I'm waiting for the SA 4550HDC but even the 3250HD that I have downstairs is much much better. The BD-V1100 is hooked up to a Panasonic 13" combo unit which I will eventually get an HD tv. I would like to get the 8550/8552 for the downstairs HDTV and replace mine with the 4550HDC. Also I want to replace the 4250 in the den with the 4550HDC. Mine is really slow on the pioneer and the 3250 is really bad as well.

20 seconds? Even the 8300HDC with a CPU not designed to handle OCAP is speedier than that! Time for a box swap for that 2000.

The 2000 is about 8 years old I think. it would have made more sense to just retire those boxes rather than stick them with something that can barely work on more recent units as it is.

I don't use the 2000 that much at the moment since I need to replace the TV it's connected to. When I do that I'll swap it out for something else.


edit: here's a shot of MDN lo-tech version.

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/8714/mdnhomebasicqz1.th.jpg (http://img401.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mdnhomebasicqz1.jpg)

The 2000 is about 8 years old I think. it would have made more sense to just retire those boxes rather than stick them with something that can barely work on more recent units as it is.

I don't use the 2000 that much at the moment since I need to replace the TV it's connected to. When I do that I'll swap it out for something else.


edit: here's a shot of MDN lo-tech version.

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/8714/mdnhomebasicqz1.th.jpg (http://img401.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mdnhomebasicqz1.jpg)

Hey Vision,

Sup? Yea, that screenshot looks pretty choppy. But they probably were forced to do severe graphics compression to even get Navigator working on those boxes. Sorry I didn't look through the post for your type of box. Is this a Pioneer?

Just to refresh our memories. Here is the famous You Tube Video of the guy with the slow Navigator box. In fact, I PM'd him and he said he had an old Pioneer box:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQI6nRIvIk8

When you get a newer box, an SA model should be much faster.

Jack

That screen shot still looks better than SARA software on my 8300HD! However, I'll take the putrid SARA display over the "pretty" one for its speed and functionality.

Update. Cable boxes were fixed, clear signal. We had an interference problem with our filter that caused all of the problems. So far no problems with navigator on either of our boxes except for the fact that it causes the cable to run terribly slow.

As for the retirement of the 2000 boxes I agree, even our cable tech said that they should just get rid of those boxes instead of just refurbishing and sending them back out.

Just to refresh our memories. Here is the famous You Tube Video of the guy with the slow Navigator box. In fact, I PM'd him and he said he had an old Pioneer box:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQI6nRIvIk8

When you get a newer box, an SA model should be much faster.

Jack

That's funny, I don't remember ever seeing that. It's actually faster than my box - Sci Atl 2000 (http://www.scientificatlanta.com/products/consumers/new_explorer2000.htm). I just checked and it now takes 45 seconds to populate one day of guide and when I go to the find shows category the only thing it lists is "none" for everything.

It's lucky I hardly use it otherwise I might be annoyed and I'm too lazy to even bother trying to reboot it to see if it solves the problem. That probably takes 30 minutes based on the other performance factors. :rolleyes:

That's funny, I don't remember ever seeing that. It's actually faster than my box - Sci Atl 2000 (http://www.scientificatlanta.com/products/consumers/new_explorer2000.htm). I just checked and it now takes 45 seconds to populate one day of guide and when I go to the find shows category the only thing it lists is "none" for everything.

It's lucky I hardly use it otherwise I might be annoyed and I'm too lazy to even bother trying to reboot it to see if it solves the problem. That probably takes 30 minutes based on the other performance factors. :rolleyes:

Shouldn't take no more than 3 to 5 minutes. Thats how long my old pioneer box would take. Going to hang on to the panny combo unit. It's a reliable TV and the box seems to be fine but if we get phone service and VIP pack then we might replace it.

For SoCal TWC users more HD channels are on the way.

Food Network HD
HGTV HD
CNN HD
History Channel HD
A&E HD
Golf/Vs HD
Discovery HD
TLC HD
Disney Channel HD
ABC Family HD
ESPNews HD
National Geographic HD

San Diego has some of those channels. North County has some of them. Maybe they are waiting to add more HD for non Adelphia customers in San Diego. Would be nice to have more HD in San Diego on TWC. Cox and U-verse offer a much better lineup of HD.

Shouldn't take no more than 3 to 5 minutes. Thats how long my old pioneer box would take. Going to hang on to the panny combo unit. It's a reliable TV and the box seems to be fine but if we get phone service and VIP pack then we might replace it.

For SoCal TWC users more HD channels are on the way.

Food Network HD
HGTV HD
CNN HD
History Channel HD
A&E HD
Golf/Vs HD
Discovery HD
TLC HD
Disney Channel HD
ABC Family HD
ESPNews HD
National Geographic HD

San Diego has some of those channels. North County has some of them. Maybe they are waiting to add more HD for non Adelphia customers in San Diego. Would be nice to have more HD in San Diego on TWC. Cox and U-verse offer a much better lineup of HD.North County has all of them, but they're on a network purchased from Adelphia composed of Motorola equipment; why they added all of those channels to the North County line-up but not to the main San Diego one is a mystery which may have something to do with that.

I'm expecting them to launch full implementation of SDV any day now, adding all of that stuff and more for people using their STBs. I also expect that I'll lose some things on my TiVo when that happens, until the Tuning Adapter gets deployed by them.

Actually TWC San Diego has adopted SDV. No HD channels are SDV. Well for Digital Simulcast they have gone SDV.

QVC, AMC, A&E, WE, SciFi, CMT, LMN, APL, TVLand, Golf, NGC, Travel & TVGuide.

Some say it isn't activated. Does any cablecard Tivo users get these channels? I saw some people by some Electrical looking box but could be for cable working on it. Apparently TWC-SD is starting their SDV/SDB implementation.

I posted the announcement re SDV on TWC-SD as of this week
in response to a question on HD thread:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=14113600
Includes info on how to check for SDV on your own systems....

SDV seems to be working just as fast as other channels...

Let the HD explosion begin......soon......please......

Actually TWC San Diego has adopted SDV. No HD channels are SDV. Well for Digital Simulcast they have gone SDV.

QVC, AMC, A&E, WE, SciFi, CMT, LMN, APL, TVLand, Golf, NGC, Travel & TVGuide.

Some say it isn't activated. Does any cablecard Tivo users get these channels? I saw some people by some Electrical looking box but could be for cable working on it. Apparently TWC-SD is starting their SDV/SDB implementation.We get the channels, but they've set the CableCARD maps to the analog carriage of the channels. We have no way to attempt to access the digital simulcast.

Kansas City also started SDV a couple weeks ago. We have 34 HD channels, 30 regular and 4 SDV. Another 6 sports SDV channels are also online, but they appear to be nonHD.

Well went to TWC and the Pioneer is bye bye. Got an 8300HDC. The 8300HDC will replace the 3250HD. The 3250HD is going in my room where the pioneer used to reside. Got the HD VIP pack as well. Hope the 8300HDC works like it should. There were others with pioneer boxes. No idea what they do with them.

Sorry if this is a repeat as this is a huge thread and I just registered, but can anyone tell me if there's a way around this problem with my DVR:

It's an 8300HD, running Mystro (which I hate, but I know I'm not alone in that) but I've gotten used to its limitations and weirdnesses, except one main thing. With the older passport software, say I was watching TV and it was 4:57pm, and I hit GUIDE, it would default to showing me what starts at 5pm since it's only 3 minutes until. With the new software, it shows me what started at 4:30 which is useless, so I press right to see what's on at 5. If I see a show I like and hit select, it wants me to record this "future program", so i gotta hit left and hit select to actually tune to that channel.

Is there any way to set the thing to get around this annoying as hell issue?

Also, if I switch sources from the cable box over to my HTPC for more than, say, an hour or so, when I switch source back to the cable box, its running but throws up a box that says something about not being able to display through DVI, but I just hit exit and the error goes away and the box works fine...

As far as I know, there is no fix for this issue. The "View This Channel Now" option was removed in Navigator. SARA and Passport had/have it. This was a limitation many found very annoying with the Navigator software.

Here in KC, TW attributes the reboots to a poor signal in a certain frequency. My system did have that bad signal (now fixed), but still crashes and I do use Closed Captioning a lot. If you have not had a tech out to check your signal, you might try that.

The phone tech can check your signal, but cannot check by frequency, which my tech said is important. Apparently, they can if you are on the right channel, but I do not know what it is. My tech said most of the phone techs will not know the correct channel either.

The frequency thing is interesting because it seems to reboot on the same channel all the time (Ch. 217, NBC17 in Raleigh). Both the engineer for NBC17 and the techs I've talked at TWC both say that can't be it but after a week of behaving itself it rebooted twice last night on 217.

An update:
My ***6TH*** box has been rebooting about once a week and Wednesday and Thursday nights it rebooted twice within 30 minutes, both while watching 217 (NBC17 HD). I called TWC Executive Customer Service at 203-351-2221 and explained my continuing problems and about 2 hours later I got a call back from the local division. I explained my problems again & how it happens nightly on NBC17HD. Says he'll send his best guy out between 5 & 7. OK. Guy comes in who came by last time and he has a brand new 8300HDC. I express my doubt that a 7th box will address the problem but they had wanted to replace it a month ago and I wouldn't let them. I give in, he sets the new box up, leaves, and within 30 minutes it reboots during the NBC Nightly News.

So now they've taken my 8300HD which had all my recordings, my favorites, and a reboot time within 1 minute and replaced it with a slower 8300HDC, no recordings, no favorites setup, and a box that takes 8+ minutes to boot. Great ...

Jim
--
SA8300HDC (BOX 7 since August)

An update:
My ***6TH*** box has been rebooting about once a week and Wednesday and Thursday nights it rebooted twice within 30 minutes, both while watching 217 (NBC17 HD). I called TWC Executive Customer Service at 203-351-2221 and explained my continuing problems and about 2 hours later I got a call back from the local division. I explained my problems again & how it happens nightly on NBC17HD. Says he'll send his best guy out between 5 & 7. OK. Guy comes in who came by last time and he has a brand new 8300HDC. I express my doubt that a 7th box will address the problem but they had wanted to replace it a month ago and I wouldn't let them. I give in, he sets the new box up, leaves, and within 30 minutes it reboots during the NBC Nightly News.

So now they've taken my 8300HD which had all my recordings, my favorites, and a reboot time within 1 minute and replaced it with a slower 8300HDC, no recordings, no favorites setup, and a box that takes 8+ minutes to boot. Great ...

Jim
--
SA8300HDC (BOX 7 since August)
Sounds like you're not very impressed with TWC's executive customer service. So...the same tech nerd arrives at your house, does no analysis of your problem, but simply replaces the box (for the 6th time) then leaves, and the problem reappears soon thereafter. Priceless! I say they now owe you some money or a credit for a month's service or more. I suggest you call the same rep again in exec customer service and give him/her holy hell. This is totally crazy.:confused:

Sounds like you're not very impressed with TWC's executive customer service. So...the same tech nerd arrives at your house, does no analysis of your problem, but simply replaces the box (for the 6th time) then leaves, and the problem reappears soon thereafter. Priceless! I say they now owe you some money or a credit for a month's service or more. I suggest you call the same rep again in exec customer service and give him/her holy hell. This is totally crazy.:confused:

You should get at least a THREE MONTH service credit for this. You might even want to consider contacting your local officials at city hall, and your local Better Business Bureau. Call them, e-mail, snail mail them, and just BLAST the **** out of your TWC division. Than there is always the option of Dish. But I would not let this go away. I would even consider canceling cable over this. But regardless of what you do, you should file a complaint with each of these agencies. This is BS, the way you have been treated by TWC.

Jack

An update:
My ***6TH*** box has been rebooting about once a week and Wednesday and Thursday nights it rebooted twice within 30 minutes, both while watching 217 (NBC17 HD). I called TWC Executive Customer Service at 203-351-2221 and explained my continuing problems and about 2 hours later I got a call back from the local division. I explained my problems again & how it happens nightly on NBC17HD. Says he'll send his best guy out between 5 & 7. OK. Guy comes in who came by last time and he has a brand new 8300HDC. I express my doubt that a 7th box will address the problem but they had wanted to replace it a month ago and I wouldn't let them. I give in, he sets the new box up, leaves, and within 30 minutes it reboots during the NBC Nightly News.

So now they've taken my 8300HD which had all my recordings, my favorites, and a reboot time within 1 minute and replaced it with a slower 8300HDC, no recordings, no favorites setup, and a box that takes 8+ minutes to boot. Great ...

Jim
--
SA8300HDC (BOX 7 since August)

There are four things that could be causing this that I can think of:

The signal quality is bad. I have heard that the 8300HDC is fickle about bad signal quality.
The box may be in an environment that allows it to overheat. The overloaded power supply in this box seems very fickle to the surrounding temperature.
There might be something going wrong in the HDMI that may be crashing the box.
You are using eSATA.

For the first one, have a cable tech measure the signal quality. For the second one, make sure the box is not near any hot things and is in the open, and put it on top of some 2x4s to give the box some room to grab air from under it to suck away the heat from its lame PSU. PSUs in general do better when they are colder. For the third one, try component cable or replacing the HDMI cable. A botched cable can possibly corrupt the DRM handshake. For the fourth one, remove the eSATA drive. Unfortunately, broken eSATA is probably a low-priority bug to fix because not that many people buy eSATA drives, so you will have to wait a while before the eSATA port can be used safely.

What we really need is a box built from the ground up to support CableCARD and OCAP, not a botched hack of a good box turning it to garbage! We also need eSATA and HDMI debugged.

I am encountering this new problem that I have not seen mentioned on this thread before... I'll go into the gory details after i say what the problem is. Problem is that I am recording the Cleveland news in HD - or any show - and my DVR is filling up at about 1% per minute!!!! :confused: Now heres some background:

I have two 8240 HDC (OCRAP version) cable boxes (call them Box-A and Box-B). Each box has software version 2.4.9_3. My cable system is based out of Kent, OH. On Box-A and Box-B I have 750 GB drives in Apricorn eSATA enclosures.

I was excited to get them both working then just a few hours later I experienced the freeze. From reading this forum its because the drive goes to sleep mode apparently because of the box. Well, one of the work-arounds I read on this forum is to constantly have shows recording. So i chose to record 4-hour blocks of a local government channel; the program is called Access. I came back from work one day and discovered that both of my boxes had locked up because "Access" didn't record. [Apparently this is a known problem too- series recordings not recording all the shows] I unplugged both Box-A and Box-B and rebooted them. Box-A came back just fine like all the other times I have had to unplug both boxes. However, when Box-B came back on the DVR LIst went from about 30% full to 85% full because it stopped recognizing my external drive. I unplugged Box-B several times and started and stopped that hard drive numerous times also. Several times I got the "drive is not formatted, press A to reformat" and I did that, but that didn't help. Finally after cycling power and hard drive power about a dozen times, I hooked up Box-B's eSATA hard drive to Box-A. I did this because I knew it would force a reformat. Box-A reformatted my Box-B's eSATA hard drive. I then re-attached Box-A's eSATA hard drive back to Box-A and all of my progams on that external drive were wiped out. So I lost all my programs but the drive still seems to be functioning well.

Back to Box-B eSATA.... I hooked up Box-B eSATA several times and cycled power a lot and still no luck. I hooked up Box-B eSATA to my laptop and formatted the drive. I was able to see and use 698 GB. So i took it back out to Box-B and connected it and still tried several times and could not get that box to recognize it had an external drive. That's the point I said screw it and just left the eSATA disconnected.

I tried using that eSATA on Box-B again a few times over the last few days, but I noticed that all my programs on there seemed to be taking up a lot of space... I deleted everything in my list and it showed 0% full. I recorded Fast & Furious Tokyo drift in HD and it used up 44% of my available space!!! So I called Time Warner just now and he... of course... had me cycle power... magically my Fast & Furious movie was deleted and it said 0% full. So the guy thinks the problem is fixed... I know better though, because I know the only thing TWC can get right is RoadRunner. So after i hung up I started recording the news in HD and I get that to fill up at about 1% per minute. I guess I'll be taking Box-B back now... If anyone read my long tale from above... do you think after I get another box that I should try to use that eSATA drive again?

There are four things that could be causing this that I can think of:

The signal quality is bad. I have heard that the 8300HDC is fickle about bad signal quality.
The box may be in an environment that allows it to overheat. The overloaded power supply in this box seems very fickle to the surrounding temperature.
There might be something going wrong in the HDMI that may be crashing the box.
You are using eSATA.

For the first one, have a cable tech measure the signal quality. For the second one, make sure the box is not near any hot things and is in the open, and put it on top of some 2x4s to give the box some room to grab air from under it to suck away the heat from its lame PSU. PSUs in general do better when they are colder. For the third one, try component cable or replacing the HDMI cable. A botched cable can possibly corrupt the DRM handshake. For the fourth one, remove the eSATA drive. Unfortunately, broken eSATA is probably a low-priority bug to fix because not that many people buy eSATA drives, so you will have to wait a while before the eSATA port can be used safely.

What we really need is a box built from the ground up to support CableCARD and OCAP, not a botched hack of a good box turning it to garbage! We also need eSATA and HDMI debugged.


I suspect it's a signal problem but every time they come out they check it and say it's fine.
I don't think this is the problem, I've got 3 inches of clearance around the vents. Also, this box replaces an 8300HD which also rebooted. I might raise it a bit if it continues to reboot, but the Mrs. would object to 2x4's.
I'm using component cable
No external drive

I got a call from the supervisor this morning to ask how things were going and I told him about it rebooting within 30 minutes. He said that there's a signal sent to the box to close out the call and sometimes that causes it to reboot. I don't buy that because I suspect that signal turns on and off features on what you subscribe to and when I went to bed last night I did not have caller ID and had access to HBO & etc. and this morning caller ID is back and HBO is gone.

I want to know who at Time-Warner decided that when we rewind a show that we want it to jump back forward almost as much as we just rewound? I still hate my SA8300HD box. My FIL's box was updated with newer software than mine and I might trade yet another box to see if I can get newer software. His seems to be a bit better/faster than mine and has a slightly different interface. I don't see why they didn't upgrade mine at the same time, we live next door. If I trade in again this will be like 5 times in 6 months.

Not sure whether this is a TWC box thing, my TV or both.

I have a Philips LCD connected via HDMI to my SA8300HDC. In addition, I have OUT2 from the SA8300HDC connected to a DVD recorder which is then connected to the TV via composite cables. When I turn on the DVD recorder and switch the TV to the recorder input line, I initially see a picture just fine, but after a few seconds, I get a black and yellow screen with the following message:

GS511_HDCP_DLG

Your TV does not allow display of this program through the DVI input source.
Please choose another TV input source.

This seems to happen regardless of channel type (analog, SD or HD). Is there a way to fix this? I haven't tried to see how switching from HDMI to component cables affects this problem mostly because when I used component before, the volume really sucked. Normally with HDMI, I can set the volume somewhere in the 20-30 range, but with component I typically have to crank it up into the 70's and that just really bugs me for some reason.

Oh, and I had a another "first" problem with the box yesterday. I don't even remember anymore what I was doing at the time, but the whole screen went gray. I had audio but no video at all, just a light gray. I think I've seen it go black before, but not this. Oddly enough, I was recording a program at the time and after it ended I rebooted the box. When I checked the program later, it all recorded perfectly.
Changing channels, the PIP trick and even powering off/on of the box didn't help.

Not sure whether this is a TWC box thing, my TV or both.

I have a Philips LCD connected via HDMI to my SA8300HDC. In addition, I have OUT2 from the SA8300HDC connected to a DVD recorder which is then connected to the TV via composite cables. When I turn on the DVD recorder and switch the TV to the recorder input line, I initially see a picture just fine, but after a few seconds, I get a black and yellow screen with the following message:

GS511_HDCP_DLG

Your TV does not allow display of this program through the DVI input source.
Please choose another TV input source.

handshake problem. The box won't let you do anything unless it has an active HDMI connection. It will display that error on the other outputs unless you're tuned in to it's dedicated input.

I use a similar type of setup to record to my DVD-rec. In order for it to work I have to unplug the HDMI from the TV before recording.

I had a couple failed recordings this morning, with a new error msg. An individual recording failed at 5:00am and a series recording failed at 9:30am. Both had a msg in the recording log of: "Set top was unable to record program." There were, however, two series recordings at 6:00am and 8:30am, and an individual recording at 5:30am that recorded just fine.

This was the first time an individual recording failed. And, unlike the last time any series recordings failed, there are no series programs that are not appearing in the Scheduled Recordings list for the remainder of today or the next few days.

SUNDAY EDIT: Two more series recordings failed this morning on my main STB. But, unlike a couple weekends ago when there were several series programs not recording on both boxes - the same programs on both boxes - this time, my secondary box did (thankfully) record a series program that the main box failed to record. In general, the failure to record this time was different than last time as there were no series programs missing from the Scheduled Recordings list.

On an up note: The diagnostics is now showing that SDV has been enabled! Hope that means we'll soon see some new HD channels!

I use a similar type of setup to record to my DVD-rec. In order for it to work I have to unplug the HDMI from the TV before recording.

I actually didn't have to resort to that. If I switch the TV input back to the TWC box, then the DVD recorder gets a normal feed and records properly. In fact I was a bit surprised. If I play an HD show, the DVD recorder actually records it in widescreen format (but it doesn't stretch vertically when played as if the upper and lower black bars are just part of the picture).

So now they've taken my 8300HD which had all my recordings, my favorites, and a reboot time within 1 minute and replaced it with a slower 8300HDC, no recordings, no favorites setup, and a box that takes 8+ minutes to boot. Great ...


It's a bit late for you to mention this now, but for others trying a new box: Keep the old one until you are satisfied with the new one. I had a second box for about six weeks. TW did charge me for the second box, but credited it back when I told them why I had the second box.

I am encountering this new problem that I have not seen mentioned on this thread before... I'll go into the gory details after i say what the problem is. Problem is that I am recording the Cleveland news in HD - or any show - and my DVR is filling up at about 1% per minute!!!! :confused: Now heres some background:

I have two 8240 HDC (OCRAP version) cable boxes (call them Box-A and Box-B). Each box has software version 2.4.9_3. My cable system is based out of Kent, OH. On Box-A and Box-B I have 750 GB drives in Apricorn eSATA enclosures.

I was excited to get them both working then just a few hours later I experienced the freeze. From reading this forum its because the drive goes to sleep mode apparently because of the box. Well, one of the work-arounds I read on this forum is to constantly have shows recording. So i chose to record 4-hour blocks of a local government channel; the program is called Access. I came back from work one day and discovered that both of my boxes had locked up because "Access" didn't record. [Apparently this is a known problem too- series recordings not recording all the shows] I unplugged both Box-A and Box-B and rebooted them. Box-A came back just fine like all the other times I have had to unplug both boxes. However, when Box-B came back on the DVR LIst went from about 30% full to 85% full because it stopped recognizing my external drive. I unplugged Box-B several times and started and stopped that hard drive numerous times also. Several times I got the "drive is not formatted, press A to reformat" and I did that, but that didn't help. Finally after cycling power and hard drive power about a dozen times, I hooked up Box-B's eSATA hard drive to Box-A. I did this because I knew it would force a reformat. Box-A reformatted my Box-B's eSATA hard drive. I then re-attached Box-A's eSATA hard drive back to Box-A and all of my progams on that external drive were wiped out. So I lost all my programs but the drive still seems to be functioning well.

Back to Box-B eSATA.... I hooked up Box-B eSATA several times and cycled power a lot and still no luck. I hooked up Box-B eSATA to my laptop and formatted the drive. I was able to see and use 698 GB. So i took it back out to Box-B and connected it and still tried several times and could not get that box to recognize it had an external drive. That's the point I said screw it and just left the eSATA disconnected.

I tried using that eSATA on Box-B again a few times over the last few days, but I noticed that all my programs on there seemed to be taking up a lot of space... I deleted everything in my list and it showed 0% full. I recorded Fast & Furious Tokyo drift in HD and it used up 44% of my available space!!! So I called Time Warner just now and he... of course... had me cycle power... magically my Fast & Furious movie was deleted and it said 0% full. So the guy thinks the problem is fixed... I know better though, because I know the only thing TWC can get right is RoadRunner. So after i hung up I started recording the news in HD and I get that to fill up at about 1% per minute. I guess I'll be taking Box-B back now... If anyone read my long tale from above... do you think after I get another box that I should try to use that eSATA drive again?

I had a crash that lost the programing on my eSATA. I was finally able to get it to recognize the the eSATA drive again, but the programs were gone. Funny thing was that it showed the percentage space remaining that it did before the eSATA shows disappeared. I can record and play shows from the eSATA, but it seems smaller than it was. I have not confirmed, but I am thinking the old shows are still on the eSATA and using space, but are not accessable from Navigator. I'm guessing that reformating the eSATA drive would restore that space.

I'm wondering if the same thing has happened on your internal drive. Exchanging the box should certainly fix that, and I'm thinking that reformating the internal drive would also, though that might require removing the drive and putting it in a computer to do it.

I am currently not using the eSATA drive as I don't like losing programs that I have recorded. There is not much to record right now, anyway. Maybe we'll get a new update before this fall.

I actually didn't have to resort to that. If I switch the TV input back to the TWC box, then the DVD recorder gets a normal feed and records properly.

That works for me as well but I'm rarely recording as I watch. I use it to offload some shows to disc that I haven't watched. As soon as you switch off the TV the box throws up the DVI input error.

That works for me as well but I'm rarely recording as I watch. I use it to offload some shows to disc that I haven't watched. As soon as you switch off the TV the box throws up the DVI input error.

Yup, found that out as well. Set something to offload then turned off the TV when I left the house to run some errands.
So if you disconnect the HDMI, will the box still output 1080i/720p or will it reduce it all to 480p without the handshake?

Is anyone using a harmony remote to control their Navigator based DVR? I'm thinking about getting one and wanted to know if anyone here could share their experience.

Is anyone using a harmony remote to control their Navigator based DVR? I'm thinking about getting one and wanted to know if anyone here could share their experience.

Yes, I am using a Logitech Harmony 670. It works great. I have the 8300HD DVR and Navigator. I did not have to make any changes when we switched from Passport to Navigator.

Has anyone heard any current news about when or if SARA users will be switched to NAVIGATOR? SARA 1.89.17.1 Greensboro NC

Has anyone heard any current news about when or if SARA users will be switched to NAVIGATOR? SARA 1.89.17.1 Greensboro NC

1st quarter of this year was our deployment start date and nothing ever happened. I have since emailed and called, but only get the standard canned answer of when it's available we will let you know, which translates to once it downloads to your box, you'll know.

I'm curious as to ANY markets that have switched from SARA? If anyone has, please report here.

I have a firm memory of some guy recently saying in this thread that he thought that Navigator was considerably better looking than SARA, but that it was little consolation for the problems he was having.

I have a firm memory of some guy recently saying in this thread that he thought that Navigator was considerably better looking than SARA, but that it was little consolation for the problems he was having.

Yes, it is much better looking, but from reports here, nowhere near as functional or reliable.

I have a firm memory of some guy recently saying in this thread that he thought that Navigator was considerably better looking than SARA, but that it was little consolation for the problems he was having.I poked around and I believe that what I'm remembering are comments by Crazywoody, comparing SARA running on boxes in his home in Greensboro, NC to Navigator running on a Pioneer box in his beach house on Emerald Isle, NC, 230 miles away.

I tried to find some indication of what the situation was by looking at the TWC sites for the locales, but TWC has a strange combined site for "the Carolinas" (here (http://www.timewarnercable.com/Carolinas/)). That's quite a number of different cities and communities with, apparently, different equipment. The only guide documentation that I found there was for Navigator, but I didn't look very hard.

Yes, I am using a Logitech Harmony 670 it works great. I have the 8300HD DVR and Navigator.

Ditto but use 550 and 880.

Has anyone heard any current news about when or if SARA users will be switched to NAVIGATOR? SARA 1.89.17.1 Greensboro NC
RE: TWC Hawaii - SARA

A customer service rep told me that there are no plans for TWC-Oceanic to switch away from SARA. I had been emailing him copies of complaints and issues about Navigator. Our Sara here functions reliably, quickly, and supports all the functions we need including Esata, SDV, call waiting, etc. I will continue to lobby strongly to our cable company to make no changes unless I have absolute proof that Navigator has been re-designed to function at least as good as Sara.

I haven't had a spontaneous reboot in almost 2 weeks! Life after Passport is getting better. I'm getting used to Navigator, and while there are some things I don't like about it, there are things I like more than Passport. Give and take, I guess. I will not be cancelling my TWC. :)

Jeff
SA 8300HD

I have a Vizio 42" 1080P LCD that's about a year old (I love it). I have an 8300HDC with Navigator (I hate it). I usually leave the 8300 on and it is set to 1080I. When I turn on the TV, regardless of channel or channel type, the box changes to 480P, the picture is narrow and it drives me crazy. go to settings, select 720P (or I) press C (cancel), press C press exit. and the box goes to 1080I. The picture usually remains in the upper left corner and I have to hit PIP but we all know about that. As far as I know I have the most recent software release. From reading other posts I guess this is a handshake issue but I can't seem to find a way to fix it. If I turn the box off, turn the TV on and then, with the box showing 1080I turn on the box I still have the same problem. Still can't swap without PIP, still lose previouse 2 hours on BOTH tuners everytime I swap, still reboot every couple of days.
My box rebooted Sunday June 15th just after 4:00pm while I was watching the US Open. It rebooted at almost exactly the same time Monday (June 16th) while watching the same playoff at the US open. It was weird.

P.S.1 - Also, I wanted to note that I have been successfully using my external SATA drive with Navigator this week. When Navigator was loaded on the system, it went into the cycle of reboots described in this thread. I figured I'd start with a fresh drive, so I loaded it into my PC and formatted it to NTFS. Then I put it back on the 8300 HD and it is working like it used to. HD space went from 83% to 23%. Diagostic screen lists on the WDC drive in the DVR though. It doesn't list the name of my Seagate external 400gb.


I was hoping there was another solution than this, but now that you've confirmed that this works, I'll go ahead and do this.

THANKS for the report!!!

I'm getting used to Navigator, and while there are some things I don't like about it, there are things I like more than Passport.Could you list what those things are? I share a house and Navigator (MDN) is running on an 8300HD in the family room that I admittedly don't watch much (I have a 46" LCD panel in my room with which I use TiVo Series3). Perhaps I've missed something, but my initial impression was that Navigator didn't do much of anything better than Passport and quite a few things not nearly so well.

The only things that I can think of are the disk space gas-meter and the fact that eSATA drives seem to work with it without loss of live trick-play (a biggie, but not a fair trade-off for the bugs).

1st quarter of this year was our deployment start date and nothing ever happened. I have since emailed and called, but only get the standard canned answer of when it's available we will let you know, which translates to once it downloads to your box, you'll know.

I'm curious as to ANY markets that have switched from SARA? If anyone has, please report here.
So Cal still has Passport after it looking like we would be getting Navigator last summer.... Hopefully it will be more "ready for primetime" by the time we get it. /Dan

So Cal still has Passport after it looking like we would be getting Navigator last summer.... Hopefully it will be more "ready for primetime" by the time we get it. /DanSpeak for yourself, OC. Down here in southern-most California, we got Navigator.

Speak for yourself, OC. Down here in southern-most California, we got Navigator.
Correct, SoCal = basically Los Angeles, Orange Counties per TWC designation. Far south was converted earlier this year. /Dan

You should get at least a THREE MONTH service credit for this. You might even want to consider contacting your local officials at city hall, and your local Better Business Bureau. Call them, e-mail, snail mail them, and just BLAST the **** out of your TWC division. Than there is always the option of Dish. But I would not let this go away. I would even consider canceling cable over this. But regardless of what you do, you should file a complaint with each of these agencies. This is BS, the way you have been treated by TWC.

Jack

BBB complaint filed this evening via the web as city hall and the Executive Customer Service haven't helped. Calls to the managers who freely give out their phone numbers but don't answer have not been returned. I've requested 10 months of credits (back to August 07). It's rebooted 5 times (3 today) since Friday when they replaced the box.

Jim

RE: TWC Hawaii - SARA

A customer service rep told me that there are no plans for TWC-Oceanic to switch away from SARA. I had been emailing him copies of complaints and issues about Navigator. Our Sara here functions reliably, quickly, and supports all the functions we need including Esata, SDV, call waiting, etc. I will continue to lobby strongly to our cable company to make no changes unless I have absolute proof that Navigator has been re-designed to function at least as good as Sara.

SARA won't get navigatored until 2009. The Passport users like me got navigatored already. Maybe later this year but you probably wont get it for a while.

What does SARA look like anyways? I have only seen passport and navigator.

What does SARA look like anyways? I have only seen passport and navigator.It looks like something older. No fancy search features, etc. BUT, it fully and flawlessly implements ALL hardware features of the SA8300 (including full external drive operation, adjustable boarders for 4:3, setting any output resolution, ability to make anamorphic DVDs from widescreen material, etc.)

Correct, SoCal = basically Los Angeles, Orange Counties per TWC designation. Far south was converted earlier this year. /DanWhose definition of SoCal are you using? As I understand the term, there's no southern border of the region, just an undefined northern one.

EDIT: I understand now--TWC has a division which they call "Southern California", inclusive of much of LA and Ventura Counties and some interior portions of Orange (they have a service area map here (http://www.timewarnerla.com/images/regionmap/TWCLA_region_map.gif)). You should have said "TWC SoCal", to avoid confusion with Southern California in general.

BBB complaint filed this evening via the web as city hall and the Executive Customer Service haven't helped. Calls to the managers who freely give out their phone numbers but don't answer have not been returned. I've requested 10 months of credits (back to August 07). It's rebooted 5 times (3 today) since Friday when they replaced the box.

Jim

Good work Jim,

Maybe this will "get the ball rolling" for you getting some quality compensation. Let us know what happens.

Jack

Good work Jim,

Maybe this will "get the ball rolling" for you getting some quality compensation. Let us know what happens.

Jack


I wouldn't hold my breathe. As I've stated before, the only way to send a message to any conglomerate (in this case TWC) is mass cancellations with the specific reason being the substandard product/service. Unfortunately, we live in a "me" society now and not enough people are will to sacrifice for the greater good. I'm sure TWC has and is losing subs over this fiasco, but it's obviously not on a scale that impacts them. Most cable companies operate with virtual impunity as the PSC boards and local franchising agents couldn't care less. They consistently renew and provide little if any oversight.

Correct, SoCal = basically Los Angeles, Orange Counties per TWC designation. Far south was converted earlier this year. /Dan

It's weird.Half of North Carolina has Navigator and half has Sara.At my home I have sara and at my beach house I have navigator(non dvr).I like the navigator search engine better than sara.However the rest would have to be a draw with sara comeing out a little ahead.Like that I can change screen color with sara.The Navigator blue gets to be a bit much after a while.i have had passprt non dvr and i will give navigator non dvr a thumbs up over it.However from what I have seen Passport dvr heads up over Navigator.

Could you list what those things are? I share a house and Navigator (MDN) is running on an 8300HD in the family room that I admittedly don't watch much (I have a 46" LCD panel in my room with which I use TiVo Series3). Perhaps I've missed something, but my initial impression was that Navigator didn't do much of anything better than Passport and quite a few things not nearly so well.

The only things that I can think of are the disk space gas-meter and the fact that eSATA drives seem to work with it without loss of live trick-play (a biggie, but not a fair trade-off for the bugs).


Don't get me wrong, there aren't many things better about Navigator, but this is what I've come up with so far: (some of it's a stretch - I want to like navigator)
First, you can now record music channels.
Second, like you mentioned, the dvr space meter.
Third, the gray bars on SD channels have vanished.
Fourth, slow motion requires only a single press rather than a sometimes awkward quick double press.
Fifth, if my 2 year old son "accidentally" changes the channel when we are behind live TV, it swaps tuners so you don't lose everything that's been buffered.
Finally, it just looks better than passport. IMO anyway.

It sounds like I don't have as many bugs perhaps b/c I'm using component cables rather than HDMI. To my eyes, component gives a brighter image and I need all the lumens I can get for the downstairs pj.

BBB complaint filed this evening via the web as city hall and the Executive Customer Service haven't helped. Calls to the managers who freely give out their phone numbers but don't answer have not been returned. I've requested 10 months of credits (back to August 07). It's rebooted 5 times (3 today) since Friday when they replaced the box.

Jim

The Better Business Bureau is a sham.

Don't get me wrong, there aren't many things better about Navigator, but this is what I've come up with so far: (some of it's a stretch - I want to like navigator)
First, you can now record music channels.
Second, like you mentioned, the dvr space meter.
Third, the gray bars on SD channels have vanished.
Fourth, slow motion requires only a single press rather than a sometimes awkward quick double press.
Fifth, if my 2 year old son "accidentally" changes the channel when we are behind live TV, it swaps tuners so you don't lose everything that's been buffered.
Finally, it just looks better than passport. IMO anyway.

It sounds like I don't have as many bugs perhaps b/c I'm using component cables rather than HDMI. To my eyes, component gives a brighter image and I need all the lumens I can get for the downstairs pj.

I will add to the pro's:

Live instant replay for eSATA

Standby mode stops buffering/writing

con's:

No manual recording (damn HD Brewer games!)

Keyword search is weak compared to Passport

Guide load is slow and not the promised 2 weeks ahead (more RAM!)

The Better Business Bureau is a sham.BBB is not a sham at all. But there are certain areas where they are effective and many where they are not. I suspect that technical issues with cable are not one of those areas - but trying that can't hurt.

Frankly, I'd try the state Attorney General. That often works well - well, at least in New York.:cool:

Guide load is slow and not the promised 2 weeks ahead (more RAM!)

one week, two weeks, whats the difference,,,ever since the switchover, I have to reload all week every day I turn TV on. It never keeps the week like it used to. I used to only have to load the 7th new day. Now, every darn day, I have to reload the whole week. It never keeps it loaded over night.

Fifth, if my 2 year old son "accidentally" changes the channel when we are behind live TV, it swaps tuners so you don't lose everything that's been buffered.

I had originally considered that a negative, since I would lose what I may have been buffering on the 2nd tuner, but I've come to like that feature too. Although, I don't necessarily trust Navigator's buffering in general, so I tend to record everything to ensure that there's no 'accidents.'


Con's:
No manual recording
Keyword search is weak compared to Passport
Guide load is slow and not the promised 2 weeks ahead (more RAM!)
Agreed!
** The lack of a manual recording feature (like Passport's) is a huge negative!
** There is no Keyword search, period. There is only Title search. Plus, the keyboard is not 'smart' (ie: the unavailable keys don't dim as you type in a word).
** The Guide on MDN is just about as fast as Passport was, but ODN's guide is very slow. Since Passport also only had a 1 week Guide, the lack of 2 weeks ahead is only a drawback since it was originally promoted by TWC when they first started releasing Navigator. But, I hope they will eventually offer the promised 2 weeks, since its a big plus when going on vacation!
** The Guide's failure to hold more than 24-hours ahead each new day really stinks. Having to reload each day of the coming week individually every day is a major time-wasting pain.


On a side note (update from last weekend's comments): I had two more series recordings fail yesterday (Tuesday). One at 3:00am and one at 6:30pm. In both cases, the recording log said 'Set Top Unable to Record Program'. I did a soft reboot to see if it helps.

Update (Wednesday): Nope, soft boot didn't help. Today, three series programs failed to record - same error message. Doing a hard reboot tonite.

How do I know? My wife liked Passport better than Navigator. She's never wrong (right).

What does SARA look like anyways? I have only seen passport and navigator.
SARA Channel Guide screen is sorta like Passport, with button operations "different by design".
Adds a Setup Wizard....and Search is the pits:
http://www.cox.com/support/digitalcable/dvr/pdf/SA_DVR_740246revD.pdf
http://www.cox.com/support/cable/pdf/diguserguide_sandiego.pdf

SARA Channel Guide screen is sorta like Passport, but other button operations are "different by design".
Adds a Setup Wizard....and Search is the pits:
http://www.cox.com/support/digitalcable/dvr/pdf/SA_DVR_740246revD.pdf
http://www.cox.com/support/cable/pdf/diguserguide_sandiego.pdf

The first link isn't an accurate picture. It is print generated and has much crisper text. The second link more accurately shows the SARA guide as it is with more jagged text and an overall grainy appearance. I firmly believe that with a few tweaks and a new UI that SARA would be a desirable platform. It just needs things like keyword search and time indicator on the DVR progress bar. A few tweaks coupled with a facelift and TWC could have kept everyone happy.

Time Warner and Samsung showed off the SMT-H3090 at a cable TV show. What was interesting is that it had Passport OCAP which was based off passport echo and not Mystro ODN. Strange isn't it.

The first link isn't an accurate picture. It is print generated and has much crisper text. The second link more accurately shows the SARA guide as it is with more jagged text and an overall grainy appearance. I firmly believe that with a few tweaks and a new UI that SARA would be a desirable platform. It just needs things like keyword search and time indicator on the DVR progress bar. A few tweaks coupled with a facelift and TWC could have kept everyone happy.

I agree.SARA could have been made into the guide that everyone could have loved without any Navigator problems.With a proper search engine and facelift TWC could have had the nationwide guide it wanted.Maybe a bit more expensive than inhouse but way way less customer complaints.

I agree.SARA could have been made into the guide that everyone could have loved without any Navigator problems.With a proper search engine and facelift TWC could have had the nationwide guide it wanted.Maybe a bit more expensive than inhouse but way way less customer complaints.

Or, instead of the "silver" approach you outline, they could have had the "gold" standard by just hiring Aptiv to upgrade Passport, preferred by nearly everyone who had seen both in action. That would have been the proper approach, and would have saved them money and headaches in the end. And oh, not that it matters, but it would have been in the best interests of their customers as well.

Does anyone know how I can hook up a DVD recorder to my SA8240HDC HD-DVR box so I can record shows I've already DVR'd to DVD's? I just bought a Sony RDRGX360 and I'm not sure how to do it. I have my SA box hooked up to my Dell 32" HDTV with component cables, the red, green, blue ones. I've attached a picture of the back of my DVD recorder. Thanks for the help! I enjoy reading all the information and find it very helpful.

OK, I did experiment and this time I got component working. What I did was move the Wii to Component 2 instead of 1 where it had been. Then I plugged the TV into Component 1 and this time it worked, sound and all. I had to unplug the HDMI cable before it would work, but it works.


Did the sound level increase? I just got a 8300HDC for my bedroom and hooked it up with HDMI to TV for video and composite audio to my 3-Play av switcher. The audio is then sent to AudioEngine A5 active speakers. The audio is way too low (settings are 'variable' and 'narrow band'). If I switch to component, will the pre-amp gain increase so I can get high volume?

Does anyone know how I can hook up a DVD recorder to my SA8240HDC HD-DVR box so I can record shows I've already DVR'd to DVD's? I just bought a Sony RDRGX360 and I'm not sure how to do it. I have my SA box hooked up to my Dell 32" HDTV with component cables, the red, green, blue ones. I've attached a picture of the back of my DVD recorder. Thanks for the help! I enjoy reading all the information and find it very helpful.

Either use the component (better video quality) or composite outputs to connect your DVR to your DVD Recorder. Then queue DVR program, press RECORD on DVD Recorder, and then PLAY on DVR.

Either use the component (better video quality) or composite outputs to connect your DVR to your DVD Recorder. Then queue DVR program, press RECORD on DVD Recorder, and then PLAY on DVR.
So can I still have another set of cables from the dvr to the tv? Does the dvr box just output on all types all the time? I'm also assuming I can't watch anything else while I'm recording to DVD? Thanks for the help.

Either use the component (better video quality) or composite outputs to connect your DVR to your DVD Recorder. Then queue DVR program, press RECORD on DVD Recorder, and then PLAY on DVR.

The component video on that DVD recorder is out only, so it cannot accept video coming in. I would recommend the S-Video connection if possible, only falling back to composite if the S-Video on the cable box is being used.

So can I still have another set of cables from the dvr to the tv? Does the dvr box just output on all types all the time? I'm also assuming I can't watch anything else while I'm recording to DVD? Thanks for the help.

The DVR outputs the same thing on all outputs (except IEEE 1394, which only outputs the raw compressed video and audio without any internally-generated graphics because it is too slow to handle uncompressed video). IEEE 1394 outputs the compressed audio and video of the program being shown at the time. All other outputs show the decompressed video. The HDMI port and the digital audio ports carry either compressed Dolby AC-3 audio or the decompressed PCM audio that has been degraded from 5.1 channels to 2 channels depending on the settings made in the software. The conventional RCA audio ports of course only handle 2-channel analog audio.

Or, instead of the "silver" approach you outline, they could have had the "gold" standard by just hiring Aptiv to upgrade Passport, preferred by nearly everyone who had seen both in action. That would have been the proper approach, and would have saved them money and headaches in the end. And oh, not that it matters, but it would have been in the best interests of their customers as well.


That would have worked to, but it would really depend on what platform had a larger installed base at the time. SARA at that time already had many features TWC wanted like Caller ID on TV and the biggie: SDV. In the end, this doesn't matter because TWC doesn't care. I'm certain that given the choice between an improved SARA or Passport, customers would take either over Navigator.

Does anyone know how I can hook up a DVD recorder to my SA8240HDC HD-DVR box so I can record shows I've already DVR'd to DVD's? I just bought a Sony RDRGX360 and I'm not sure how to do it. I have my SA box hooked up to my Dell 32" HDTV with component cables, the red, green, blue ones. I've attached a picture of the back of my DVD recorder. Thanks for the help! I enjoy reading all the information and find it very helpful.
RE: Recording from DVR to DVD/VCR recorder

I connect Video/Audio output #2 to my DVD recorder inputs. You didn't state what software your DVR has. My Sara v. 1.90 offers a "Record to VCR" function which is very cool. During the recording, it sends the program to video output #2 for but you still can watch/record/play other programs during the recording. During the recording, none of the program guide screens, or progress bars will be on the recording. Of course Video ouput #2 is not HDTV but there are no HDTV recorders yet anyway so no biggie.

Time Warner and Samsung showed off the SMT-H3090 at a cable TV show. What was interesting is that it had Passport OCAP which was based off passport echo and not Mystro ODN. Strange isn't it.Strange, indeed--difficult to believe. I've read several reports of Samsung running ODN on their OCAP-compliant television prototypes at various technology shows over the past 3 years (just google "time-warner-cable samsung navigator" and you'll turn up a ton of PRs on the topic). Samsung's televisions are certainly not restricted to running ODN, but I've yet to hear a report of them running anything else, and I certainly wouldn't expect them to be running anything else in TWC's booth.

Do you have a link to an online report on that?

EDIT: I found a picture of Samsung's box running something with the Aptiv logo at the bottom at last month's The Cable Show, here (http://www.engadgethd.com/photos/the-cablenet-booth-tour-at-the-cable-show/814033/), in Engadget's photo gallery of the show. No indication of that display being associated with TWC that I can see.

Did the sound level increase? I just got a 8300HDC for my bedroom and hooked it up with HDMI to TV for video and composite audio to my 3-Play av switcher. The audio is then sent to AudioEngine A5 active speakers. The audio is way too low (settings are 'variable' and 'narrow band'). If I switch to component, will the pre-amp gain increase so I can get high volume?

The sound level did increase, but I had no problem with HDMI in the first place when it came to sound. When I switched to composite the first attempt, it just didn't seem right. Sound was terrible, as I said. The second attempt just worked and sound was fine. So I don't think there was a difference in sound between HDMI and composite, just that the first time I tried composite something went wrong overall.

RE: Recording from DVR to DVD/VCR recorder

I connect Video/Audio output #2 to my DVD recorder inputs. You didn't state what software your DVR has. My Sara v. 1.90 offers a "Record to VCR" function which is very cool. During the recording, it sends the program to video output #2 for but you still can watch/record/play other programs during the recording. During the recording, none of the program guide screens, or progress bars will be on the recording. Of course Video ouput #2 is not HDTV but there are no HDTV recorders yet anyway so no biggie.
So do I just switch the tv to that input and queue up the dvd recorder and then start playing the dvr box? I have time warner with their new navigator on it. I'm assuming then I cannot touch the tw dvr box until it is done recording to the dvd recorder? Thanks for the help.

That would have worked to, but it would really depend on what platform had a larger installed base at the time. SARA at that time already had many features TWC wanted like Caller ID on TV and the biggie: SDV. In the end, this doesn't matter because TWC doesn't care. I'm certain that given the choice between an improved SARA or Passport, customers would take either over Navigator.

I agee.The reason I said SARA once improved would be the guide of choice beside the reason you stated is that 75% of TWC customer are on SARA and 25% are or were on Passport.Would have been easier to switch 25% and cheaper than switch 75% the other way.However is seems in the long run 100% will be switched to one version of Navigator.

Yea, TWC really screwed the pooch with Navigator. The only thing I can hope for is that by the time our market gets it, we see a refined and reliable/functional version. If they can produce that, then I stay with them. I have been satisfied with the overall quality of service thus far. My only gripe would be the stagnated HD offerings. Don't get me wrong, we have more than most at about 35-40 actual channels, but we are missing a few key networks like Fx, USA and Sci-Fi.

I agee.The reason I said SARA once improved would be the guide of choice beside the reason you stated is that 75% of TWC customer are on SARA and 25% are or were on Passport.Would have been easier to switch 25% and cheaper than switch 75% the other way.However is seems in the long run 100% will be switched to one version of Navigator.

You guys seem to be forgetting that SARA is a SA (Scientific Atlanta, now Cisco) product and only runs on their equipment - both the head-end and the actual cable boxes. TWC uses equipment other than SA, especially in the areas that they bought from other cable companies. They wanted an "equipment neutral" software product that would run on all their equipment - both current and future. A company never wants to be tied to a single vendor. With 2 or more, they can pit them against each other for better pricing & hopefully better products.

You guys seem to be forgetting that SARA is a SA (Scientific Atlanta, now Cisco) product and only runs on their equipment - both the head-end and the actual cable boxes. TWC uses equipment other than SA, especially in the areas that they bought from other cable companies. They wanted an "equipment neutral" software product that would run on all their equipment - both current and future. A company never wants to be tied to a single vendor. With 2 or more, they can pit them against each other for better pricing & hopefully better products.They don't just want a guide that can run on the boxes that they lease, they want one that can run on the third party subscriber-owned <tru2way> compliant equipment that's on the near horizon. In the not-so-distant future, you will be able to purchase a television that ODN can be downloaded into and run without any set top box whatsoever, from which you will be able to access interactive services like Impulse Pay-Per-View and Video On Demand channels and any other service that TWC can come up with, like on-screen caller-ID (for cable phone service) and "Start Over".

I believe that <tru2way> will spell the end of SARA (R.I.P. :rolleyes:), unless Cisco/SA were to make an OCAP version of it. I'd be surprised if that happened, but then again maybe they'll do it to try to preserve the revenue from SARA licensing fees.