Time Warner Cable Navigator [Text View] - Page 23

jnv11

09-04-08, 11:45 AM

Oh no, I know what you're talking about (I've run into it when switching between guide and full screen, etc where it would get stuck in that 1/4th of the screen) with that bug. This is actual corrupted video (giant macroblocks, multicolored blocks, etc) that is full screen but only correctly draws about 1/4th of the image starting at the top. Sound may or may not be present. Looks like really old bad mpgs used to look like back in the infancy of internet video if they got corrupted during download.

It's not every recording but it does run in streaks such as an entire day will be corrupted but the next day and the day before it will be fine.

Looks like a signal issue. Call for a truck roll. If the technician finds no signal issue, then he probably will have a few spare boxes to perform a box swap if this is a bad hard drive.

Also, have you ever opened the plate where the cable outlet is? Sometimes, I found out that the connection from the cable in the wall to the plate is so weak it should not have worked. I therefore have to truncate the cable with the weak connection and then crimp a new connector onto the cable. I do not know how many of these bad cables I have had to repair in this manner in my parents' house. It is possible that the electrician who wired up your cable was a moron. Better yet, if you discover a weak connection and you have a truck roll coming, ask the cable technician to terminate any cables with weak connectors for you. The cable company's cable termination equipment is better than what many of us can afford.

mecasull

09-04-08, 05:26 PM

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=13247598#post13247598

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=14437374#post14437374

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=14216842#post14216842

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=14535800#post14535800

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=13819253#post13819253

...

thanks, i actually searched and did a number of methods. so, i appreciate your attempt to be a smart ass.

at anyrate, it now works, and i can enter diagnostic mode. I have version 10_11 now... eSATA says my drive is bad, though. freezes up every button on the box and requires a reboot.

IamtheWolf

09-04-08, 06:19 PM

My 8300HDC in Raleigh received 2.4.10_11 last night!

Is that ODN only? I have 2.4.1-107 with 8300HD (no C).

Thanks.

jnv11

09-04-08, 07:57 PM

Is that ODN only? I have 2.4.1-107 with 8300HD (no C).

Thanks.

Yes, that is ODN only.

jnv11

09-04-08, 08:01 PM

BenJF3

09-04-08, 09:20 PM

Please see Cisco's page showing the models it has manuals for (http://www.sciatl.com/products/consumers/new_cableboxes.htm) under the header "Digital Video Recorder (DVR)". Does this mean that either the 8550HDC or 8540HDC are in mass production, being bought by some cable companies, and no longer are vaporware?

At the State Fair a TWC rep in our division said we won't see them until at least next year. Keep in mind that there is no way to know if this is accurate as TWC employees routinely mis-lead and make up information.

scnrfrq

09-04-08, 11:03 PM

jnv11

09-04-08, 11:11 PM

I just hooked up an external drive to my HDC that was working before. Now when I hook it up, I don't think it's being recognized. No message comes up about the external drive, and I don't think it sees it. What do I do now?

Have you rebooted the box after the hookup? Navigator only tries to recognize the eSATA drive during boot as far as I know.

scnrfrq

09-04-08, 11:21 PM

I did reboot and no message. I tried connecting the drive while the DVR was on and did get a quick message. I'm testing now to see if I can verify the drive is being seen.

mfogarty5

09-05-08, 12:23 AM

Ok, I have had Mystro Navigator(non-OCAP) for awhile and while I don't really like the interface, it has worked. Last Saturday I wanted to see all the college football games on that day so I did a keyboard search and found "College Football". So far so good.

When I selected College Football I expected to be able to scroll down and see each game, but was unpleasantly surprised to find that each game was its own College Football listing!?! So I had to select College Football, see what game was listed and then go back to the main listing to select the next College Football in the list. This was highly inefficient and I gave up after about 6 or 7 games.

Someone please tell me that I am an idiot and am doing something wrong! Shouldn't all college football games be lumped together under one College Football listing?!?

VisionOn

09-05-08, 01:19 AM

Someone please tell me that I am an idiot and am doing something wrong! Shouldn't all college football games be lumped together under one College Football listing?!?

In a magical world in a parallel universe TWC thought listing all the same type of thing under one result in the DVR search was a good idea.

Unfortunately we don't live there so we are stuck with the way it is in this world. Where Navigator will list the same title multiple times with no clear way to tell why until you drill down and no logical reason for it to be like that.

Satch Man

09-05-08, 04:40 AM

In a magical world in a parallel universe TWC thought listing all the same type of thing under one result in the DVR search was a good idea.

Unfortunately we don't live there so we are stuck with the way it is in this world. Where Navigator will list the same title multiple times with no clear way to tell why until you drill down and no logical reason for it to be like that.

I was just going to post this!!!! We have a mindreader on the board!

The next Navigator update REALLY NEEDS the following:

1. A more detailed sports category search: One of the problems with this feature is that the descriptions are much too generic. For example, if you want to look for College Football, you could do a:

1.) Find Shows (Press B)

2.) Select Category

3.) Select Sports

4.) Select Football.

However, than you have to scroll through about 50 different Football listings doing needle in a haystack scenarios to try to find the game and team you want. Than even after you press Select, it often does not give specific teams.

Once I get to a category, such as Football, the left hand side of the screen should list THE EXACT football teams that are playing. Don't just say, College Football, than I have to select again to find Teams TBA. Put the exact team names on the left hand panel for a sub category after the category has been chosen.

What is:

College Football

College Football

College Football

College Football

College Football

College Football

College Football

College Football

College Football

College Football?

Than I have to press Select and info to see who is playing about 40 times?

The set up should be: Press Select than after you get to Football, press select:

Michigan vs. Ohio State

Stanford vs, Nebraska

Arizona vs. Illinois.

And so on.

At least the Movie descriptions are better. The names of movies are actually shown by subcategory when the Category Movies is selected. However, with Sports, we are getting sub categories (College Football) instead of actual team descriptions, which should be in that area.

And please give Tennis its own Sports Category!

Jack

Crazywoody

09-05-08, 07:05 AM

I am so glad that SARA subs have not yet been Navigatored.I have the non dvr Navigator at my beach house.It's not the disaster I have heard about but I will say SARA is still surerior in many ways.Navigtor looks and fills like a couple of really and I mean really good software updates could make it a acceptable guide.As much as a lot of folks rag on Sara it is still a rock solid guide.Has anyone heard when or if Sara users will be Navigated? Sara 1.24.1 Greensboro NC

BenJF3

09-05-08, 07:18 AM

At the New York State Fair the TWC reps at their expo didn't even know what Navigator was?!?! There is no telling, but if they can pull off a more final version and get up to speed with HD, many in my division won't switch that are currently on the fence. However, with the announcement of a next gen DirecTivo in the works, it really boils down to what is in play at the time that comes out. I'm ready to switch, but right now there just isn't enough incentive to pay all the extra money it'll cost for either satco.

xnappo

09-05-08, 09:22 AM

PedjaR

09-05-08, 09:40 AM

I was just going to post this!!!! We have a mindreader on the board!

The next Navigator update REALLY NEEDS the following:

1. A more detailed sports category search: One of the problems with this feature is that the descriptions are much too generic. For example, if you want to look for College Football, you could do a:

1.) Find Shows (Press B)

2.) Select Category

3.) Select Sports

4.) Select Football.

However, than you have to scroll through about 50 different Football listings doing needle in a haystack scenarios to try to find the game and team you want. Than even after you press Select, it often does not give specific teams.

Once I get to a category, such as Football, the left hand side of the screen should list THE EXACT football teams that are playing. Don't just say, College Football, than I have to select again to find Teams TBA. Put the exact team names on the left hand panel for a sub category after the category has been chosen.

What is:

College Football

College Football

College Football

College Football

College Football

College Football

College Football

College Football

College Football

College Football?

Than I have to press Select and info to see who is playing about 40 times?

The set up should be: Press Select than after you get to Football, press select:

Michigan vs. Ohio State

Stanford vs, Nebraska

Arizona vs. Illinois.

And so on.

At least the Movie descriptions are better. The names of movies are actually shown by subcategory when the Category Movies is selected. However, with Sports, we are getting sub categories (College Football) instead of actual team descriptions, which should be in that area.

And please give Tennis its own Sports Category!

Jack

They are unlikely to do all you ask for, as there are two problems with it:

1. "College Football" is the name of the program, and the thing will not go by anything except the name.
2. There are multiple channels showings the same game, typically at least one HD and one SD.

I very much doubt that they will go by anything other than name, as that is likely more work than they want to do.
However, hiding SD channels if you have the corresponding HD channel is something that should be fairly easy, and is (at least in this forum) requested fairly often, so maybe, just maybe, they would do that. Then, you would still see 40 instances of College Football, but at least each one would have only one channel showing it, so you can have the description on the right pane like any unique show, and you'd just have to scroll through the list, no Select/Info required. Not as good as what you propose, obviously, but much easier for them to do and still much better than the user-hostile thing that is there now (and would please people who asked for hiding SD channels with HD counterparts for other reasons). Would not help when ESPN decides to show the game twice, though.

Danabw

09-05-08, 10:38 AM

And please give Tennis its own Sports Category!

!!!Yes!!!

danno321s

09-05-08, 10:43 AM

!!!Yes!!!

And soccer!

Rob052067

09-05-08, 04:37 PM

Still on MDN 2.4.1-92

Had another random reboot at 1:27am two nights ago. Still no updates to the firmware as far as I can tell. It's annoying that some of the settings are lost after a reboot, especially the HD Resolution settings. For the past couple of weeks, the 7-day guide has been completely populated on most days. I've only had to load daily guide data a couple of times recently. The tuner swap feature recently reverted back to requiring PIP first before being able to swap.

I've noticed a few more Navigator glitches lately, too. Every night, around 1am, the guide goes blank on all channels. I have to move ahead an hour and then backup in order to see what's airing at 1am, and I have to repeat that step every time I go up or down the channels in the guide. During the 1am hour, if you hit the Info button while watching a program, all I get is a 'loading data' message and no program info on the menu bar at the bottom of the screen

I also have a few programs that record between 1am and 3am. The DVR listings includes the program information, but if I am viewing one of those recording programs and press the Info button, I just get is window with a 'No Program Data Available' message.

I've grown accustomed to Navigator recording or not-recording repeat series programs in a completly random manner. And, of course, the occasional failed recording. But, sometimes I've canceled scheduled repeat programs and they've still been recorded. In those cases, after I delete the undesired recording, the same program appears twice in the recording log: Once with a 'canceled by user' message and once with a 'deleted by user' message (very odd). Undesdired recordings would be a big headache if the drive was nearly full, especially if recorded in HD.

How very ironic that Navigator can both fail to record programs you want and record programs you don't want.

On the other hand, my new DishNetwork HD DVR has performed flawlessly!

Danabw

09-06-08, 12:58 AM

Rob...bummer. The most current release of the Nav SW has been very stable and accurate in terms of recording for me. Hope they get the new sw rolled out in your area soon. Still ain't perfect, but definitely an improvement.

Satch Man

09-06-08, 03:20 AM

My Navigator on my 8300 Maestro DVR has been very stable. The "problems" are more minor inconveniences of features that it doesn't have, but the guide works OK for me.

If the Keyboard could get a Catagory Search capability and the system more Sports categories, I would be happy.

Jack

Satch Man

09-06-08, 07:20 AM

Still on MDN 2.4.1-92

Had another random reboot at 1:27am two nights ago. Still no updates to the firmware as far as I can tell. It's annoying that some of the settings are lost after a reboot, especially the HD Resolution settings. For the past couple of weeks, the 7-day guide has been completely populated on most days. I've only had to load daily guide data a couple of times recently. The tuner swap feature recently reverted back to requiring PIP first before being able to swap.

I've noticed a few more Navigator glitches lately, too. Every night, around 1am, the guide goes blank on all channels. I have to move ahead an hour and then backup in order to see what's airing at 1am, and I have to repeat that step every time I go up or down the channels in the guide. During the 1am hour, if you hit the Info button while watching a program, all I get is a 'loading data' message and no program info on the menu bar at the bottom of the screen

I also have a few programs that record between 1am and 3am. The DVR listings includes the program information, but if I am viewing one of those recording programs and press the Info button, I just get is window with a 'No Program Data Available' message.

I've grown accustomed to Navigator recording or not-recording repeat series programs in a completely random manner. And, of course, the occasional failed recording. But, sometimes I've canceled scheduled repeat programs and they've still been recorded. In those cases, after I delete the undesired recording, the same program appears twice in the recording log: Once with a 'canceled by user' message and once with a 'deleted by user' message (very odd). Undesired recordings would be a big headache if the drive was nearly full, especially if recorded in HD.

How very ironic that Navigator can both fail to record programs you want and record programs you don't want.

On the other hand, my new Dish Network HD DVR has performed flawlessly!

Rob,

When did you start seeing the missing guide data between the 1-3am cycles? How many Navigator reboots have you had in the past week? How about the past two weeks?

I wonder if your division is doing an incremental software update between 1-3 AM? After the IPG files in, how is your scroll speed in the guide and menus? If we can narrow this down to a time element, it would seem to be a server update. Any announcement of channel changes in terms of location for your area. or new channels?

We got Big Ten Network on Standard Service about last week. Over the last few days there were like 1-3 channels in our own IPG that showed no data in them, but the problem didn't last very long. BTN just came on. The reboot must have happened when I was asleep.

Jack

fsuinnc

09-06-08, 11:05 AM

The new version (here in Chapel Hill) does solve some problems for me. When I turn the TV on the picture stays at 1080p and so far the picture hasn't gotten stuck in the upper right hand corner after using the menu. At least I don't get angry just turning on the set any more. The bigger problems still remain, I lose al buffered video each time I swap tuners and I can't swap tuners without the pic-n-pic turned on. So far my SA8240HD hasn't rebooted on it's own. Overall I have to say that I believe the Navigator ODN software is finally ready for an Alpha release. If TWC will do a little research and add the features people want they could be ready for Beta testing very soon, (12 months at the rate they seem to move).

Satch Man

09-06-08, 02:59 PM

Rob052067

09-06-08, 04:28 PM

Rob,

When did you start seeing the missing guide data between the 1-3am cycles? How many Navigator reboots have you had in the past week? How about the past two weeks?
I've been noticing the missing guide info for at least a month, not for certain just how long. One reboot this past week, and 2 over the past month.

I wonder if your division is doing an incremental software update between 1-3 AM? After the IPG files in, how is your scroll speed in the guide and menus? If we can narrow this down to a time element, it would seem to be a server update. Any announcement of channel changes in terms of location for your area. or new channels?
It's possible, but the missing data is every day, not just occasionally. Haven't really noticed any big slow downs in guide speed. If it's empty for the 1am hour, and I move ahead and back an hour, it fills in the misisng info quickly. We did get 3 new HD channels just prior to the Olympics, plus USAhd temporarily. Big10 SD&HD were added last Saturday. Supposed to get 3 more HD this month.

Rob We got Big Ten Network on Standard Service about last week. Over the last few days there were like 1-3 channels in our own IPG that showed no data in them, but the problem didn't last very long. BTN just came on. The reboot must have happened when I was asleep.
Jack
Prior to the mid-week reboot the other day, it had been several weeks since the last reboot. I don't think it ever rebooted when the new channels were added in mid-August and last weekend.

strutter

09-06-08, 07:33 PM

i got something new and strange happening right now.

on hbohd the 8300hd in one room has sound but no picture. the same channel in another room on a 3250hd has picture but no sound. weird!!!!

Danabw

09-06-08, 08:47 PM

i got something new and strange happening right now.

on hbohd the 8300hd in one room has sound but no picture. the same channel in another room on a 3250hd has picture but no sound. weird!!!!

Can you get them together in the same room? ;)

Crazywoody

09-07-08, 09:51 AM

zgori

09-07-08, 09:58 AM

Hi,

Just wanted to post about an issue with Navigator that's been driving me crazy, which i couldn't find any documentation on here or anywhere else on the internet, and which I seemed to have solved. In case anyone else is having the same problem.

I have TWC in Brooklyn. I recently traded in my SA 8300HD because the HDMI port had stopped working. I received a SA 8300HDC with Navigator, which until last week I didn't know existed. My problem was that the box was often unresponsive to the remote, particularly when it was first turned on. Rebooting would solve the problem temporarily, and sometimes after pushing random buttons on the box itself the remote would suddenly start working.

The problem appears to have been a USB infrared extender that I had plugged into the box's front USB port. This device, which worked flawlessly on my old 8300HD, allows me to have the box out of sight. But for some reason it interfered with the remote, even when the remote was aimed directly at the box, not the extender's receiver.

I believe the extender just draws power from the USB jack, so I've ordered a USB power adapter that plugs into a regular outlet to try using with it instead, so it won't have to pluged in to the box. Hopefully that will work. In the meantime, with the extender unplugged from the box, the remote seems to be working fine (though I've had to rearrange a bit to keep the box in sight).

strutter

09-07-08, 12:40 PM

Can you get them together in the same room? ;)

:rolleyes::D:D:)

its still like that today. only that one channel. i have rebooted both of them. a third 3250hd in another room is the same as the other 3250 ,picture no sound.

i'm gonna try unplugging the amp and reinserting. i dont think thats it though. i think the amp is only for the main set on the 8300.

alleg23

09-07-08, 07:25 PM

hi all,

im on twcnyc: brooklyn and have two boxes an 8000 and 8300, both standard.

i was wondering when i can expect to be upgraded to navigator?

is navigator only for HD boxes?

i am finally getting an HD today, and I am wondering if I could still get an 8300hd box with passport on it?

thanks.

hdtvfan2005

09-07-08, 09:40 PM

alleg23

1. Whenever they load it on to the headend.

2. Navigator is for both HD and SD boxes.

3. Maybe or you could get an 8300HDC with Mystro ODN. ODN is OCAP digital Navigator. It's a version of Navigator that runs on OCAP boxes.

Danabw

09-07-08, 10:40 PM

:rolleyes::D:D:)

its still like that today. only that one channel. i have rebooted both of them. a third 3250hd in another room is the same as the other 3250 ,picture no sound.

i'm gonna try unplugging the amp and reinserting. i dont think thats it though. i think the amp is only for the main set on the 8300.

Bizarre. Good luck w/your troubleshooting...I'm glad my SA8300HD isn't as "creative" as yours. :)

danno321s

09-08-08, 10:01 AM

Danabw

09-08-08, 12:14 PM

I can't even get to programming past 3:00 PM today in my Guide, last night or this AM. The Guide blanks out, loading data message finally appears, but then no data shows and the Guide closes!!

Rob052067

09-08-08, 12:16 PM

Is there any ETA for Manual Recording? The US Open Men's Final was pushed to today at 4 pm CDT so I had to schedule a bunch of shows in that time slot but what if TWC now updates the Guide and I miss the US Open Final?

No ETA and don't get your hopes up anytime soon. But, rather than scheduling several shows, you could have scheduled one show with options to add a few hours to the end of the recording.

bsquare

09-08-08, 01:58 PM

Has anyone anywhere heard when SARA user will start to receive Navigator?I am on SARA 1.24.1 and it's a rock solid if not pretty guide.I hate the sara search functions.However sara has deep and easy to use recording options that covers about any option you would want.It seems Navigator is sorely lacking in this area.Can anyone post on the current Navigator recording features.Sara has both a daily or single day slot recording feature that is very useful.SARA has has very good manual recording features. Also can do first run only or first run and repeats.Does Naviigator come anywhere close in these options?'
Crazy:

SARA 1.90.5.111 3/8/08 here (8300 HDC). Check your version again.

I emailed TWC Hawaii & they replied that there are no plans to change from Sara to Navigator. I bombarded them with emails about Nav horror stories. I don't want to give up the great recording options of Sara. I don't care about the search function - I get the best searches on my PC with a real keyboard & instant results.

Danabw

09-08-08, 02:11 PM

No ETA and don't get your hopes up anytime soon. But, rather than scheduling several shows, you could have scheduled one show with options to add a few hours to the end of the recording.

That's what I do...you can extend up to two hours max past normal end date. So for a potentially long event like a five-set final (best case, maybe 4 1/2 to 5 hours) where it isn't in the guide, you end up having to set recordings for multiple shows to cover all that time.

I'm going to check back home at lunch and see if the Guide is working yet...if I don't get the US Open final recorded properly while I'm at work I'll be very, very unhappy.

andrewperrin

09-08-08, 02:30 PM

Satch Man

09-08-08, 02:52 PM

How do I cancel a series recording request?

I foolishly entered a bunch of "record series" requests when I first got the box... now I can cancel specific upcoming shows but not the whole series I don't want anymore! Help....

Using 8300HDC and ODN 2.4.10_11.

Thanks.

To take actions on a whole series, Press LIST on your DVR remote. Than horizontal scroll to Series Manager. Prompts should appear on screen for how to deal with each series you have set up. If needed, press select and scroll down or up to the name of each series following the prompts to take action on each series. When finished, press exit. (Same as with any other leave guide option) to return to watching TV.

Jack

danki6x

09-08-08, 05:24 PM

Crazywoody

09-09-08, 09:47 AM

Crazy:

SARA 1.90.5.111 3/8/08 here (8300 HDC). Check your version again.

I emailed TWC Hawaii & they replied that there are no plans to change from Sara to Navigator. I bombarded them with emails about Nav horror stories. I don't want to give up the great recording options of Sara. I don't care about the search function - I get the best searches on my PC with a real keyboard & instant results.

OPPS 1.89.24.1 sorry all

CycloneMike

09-09-08, 10:51 AM

I found the diagnostics screen and the other information screen.

I will take a look at the info and report back later.

Thanks.

zgori

09-09-08, 03:11 PM

On a similar note, some LCD TVs actually put out enough IR the first few minutes they are turned on that they swamp remotes (expecially one of the satellite services - forget which one).
/Dan

That is fascinating -- I hadn't come across that and I've done a lot of googling on this problem. I have an LCD tv and I'm going to investigate this further. Thanks for the lead.

phousley

09-09-08, 03:40 PM

That is fascinating -- I hadn't come across that and I've done a lot of googling on this problem. I have an LCD tv and I'm going to investigate this further. Thanks for the lead.If you're looking for a way to detect IR, just use cell phone. Most cell phone cameras can see IR. Just try it with your remote.

danki6x

09-09-08, 05:13 PM

That is fascinating -- I hadn't come across that and I've done a lot of googling on this problem. I have an LCD tv and I'm going to investigate this further. Thanks for the lead.Couple other things. I think it is just masking tape they put over the IR LEDs on the remote to make it work. Maybe it was on the sensor and maybe not masking tape (I didn't care so going from long term memory). Also, you can see the IR with a cell phone camera. Fun to watch the remote flash. /Dan

CycloneMike

09-10-08, 01:39 PM

I found the diagnostics screen and the other information screen.

I will take a look at the info and report back later.

Thanks.

First off, I wanted to thank all those who had previously posted information on how to check signal strength with the cable boxes - I actually used a cable box (4250HD) and a small 13-inch TV to run around the house and check the signal strengths at various locations. I had to be patient as the box rebooted every time I plugged it in at a different location, but it was alot cheaper than buying a signal tester!!!! I had plenty of other things to do, so I would move it and go back about 1/2 hour later after it rebooted and check the readings.

I was also able to verify my Mystro software version: ODN 2.4.10_11

I got into both into the information screens and the diagnositc screens and based on the information and my cable/splitter/amplifier (+15dB)/wiring setup and lengths have determined / estimated the following signal strengths (digital QAM 1 dBmV):

Basement 8300HDC: +3 to +10 (depending on MHz - higher MHz, lower reading).
Office 4250HD: -4 to +2
Office SA Cable Modem: +9.5
Signal strength at house cable drop: +2 (pretty good as they aim for 0)

The reading on the 8300HDC shows yellow at 9 dBmV and red at 10 dBmV. I think this indicates that it prefers the signal to be at or below +8 dBmV. I hope this won't cause premature failure of the box or problems with recordings.

In the office at the 4250HD I tried to split the cable again and feed the 4250HD one line and the antenna connection on the TV the other line, but the 4250HD had trouble with pixelization on the HD channels that were the higher MHz signals. It would have put those signals around -7.5 dB and that is the low end of the acceptable range. The TV antenna connection was also degraded.

Prior to adding the 15 dB amplifier with the cable modem, I was having some problems with the signal which was at about -5.5 dBmV and now at the +9.5 I am having even more problems (I may be over-powering the modem).

I think I will see what happens if I split the cable modem feed to the the cable box, which should lower the modem to +6.0 and raise the cable box to that same amount. I can then split the signal to the cable box/TV again and they will have around +2.5 average.

I know this seems confusing, but in general I think I have a signal strength at my house that I can't complain to TWC about.

Thanks,

Mike

xnappo

09-10-08, 03:39 PM

CycloneMike

09-10-08, 05:55 PM

Hi Mike,

I hate to tell you this now, but you really needed to be watching you S/N (signal to noise) ratio. You could have decent signal levels, but have 'ingress' (leakage of OTA signals into your line) that will only show up in the SNR.

xnappo

No problem - I can check those easily at the two locations where I currently have the 4250HD and the 8300HDC. I don't imagine they would be significantly different for the other locations.

Thank you,

Mike

nmspace

09-11-08, 11:55 PM

Has anyone been able to use more than one external sata drive? (swapping them back and forth?)

I recently got a 2nd drive when my first external was near full. I powered everything off, removed the first external drive, and plugged in the new/2nd drive.

Everything powered up properly, I received the msg to format the drive, did so, and was able to start using the new drive for recordings.

Now my problems start: Tonight when I wanted to watch a show on the original external drive, I turned everything off, disconnected the 2nd drive, put the first one back on and powered up. Basically it ended up looking like everything on the first drive was no longer found!!.. No old shows were showing up in List. OH NO, so I switched back to the new (2nd drive), and the shows that i taped on that drive over the last week were gone also.

On the old drive, when I bring up list, I'm getting like 76% space used (it had been 95%). When I have NO external drive, I show 90% used on the internal only. When I put the 2nd/new drive in, I show 20% used. Both the 1st and 2nd external drives are 500GB. So it appears like the shows may still be there taking up space....

Is there a way to force Navigator to re-read or re create a list?... I've got the latest (I think) version of navigator (the .11 version which fixed the problems with hanging with an external drive if not in use all the time).

thanks!!

xnappo

09-12-08, 09:35 AM

No problem - I can check those easily at the two locations where I currently have the 4250HD and the 8300HDC. I don't imagine they would be significantly different for the other locations.

Thank you,

Mike

FYI - at least on SARA the QAM SNR / S/N is on a different page of the diags than the levels.

xnappo

michaeltscott

09-12-08, 11:35 AM

Has anyone been able to use more than one external sata drive? (swapping them back and forth?)I'm fairly certain that this can't be done; there's no way that they would have designed to allow it.

You can mount multiple drives in a system which make them appear as a single drive if massive space is your aim (see a review of "Drobo" at Cnet here (http://reviews.cnet.com/external-hard-drives/drobo/4505-3190_7-32470303.html)). But I know that some people had the idea of building a library of content as stored on an unbounded set of HDDs and that's just not going to happen.

nmspace

09-12-08, 11:55 AM

I'm fairly certain that this can't be done; there's no way that they would have designed to allow it.

You can mount multiple drives in a system which make them appear as a single drive if massive space is your aim

Hi, sorry, maybe I wasn't as clear as I hoped: I'm not trying to run multiple drives at once externally. But rather, I have a 2nd external drive that I want to use instead of the first one. And then later on, put the first one back online (removing the 2nd one) and watch the shows still on the first one.

I tried that, and lost all my shows on both external drives...

michaeltscott

09-12-08, 12:56 PM

Hi, sorry, maybe I wasn't as clear as I hoped: I'm not trying to run multiple drives at once externally. But rather, I have a 2nd external drive that I want to use instead of the first one. And then later on, put the first one back online (removing the 2nd one) and watch the shows still on the first one.

I tried that, and lost all my shows on both external drives...You were clear and I thought that I was clear in my response--as I said in the part of my post that you didn't quote, people who've participated in other threads (SARA, Passport) have had the intention of using the external drive feature to allow them to archive endless content by filling up one drive, then another, and another and so forth. When they wanted to access the stuff on one of the archive drives, they'd just power the thing down, remove the current drive and pop an old one in so that they could watch stuff they recorded long ago. As you found out, it doesn't work that way. If you remove the drive the stuff that you recorded on it disappears from the recording list; if you put the same drive back, it will recognize it and you regain access to its recordings. If you put any other drive in, it will see that it's not the last drive that it was "married" to and it will reformat it before starting to store stuff on it, "marrying" the new drive. If you put the first drive back, it will only examine it far enough to determine that it's not the drive that it has a current association with, causing it to reformat it.

It's a monogamous, "marital" relationship--it can only have an association with one external drive at a time; put in any other drive and it forms a new relationship with it, excluding any previous drives that you use. SARA works that way, Passport Echo works that way, TiVo works that way and Navigator would appear to work that way (SARA, Passport and Navigator probably all use the same core features of Cisco's PowerTV RTOS to implement external drive support).

nmspace

09-12-08, 01:10 PM

danki6x

09-12-08, 06:14 PM

Mike, thanks for the quick response back. My apologies, I misinterpreted your original response. I understand now, and thanks for the nice/detailed explanation. Appreciate it very much.

best regards, naren.Also note that the program listing is on the main drive and not on the external drive. That is why that goes away. There is a thread on external drives on AVS which will get you all the details. /Dan

xnappo

09-12-08, 07:18 PM

I'm fairly certain that this can't be done; there's no way that they would have designed to allow it.

Not to confuse things, but this technique works fine on SARA - you can be a single bachelor :)

xnappo

michaeltscott

09-12-08, 07:32 PM

Not to confuse things, but this technique works fine on SARA - you can be a single bachelor :)

xnappoSorry, then--I could have sworn that SARA, Passport and TiVo all worked that way, from past conversations in various threads. I'm absolutely sure about TiVo, but since I'm wrong about SARA, I could be wrong about Passport as well, and I'm admittedly guessing about Navigator, though nmspace's current experience would seem to bear this out. But if it's not the way that SARA works, it probably isn't a feature of some core function within PowerTV. I'll look in the Passport thread and see if I can find some corroboration.

Again, I apologize for the misinformation.

EDIT: Man, signs of early onset Alzheimer's--I found this (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10422445) discussion in the Passport thread from 1 year 5 months ago (featuring myself among others) indicating that you can do it with Passport as well. Apparently, index entries are always around for everything that you ever recorded and if you ask to play something that's not on the internal drive or currently attached external drive, it will ask you to attach the proper drive.

So, it looks like only Navigator and TiVo can't use multiple external drives. I'm absolutely certain about TiVo, and Navigator we have one report about.

daballs

09-12-08, 09:37 PM

anyone know if in the diagnostic screen you can tune to a channel thats not on the guide yet? like you could in passport diagnostic.

BenJF3

09-12-08, 09:41 PM

Sorry, then--I could have sworn that SARA, Passport and TiVo all worked that way, from past conversations in various threads. I'm absolutely sure about TiVo, but since I'm wrong about SARA, I could be wrong about Passport as well, and I'm admittedly guessing about Navigator, though nmspace's current experience would seem to bear this out. But if it's not the way that SARA works, it probably isn't a feature of some core function within PowerTV. I'll look in the Passport thread and see if I can find some corroboration.

Again, I apologize for the misinformation.

EDIT: Man, signs of early onset Alzheimer's--I found this (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10422445) discussion in the Passport thread from 1 year 5 months ago (featuring myself among others) indicating that you can do it with Passport as well. Apparently, index entries are always around for everything that you ever recorded and if you ask to play something that's not on the internal drive or currently attached external drive, it will ask you to attach the proper drive.

So, it looks like only Navigator and TiVo can't use multiple external drives. I'm absolutely certain about TiVo, and Navigator we have one report about.

I'm sure it's a priority to TWC right now to make this function work. :rolleyes:

Can't you technically daisy chain external drives to make one massive storage system? That or possibly the set top has some limitation on drive size.

michaeltscott

09-12-08, 10:51 PM

I'm sure it's a priority to TWC right now to make this function work. :rolleyes:They may actually be actively supressing it. It's the type of thing that content providers would complain about. I doubt that it works intentionally in SARA or Passport--certainly there's nothing in the documentation for SARA (and the SARA User's Guide does document how to add an external drive).
Can't you technically daisy chain external drives to make one massive storage system? That or possibly the set top has some limitation on drive size.There are eSATA RAID enclosures into which you can mount multiple drives and set them up so that they appear as a single drive. Not inexpensive, but something you can do if you have to have massive storage.

BenJF3

09-13-08, 07:32 AM

They may actually be actively supressing it. It's the type of thing that content providers would complain about. I doubt that it works intentionally in SARA or Passport--certainly there's nothing in the documentation for SARA (and the SARA User's Guide does document how to add an external drive).

I was being sarcastic. :)

I doubt TWC cares or will even officially acknowledge eSATA support.

Satch Man

09-14-08, 05:14 AM

I was being sarcastic. :)

I doubt TWC cares or will even officially acknowledge eSATA support.

I agree Ben,

And they have a nice little loophole, that since TWC does not rent out ESATA equipment, (i.e external drives independent of the DVR's), their customer carriage agreement does not say they have to provide external drive support.

In order for them to support external drives, they would probably have to charge customers another $5-$10 if you wanted an auxiliary drive for more storage. But what they are saying is they can't be responsible for any equipment that they don't rent out. And they can charge you a truck trip to attempt to fix anything that is not cable, DVR, Internet, or Digital Phone related, whether they fix the problem or not! It sucks, but external drive support is not a part of their service contract. It was SA's idea to provide the extra outlets to connect an extra hard drive. But that's the responsibility unfortunately of SA, the customer, and the third party manufacturer of the external hard drive.

Most of those dolts that answer the phone don't know their a$$ from a hole in the ground with their own equipment, so the only way that you would get external drive support would be for everyone to be "trained" and than have another optional equipment charge on your bill.

Jack

BenJF3

09-14-08, 07:13 AM

I hear you Jack, but the bigger problem lies in this: Why is SA/Cisco still using small drives (160GB) in their next gen equipment? At least Dish uses a 500GB internal and even though the rip you off by charging $40 to activate the port, they still at least provide the option to add more.

Personally, I feel no DVR unit should be going to market at this point in time with anything less than a 500GB.

holl_ands

09-14-08, 09:21 AM

Has anyone been able to use more than one external sata drive? (swapping them back and forth?)

Is there a way to force Navigator to re-read or re create a list?...
I've got the latest (I think) version of navigator (the .11 version which fixed the problems with hanging with
an external drive if not in use all the time).
I'm the one who walked in and talked to Apricorn directly (they're in San Diego).
They said they swapped eSATA drives all the time...back when we were on PASSPORT.

I haven't tried swapping with either MDN or ODN Navigator, but it appears yours
didn't "find" the external drive. I've always experienced this problem....

With the eSATA drive connected and powered up, REBOOT and patiently wait
for initialization to complete (black screen). GET READY when it's nearly complete.
IMMEDIATELY hit power button to turn box back "ON" and watch for a menu
asking you to hit "A" key to confirm you want to connect the eSATA drive.

I try to hit the power key and "A" key without waiting for the menu to pop up.
You will probably have to do this a couple times...eSATA is not yet ready for primetime...

If the above does not work, you could try "hot plugging" the eSATA
connector to force the DVR to recognize the presence of the drive.
First couple times, ignore the prompt to reboot and see if it will
simply recognize the eSATA HD and ask for the "A" key entry.
If that doesn't work, you could try following the prompt and rebooting,
followed by the quick key sequence described above.....

And don't give up on the first attempt.....try, try, retry...

=======================================
FYI: Cisco specs say 1.5 TB (1500 GB) max size for external eSATA HD.

Which means you would be wasting 500 GB on a 2 TB drive. Perhaps
eSATA's USB port could be connected to a PC to add a 500 GB DOS partition....

benintendi.1

09-15-08, 11:27 AM

I have a TW DVR, 8240HDC and I just connected a 1TB Western Digital Drive with the Vantec Nexstar 3 enclosure. It worked great but when the power went off and came back on everything it had recorded to the external was gone.

Any thoughts as to why this happened? I tried it again and was able to repeat the issue. I have the latest version of navigator, 2.4.11.

:confused:

Dublin, Ohio
TW with Navigator 2.4.11
DVR 8240HDC

scsiraid

09-15-08, 11:33 AM

benintendi.1

09-15-08, 11:52 AM

Where did you have the AC power cord of the external HDD plugged? Hopefully not into the DVR outlet....
I did have it plugged into the DVR. Is that my only problem? I can change it for sure. Can I plug something else into that outlet?

scsiraid

09-15-08, 12:57 PM

I did have it plugged into the DVR. Is that my only problem? I can change it for sure. Can I plug something else into that outlet?

Plugging it into the DVR outlet can result in the drive not being powered as the DVR boots up and thus the problem you saw. Sure... you can plug something else into that outlet... just make sure the HDD is directly powered independant of the DVR. I suggest that you consider a UPS to keep power up on the DVR and HDD to avoid further issues.

danki6x

09-15-08, 06:13 PM

I did have it plugged into the DVR. Is that my only problem? I can change it for sure. Can I plug something else into that outlet?You can also set the outlet always on. There is an external drive thread at http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=516559 /Dan

Crazywoody

09-15-08, 11:25 PM

BenJF3

09-15-08, 11:47 PM

NAVIGATOR FROM SARA ALERT!!!!! Greensboro NC. On the Time Warner Triad website under the site map a letter has been added informing us over the next 3 months we will be getting Navigator.If yo want to go there read it for yourselves.Talks about the letter and phne call we will get and how great Navigator is.Go read it and I guess HERE IT COMES FELLOW SARA USERS. Go to the the site map and click on Navigator.

Crap, but at the same time it just give more incentive to switch. DirecTV is adding HD locals here next week! So even if I plan on OTA, I can still scope out the sat quality first.

Satch Man

09-16-08, 05:14 AM

Crap, but at the same time it just give more incentive to switch. DirecTV is adding HD locals here next week! So even if I plan on OTA, I can still scope out the sat quality first.

$hit Ben!

That sucks! But at least this forum has allowed fellow Sara users like yourself to prepare for the bad omen. Actually, Navigator has gotten a lot better for many of us compared to when it first came out. Much better. Most problems are now related to features that Passport had that Navigator does not yet offer and needs to bring back. (i.e stuff we have all talked about like expanded keyboard searching by Theme as well as title, and an expanded sports list.)

So are you going to try Navigator for a month or so, or are you going to satellite almost as soon as your box is converted?

Jack

wleehendrick

09-16-08, 12:20 PM

Actually, Navigator has gotten a lot better for many of us compared to when it first came out. Much better.

Speak for yourself! j/k ;) Mine still fails to record both manually and series recordings on occaision. I called my local TW to bitch about it and they took off the last three months of DVR specific charges and will do so as long as I continue to suffer from the 'known issues'. Somtimes the squeaky wheel does get the grease! On an aside, their tech did mention that they are working to implement manual (time/channel) recordings.

BenJF3

09-16-08, 02:25 PM

$hit Ben!

That sucks! But at least this forum has allowed fellow Sara users like yourself to prepare for the bad omen. Actually, Navigator has gotten a lot better for many of us compared to when it first came out. Much better. Most problems are now related to features that Passport had that Navigator does not yet offer and needs to bring back. (i.e stuff we have all talked about like expanded keyboard searching by Theme as well as title, and an expanded sports list.)

So are you going to try Navigator for a month or so, or are you going to satellite almost as soon as your box is converted?

Jack

Well, right now their are a couple of things I'm waiting on to develop in the sat camp as far as features and equipment (Namely the new DirecTivo). If we get avigator and it is as bug ridden and problematic as I've read about here it will force my hand, but I'm willing to give it about a month of break in. However, if the sat providers come through I may be gone before Navigator even arrives. Personally I'd love to get my hands on a Cisco 8550 with Navigator to see how the handles it. The other reason I'm looking is because TWC has basically stagnated the HD content. Now, if they were to get the NBC Universal agreement done and add USA, Sci-Fi, Fx, Bravo, etc. in HD I'll probably hold off switching for longer. I'm on the fence right now as their are a few developments happening with all the carriers that I'm watching.

jnv11

09-16-08, 03:41 PM

Apparently, the Navigator wish list thread is dead (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=723830), so I am reposting my wish list with a few mods that I can think of:

Bugs remaining to fix:

The banner does not go away after someone uses either the slow-motion or the pause features after the user presses play or pause to get out of those modes.
Warning: Complex bug ahead. I have Good Morning America set up as a series recording that records from 7AM-9AM each morning. However, TWC often updates the guide around 7:45AM each morning by updating the profile at that time on the guide data carousel. You can get the time the latest profile was loaded in the diagnostics. One morning, the guide data changed the guide record in the middle of the recording to add a description. This caused a duplicate recording to start at the time the profile was loaded. The solution is to check to see if the duplicate matches the original recording's start and stop time, and then to update the description at this time.
Sometimes, both tuners of the box are in use when the service group discovery (abbr. SGD) file is updated, forcing the box to abandon performing SGD. Apparently, SGD loads the parameters needed to perform video on demand (not switched digital video). Tuning the box to a video on demand channel retries SGD if it was previously abandoned or failed. The retry fails if one tuner is recording, making video on demand fail and logging a tuner error in the diagnostics. Is the box trying to use the secondary tuner to perform this while it is in use recording something to perform service group discovery? The program should be smart enough to fall back upon the primary tuner to perform this job when the secondary is recording something.

Feature requests:

Allow users to create full-custom recordings. (Some call this manual recording, but that terminology makes me think that this is what happens when you tell the box to record the show you are viewing.)
Allow multiple user profiles so that two users who have wildly different tastes do not have to sort through each others' recordings.
Add an Auto HD/SD switching feature. If the program is available on both an SD and an HD channel, record the SD version if the HD channel's version of the show is just an upconversion to save space on the hard disk. Otherwise, record the HD version. This feature should be selectable per channel because some stations' HD feeds fail due to rain fade while their SD feeds are stronger. Use program guide data to detect the HDTV flag for this decision.
Allow the users to customize the kickback from fast forwards, rewinds, and the instant replay button.
Allow us to turn the AC outlet always off. When the AC outlet is set to always on, the relay makes clicking noises every time the power fails or is restored. Therefore, I believe that this relay is a single pole normally open relay that requires a voltage to be passed through an electromagnet to hold the relay closed, allowing power through. Since the power supply in some 8300HDC/8240HDC boxes seems overloaded, those who do not need the AC outlet can lower the load on the PSU and save some money on the electric bill by setting the outlet to "Always off".
Port the feature that allows you to restrict the recording time on a series to one specific time from MDN to ODN.
Give us back the x4 fast forwarding and rewind modes.
We need an advanced manual that covers every feature of Navigator for power users.
Map a thirty second skip onto the C or D buttons when they are not used for anything else.
Allow users to confirm when they want an upgrade to proceed.
Before an automatic software upgrade is performed, check to see if any recordings are about to take place or are occurring and wait until the recordings finish before attempting the upgrade.
Replace DAVIC-based communications with DOCSIS-based communications. This is expensive, but DOCSIS has many advantages that will facilitate the features requested below and will allow Time Warner Cable to start using Motorola as a supplier to put pressure on Cisco to increase its quality to compete and to keep someone in Cisco's sales department available during the holiday season. (TWC ran out of HD boxes last year due to Scientific Atlanta's sales department shutting down for vacation during the holiday season according to one tech who came last month! TWC wanted to order more, but its order could not be placed while that sales force was on vacation.) Motorola boxes apparently do not support DAVIC, but most CableCARD-enabled Motorola boxes except their SD-only CableCARD-enabled boxes support DOCSIS. Also, DAVIC is very slow compared to DOCSIS.
Like Comcast does, allow users to license other OCAP interactive program guides, like TiVo or Passport Echo OCAP version. This will require DOCSIS to perform the individual download for each guide because the alternative would require a carousel, or data broadcast channel, for each interactive program guide for reasonable performance. That would be a lot of channels because there are many program guides out there if carousels were used to load these guides. DAVIC is too slow for this purpose.
Allow users to select the version of ODN they want to use. For example, ODN 2.4.5_4 was able to handle eSATA, but failed when someone rewound in the middle of a recording while it was being recorded. ODN 2.4.9_3 was able to handle rewinds while the show being rewound was being recorded, but crashes when an eSATA drive is connected and had odd HDMI bugs. Thies example is now moot because ODN 2.4.10_11 fixes all of these bugs, but it still is a valid illustration of my point. We would like this in case the next ODN is a buggy wreck. This will require DOCSIS to perform the individual download for each guide because the alternative would require a carousel, or data broadcast channel, for each version of ODN for reasonable performance. That would be a lot of channels because there are many versions of ODN.
On boxes with the capability to draw 960x540 graphics, optionally fill up the sides of the screen with some content like a stock ticker, a weather forecast, or whether someone has unread email in their Road Runner account when a 4x3 program is displayed on a 16x9 screen.
Set up series recordings that will record any game involving a selected sports team.

User interface fixes:

Move everything out of the Devices submenu in the Quick Settings menu to appropriate categories like in MDN, and write meaningful help to the options in that submenu while you move it out.
Require a confirmation for a deletion of a recording. With Java's need to sometimes perform garbage collection (a.k.a. deleting useless stuff in memory and moving useful stuff around memory in order to maximize contiguous free memory for new data structures) whenever the box runs out of contiguous memory, the user interface sometimes seemingly randomly freezes temporarily at critical times like these. During these times, the box cannot respond because garbage collection generally requires the temporary freezing of the program being executed to do its work.
Allow users to develop new skins for the box and to have the box load them from the Internet.
My father would love a feature where the user can choose to have the list sorted in descending order so pressing up on the remote will increment the channel number instead of decrement it. Of course, it should be tied to user profiles because I like the list sorted the traditional way in ascending order.
Expand the sports categories.
Do not show the banner when someone hits the instant replay button.
Map an enter button for the PIP tuner to the * button to allow us to quickly switch to a far away channel on PIP without swapping the tuners.

Is there anything I missed?

michaeltscott

09-16-08, 04:25 PM

Allow users to create full-custom recordings. (Some call this manual recording, but that terminology makes me think that this is what happens when you tell the box to record the show you are viewing.)One reason why people call it that is because DVR UI designers more or less universally call it that: the UIs of both Passport Echo and TiVo call this option "Set Up Manual Recording" and SARA calls it "Schedule a New Manual Recording".

Satch Man

09-16-08, 05:02 PM

One reason why people call it that is because DVR UI designers more or less universally call it that: the UIs of both Passport Echo and TiVo call this option "Set Up Manual Recording" and SARA calls it "Schedule a New Manual Recording".

Is this correct, at least in theory?

That in Navigator if you hit the Record button in the middle of a show you are watching (as in you only want to record a segment of the show.) you have created a manual recording because the show would record from that starting point? What customers want is the ability for Navigator to have time-user activated periods to start and stop shows. That is true manual recording.

Jack

michaeltscott

09-16-08, 05:13 PM

Is this correct, at least in theory?

That in Navigator if you hit the Record button in the middle of a show you are watching (as in you only want to record a segment of the show.) you have created a manual recording because the show would record from that starting point? What customers want is the ability for Navigator to have time-user activated periods to start and stop shows. That is true manual recording.

JackThat's what I'm saying. I had the impression that the creation of requests to record by specifying a date, start- and end-time and channel (with options to repeat) are referred to as scheduling or setting up a "Manual Recording" by all of the DVR UIs that I've used. I checked the TiVo GUI itself and the documentation for Passport Echo (http://www.midtel.net/pdf/echo_gettingstarted.pdf) and SARA (http://www.scientificatlanta.com/Products/consumers/userguidepdfs/4003870.pdf) before I posted that--they all call that Manual Recording. They refer to pushing the REC button as "Record a program you are watching" or "Record this program" or something like that.

In Passport, when you push the REC button, you get a little pop-up menu where "Record this program" and "Set up a manual recording" are choices; in SARA, there's an option in the settings menus.

Danabw

09-16-08, 05:14 PM

Navigator doesn't have manual recording...Michael is referring to SARA , TiVo, and Passport, all of which do have manual recording.

Navigator doesn't call pressing the record button when your watching a show anything...there's no UI, you just press the Record button and the show starts recording, and goes back only as far as the existing buffer for that channel...if you just tuned to it, the buffer will be pretty much empty, so you'll get the show recorded from that point. If you've been watching the channel for a while, you'll get whatever is in the buffer up to the end of the show.

BenJF3

09-16-08, 05:29 PM

Navigator still leaves one very big hole for me. The ability to customize the guide in any way other than favorites. Even a simple option for HD content would solve the issue of other people in the house constantly recording SD material when HD is available. A simple show HD option. Ideally I'd like to see something along the lines of a DirecTV or Dish style guide with full customization, add/delete channels, etc. but as discussed previously the general consensus is that TWC will never do that.

xnappo

09-16-08, 05:39 PM

Navigator still leaves one very big hole for me. The ability to customize the guide in any way other than favorites.

Having not used it myself - how is favorites different from the Dish system where you have two guides - your channels, and all channels?

xnappo

BenJF3

09-16-08, 05:53 PM

Having not used it myself - how is favorites different from the Dish system where you have two guides - your channels, and all channels?

xnappo

On Dish I could add and delete channels making a guide to my preference. Say I want to remove all the shopping channels, I could.

On DirecTV you have an option to show the HD version of the same SD channel instead of both. I haven't played with D* long enough to check other options.

At the very least DirecTV has common sense, easy to follow channel alignment. IE: The SD and HD are located at the same number, the VOD is the same number with a one in front of it. My TWC channels are all over the place. For example: Food Network is 39, Food Network HD is 827, and Food Network On Demand is 550. Why not align them similarly? Also the SARA Guide doesn't distinguish HD like the Sat guides (I don't know if Navigator does) unless you go into the info and look for it, thus the reason my wife continues to record everything in SD. She goes to the first channel in the guide which is 39. I can't delete it so that 827 is the only Food Network channel that shows. I was hoping Navigator would address this. Also, I believe there is a limit on how many Favorites you can make with Navigator. If not, maybe a Navigator user can provide some insight on it.

xnappo

09-16-08, 06:49 PM

Also, I believe there is a limit on how many Favorites you can make with Navigator. If not, maybe a Navigator user can provide some insight on it.

Hi Ben,

Sorry - I missed the fact that your are on SARA - I completely agree the lack of a custom guide sucks with SARA. In my market, they have now added a bunch of annoying channels like TWC News and TWC sports HD IN BETWEEN the network channels! Very annoying - you can no longer view the major networks on one screen.

I am curious from someone with Navigator how well the favorites function works for this type of situation.

xnappo

BenJF3

09-16-08, 07:21 PM

Hi Ben,

Sorry - I missed the fact that your are on SARA - I completely agree the lack of a custom guide sucks with SARA. In my market, they have now added a bunch of annoying channels like TWC News and TWC sports HD IN BETWEEN the network channels! Very annoying - you can no longer view the major networks on one screen.

I am curious from someone with Navigator how well the favorites function works for this type of situation.

xnappo

Yes, I am preparing for the pending transition to Navigator now that it has begun in SARA markets. I'm trying to gather as much intel as I can on both sat providers so that when the time comes I am prepared.

suz01

09-16-08, 09:55 PM

my wish list is pretty basic.... all I want for christmas this year is a guide that consistently works!

I have a MUCH bigger list for next year after they get the reliability of the guide fixed.

yours truly,
Loading....

Loading....

and still loading.... (hello SA8300HD/Mystro reboot)

BenJF3

09-17-08, 07:13 AM

my wish list is pretty basic.... all I want for christmas this year is a guide that consistently works!

I have a MUCH bigger list for next year after they get the reliability of the guide fixed.

This shouldn't be part of a wish list, it should be a given. Wishes would be features and additional functions, but I guess to TWC reliability counts as an option.

PedjaR

09-17-08, 09:26 AM

Hi Ben,

Sorry - I missed the fact that your are on SARA - I completely agree the lack of a custom guide sucks with SARA. In my market, they have now added a bunch of annoying channels like TWC News and TWC sports HD IN BETWEEN the network channels! Very annoying - you can no longer view the major networks on one screen.

I am curious from someone with Navigator how well the favorites function works for this type of situation.

xnappo

You can have your favorites listed first in the guide, then the rest of the channels (with each of the favorites listed again when its number comes up). It helps somewhat, as I almost never browse the guide past the favorites. It would be better if you can sort the favorites themselves the way you like it, rather then just by their numbers. One thing I'd like to see (but probably won't) is the ability to restrict the search results to the favorites.

xnappo

09-17-08, 10:05 AM

You can have your favorites listed first in the guide, then the rest of the channels (with each of the favorites listed again when its number comes up). It helps somewhat, as I almost never browse the guide past the favorites. It would be better if you can sort the favorites themselves the way you like it, rather then just by their numbers. One thing I'd like to see (but probably won't) is the ability to restrict the search results to the favorites.

Not ideal, but vastly better than what I have now. Can you easily get the the favorites in the guide or do you have to scroll to them somehow?

xnappo

mjdavis

09-17-08, 10:08 AM

PedjaR

09-17-08, 10:53 AM

Not ideal, but vastly better than what I have now. Can you easily get the the favorites in the guide or do you have to scroll to them somehow?

xnappo

There is a menu item to add favorites; it basically presents a list of all the channels and you scrool through them one at the time and mark the ones you like. Since it is likely a one-time thing, not a big deal.

The good part is that when you are tuned to one of your favorites, and you hit Guide button, the guide opens on that channel in the favorites group at the beginning, not the second time the channel shows in the guide, so you basically do not have to venture out of your favorites list at all. Also, you have a choice of the start-up channel (which channel the box tunes when you turn it on; of course, that does not work if you are recording with both tuners at the time) and it is obviously a good idea to pick one of your favorites to be your start-up channel - unless you want to use the last channel the box was tuned to, I can see that being useful as well. What I would like instead of that is when the box is turned on to go to the recording I was last playing (if I stopped in the middle of one).

BenJF3

09-17-08, 11:13 AM

Is there a limit to how many favorites one can add?

Rob052067

09-17-08, 12:36 PM

Well, right now their are a couple of things I'm waiting on to develop in the sat camp as far as features and equipment (Namely the new DirecTivo). If we get Navigator and it is as bug ridden and problematic as I've read about here it will force my hand, but I'm willing to give it about a month of break in. However, if the sat providers come through I may be gone before Navigator even arrives. Personally I'd love to get my hands on a Cisco 8550 with Navigator to see how the handles it. The other reason I'm looking is because TWC has basically stagnated the HD content. Now, if they were to get the NBC Universal agreement done and add USA, Sci-Fi, Fx, Bravo, etc. in HD I'll probably hold off switching for longer. I'm on the fence right now as their are a few developments happening with all the carriers that I'm watching.

DirecTivo is over a year away, and since they'll be using new hardware I would expect some bugs.

DishNetwork's ViP722 DVR is outstanding! Loving it, big time!

TWC definitely needs to get on the ball with adding SciFi and USA HD. Not much on Bravo these days worth watching. (FX is a Fox network, but it too would be nice to have.)

phousley

09-17-08, 01:02 PM

Is there anything I missed?One feature I miss from the old ReplayTV DVR is the ability to access and modify my recording schedule online. Useful when traveling. If designed properly, it would probably be easier to use than the remote control.

jnv11

09-17-08, 01:28 PM

Item #3 for Bugs to be Fixed in the wish list

3. Keep both tuners active at all times. Watching 2 shows/games/channels at once is now impossible unless you are recording both channels. Gone is the ability to watch the AFC game on Tuner 1, then at a commercial, swap to Tuner 2, rewind 15 minutes, and watch the NFC game. Then switch back, rewind 7 minutes on tuner 1,.... Some might call this a lacking feature that was available in passport, I call it a bug in Navigator.

There really is a tradeoff on whether this feature should be added or not, and there are many ways to add this feature, but each way has its pros and cons. Here are the pros and cons of the method used today:
Pros:

Buffering one show only means less wear and tear on the hard drive.
You will not have to worry about the secondary tuner's buffer getting wiped out due to the need from time to time for the secondary tuner needing to go to the in-band data carousel to retrieve the program guide or other data.
Having the secondary tuner normally pay attention to the high-speed in-band data carousel instead of having to rely on the super-slow DAVIC out of band tuner immensely reduces strain on the cable network's out of band data network. This can speed up data applications like retrieving the guide and tuning SDV channels. (SDV requires the cable box to send a request to and get a response from the cable head-end whenever someone tunes in to or out of an SDV channel to help the head-end know when to start or quit broadcasting an SDV channel.)

Cons:

This is inconvenient because the user must explicitly record a show to guarantee the buffers. The Passport method and MDN Navigator method where both tuners are active is a little safer to accidental channel changes.

Here are the pros and cons of buffrering with both tuners, but having to tune the secondary tuner to the data carousel whenever data access is needed:
Pros:

Since data access is not needed often, the user has a reasonable chance to watch what is being buffered on both tuners, possibly saving the user when an accident with the remote causes a bad channel change.

Cons:

Whenever the data carousel must be accessed, the secondary buffer must be discarded. That means that you are gambling with the second buffer unless both are explicitly told to record.
Forcing the secondary tuner to tune will slow down the data access due to the time taken to tune to the data carousel.

Here are the pros and cons of buffering with both tuners, but having data accesses done through DAVIC alone:
Pros:

Your buffers are safe.

Cons:

DAVIC is super-slow (e.g. max theoretical throughput is 1.544Mbps both ways, and that does not factor in the fact that upstream DAVIC maxes out at around 37% utilization), and is not scalable under heavy load. Too many users trying to use DAVIC will saturate the out-of-band network, forcing the cable company to install more head-ends. It should be used only when there is no alternative whatsoever.

This method is used when both buffers are explicitly told to record something because there is no other way to receive data.

Here are the pros and cons of buffering with both tuners, but having data accesses done through DOCSIS alone:
Pros:
Your buffers are safe.
DOCSIS 1.x supports 38Mbps downstream and 9Mbps upstream, so it is scalable and fast enough to support a general-purpose data carousel.
If OCAP is used, you can use OCAP-capable boxes from almost any vendor. Cisco/Scientific-Atlanta boxes with CableCARDs implement both DAVIC and DOCSIS, while Motorola boxes with CableCARDs implement a super-slow 2.048 Mbps ALOHA-based protocol whose upstream utilization maxes out at around 18% utilization, and all Motorola boxes with CableCARDs except an SD-only cable box implement DOCSIS.
DOCSIS has much lower upstream latency, so tuning SDV channels can be sped up.

Cons:

Installing another DOCSIS head-end increases costs at legacy installations.
Data actions can slow down based upon the utilization. For example, if someone decides to license TiVo's OCAP IPG, the download will slow everybody else's data accesses down during the download.
This requires scrapping most of the legacy cable boxes, because most legacy boxes do not have a DOCSIS cable modem.

While the last solution is ideal, it is expensive. We complain enough about high cable bills, so the first solution to have the secondary cable tuner serve as a data receiver makes the most economic sense for legacy installations. For completely new installations, cable companies would be totally foolish not to implement the last solution because the cost of deploying a DOCSIS head-end should be lower than deploying a DAVIC head-end or a Motorola head-end because a DOCSIS head-end has lots of competition because DOCSIS is already used by many Internet cable modems, turning DOCSIS goods into somewhat of a commodity.

bsquare

09-17-08, 02:51 PM

Satch Man

09-17-08, 06:31 PM

Is there a limit to how many favorites one can add?

Ben,

AFAIK, you can add as many favorites as you want.

Jack

holl_ands

09-18-08, 02:35 PM

VisionOn

09-18-08, 02:47 PM

TWC subscribers need to boycott SciFi, USA, etc and CALL NBC & TELL THEM. Bravo programs until they add them in HD. They also need to be told that they will not use any sponsor products until the channels are added. We need to flood their phone lines with complaints. Here's the phone number:

212-605-0201

A switchboard operator will answer - ask for programming executives, distribution, or whatever deptarment(s) you think will help. Use different phones to call to increase the number of distinct calls they log.

I don't see how that will help. That's assuming that TWC have the technological ability to add them in some areas.

Apart from my town and a couple of others Raleigh market doesn't get Bravo in SD. That's been that way for years despite calls to add it.

bsquare

09-18-08, 07:31 PM

I don't see how that will help. That's assuming that TWC have the technological ability to add them in some areas.

Apart from my town and a couple of others Raleigh market doesn't get Bravo in SD. That's been that way for years despite calls to add it.
If SDV has been implemented, then they have the capacity to add them.

The greater leverage is on NBC more so than TWC because they need ratings on their new shows and if folks like me are boycotting their sponsors, that's bad for their business. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

BenJF3

09-18-08, 07:46 PM

If SDV has been implemented, then they have the capacity to add them.

The greater leverage is on NBC more so than TWC because they need ratings on their new shows and if folks like me are boycotting their sponsors, that's bad for their business. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Alot of people are getting fed up with TWC though. I know, I for one have been keeping tabs on both sat providers and if one or the other comes through with the right combination of things then I'm gone. Sure, we have gotten some good HD additions, but adding USA to only remove it was lame and our guide/channel alignment is terrible. Also, the impending deployment of Navigator is looming now that they will be converting SARA markets. In my market, TWC is only a few channels shy of an HD lineup that rivals DirecTV (minus the sports package which I don't care about). If, and this is a big IF, the get USA, Sci-Fi, and Fx in HD and deploy a stable version of Navigator with a new improved channel alignment (or option to customize my favorites) then I'm likely to stay with them. I'm not holding my breath. If any of the sat providers want my business, I'm watching them. They come through what what I'm looking for and I'm gone. The only thing lacking from DirecTV is a PIP feature for me. That and right now it's still too expensive as far as up front costs. I can make due without PIP, but I'm not shelling out close to $500 to switch. Now, if Dish comes through with On Demand, I'm there. Their equipment is what I'm looking for, they have the channels and features, but lack the VOD. Plus the up front costs are virtually nil. I'm just keeping my options open and looking, something I wouldn't be doing if TWC was listening to the subs.

Crazywoody

09-18-08, 11:19 PM

BenJF3

09-18-08, 11:42 PM

Just curious.Have any other of my fellow Sara systems been informed by their TWC websites that Navigator is comeing?The letter was first on the site map location but now is on the main page under the Navigator setting that has just been added. Sara 1.89.24.1 Greensboro NC

Nothing here yet and it was asked about at the display booth during the State Fair. The reps didn't even know what Navigator was! :p TWC has some of the worst trained and technologically impaired reps working for them. I mean, really, a requirement should be basic knowledge of the product. I just hope the RoadRunner and Digital Phone never get as bad as the cable service!

Satch Man

09-19-08, 06:29 AM

Nothing here yet and it was asked about at the display booth during the State Fair. The reps didn't even know what Navigator was! :p TWC has some of the worst trained and technologically impaired reps working for them. I mean, really, a requirement should be basic knowledge of the product. I just hope the RoadRunner and Digital Phone never get as bad as the cable service!

Good post Ben!

I was wondering, why are the Digital Phone and Road Runner services seemingly better than the cable TV part?

Jack

Crazywoody

09-19-08, 09:07 AM

Nothing here yet and it was asked about at the display booth during the State Fair. The reps didn't even know what Navigator was! :p TWC has some of the worst trained and technologically impaired reps working for them. I mean, really, a requirement should be basic knowledge of the product. I just hope the RoadRunner and Digital Phone never get as bad as the cable service!

I'm getting a bad feeling about us being one of the first Sara systems going Navigator.Can you say Nebraska, Lincoln. Sara 1.89.24.1 Greensboro NC

xnappo

09-19-08, 09:31 AM

I'm getting a bad feeling about us being one of the first Sara systems going Navigator.Can you say Nebraska, Lincoln. Sara 1.89.24.1 Greensboro NC

Nothing here in Austin yet. I am not nearly as worried as I was 6 months ago though. I am looking forward to a better search, favorites in the guide and a conflict resolution screen - three features that have been missing from SARA for a long time.

xnappo

bsquare

09-19-08, 10:13 AM

Nothing here in Austin yet. I am not nearly as worried as I was 6 months ago though. I am looking forward to a better search, favorites in the guide and a conflict resolution screen - three features that have been missing from SARA for a long time.

xnappo
You're gonna lose a lot more than you'll gain. I LOVE the manual recording & variety of recording options - I can always search for a show on my PC using a real keyboard. Plus Sara is rock solid reliable - that's the #1 priority.

BenJF3

09-19-08, 12:35 PM

Good post Ben!

I was wondering, why are the Digital Phone and Road Runner services seemingly better than the cable TV part?

Jack

Well, for one the Internet and Phone are basically "fixed" services. What I mean by that is each has it's own dedicated portion of bandwidth and there are rarely changes to the service. The cable on the other hand constantly requires shuffling channels, grooming the signal, and using SDV in order to make room for more content and fit more into a limited amount of bandwidth. It's not without it's challenges. Then there are also the retransmission agreements and other content related problems like lacking certain networks. I can grant some amount of leeway over those things. However, the Navigator debacle is a whole different situation. This never should have happened. They never should have dumped such bug ridden software upon the subs. My main point was that if they could get their act together and deliver a cable product as good as they deliver the phone and Internet, then I wouldn't even be considering a provider switch for my video service right now.

Crazywoody

09-19-08, 01:40 PM

You're gonna lose a lot more than you'll gain. I LOVE the manual recording & variety of recording options - I can always search for a show on my PC using a real keyboard. Plus Sara is rock solid reliable - that's the #1 priority.

I agree.SARA is solid as Fort Knox.Great recording options and have only had one missed recording going on 3 years.Could use better search but I have no main grips about SARA. SARA 1,89.24.1 Greensboro NC

BenJF3

09-19-08, 01:58 PM

I agree.SARA is solid as Fort Knox.Great recording options and have only had one missed recording going on 3 years.Could use better search but I have no main grips about SARA. SARA 1,89.24.1 Greensboro NC

Exactly, which begs the question why not just give SARA a facelift? I posed this way back. The whole idea for Navigator, according to Time Warner, was to be able to roll out new features and updates faster. In other words, not wait on a third party vendor. Yea, that worked out really swell! People are still waiting for Navigator to just work consistently after two years!!!

SARA has been a solid performer. The only things I have issue with are search, customization, and yes, it's butt ugly.

bsquare

09-19-08, 02:15 PM

Butt Ugly?...Perhaps, but she has a nice body!

Actually the Boardwalk scheme in purple is kinda cool. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder!

strutter

09-19-08, 02:53 PM

strutter

09-19-08, 02:58 PM

I'm getting a bad feeling about us being one of the first Sara systems going Navigator.Can you say Nebraska, Lincoln. Sara 1.89.24.1 Greensboro NC

i went from SARA to Passport to Navigator all within a span of 2 months. aside from getting used to each ones peculiarities it was fairly smooth.

BTW the reason for the changes is that we were adelphia (SARA) then TW took over and changed it to Passport shortly after it changed again to Navigator.

BenJF3

09-19-08, 03:00 PM

its called plausible deniability.

Maybe so, but I call it not knowing your ass from a hole in the ground. :D

I'd like to think some probably know of it, but also know what a disaster it's been. Remember that at these booths they are pushing service. They may not want to frighten off potential subs by saying "Yea, Navigator will be here SOON!"

strutter

09-19-08, 03:13 PM

i almost became one of those door to door TW reps when i lost my job. i'd have been real good at it too. actually i'd have probably been fired for knowing to much.
they get a pretty good deal, free cable , internet and phone but only about $10 per hour. they have to use their own vehicle and with gas at $4 + per gallon me and my pick up truck didnt think the pay was good enough. of course i'm still unemployed so if i saw that ad in the paper again i'd probably jump on it.

Crazywoody

09-19-08, 03:28 PM

i went from SARA to Passport to Navigator all within a span of 2 months. aside from getting used to each ones peculiarities it was fairly smooth.

BTW the reason for the changes is that we were adelphia (SARA) then TW took over and changed it to Passport shortly after it changed again to Navigator.

Does the version of Navigator you have in the recording features have the time slot recording option.I use that a great deal with sara. Also has the recording priority option that passport had been added.That option is available with the Lincoln customers I understand. SARA 1.89.24.1 Greensboro NC

Crazywoody

09-19-08, 03:58 PM

phousley

09-19-08, 04:13 PM

I just checked the Lincoln Time Warner site.Navigator there has series priority feature like passport.It has Time slot recording like Sara.New features just added are buffering for both tuners and high resolution graphics.If we get these features and they work bug free bring on Navigator.If they do not have these features keep Navigator. SARA 1.89.24.1The Nebraska document has been around for a long time. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but no one yet has many of these features. It's just a roadmap for promised capabilities.

BenJF3

09-19-08, 04:19 PM

jnv11

09-19-08, 04:32 PM

Does the version of Navigator you have in the recording features have the time slot recording option.I use that a great deal with sara. Also has the recording priority option that passport had been added.That option is available with the Lincoln customers I understand. SARA 1.89.24.1 Greensboro NC

In the Carolinas division that I am in, that depends on whether your box is a legacy box or a CableCARD-based box.

I noticed that these two features are in MDN Navigator, but are absent from ODN Navigator. However, ODN Navigator has the ability to change the border colors of 4x3 programs being shown on a 16x9 screen, has a guide that is faster when I must advance the guide beyond today and tomorrow, and is much more stable than MDN Navigator from my own experience with both and what others say in the TWC office when I am waiting in line for a customer service representative if MDN was put onto an HD box, which generally turns it into a crash-happy wreck. According to a neighbor who used MDN on a Scientific Atlanta 8300 (non-HD non-CableCARD), MDN was stable, though.

Therefore, these options are only available on older boxes without CableCARDs. Newer boxes with them do not have these features, but are stable. If you have no CableCARD slot, you will get these features plus a stinking dose of instability. If you have a CableCARD slot in the back, you will not get these features, but your box will be stable for the most part unless the box develops a hardware malfunction.

Does Nebraska have these features in ODN Navigator? I really would love the timeslot recording feature, but would not care one way or the other for series priority because we do not have enough recordings going on to create a conflict. If so, could you please give me your version number?

By the way, I noticed that in the PDF Navigator guide in Nebraska (http://www.timewarnercable.com/MediaLibrary/4/49/Content%20Management/Products%20And%20Services/images/mystro/conversion_guide.pdf) shows that eBay on Navigator and fantasy sports are in the pipeline for Navigator. While I could understand the eBay application being in the works as it would be easy to convince eBay's programmers to work on this using itaas's istart programs for MDN and ODN (http://www.itaas.com/istart/istart.html) to develop an eBay application for both versions of Navigator, why are they bothering with fantasy sports? They should rather have manual recording in the pipeline before they even start on fantasy sports. Actually, sports fans would be better served by having better sports-related features in Navigator like recording each show involving a certain team rather than fantasy sports.

danki6x

09-19-08, 04:32 PM

Sure, we have gotten some good HD additions, but adding USA to only remove it was lame ...Sure see this comment a lot. I thought it was nice of them to have extra HD channels for the Olympics even though there is no regular agreement to have the channels. Other than the Olympics, I cannot remember the last time (if ever) I have watched a show on USA more than just a couple minutes as I scanned for something to watch. /Dan

Satch Man

09-19-08, 04:50 PM

Another big issue is guide speed. Have they improved the interaction/speed at all? I remember a while back someone posted a YouTube video about how awful the speed was. He'd say "click" when he pressed the button and it was literally seconds before the box responded. That and the god awful "loading data" screens. It'd be nice if someone with Navigator could post a sort of walkthrough review of it on Youtube stating the good and bad. Not a bashfest of it, but an actual honest review. Then us SARA users know what's in store for us.

I PM'd that guy on YouTube with that video. The reason for his prehistoric guide speed was because he had a box that was one of the first digital boxes that came out, a Pioneer. Those boxes at only 4megs of RAM don't have the memory needed to run Navigator and are long since defunct. The newer SA models have I believe 32megs of Ram, and I have heard the latest non-DVR uniits may have up to 64 megs. Navigator needs at least 8 megs of Ram to run at about a C acceptance level. To get it up to B range, you need at least 16 megs of Ram. The DVR boxes have 128 megs of Ram and GENERALLY, with these boxes, guide speed is not a problem. Some of the very very first SA 8000 boxes were slow, not because of Ram issues, but because of software/hardware configurations with the older boxes and DVR interaction features.

What's the model for your DVR, Ben? How old is it? Less than 5 years, you're probably OK. 5 years, it's a coin toss, but it's a 60% chance you'll be OK. If you have a box that is 6 years old or more, you're probably going to need to swipe it out for a newer model.

The 8300 boxes in general seem to work better than the 8000 boxes. But note that these are GUIDELINES. You'll know within about a day, two at most how well your box takes the transfer. I got an 8300HD on an SD set and had no problems. My box was one of the last non-C units that were produced.

Jack

BenJF3

09-19-08, 05:37 PM

Sure see this comment a lot. I thought it was nice of them to have extra HD channels for the Olympics even though there is no regular agreement to have the channels. Other than the Olympics, I cannot remember the last time (if ever) I have watched a show on USA more than just a couple minutes as I scanned for something to watch. /Dan

I was mainly peeved because they gave no indication this was temporary in our division. It wasn't until after they pulled it they said it was just for the Olympics.

jimholcomb

09-19-08, 08:10 PM

In the Carolinas division that I am in, that depends on whether your box is a legacy box or a CableCARD-based box.

I noticed that these two features are in MDN Navigator, but are absent from ODN Navigator. However, ODN Navigator has the ability to change the border colors of 4x3 programs being shown on a 16x9 screen, has a guide that is faster when I must advance the guide beyond today and tomorrow, and is much more stable than MDN Navigator from my own experience with both and what others say in the TWC office when I am waiting in line for a customer service representative if MDN was put onto an HD box, which generally turns it into a crash-happy wreck. According to a neighbor who used MDN on a Scientific Atlanta 8300 (non-HD non-CableCARD), MDN was stable, though.

Interesting, right now I have both MDN and ODN boxes and I have a choice on which to keep. I'm keeping the MDN box because it's more stable and the guide is quicker. MDN hasn't crashed in 2 weeks, ODN has crashed 3x (that I know of) in the same time period.

Jim

BenJF3

09-19-08, 08:15 PM

Crazywoody

09-19-08, 09:00 PM

Interesting, right now I have both MDN and ODN boxes and I have a choice on which to keep. I'm keeping the MDN box because it's more stable and the guide is quicker. MDN hasn't crashed in 2 weeks, ODN has crashed 3x (that I know of) in the same time period.

Jim

Does your MDN version have Time slot recording and series priority feature? Sara 1.89.2.1 Greensboro NC

jnv11

09-19-08, 09:36 PM

I PM'd that guy on YouTube with that video. The reason for his prehistoric guide speed was because he had a box that was one of the first digital boxes that came out, a Pioneer. Those boxes at only 4megs of RAM don't have the memory needed to run Navigator and are long since defunct. The newer SA models have I believe 32megs of Ram, and I have heard the latest non-DVR uniits may have up to 64 megs. Navigator needs at least 8 megs of Ram to run at about a C acceptance level. To get it up to B range, you need at least 16 megs of Ram. The DVR boxes have 128 megs of Ram and GENERALLY, with these boxes, guide speed is not a problem. Some of the very very first SA 8000 boxes were slow, not because of Ram issues, but because of software/hardware configurations with the older boxes and DVR interaction features.

What's the model for your DVR, Ben? How old is it? Less than 5 years, you're probably OK. 5 years, it's a coin toss, but it's a 60% chance you'll be OK. If you have a box that is 6 years old or more, you're probably going to need to swipe it out for a newer model.

The 8300 boxes in general seem to work better than the 8000 boxes. But note that these are GUIDELINES. You'll know within about a day, two at most how well your box takes the transfer. I got an 8300HD on an SD set and had no problems. My box was one of the last non-C units that were produced.

Jack

Actually, the Scientific Atlanta 4250HDC or 4240HDC that is being handed out in my area has 128MB of RAM. The datasheet for it suggests that OCAP only be run on the models with 128MB of RAM. The non-OCAP version only has 32MB of RAM.

EDIT: I forgot one more thing. The legacy 8000HD has 32MB of RAM, while the legacy 8300HD has 64MB of RAM.

michaeltscott

09-19-08, 10:27 PM

Interesting, right now I have both MDN and ODN boxes and I have a choice on which to keep. I'm keeping the MDN box because it's more stable and the guide is quicker. MDN hasn't crashed in 2 weeks, ODN has crashed 3x (that I know of) in the same time period.

JimI'd agree--that's our experience with the MDN box in this house (on an 8300HD) versus ODN (on a 4250HDC), and that's the impression that I get from others posting here (other than jnv11). It's also what I'd expect intuitively--the native C-code version would be faster and more stable than a port to Java running on the same processor.

phousley

09-19-08, 11:23 PM

jnv11

09-19-08, 11:25 PM

I'd agree--that's our experience with the MDN box in this house (on an 8300HD) versus ODN (on a 4250HDC), and that's the impression that I get from others posting here (other than jnv11). It's also what I'd expect intuitively--the native C-code version would be faster and more stable than a port to Java running on the same processor.

You are right about how the C-code version is faster. However, C is a rather dangerous language to use. It does not check at all if the area of memory you want to access is valid or not and provides no facilities if you want run-time checking at all, unlike C++, which provides optional run-time checking on certain memory vector accesses. This is great if the operating system can check memory accesses and shut down programs that try to access memory locations they have no business accessing because they have not asked the operating system to grant these areas. However, the operating system requires hardware in a CPU called a memory management unit (abbreviated MMU) to perform the run-time checking. Therefore, in an operating system that provides memory protection, there is no need to provide run-time memory protection by the language normally. In fact, the operating system can attach a debugger to the misbehaving program that has an excellent chance of showing the exact instruction that caused the memory error if a debugger is installed, making debugging easy.

The problem is that the standard version of PowerTV used to run natively-compiled code does not support memory protection in an effort to allow the use of cheaper CPUs without MMUs, as can be seen in this article (http://www.ddj.com/184411101) in Dr. Dobb's Journal. Therefore, a misbehaving program can walk over and corrupt other programs. The version of MDN I used, MDN 2.4.1-92, started crashing whenever I have closed captioning turned on, am playing a recorded HDTV program with lots of chat like a news program, and have the background tuner tuned to an HDTV channel. Because the news program threw a bunch of closed captioning text on the screen other programs did not throw, I suspected a memory overflow. MDN 2.4.1-107, the current version for legacy boxes as far as I know, fixes this problem, but crased when playing an Olympics program due to the long program times according to an earlier forum post. ODN did not crash this way. My mother is not a native speaker of English, so failing closed captioning on MDN 2.4.1-92 doomed the 8300HD that was running Passport Echo fine for so long.

However, Java requires run-time checking of dynamic memory accesses before they even start executing them. A failed check generates an exception that results in a stack trace that points to the exact function in the code that caused the error, simplifying debugging greatly. It might also be possible that since the AXIOM OCAP middleware runs on top of an OCAP edition of the PowerTV OS, that version of the OS might implement hardware memory checking. Therefore, if the OCAP middleware fouls up, the OS might catch this. The fact that an OCAP edition of the PowerTV OS is proven in the AXIOM diagnostics. However, the point about the special OCAP edition of the PowerTV OS implemeinting hardware memory protection is pure speculation on my part.

Therefore, it is concievable that the Java version can be more stable than the C version. Java is more of a nanny language than C. Since the normal PowerTV OS lacks memory protection, this environment is very tough to debug memory errors. Java's compulsory memory access checks slow things down, but make it much easier to debug.

PedjaR

09-20-08, 11:32 AM

Well I have ODN and after going through 2 boxes that were constantly rebooting, I've now got a system that has been pretty stable for months: no reboots and no missed recordings. Also no problems with responsiveness. Now that I can use my external drive, I'm reasonably satisfied.

That seems to be common; see some posts here from about a year ago. My guess is that Navigator is too sensitive to flakiness of the box or signal, and that the 8300HDC boxes are (at least were, maybe they improved?) frequently flaky. When it gets to your 8300HD box, if it is solid, and your signal level is good, you are likely in a good shape, but if it is not solid, you will have lots of issues (note that I mean solid as Navigator requires; it may be plenty solid enough for SARA but not enough for Navigator). Again, this is just a guess, but it fits the little data I have nicely - several people had bad issues that disappeared with box replacement (and the replacement was the same model).
My first HDC box exibited "channel not available" and had one random reboot. After a few days I replaced the box and with the replacement I had about a year with no missed recordings or random reboots. However, with that box, external drive now stutters every two minutes or so. Replaced it a week ago (very reluctantly, as I was afraid of getting worse headaches than external drive stuttering), and so far so good, but I still need more time to completely trust the new box (if it works correctly for 2 weeks, I'll be convinced).
With 2.4.10_11, it seems like there are no bad bugs left (there are missed features galore, but that's another story). The one thing that is flaky for me is series recording set to record only New episodes; works well when the guide data is good (pretty much all broadcast network stuff), but is confused when guide data is too skimpy (Daily Show/Colbert Report, for example), so it goes ahead and records everything; that is better than missing new shows, but is annoying nonetheless. The time slot restriction present in MDN but not in ODN would be useful for that, I hope they add it to ODN (without introducing bugs).

CycloneMike

09-20-08, 03:00 PM

First off, I wanted to thank all those who had previously posted information on how to check signal strength with the cable boxes - I actually used a cable box (4250HD) and a small 13-inch TV to run around the house and check the signal strengths at various locations. I had to be patient as the box rebooted every time I plugged it in at a different location, but it was alot cheaper than buying a signal tester!!!! I had plenty of other things to do, so I would move it and go back about 1/2 hour later after it rebooted and check the readings.

I was also able to verify my Mystro software version: ODN 2.4.10_11

I got into both into the information screens and the diagnositc screens and based on the information and my cable/splitter/amplifier (+15dB)/wiring setup and lengths have determined / estimated the following signal strengths (digital QAM 1 dBmV):

Basement 8300HDC: +3 to +10 (depending on MHz - higher MHz, lower reading).
Office 4250HD: -4 to +2
Office SA Cable Modem: +9.5
Signal strength at house cable drop: +2 (pretty good as they aim for 0)

The reading on the 8300HDC shows yellow at 9 dBmV and red at 10 dBmV. I think this indicates that it prefers the signal to be at or below +8 dBmV. I hope this won't cause premature failure of the box or problems with recordings.

In the office at the 4250HD I tried to split the cable again and feed the 4250HD one line and the antenna connection on the TV the other line, but the 4250HD had trouble with pixelization on the HD channels that were the higher MHz signals. It would have put those signals around -7.5 dB and that is the low end of the acceptable range. The TV antenna connection was also degraded.

Prior to adding the 15 dB amplifier with the cable modem, I was having some problems with the signal which was at about -5.5 dBmV and now at the +9.5 I am having even more problems (I may be over-powering the modem).

I think I will see what happens if I split the cable modem feed to the the cable box, which should lower the modem to +6.0 and raise the cable box to that same amount. I can then split the signal to the cable box/TV again and they will have around +2.5 average.

I know this seems confusing, but in general I think I have a signal strength at my house that I can't complain to TWC about.

Thanks,

Mike

I changed some of my wiring to drop the strength to the cable modem and raise the signal to the office SA 4250HDC Box and now I get the following:

dBmV on signal strength:

Basement 8300HDC: +3 to +10 (depending on MHz - higher MHz, lower reading).
Office 4250HD: 0 to +5 and 33 to 37 dB S/N
Office SA Cable Modem: +5.0
Signal strength at house cable drop: +2 (pretty good as they aim for 0)

The cable modem seems to be working better. I still have some problems on Saturday afternoons with breakup on the HD channels at the higher MHz, but with the cable strength at a minimum of 0 dBmV and the S/N above 33 dB it seems a little odd.

Mike

Crazywoody

09-20-08, 05:01 PM

The Nebraska document has been around for a long time. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but no one yet has many of these features. It's just a roadmap for promised capabilities.

Your wrong many people with Navigator now have these features.

phousley

09-20-08, 05:28 PM

Your wrong many people with Navigator now have these features.Good to hear! I didn't know anyone had ability to set series priority and specific air time. Also banner size and delete time estimate. Which market has these features? What release number?

jnv11

09-21-08, 01:13 AM

Good to hear! I didn't know anyone had ability to set series priority and specific air time. Also banner size and delete time estimate. Which market has these features? What release number?

In the Carolinas market, when I used MDN 2.4.1-92 (which was stable until closed captioning was used under certain circumstances which is very often in my house), we had the series priority, specific air time, and banner removal speed customization capabilities. Too bad when the closed captioning crashes forced a box swap, neither ODN 2.4.9_3 nor ODN 2.4.10_11 have them. At least closed captioning is rock-solid in ODN. I have read that MDN 2.4.1-107 fixes these closed captioning issues, but we could not wait for TWC to finish developing the bug fix (at the time, nobody knew about 2.4.1-107 on this board, so it was likely that it was not deployed then) and swapped it out.

However, I do not recall banner size nor deletion time estimates in any version of Navigator that I have used. I only found deletion time estimates in Passport Echo.

Does anyone with ODN have these features from MDN?

Geekzer

09-21-08, 03:18 PM

I'm really hoping that the 8550 is in deployment right around the time they drop Navigator on us. I think you will see a drastic difference in performance with the more up to date hardware.

On a side note: I have only had to reboot my SARA based box a total of ONE time in over two years, so a two week time frame is nothing as far as I'm concerned. They have to do far better than that.

Greetings BenJF3,

I've been scouring the HDTV Recorders thread for a few days as I want to add an external drive to my 8300HD in the TWC Albany, NY market. Your signature indicates you are in an adjacent TWC market and have the same software version as my box, SARA 1.89.24.1, but my review of xnappo's eSATA database gives me pause. Out of four reports by folks with the same version, there is only one reported success (WD 500G - 3/8/07), and three reported failures (WS 1T - 6/28/08 and 6/29/08; Seagate 500G - 9/2/08).

If you have (or had) a successful external drive setup running with that unit, would you please provide some detail of the setup? I figure my chances of success are better emulating someone with a successful combination. Thanks for whatever suggestion you might have.

BenJF3

09-21-08, 04:10 PM

I'm not currently using an eSATA drive with my box. I was looking into it, but haven't had a need for it as of late. That coupled with the fact that I'm exploring satellite options in lieu of cable.

jimholcomb

09-21-08, 09:27 PM

Does your MDN version have Time slot recording and series priority feature? Sara 1.89.2.1 Greensboro NC

I don't think so, I'd check but I think the box just died ...

jnv11

09-21-08, 11:42 PM

BenJF3

09-22-08, 07:30 AM

I have been watching more CNBC lately due to last week's global stock market crash and the crisis that might send us to Great Depression II if the upcoming bailout fails to get passed, and have noticed that the "Wall St. in Crisis" series of special reports never showed up in Navigator's guide. Have anyone with other guides like SARA have the same situation meaning that the guide data from CNBC is stale, or is whatever organization who creates the guide for Navigator not noticing the changes from CNBC and therefore creating stale guides?

I can excuse instant schedule changes due to emergencies (e.g. tornado, hurricane, terrorist attack, or some event that triggers a depression), but I do not like stale guide data that could have been fixed when the changes include changes beyond a 24-hour timeframe.

Well, I scrolled through a weeks worth of guide data and saw nothing with that title. However, it should be noted that SARA has horrible guide data in that respect with sports being the worst. Everything is either NFL Football or MLB Baseball. That coupled with an absolutely worthless search that only looks at the day your on.

Anyhow, I may have found a breaking point that is going to help convince the wife to drop TWC in favor of Dish (or Direct if the feature is available). She is tweaked because Dancing with The Stars is on a night with other things recording and won't work due to conflict. I explained with Dish I can record THREE feeds at once (2 sat, one OTA) and she likes the sound of that.

jimholcomb

09-22-08, 09:16 AM

I don't think so, I'd check but I think the box just died ...

It's back to life. I did a reboot because there was no guide data and the boot never completed successfully - during the "Mystro" screen where 5 or 6 blocks are highlighted the 2nd (or was it the 3rd?) block stayed dim. Did soft and hard reboots and the box would look like it was fine but there was no picture whatever. Finally I unpowered it for about 30 minutes or so and tried it again and it rebooted ok. This was between maybe 9pm and 11pm Sunday night.

jnv11

09-22-08, 10:44 AM

Well, I scrolled through a weeks worth of guide data and saw nothing with that title. However, it should be noted that SARA has horrible guide data in that respect with sports being the worst. Everything is either NFL Football or MLB Baseball. That coupled with an absolutely worthless search that only looks at the day your on.

Anyhow, I may have found a breaking point that is going to help convince the wife to drop TWC in favor of Dish (or Direct if the feature is available). She is tweaked because Dancing with The Stars is on a night with other things recording and won't work due to conflict. I explained with Dish I can record THREE feeds at once (2 sat, one OTA) and she likes the sound of that.

I noticed that even on Internet sites like TV Guide that titles like "MLB Baseball", "NFL Football", "NASCAR Racing", and "College Football" instead of "Atlanta Braves vs. Chicago Cubs", "New England Patriots vs. New York Jets", "Allstate 400 at the Brickyard", and "East Carolina State University vs. North Carolina State University" are the primary titles used. Navigator guide data has the same flaw. Therefore, I think that this flaw is in the guide data that is fed to Time Warner Cable. This flaw is great for people who want to record all "MLB Baseball", "NASCAR Racing", or "College Football", but is terrible for people to be searching for teams. TWC needs to develop a script that will replace those titles with the subtitles listing the teams or players involved if the subtitle is present.

However, ODN Navigator's search goes through all of the guide data available at once because ODN takes advantage of the large 128MB memory to store the entire program guide instead of having to read the carousel for each day's worth of guide data when needed.

Passport Echo was only able to search to tomorrow unless I loaded the guide manually by going past tomorrow in the guide data. If it is able to cache the guide data after manually loading by advancing the guide beyond tomorrow, why couldn't Aptiv Digital have been smart enough to load the whole guide each night?

I do not know if MDN Navigator's search is able to search the whole guide data because I had to swap out the box due to instability related to mixing DVR functionality, HDTV, and closed captioning caused by a now-obsolete version of MDN before I needed the search. Could someone tell us if MDN Navigator's search is only able to search through tomorrow, or is able to search the whole guide through the week?

Satch Man

09-22-08, 02:05 PM

It's back to life. I did a reboot because there was no guide data and the boot never completed successfully - during the "Mystro" screen where 5 or 6 blocks are highlighted the 2nd (or was it the 3rd?) block stayed dim. Did soft and hard reboots and the box would look like it was fine but there was no picture whatever. Finally I unpowered it for about 30 minutes or so and tried it again and it rebooted OK. This was between maybe 9pm and 11pm Sunday night.

Jim,

Were you the one that contacted the Better Business Bureau some months ago for cable/Navigator problems? What was/were the results of that? Did you get billing compensation credits?

Jack

jimholcomb

09-22-08, 02:55 PM

Jim,

Were you the one that contacted the Better Business Bureau some months ago for cable/Navigator problems? What was/were the results of that? Did you get billing compensation credits?

Jack

Yes I was, it did get their attention and they finally found the problem I had with my wiring. I did get a credit for my problems that I thought was fair.

On the problem I had last night, I was telling a coworker who lives in Clayton about it and they had the same problem, must have been system wide.

Jim

Satch Man

09-22-08, 04:25 PM

I noticed that even on Internet sites like TV Guide that titles like "MLB Baseball", "NFL Football", "NASCAR Racing", and "College Football" instead of "Atlanta Braves vs. Chicago Cubs", "New England Patriots vs. New York Jets", "Allstate 400 at the Brickyard", and "East Carolina State University vs. North Carolina State University" are the primary titles used. Navigator guide data has the same flaw. Therefore, I think that this flaw is in the guide data that is fed to Time Warner Cable. This flaw is great for people who want to record all "MLB Baseball", "NASCAR Racing", or "College Football", but is terrible for people to be searching for teams. TWC needs to develop a script that will replace those titles with the subtitles listing the teams or players involved if the subtitle is present.

I agree 100%. Even when we had Passport, from time to time there would be program descriptions for episodes that would be wrong. But the thing was, they would be wrong EACH TIME an episode aired that had the incorrect data. Navigator, Passport, SARA, TV Guide, they all use the data supplied by TWC. TWC gets database data for episodes and listings from the stations, but once that episode listing, especially for a recurring series, goes into the computer that's the listing that everyone gets on their guides.

Jack

BenJF3

09-22-08, 04:33 PM

The bigger issue with SARA is you cannot search for teams. I can only scroll through the listings, for that day only, of MLB, NFL, etc. I don't even know why they bothered to put a search feature in SARA. It is absolutely worthless.

jnv11

09-22-08, 11:28 PM

I agree 100%. Even when we had Passport, from time to time there would be program descriptions for episodes that would be wrong. But the thing was, they would be wrong EACH TIME an episode aired that had the incorrect data. Navigator, Passport, SARA, TV Guide, they all use the data supplied by TWC. TWC gets database data for episodes and listings from the stations, but once that episode listing, especially for a recurring series, goes into the computer that's the listing that everyone gets on their guides.

Jack

Seeing how TV Guide's data on its Internet site and in Navigator was SNAFU again on CNBC due to the Wall St. in Crisis ongoing special report and how a TV Guide logo appears in the guide, my guess is that one of these things is happening:

CNBC is not supplying TV Guide with the correct data,
CNBC can't make up its mind on how long the special report will run, or
TV guide is dropping the ball on the change requests from CNBC.

Therefore, the guide data for CNBC after Mad Money, when the special report airs, is as good as a share of stock in Lehman Brothers or other failed bank of the week that the FDIC has to shut down on Fridays.

The TV Guide logo in Navigator seems to make me think that TWC is just licensing the data from TV Guide. If so, there is a possibility that TWC is not allowed to modify the data, but only repackage or compress it for Navigator if repackaging or compression is needed. If this is the case, the search feature needs to be able to deep scan the descriptions to extract the teams for the search function.

VisionOn

09-22-08, 11:35 PM

The TV Guide logo in Navigator seems to make me think that TWC is just licensing the data from TV Guide.

That's pretty ironic when you consider that TWC intentionally dumped Passport for Navigator yet they still have to use the guide data provided by the owners of Passport.

Makes the transition even more pointless.

hdtvfan2005

09-23-08, 07:10 PM

http://hdtv.forsandiego.com/messages/2/6937.html?1222207238

Another revised navigator is on the way. Perhaps SARA customers will get this version instead of 2.4.10_11 or 2.4.1-107.

xler8

09-24-08, 04:07 AM

FYI - TWC Cincinnati, OH

SDB / SDV is now showing as 'enabled' in the diag screens here (hold SELECT, then hold INFO). Currently no server:port assigned though. I think this has only shown up after the repairs from the storm last week though, so it may not be intentional. I can post screenshots if anyone is interested.

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

MDN 2.41.92-107, 8300HD, 400GB E-SATA (w/ sporadic glitching),

Misc Notes:
-manual recordings frequently do not record without explanation
-HBO VOD very fast recently, much like DVR speed / PQ.
-CC had caused crashes about 3 weeks ago. Not sure if that was before 2.41.92-107 was sent though.
-For the past 2-3 months, we have been able to tune to some channels not in the guide. 600 or 601 ("InHome"), 612 (grainy vers of 12), etc. Not sure what use they are though.

Crazywoody

09-24-08, 11:01 AM

Was reading on the Brighthouse website about Navigator.It gives more information than the TWC websites.It cearly states the non c boxes have series priority list.C boxes have the last series added as first priority.Do not know why non c boxes have more features than c boxes.It would seem lke a no brainer to have all of Navigator with same features.Non C boxes also have time slot recording.The series priority list was one of reasons i used to have tivo.Only the hd dvd recorded at thte twc price made me use the sara software on dvr.I will say sara has many less features than tivo but is rock solid stable.Never had passport dvr software but from what I have read it was much closer to tivo.With comcast and I belive cablevision adding tivo Time Warner just has to get Navigator working with the right feature set or a lot of subs gona be heading to dish,direct ot tivo. Sara 1.89.24.1

BenJF3

09-24-08, 11:35 AM

Just an update for Central New York:

I believe we are on deck to get Navigator. They just updated the website this morning talking about "new features". The only thing listed thus far is Start Over and not all the links are active yet. No mention of Navigator, but the fact that SARA hasn't had an update in years here and TWC has effectively written it off leads me to deduce that any "new features" we get will be in the form of Navigator. I'll update as more comes out.

xnappo

09-24-08, 12:10 PM

BenJF3

09-24-08, 12:14 PM

VisionOn

09-24-08, 12:32 PM

How is TWC adding features to SARA software? I thought they stopped taking updates? I guess time will tell, but it seems odd that they have begun rolling out Navigator in SARA based markets, but would then add new features back to SARA in other markets? Then again, we are talking about TWC here!

Start Over isn't a SARA update. It's a separate thing that TWC created that it just so happens SARA can run. It doesn't work with Passport that's why the forced upgrade to Nav for those users.

Start Over has been around for 3 years now in some markets. So even now TWC are still crawling along even on platforms that could already handle it long ago.

Start Over still doesn't exist here, even with Navigator.

BenJF3

09-24-08, 12:38 PM

Start Over isn't a SARA update. It's a separate thing that TWC created that it just so happens SARA can run. It doesn't work with Passport that's why the forced upgrade to Nav for those users.

Start Over has been around for 3 years now in some markets. So even now TWC are still crawling along even on platforms that could already handle it long ago.

Start Over still doesn't exist here, even with Navigator.

Thanks for the clarification. I wasn't aware of that. I thought it had to be embedded into the SARA code. I only mentioned that because the last SARA update (some two years ago) gave us Caller ID on TV. Anyway, if anything changes, I'll post here.

On a side note: I may be gone from TWC before we ever see it. I'm seriously looking at satellite right now and only a few things are keeping me from the jump. Namely DirecTV's lacking equipment and Dish's lacking programming! I was hoping the new D* Tivo would be unveiled sooner than later, or at least the specs.

Crazywoody

09-24-08, 01:30 PM

In the Sara market here in Greensboro it states we will have Navigator within 3 months.We have had starover going into it's second year and we also have quick clipsSDV is fully active here also.This may be one of the reasons that we are one of the first Sara areas to get Navigator.Most of the things Navigator is uspose to brin are alredy in place on Sara here.Maybe they are hopeing for a soft landing here unlike the crash in LincolnI emailed the division vp and received no reply about Navigator.I called the csr dest and was told I would get a replu to my inguiry within 24 hours.(4 days have passed)guess that is lost cause.Only info I have is what is on the TWC Greensboro website..

Crazywoody

09-24-08, 11:15 PM

I have received conformation via E mail from our local Time Warner office that Greensboro is indeed receiveing Navigator.It states that we are one of the first areas to be switched from sara to navigator.The change over begins the first of Oct andwill be finished in 3 months.It is as I had suspected that since we have all the new features such as sdv.start over,quick clips they are hopeing for a soft landing.So fellow sara users get ready to kiss it goodby.Our Navigation time frame 3 months.If we have no major problems who can say who is next. SARA 1.89.24.1

gurtyb

09-25-08, 10:51 AM

VisionOn

09-25-08, 11:01 AM

How can I fix this? Will Time Warener let me switch back to the old boxes? I am seriously annoyed by this whole thing!

Can you get sat or FiOS?

If not you're just screwed like the rest of us.

godfreyb

09-25-08, 11:15 AM

Can you get sat or FiOS?

If not you're just screwed like the rest of us.
You're screwed! I am in NYC and I now have one box running Passport and one running Navigator. Navigator is awful, your DVR controls will go to sleep (no rewinding the last hour of the channel that you were switched to), it is slooooooow plus much much more!

VisionOn

09-25-08, 11:25 AM

You're screwed! I am in NYC and I now have one box running Passport and one running Navigator. Navigator is awful, your DVR controls will go to sleep (no rewinding the last hour of the channel that you were switched to), it is slooooooow plus much much more!

Just count yourself lucky they haven't forced Nav onto the other box yet. It won't be long before they've completely killed Passport in your area.

jnv11

09-25-08, 12:17 PM

You're screwed! I am in NYC and I now have one box running Passport and one running Navigator. Navigator is awful, your DVR controls will go to sleep (no rewinding the last hour of the channel that you were switched to), it is slooooooow plus much much more!

I have never had the DVR buffer of the channel I have tuned to fail on me on any version of Navigator as long as I do not switch channels except for a power failure. Could you please explain what you mean?

hdtvfan2005

09-25-08, 05:39 PM

I am in New York City. Time Warner NYC came to my house yesterday and swapped out my two HD-DVR boxes which were having various problems, and in their place put two "new" boxes that have different software on them, which I hate! From what I've found online, my old boxes had the "Passport" software, but the new boxes have something called Mystro or something like that. It is a HORRIBLE interface and is so much slower than the old boxes. How can I fix this? Will Time Warener let me switch back to the old boxes? I am seriously annoyed by this whole thing!

Time Warner doesn't use Passport Echo OCAP. You most likely have an ODN box. There is an OCAP Passport but Time Warner has no plans to use it. I have one of those 8300HDC's and they are ok but they could be better. They could have some 8300HD's but I doubt it. The FCC prohibits non OCAP boxes since they have integrated security. FCC wants all boxes to have separable security aka OCAP. OCAP is Open Cable Access Platform. Sounds a bit technical but this is a good explanation.

michaeltscott

09-25-08, 05:51 PM

The FCC prohibits non OCAP boxes since they have integrated security. FCC wants all boxes to have separable security aka OCAP. OCAP is Open Cable Access Platform. Sounds a bit technical but this is a good explanation.The FCC prohibits the use of integrated security, but they don't require OCAP. The Cisco "C" boxes could just as well be running a hard-coded IPG application, so long as they used CableCARD or some other approved separable security mechanism for conditional access services.

VisionOn

09-25-08, 09:42 PM

Navigator strikes again.

Didn't record both Earls tonight because again "the episode was not available." It had no problem with Supernatural however and when I just checked the guide NBC channel info is all there.

Ironic that a program called "Navigator" can't find the **!!*#@ show in the guide.

godfreyb

09-26-08, 10:50 AM

I have never had the DVR buffer of the channel I have tuned to fail on me on any version of Navigator as long as I do not switch channels except for a power failure. Could you please explain what you mean?
What I mean is that more often than not the DVR controls go to sleep (I can find no 'option' to prevent it) and when that happens the buffer does not get stored, so if you turn the tv on and try to go back, you've had it - doesn't happen with Passport.

Satch Man

09-26-08, 03:56 PM

hdtvfan2005

09-26-08, 03:58 PM

I'm hearing that a new high res version of Navigator is going to be deployed in some markets within the next 3 months. Is this just a rumor? A marketing ploy to make Navigator look good? If this is true, has anyone seen the GUI of the new improved interface? Are we going to get Keyboard Theme Search with the next version and more sports categories?

Jack

Yes thats been rumored. Bob Barlow the president of the San Diego division says that they have been testing this new version on the employees. He says it looks much better. The new version should be coming out next month San Diego.

Edit: Perhaps it might be in widescreen for those 960x540 boxes. The new Cisco/Samsung boxes can render 960x540 16.9 graphics.

BenJF3

09-26-08, 04:00 PM

I'm hearing that a new high res version of Navigator is going to be deployed in some markets within the next 3 months. Is this just a rumor? A marketing ploy to make Navigator look good? If this is true, has anyone seen the GUI of the new improved interface? Are we going to get Keyboard Theme Search with the next version and more sports categories?

Jack

Who knows? TWC is terrible at communication. Other people posted on a local forum about how they called TWC for info on Start Over which was just implemented and the CSR's had no clue what they were talking about. People are getting fed up with this. Three people call TWC and each gets a different answer to the same question AND none are the right answer. It's getting ridiculous.

hdtvfan2005

09-26-08, 04:05 PM

StinDaWg

09-30-08, 04:44 PM

I have a 8240HDC and I can't stand how it will randomly record repeat episodes when you have it set to new only. On an old box I used to be able to set to record only at a certain time, this would do away with the problem of repeat recordings. Why this feature is no longer available is beyond comprehension. With the small size of the hard drive and only 20 hours HD available it sux.

jnv11

09-30-08, 09:00 PM

The good news:
When I was at North Carolina State University's Engineering Career Fair today, one Cisco rep said that the 8300HDC and 8240HDC were entering the end-of-life phase. This means that TWC will have to order better cable boxes soon.

The bad news:
Time Warner Cable does not have a reservation for this career fair (and this career fair is open today and tomorrow), and I think that TWC could really use some more computer science majors or computer engineering majors to help debug both versions of Navigator, especially because MDN should be considered alpha quality software, and ODN should be considered beta quality software.

michaeltscott

09-30-08, 09:59 PM

...MDN should be considered alpha quality software, and ODN should be considered beta quality software.Would you stop with this "ODN is in better shape" rap? There is absolutely no evidence of that and judging by the performance of the boxes in my house I'd say that the opposite is true. (Which is intuitively what I'd expect, since MDN was deployed at least a year before ODN).

jimholcomb

09-30-08, 10:19 PM

Would you stop with this "ODN is in better shape" rap? There is absolutely no evidence of that and judging by the performance of the boxes in my house I'd say that the opposite is true. (Which is intuitively what I'd expect, since MDN was deployed at least a year before ODN).

I have to agree that MDN is the better platform, I've had both since the Olympics and I've chosen to keep the MDN box. Scrolling through the guide is probably 2x as fast and the menu options seem to be a bit better laid out, and you can set series records to only record a series at a specific time.

Jim

VisionOn

09-30-08, 11:24 PM

Navigator is getting some more changes even after the next month revision. This is actually from Bob Barlow. Maybe San Diego gets startover but maybe they need more bandwidth.

http://hdtv.forsandiego.com/messages/2/6937.html?1222207238

This should help some but it has some corporate junk in it.

Before anyone gets their hopes up elsewhere, a reminder - what a test market receives is no guarantee you will see it any time soon or possibly at all.

See Start Over, Quick Clips, Access mini-Menu, Photoshow TV, Football Tracker etc. and other stuff that's been available for years that you probably have not seen yet.

jnv11

10-01-08, 01:53 AM

I have to agree with you that MDN has more features and is faster than ODN. I wish that they were in ODN. However, I have noticed far fewer random crashes with ODN than MDN. I really miss those features in MDN that are missing in ODN, but I have really said good riddance with the somewhat frequent random crashes that MDN 2.4.1-92 did on me even when we did not need closed captioning. However, most of the crashes I have had with ODN could be traced to either me doing something that normal customers will not do like using the AXIOM diagnostics too often without a reboot, or some sort of hardware failure. I count the first case with only a small amount of weight and will not count the second case at all, but will lay the blame on the makers of the dodgy hardware, Cisco/Scientific Atlanta, which should have had the time to debug these boxes by now. I will place lots of weight on bugs normal customers could be expected to find, like the major bug where the on demand code fails to fall back to the primary tuner to receive video on demand parameters when the stored parameters need to be renewed and when the secondary tuner is being used to record something.

My guess is that different people stress their systems differently. Therefore, if you go through certain areas in the software and I go through different areas, we might generate different crash frequencies and get different opinions.

I will admit that MDN is faster than ODN, and that ODN is currently inexcusably slow on 8240HDCs and 8300HDCs. That is just the nature of running native code vs. running code through an emulator on an architecture that does not have the hardware (a branch prediction unit in the CPU) to perform the decision instructions quickly because the CPU was originally targeted for a platform where these decision instructions should be few and far away from each other, so slow decision making would not be a problem and would immensely improve the yield and costs of these CPUs. The 85xxHDC series and the EOL status of the 8300HDC/8240HDC however should narrow the execution speed gap and possibly remove random crashes due to hastily designed and therefore flaky hardware because this series apparently looks like it was designed for OCAP.

I will also admit that the specification for writing to the PowerTV OS is clean, and that the OCAP specification is a change log for some European standard known as MHP. Obviously, this kind of standard is very hard to understand. Therefore, it made sense that ODN at first stank compared to MDN (e.g. HDMI bugs, DVR bugs, eSATA bugs, and other random crashes galore in initial versions of ODN).

However, Java provides memory protection. Natively run code on the standard PowerTV OS does not get memory protection which I feel is a very stupid choice nowadays on a modern operating system. The cost savings of using cheaper CPUs is somewhat offset by the huge amount of man-hours it takes to fix those very hard to find memory bugs and customers lost due to their getting fed up with the crashes for the years that it takes to find these seemingly random bugs. Also, this choice is a complete liability when the hardware for memory protection happens to be present in the CPU that is selected. Memory protection helps the programmers find and fix these bugs quickly, allowing the programmers to get back to work adding more features like manual recording and searching by team. An earlier post showed how much of a buggy wreck the initial versions of Passport were, but it took lots of time to become the guide many of us would want to return to. Therefore, it made sense that when we went from MDN 2.4.1-92 to MDN 2.4.1-107, that the HD DVR closed captioning bug was fixed, but people started reporting a random crashing during the Olympics with MDN which turned out to be another bug that caused MDN to fail with long HD programs according to one TWC representative whose response was summarized and posted to this forum by another poster. Interestingly, one neighbor reported no crashing with MDN 2.4.1-107 on an 8300 non-HD non CableCARD box. Since handling HD video uses more memory than handling SD memory, this suggests a buffer overflow where the guide and the video decode data collide with each other.

However, I will admit that both need loads of work before any of us will consider MDN or ODN ready for release. ODN needs the missing features in MDN and a menu reorganization to make the setup menus as clean as MDN's setup menus. MDN needs more stability. After both reach feature parity, both need a vastly improved search and manual recording. There is not much ODN can do for speed except run on a box designed for OCAP.

Interestingly, I noticed that ODN once really slowed down. When I pulled up the the AXIOM diagnostics, they showed evidence of a breakdown in communications between the CableCARD and the cable box. I wonder if this is a failure in AXIOM or if this is caused by the CableCARD crashing.

I guess that we may have to agree to disagree on the issue of which Navigator is better. Some customers like me value stability first. Speed is a great asset, but failing to get the job done in the first place renders speed useless. Random crashing and hardware failures will get me cranky enough to do a box swap. Momentary slowdowns only annoy me. Constant slowdowns get treated like a crash (reboot the cable box). Others tolerate crashing, but hate slow software. Some like SD-only customers with fast boxes can't explore the corner cases that will trip up MDN in HD, in which case MDN is the clear choice for them.

michaeltscott

10-01-08, 03:33 AM

jnv11

10-01-08, 11:51 AM

No valid judgement whatsoever can be drawn from the observations of a few people in this group. If you have the engineering background that you seem to have, you should know that. It's possible (though admittedly improbable) that no one else is stressing the system exactly the same way that you do. Some of us are having a much more frustrating time with remaining bugs in ODN. MDN has been running in my home for months and I'm unaware of it failing to make a recording or of it frequently crashing, whereas the boxes running ODN have been up and down (and take forever to boot up). You can only speak for your own experience; try to make that clear in your pronouncements.

I also find your faith in the power of Java's runtime memory checking to be a little vexing. I've been writing code for embedded systems for about 17 years, some of it for some pretty damn primitive runtime environments (I still have nightmares of pSOS :rolleyes:). Hardware memory protection and runtime memory checking certainly help to speed up development, but they don't guarantee solid code; things written in other languages can be effectively bug free (nothing is ever truly bug free, but if a bug is never encountered by a user of the software, does it truly exist? :). A well written and executed regression testing regimen is much more effective for acheiving fault-free code than anything in the language runtime or operating system. (Of course, there's little evidence of such testing being used here, at least not early one :D).

I understand your points. First, I noticed that the ODN boxes I have used mostly quit crashing if I propped them up with something like 2x4s. Someone else said that he created a metal shelf with perforated metal and put his 8300HDC on top of it to allow the box to get much more air, and it quit crashing as often. This really suggests flaky hardware to me. Your experience might differ, and it might not.

As for the boxes I have used, here are the problems that I have encountered that have forced box swaps:

8300HD: MDN 2.4.1-92 (which has been made obsolete by MDN 2.4.1-107) could not handle the mix of DVR functionality, closed captioning, and HDTV. Mom is an ESL person, so closed captioning frequently is needed in my house.
8240HDC: Overheated and cooked itself enough to have that stench of burnt electronics. Later boxes are placed on a pair of 2x4s to prevent this from happening again. After the 2x4s were installed, the number of failed recordings fell to one or two in five months on all subsequent boxes.
8300HDC: Was swapped out to prove that there was no problem in my house when SDV failed in delivering the Olympics special channels. I want this particular 8300HDC back as it was one of the few rock-solid 8240HDC/8300HDC boxes that I have used. I have to admit that I did not use HDMI nor eSATA because ODN 2.4.9_3 crashed on these issues.
8240HDC: Suddenly crash-prone one day. Tuners also failed that day.

I currently have an 8300HDC.

As for your point on memory protection, the bugs that trip me up most in the code that I write are memory manipulation bugs like buffer overflows and out of range array accesses. I have had other bugs trip me up, but nowhere near as much as memory manipulation errors. Therefore, memory protection is very helpful to me, no matter whether it is provided by the operating system or the virtual machine. Sure, memory protection provided by the virtual machine gives better insight on where the bug is, but is slow. Memory protection by the operating system is nearly cost-free in terms of performance, but does not provide as much clues as to the problem when a program misbehaves. I understand that there are other things needed to write solid code like having a team separate from the developers test the code in order to stress the program in ways the developers did not anticipate. Also, I have fallen victim to bugs that I wrote that told the computer to perform the wrong operation. However, memory bugs are the ones that trip me up the most. I guess this shows us how different programmers have different debugging requirements.