Time Warner Cable Navigator [Text View] - Page 30

jnv11

03-10-09, 03:21 AM

I am sorry for misidentifying the CPUs used in the 8300 series DVRs. Since these DVRs use Xilleon video processors, I thought that they would use the Xilleon's MIPS CPUs that are included in them. However, slide 24 in this presentation (http://www.scientificatlanta.com/products/customers/images_scicare/752705-c%20implementing%20separable%20security%20in%20a%20dbds.pdf) shows that the CPUs are UltraSPARC processors which have branch prediction according to this white paper (http://infopad.eecs.berkeley.edu/CIC/archive/UltraSparc2.CompCon96.pdf). Therefore, my statements about these processors not optimized at all for Java due to the lack of a branch predictor are false.

Therefore, something else is responsible for the poor speed of ODN before ODN 3.x.x_x. The thought that these CPUs cannot do the job has been shot down with the reported speed of ODN 3.x.x_x. Here is my list of possibilities of what could have caused the poor performance in ODN 2.x.x_x:

A working set is the set of critical code and data that must fit in a cache for that cache to have any significant benefit. Was the working set for the AXIOM OCAP middleware and ODN 2.4.x_x too big for the external L2 cache?
Was AXIOM slow in versions shipped before ODN 3.x.x_x?
Was ODN before 3.x.x_x coded without caring for speed at all?
In order to use multiple CPUs in a program, that program must be split into threads. Is generating one thread to translate Java bytecode and another thread to run the translated code for each Java thread a good idea, or is it better for those tasks to be integrated into one thread each in order to avoid overhead? The former exploits parallelism, but could generate extreme amounts of operating system overhead due to the need to have it suspend threads that have no work to do (e.g. the thread that runs the translated code starts having to wait for more translated code) and to wake up suspended threads when there is work for them (e.g. the translation thread has finished translating some Java bytecode and therefore the execution thread needs to be woken up and told to run the resulting set of instructions from the translation), large amounts of front side bus traffic, and possibly large amounts of memory traffic.

MikeRoberts44

03-10-09, 08:13 PM

I think right now for MDN 2.4.4-15 is the highest. Has anyone heard or seen different?

Jack
Kansas City has had MDN 2.4.4-16 for a couple of months. We went from 2.4.1-107 so I have not seen anything in between. 2.4.4-16 seems pretty stable and works with my eSATA. It also works MOST of the time with closed captioning which I have on most of the time. Closed captioning has not caused a reboot, but occasionally it (the CC) gets flakey. Sometimes I can get it back to normal by turning it off and back on. Sometimes I do a warm boot.

Thombil

03-10-09, 09:11 PM

We also have 2.4.4-16 in Columbus, Ohio

alleg23

03-11-09, 10:59 PM

so what does it mean that my box has ODN 2.4.10_11? how behind is that?

also, what do tune failure count and ib mount errors mean?

thanx.

hdtvfan2005

03-11-09, 11:22 PM

You are about 2 versions behind. 2.4.10_11 is the latest version of ODN 2.4. ODN 3 is 3.1.0_11. San Diego deployed 3.1.0_7. Other divisions with ODN 3 have 3.1.0_11.

humdinger70

03-12-09, 02:24 AM

You are about 2 versions behind. 2.4.10_11 is the latest version of ODN 2.4. ODN 3 is 3.1.0_11. San Diego deployed 3.1.0_7. Other divisions with ODN 3 have 3.1.0_11.

Check your system. San Diego went to ODN 3.1.0_11 a while ago.

The MDN version San Diego has is still 2.4.4-14. Reports are out and about that the latest revision is 2.4.4-16.

jnv11

03-12-09, 03:40 AM

so what does it mean that my box has ODN 2.4.10_11? how behind is that?

also, what do tune failure count and ib mount errors mean?

thanx.

Tune failure count tells you how many times the box failed to tune to a channel that it should have been able to tune to since its last boot. Since the box cannot tune to an SDV channel that is not being watched by someone else when SDV is maxed out, I do not think that this kind of error is included.

I am speculating that IB mount errors means the amount of times one of the primary tuners tried to find or load an in-band data carousel. A carousel is a channel that is dedicated to broadcasting data instead of video, like the program guide, software images to be read by boxes that need to be updated, video on demand data, and possibly caller ID information. Since in-band channels deliver 38Mbps rather than the 1.544Mbps the out-of-band protocol used in Cisco/Scientific Atlanta equipment, a well-programmed box should try to read data off of the carousel and should falll back to the out-of-band tuner if it is impossible to read the carousel (e.g. both in-band tuners are recording shows and therefore cannot read the carousel).

SouthernJet

03-12-09, 12:06 PM

michaeltscott

03-12-09, 12:58 PM

Your settings won't be transferred to a new box. Just go through the settings on your current box and write them down so that you can set your new box up the same way.

jnv11

03-12-09, 01:54 PM

I am in raleigh and have a 8300HD I believe..
Lately I have been getting DVRed programs freezing and not going forward even though I can see it recorded whole program. Also I am getting some programs where it will stop, jump ahead a few seconds and sometimes show another picture beneath the one I recorded. Then many times the show will be recorded and viewed perfect.
Is it a bad box or a issue with cable?
Some one said maybe deleting all DVRed saved programs might help in some way???? Clear file problems??

I hate to get new box as I am afraid all settings wont get carried over and i will see wierd picture or bad sound.

There are two possibilities: Your file system is corrupt, or your hard drive is going bad.

To clear the first possibility (corrupt file system), you could watch all the programs, delete the corrupt ones, and then rewatch the remaining programs because deleting the corrupt programs can corrupt the remaining programs because the corrupt programs could link to sectors from clean programs, causing the deleter to delete the clean areas and corrupting the now formerly clean programs. The second way to clear this is to delete everything.

To clear the second possibility (failing hard drive), change out your cable box. If you get an 8300HDC or 8240HDC, be sure to keep that box cool, but don't stick it in the refrigerator or freezer. This immensely improved stability on the CableCARD-based boxes that I have used. For example, only enclose it in the room, keep things two or more inches away from it, and put some 2x4s under the legs if you want to go all the way. These boxes are basically rushed engineering jobs that did not spend enough time in quality assurance due to an FCC deadline that was pushed back and back during the Clinton and the early half of the Bush administration, but Kevin Martin, the chairman during the Bush administration, decided to side with the telcos in the second Bush term and hurt the cable industry apparently because he wanted to go to work for the telcos which the cable companies started competing against after he left the FCC decided to stand his ground on the deadline, forcing the rush to develop and get out to the field these boxes.

nickdawg

03-12-09, 02:15 PM

These boxes are basically rushed engineering jobs that did not spend enough time in quality assurance due to an FCC deadline that was pushed back and back during the Clinton and the early half of the Bush administration, but Kevin Martin, the chairman during the Bush administration, decided to side with the telcos in the second Bush term and hurt the cable industry apparently because he wanted to go to work for the telcos which the cable companies started competing against after he left the FCC decided to stand his ground on the deadline, forcing the rush to develop and get out to the field these boxes.

I personally think the whole cable card/separable security/OCAP thing is a load. I think it's ridiculous that the FCC would make cable companies do this, especially when the faulty equipment developed out of this is putting cable customers at a disadvantage.

The big topic in my local section is the tuning adapter for tivo and SDV. They're going to start distributing tuning adapters on April 1 as part of out transition to SDV. This makes me wonder what else the FCC is going to do. Think the next generation of SA boxes will also have to use the tuning adapter too? :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

jcalabria

03-12-09, 02:33 PM

Think the next generation of SA boxes will also have to use the tuning adapter too? :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

I realize you are dabbling in sarcastic humor but, no, they won't... and neither should the next gen of Tivos and TVs designed to be tru2way (OCAP) compliant.

Speaking of which... has anybody heard anything about the Chicago or Denver tru2way tests? Panasonic has been selling Chicago/Denver market specific tru2way TVs but I haven't heard much about it. The tru2way section here has been dead.

FYI: http://www2.panasonic.com/consumer-electronics/shop/Televisions/VIERA-Plasma-HDTVs/model.TH-42PZ80Q_11002_7000000000000005702

nickdawg

03-12-09, 02:46 PM

I realize you are dabbling in sarcastic humor but, no, they won't... and neither should the next gen of Tivos and TVs designed to be tru2way (OCAP) compliant.

Yep. That was sarcastic humour, meant to show how absurd this is. Doesn't matter what they do, there will never be a "100% level playing field" as they were going for with OCAP. TWC equipment will always do TWC services better(VOD, PPV) and some people will always think their $600 DVR performs better than my SA box! :p

How will these two way DVRs and TVs work? Will the cableco actually download their software to my TV?

jnv11

03-12-09, 03:31 PM

Yep. That was sarcastic humour, meant to show how absurd this is. Doesn't matter what they do, there will never be a "100% level playing field" as they were going for with OCAP. TWC equipment will always do TWC services better(VOD, PPV) and some people will always think their $600 DVR performs better than my SA box! :p

How will these two way DVRs and TVs work? Will the cableco actually download their software to my TV?

Yes, with OCAP/<tru2way> equipment, the cable company will download its OCAP program onto your TV, but I guess it is your responsibility to update your TV's OCAP middleware from time to time instead of TWC's responsibility. TWC is only able to update the middleware for boxes it owns and customer-owned boxes that are the same as the cableco boxes.

michaeltscott

03-12-09, 03:53 PM

Yes, with OCAP/<tru2way> equipment, the cable company will download its OCAP program onto your TV, but I guess it is your responsibility to update your TV's OCAP middleware from time to time instead of TWC's responsibility. TWC is only able to update the middleware for boxes it owns and customer-owned boxes that are the same as the cableco boxes.I kind of doubt that that will happen. More probably, the cable companies will have to dance around any problems exist in the OCA Platforms of various devices. Requiring <tru2way> television and STB users to be sophisticated enough to update firmware is far, far too un-user-friendly (though you might offer them the option, as an advanced operation performed at their own risk :)).

There's a recent service out there for devices updating their firmware in datacasts carried in local broadcast subchannels (and probably on cable channels as well). A company called UpdateLogic (http://www.updatelogic.com/) sells a product which they call UpdateTV (there's also a Wikipedia article about them here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UpdateLogic)). Perhaps it, or something like it, will start being widely used.

TheDaveMan

03-13-09, 05:18 PM

I have an 8300HDC and Apricorn DVR Expander with TWC-NYC (Manhattan South), and according to my diag screen, my Navigator hasn't been upgraded - I'm still with 2.4.10_11.

I installed my external HD 3 weeks ago and it was working flawlessly until I just turned on my system to discover that all programs recorded on the external drive are no longer visible. As I had managed to fill up the combined capacity to ~95% capacity and was looking forward to seeing those programs, this is quite annoying, to say the least.

I unplugged the Apricorn and then did a cold boot of the DVR, to no avail.

Are my recorded programs going to come back? Is there anything I can do to make them come back? If not, how do I get the DVR to re-recognize the capacity so that I can look forward to dealing with this problem again in the future?

For the record, my Recording Log isn't listed as a tab option any more either - it's not blank, it's just not there.

When I spoke with the idiots at TWC tech support, first a woman who could barely speak English, and then her supervisor, they told me that I'm not supposed to have been able to record to an external HD because 1) they don't support the connection, and 2) it's "copyright infringement." In addition to that being a contradiction of what a different TWC tech person told me before I bought the drive in the firstplace, we all know that that isn't true.

I know we've all dealt with these people at some point, but I've never been so frustrated by them before.

Any suggestions at all are appreciated.

michaeltscott

03-14-09, 02:01 PM

There's a recent service out there for devices updating their firmware in datacasts carried in local broadcast subchannels (and probably on cable channels as well). A company called UpdateLogic (http://www.updatelogic.com/) sells a product which they call UpdateTV (there's also a Wikipedia article about them here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UpdateLogic)). Perhaps it, or something like it, will start being widely used.I've been beta testing Cisco's Tuning Adapter with my TiVo for TWC San Diego. When they installed it, they gave me a handy chart of the channels, printed in tiny little type, unfortunately sorted by subscriber channel number. When I first got it I'd been getting some interference from the TA with two HD channels in the QAM carrier at 525 MHz, so I checked that chart to see if they didn't have a standard-def channel or two wedged in there. There's nothing else on 525 except Channel 1 "On Demand Preview" and a couple of datacasting streams for UpdateLogic's UpdateTV service :).

VisionOn

03-14-09, 03:59 PM

There's a recent service out there for devices updating their firmware in datacasts carried in local broadcast subchannels (and probably on cable channels as well). A company called UpdateLogic (http://www.updatelogic.com/) sells a product which they call UpdateTV (there's also a Wikipedia article about them here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UpdateLogic)). Perhaps it, or something like it, will start being widely used.

This kind if thing has been widely used in the UK for many years to update digital terrestrial boxes over the air.

http://www.dtg.org.uk/retailer/download_schedule.pl

If a box is being jacked into a cable network the whole process should be faster and easier. All the cable companies have to do is lock down a channel specifically to carry software data and given the amount of OCAP manufacturers out there it shouldn't be a very crowded schedule. TWC already have plenty of redundant channels hidden outside of the guide they could be using.

holl_ands

03-14-09, 04:39 PM

This kind if thing has been widely used in the UK for many years to update digital terrestrial boxes over the air.

http://www.dtg.org.uk/retailer/download_schedule.pl

If a box is being jacked into a cable network the whole process should be faster and easier. All the cable companies have to do is lock down a channel specifically to carry software data and given the amount of OCAP manufacturers out there it shouldn't be a very crowded schedule. TWC already have plenty of redundant channels hidden outside of the guide they could be using.
On-Air DTV S/W Updates runs as a fairly low data rate sub-channel on our PBS station.
It also runs on TWC-SD cable, consuming only a small amount of data rate.
Two-way request control would be more efficient than OTA continual transmit.

michaeltscott

03-14-09, 05:39 PM

This doesn't really need to be a bidirectional protocol. So what if your loop takes a few days to run (and it seems as though UpdateTV is running two of them on cable)? It's not as though there's any urgency to firmware updates. So long as units plugged into power an the network can do this in the background in either ON or STANDBY states, the situation is much better than the previous one, where most devices were stuck with whatever level of firmware they shipped with. Once their code comes around, potentially tens of thousands of plugged in units of a model can update themselves simultaneously.

If they miss part of it, they can wait until it comes around again.

holl_ands

03-14-09, 06:15 PM

Request/response protocol only needs to run when the DTV is powered up.

ATSC A/97 OTA transmit protocol means a significant waste of power waiting for the update
to come around for your model number, amongst 100's if not 1000's of other models....
And would increase the "IDLE" power level many orders of magnitude above EnergyStar levels.

Which begs the question of how long does your DTV need to dwell on the PBS channel
to hear the list of available updates....and only power up when it needs to download???
And maybe they'll use a second ATSC tuner.....degrading sensitivity....

holl_ands

03-14-09, 06:47 PM

Update Logic says for cable they use Common Download method defined in SCTE 28:
http://updatelogic.net/network-cable.html

Common Download methods for cable starts on pg157:
http://www.scte.org/documents/pdf/ANSISCTE282004.pdf
There are multiple modes of operation for different purposes....

"The protocol described in this document is based on the DSM-CC data carousel,
which provides a format for data objects on a broadcast carousel. Since a common
transport layer protocol for the in-band data channel (also known as the Forward
Application Transport or FAT Channel) is MPEG-2, it provides a convenient starting
point for a common protocol to download operating software code objects.
Control messages, specific to each type of Host device on the network, provide a
locator (frequency of the transport stream, modulation mode, and PID) for the code
file on the data carousel. A second approach is also defined where a source ID is
utilized that identifies the program source associated with the virtual channel that is
utilized for carrying the DSM-CC Download Information Indication message and/or
the code file. The DSM-CC Download Information Indication message contains
information pertaining to various firmware images that are available for download for
particular Host devices.

This document uses the following terminology to differentiate between the two
download methods:

1) OOB Forward Data Channel method: This method places the Code Version
Table (CVT), as defined in section 3.5.5, in the OOB Forward Data Channel.
The POD acquires the CVT via the OOB, filters the CVT and passes relevant
information to the Host, as defined within this document. The Host utilizes the
information passed to it via the POD to determine if a download is available.
Download via this method is not possible without the POD. The data carousel
is carried on the IB and contains the code file image. The Host only knows of
the existence of a download via the POD.

2) IB FAT Channel method: This method places the Code Version Download
Table (CVDT), as defined in section 8.15.2.2.1, in the IB FAT Channel. The
Host acquires the CVDT via the IB, filters the CVDT and determines if a
download available. The POD is not used for filtering or reception of the
table. The data carousel is carried on the IB and contains both the code file
image and the CVDT. The Host knows of the existence of a download via the
utilization of a source ID or via interaction with the POD.

Currently, the transport and message protocols between the Headend and the POD are
proprietary. In order for any Host to decode the message, extensions to the existing
POD-Host interface specification, are required. These extensions provide a common
network interface to the Host. This approach requires some additional functionality
in the POD, in that the POD translates the proprietary network protocols to the
common one specified in this document.

There are four types of code upgrade protocols that may be used by the MSO to
download code. Additionally, there may be devices on the network for which the
MSO does not have code objects, in which case, download would not be supported.
Summarizing these options:
• In-band, broadcast
• In-band, command
• In-band, on-demand
• DOCSIS
• Not supported

This specification defines protocols for the first three download methods; the fourth
method is well documented in the DOCSIS specification. These methods specified
here are based on the DSM-CC data carousel. The broadcast model is used when the
MSO is not dynamically adding files to the broadcast carousel. The command model
is used when the MSO has just added a new code file and wants all applicable Host
devices to download the code file immediately. The on-demand case allows the MSO
to dynamically add and remove code images as new subscribers come online and
require upgrades."

holl_ands

03-14-09, 07:04 PM

Detailed descriptions of various download methods follow. However, even the
"broadcast" method can require a device request before loading carousel:

"8.15.1.1 Common Download via the OOB Forward Data Channel
In the broadcast model, data is broadcast over the OOB Forward Data Channel that
relates the manufacturer and hardware version to the locator for the code object in a
DSM-CC data carousel. The POD filters these data and passes the appropriate data
onto the Host. The Host can then tune to the appropriate broadcast MPEG multiplex
stream and set the PID filters to the PID that identifies the code object in the
multiplex stream.

Because every possible code object might not be carried all of the time on the
broadcast carousel, the MSO may provide an on-demand capability. In this method,
when a Host signs onto the network, the Headend is informed that a new Host is now
on-line. If a new version of the software for that Host is available, the Headend loads
the object onto the carousel and sends a message back to the Host identifying the
location of this code object. If a code object is not available, the Host is informed that
download is unsupported. After the Host has finished downloading the object and
authenticates it, it sends a ‘done’ message so that the Headend can unload that object
from the carousel."

Of course, tru2way DTV/STB/DVR/PCs need updates much more frequently than OTA only....

phousley

03-17-09, 07:14 AM

I'm not having a good morning. Central Ohio got upgraded last night to a release I haven't seen reported here: ODN 3.1.1_3 2009/02/05.

When I first turned it on, I could tell it had rebooted last night because it was on channel 01. I immediately checked the diag screen and saw the new release. Also saw that there are now 14 pages, one of which provides disk information. It indicated I had only one device. Sure enough, my recordings are listed but won't play.

So, I did a full reboot -- pulled the plug. I was heartened to see the disk accessed during the boot process. When it came back up, I couldn't enter the diag screens. None of the usual remote functions worked (Guide, List, Settings, etc) except the up/down channel and number buttons. Finally got it to recognize the Menu button but attempt to select the functions (e.g. program guide) just resulted in infinite "Loading Data" message. Also, while in the Menu, scrolling would sometimes bring up a blank diag screen that indicated page 1 of 0.

Rebooted again. Now all the remote buttons work, but the diag screens keeps showing page 1 of 0.

Rebooted again. As usual, the disk is being accessed during the boot process. This time I waited a full minute after the boot was complete to turn it on. Everything functional again (including the diag screen) except that my external disk is not functional.

Don't have time to screw with any more. Will try again tonight.

Skid71

03-17-09, 07:36 AM

T3ddyG

03-17-09, 01:49 PM

I'm not having a good morning. Central Ohio got upgraded last night to a release I haven't seen reported here: ODN 3.1.1_3 2009/02/05.

I was upgraded to 3.1.1_3 also. This morning when I turned on the news, my box was on channel 1, and I had the new color scheme. I checked the diagnostics, and I had been upgraded over night.

I haven't messed around with it at all yet, just quickly watched the weather before walking out the door. I don't have external storage, but I'll post back on if my recordings still work.

T3ddyG

03-17-09, 05:41 PM

jcalabria

03-17-09, 06:08 PM

I checked to see if my recordings work after my ODN software upgrade last night.... so far, everything seems to be working. I don't use esata storage, just the internal drive. Anyone know what changes there are in this version?

I think you and Phousley are the first to report this version... you guys have to tell us!!! :)

Prior to this it had seemed that Charlotte, San Diego and Kansas City had always been the bleeding edge systems... I guess its someone else's turn, which, unless you tell us that you have some new wiz-bang feature, is OK with me 'cause 3.1.0_11 has been pretty stable and not lacking too much feature-wise.

BenJF3

03-17-09, 06:48 PM

michaeltscott

03-17-09, 07:07 PM

Well, I've been wanting Navigator for some time now, but not if I'm going to lose my eSata support. Hopefully TWC realizes how important it is to have eSAta support when the internal drive only holds 20 hours of HD.TWC has never provided support for eSATA. They've never acknowledged its existence, advertised it or documented it. It works in SARA because SARA is essentially a software reference platform the Cisco/SA Explorer DVRs and as such, they've made every feature of the hardware work in it.

Some techie end users discovered that eSATA works to various extents in various IPGs, and decided to use it, but it's always been used at your own risk.

BenJF3

03-17-09, 07:41 PM

TWC has never provided support for eSATA. They've never acknowledged its existence, advertised it or documented it. It works in SARA because SARA is essentially a software reference platform the Cisco/SA Explorer DVRs and as such, they've made every feature of the hardware work in it.

Some techie end users discovered that eSATA works to various extents in various IPGs, and decided to use it, but it's always been used at your own risk.

Our VP of Public Relations in this division acknowledged it and said it was active. Albeit, we are a SARA division. I suppose in a worse case scenario I would be willing to remove and clone the internal drive to a 1TB drive to see if that worked. 160GB is not nearly enough space here, especially with the recent addition of 15 more HD channels.

michaeltscott

03-17-09, 08:39 PM

Our VP of Public Relations in this division acknowledged it and said it was active.Okay--that was pretty safe for him to do, since it is "supported" by Cisco/SA and fully detailed in their documentation for SARA. Will they, however, help you make it work if you're having trouble? Have they qualified specific drives that they're committed to supporting? Will they fix it if it stops working? I'm betting that's a "no".

Unless he stated that it's strictly unsupported when he acknowledged its existence and that it was active, that statement alone might be enough to legally bind them to providing some level of support for it :).

BenJF3

03-17-09, 09:18 PM

Well, I don't really rely on them to support anything. My thinking was that he acknowledged the fact that 20 hours isn't enough now that we have about 70 HD channels. Thing is, I don't know why they don't support it via themselves. It could be a revenue stream. They could issue DVR Expanders from WD that are tested to work with the SA8300 and charge a small fee for the rental.

What TWC should really be doing is have programmers figure a way for redundant backup of settings. IE: a file that resides on both drives so in the event of failure, I can just swap either my set top or external drive out and retain all my favs, settings, scheduled recordings, etc. That would be a good feature. This way if you swap a box you don't lose everything - only what was on that box.

phousley

03-17-09, 09:39 PM

Skid71

03-17-09, 10:47 PM

Just a brief update concerning ODN 3.1.1_3 with external esata. There's still hope. Tonight I've watched 2 of my old recordings from the external drive and I've got 2 more being recorded. It took a lot of angel farts and sprinkle dust but it seems to be working (so far).

I'll be able to explain more after experimenting tomorrow. I don't want to bore everyone with irrelevant crap.

Preliminary theory: Twice now I've had the external drive working until I entered the diag screens. Which, by the way, kept reporting only 1 disk device.

I haven't looked too closely, but it seems to be no different functionally than what I read about ODN 3.1.0_11. If anyone has something specific they want me to check, let me know.

One annoying bug: Every time I reboot it loses my setting for Audio: Digital Output setting. I set it to Dolby Digital and it keeps going back to HDMI.

I'm glad that you are finding some good fortune! Please, bore me with the irrelevant crap, maybe we can figure out how to make those angel farts work for others. :D

Not keeping the Dolby Digital Audio Output is at very least an annoyance. At first I thought it was a receiver issue, then I thought it only happened when the display &/or HDC powered off/on.

It's everytime I switch inputs. Was trying to do a little streaming with the 360, went back to cable.... voila, HDMI audio again. argh!

Best of luck ph,
Skid

Riverside_Guy

03-18-09, 08:44 AM

Just a brief update concerning ODN 3.1.1_3 with external esata. There's still hope. Tonight I've watched 2 of my old recordings from the external drive and I've got 2 more being recorded. It took a lot of angel farts and sprinkle dust but it seems to be working (so far).

I'll be able to explain more after experimenting tomorrow. I don't want to bore everyone with irrelevant crap.

Preliminary theory: Twice now I've had the external drive working until I entered the diag screens. Which, by the way, kept reporting only 1 disk device.

I haven't looked too closely, but it seems to be no different functionally than what I read about ODN 3.1.0_11. If anyone has something specific they want me to check, let me know.

One annoying bug: Every time I reboot it loses my setting for Audio: Digital Output setting. I set it to Dolby Digital and it keeps going back to HDMI.

I've read several reports that xxx.11 and the previous release seemed to break eSATA support. BUT I also recall maybe one or two posts that it worked with those versions.

I assume you had a previous release to xx.3, so was external recording functioning then?

jcalabria

03-18-09, 08:56 AM

I'm glad that you are finding some good fortune! Please, bore me with the irrelevant crap, maybe we can figure out how to make those angel farts work for others. :D

Not keeping the Dolby Digital Audio Output is at very least an annoyance. At first I thought it was a receiver issue, then I thought it only happened when the display &/or HDC powered off/on.

It's everytime I switch inputs. Was trying to do a little streaming with the 360, went back to cable.... voila, HDMI audio again. argh!

Best of luck ph,
Skid

Your issue with the audio settings is occurring w/ 3.1.0_11, corrrect?

Phousley has the issue starting with 3.1.1_3... did he have it prior to that and what version is he coming from?

I do not have the audio issue with 3.1.0_11... we gotta figure out what set of circumstances is actually controlling/triggering that issue. Maybe the angel farts are more potent down here! ;)

phousley

03-18-09, 12:50 PM

I've read several reports that xxx.11 and the previous release seemed to break eSATA support. BUT I also recall maybe one or two posts that it worked with those versions.The previous ODN release (2.4.10_11, the one most TW customers currently have) worked beautifully with estata. It was the release before that that had the sleep-mode problem. Only one person has reported that the transition to 3.1.0_11 caused no problems (and he's beginning to change his tune).

I assume you had a previous release to xx.3, so was external recording functioning then?
Phousley has the issue starting with 3.1.1_3... did he have it prior to that and what version is he coming from?I am a longtime user of esata on the 8300HDC. I've recorded and watched 100's of hours of externally recorded material and I was one of the contributers to the analysis and reporting of the sleep-mode problem with the earlier release. As I mentioned above esata works like a charm with ODN 2.4.10_11.

I do not have the audio issue with 3.1.0_11... we gotta figure out what set of circumstances is actually controlling/triggering that issue. Maybe the angel farts are more potent down here! ;)My audio situation is pretty simple. I go to Settings>Quick Settings>Devices>Audio: Digital Output. I change it from HDMI to Dolby Digital. I can see the change on my receiver and hear the difference in my speakers. I press Exit, turn off the power, then back on. The setting is now back to HDMI; confirmed by the receiver display, my ears, and the Settings menu.

abyssrules

03-18-09, 01:31 PM

<-----------------wishes i had any navigator to complain about .:(

T3ddyG

03-18-09, 03:38 PM

My audio situation is pretty simple. I go to Settings>Quick Settings>Devices>Audio: Digital Output. I change it from HDMI to Dolby Digital. I can see the change on my receiver and hear the difference in my speakers. I press Exit, turn off the power, then back on. The setting is now back to HDMI; confirmed by the receiver display, my ears, and the Settings menu.

Hmm... I haven't had any problems with my audio, but I run HDMI for video/audio. I'll try switching the output, and turning the box off/on. This seems like it would be a big mistake on their part?

phousley

03-18-09, 05:27 PM

The external drive with ODN 3.1.1_3 is mostly worthless. I can boot the system and watch my old recordings, but that's about it. I will be connecting the external drive for that purpose only. Basically, the system recognizes the drive after I boot but loses it after I change change channels. The system comes up on channel 01 which, in my region, is OnDemand movies. I'm guessing the system is content on channel 01 because it doesn't need to buffer.

My plan is to disconnect my external drive and convert all my series recordings to SD. I will reattach the external drive only long enough to watch my old recordings. Because I have a hunch that the file system on the external drive was corrupted during this upgrade process or is inconsistent with the system's file indices (which is pretty much the same thing), I will eventually reformat the external drive to see if the system can cope better with a clean drive.

I afraid this may be the deal breaker for me. If TW won't put enough storage on their box to adequately support recording of HD material and then they break a system that could previously utilize an external drive, then I may have to start looking elsewhere. Especially when I have absolutely no control over the implementation of these bug-ridden releases.

I guess I wouldn't be so frustrated if I was able to talk with someone at TW with some intellegence about this problem; someone who cares that it does not work and could assure me that they feel it is importent to them to eventually fix it. This pattern of breaking a highly useful and perfectly functioning feature every other release is frankly getting very tiresome.

BTW: Some of you may remember me arguing with you about the performance of 2.4.10_11. I asserted that 2.4.10_11 on my system performed quite well and was responsive. Without detailed measurements, my subjective opinion is still that 2.4.10_11 performed just as well as any function I've tried on 3.1.1_3.

T3ddyG

03-18-09, 05:54 PM

I just tried switching over to Dolby Digital on my STB, turning it off with the power button on the remote (standby), turning it back on, and it remained on Dolby Digital output. I tried it twice, both times, it stayed on the Dolby Digital output.

Phousley, Are you saying it loses your settings when doing a full reset (remove the power plug for 30 seconds, and turn it back on), or it loses settings when turning off via remote and back to on?

Today is the first day I've had some time to watch tv, and I have to agree - I'm not seeing any major speed differences between this 3.x version and the previous 2.x version we had. Either the other posters had some atrocious 2.x version, they are convincing themselves that it is faster because they got an updated version, or our version of 3.x is not as fast as theirs?

T3ddyG

03-18-09, 05:58 PM

Here is some other info from the diagnostic screen on my STB:

BootStrapper Version: 3.0.0_15
Network Version: 3.1.0_7
Monitor Version: 3.1.0_7
ODN Version:3.1.1_3

Phousley, does it match yours?

jcalabria

03-18-09, 06:15 PM

Either the other posters had some atrocious 2.x version, they are convincing themselves that it is faster because they got an updated version, or our version of 3.x is not as fast as theirs?

I have never had any 2.x version to compare... but when I have stated that 3.1.0_11 has always been been adequately fast on my 8300HDC, several 2.x users have always been quick to argue (sometimes rather vigorously, lol).

I just finally got around to ordering an eSATA cable to connect my external drive... my luck will have them upgrading my ODN as soon as I declare it to be working successfully with 3.1.0_11.

Crazywoody

03-18-09, 07:05 PM

Skid71

03-18-09, 07:07 PM

Skid71

03-18-09, 07:14 PM

I have never had any 2.x version to compare... but when I have stated that 3.1.0_11 has always been been adequately fast on my 8300HDC, several 2.x users have always been quick to argue (sometimes rather vigorously, lol).

I just finally got around to ordering an eSATA cable to connect my external drive... my luck will have them upgrading my ODN as soon as I declare it to be working successfully with 3.1.0_11.

Best of luck. (not being sarcastic)
I am still having the DD audio output issue phousley is.
Basically, the only time that the HDC will keep the audio output setting as Dolby Digital is when I just watch TV. Anytime I switch to another input on the plasma, HDC is turned off or reset/unplugged, or powering the plasma on/off will reset the audio output setting back to HDMI.

Connections are:
SA8300 => HDMI => Pioneer5070 (I want the video only)
SA8300 => Optical => Onkyo705 (I want the audio only)

160gb for recording HD programming just ain't gonna cut it. I'll save for a Tivo and drop this (fill in the blank) back off at TWC.

Skid

Edit: All was kosher with ODN 2.4.10_11

BenJF3

03-18-09, 07:19 PM

Well, I for one would go the Tivo route now that we have available SDV tuning adapters, but I'd still lose PPV and VOD functions. As soon as (BIG IF) TWC comes out with a Tru2Way solution and Tivo picks up on it to fully support all functions, then I'm there. Of course we may have new hardware and Navigator by the time that ever happens.

jcalabria

03-18-09, 09:23 PM

SIGH, Us poor folks in Greensboro can only look on in envy as we watch our SARA units. SOB SOB

I know... every time I visit my daughter in Greensboro I see ugly old SARA... but at least you're "stuck" with a stable OS that supports SDV so its not stunting your HD channel growth. ODN looks pretty and some versions work well, but we never know what we'll wake up to tomorrow.

danno321s

03-18-09, 09:26 PM

Just a brief update concerning ODN 3.1.1_3 with external esata. There's still hope. Tonight I've watched 2 of my old recordings from the external drive and I've got 2 more being recorded. It took a lot of angel farts and sprinkle dust but it seems to be working (so far).

I'll be able to explain more after experimenting tomorrow. I don't want to bore everyone with irrelevant crap.

Preliminary theory: Twice now I've had the external drive working until I entered the diag screens. Which, by the way, kept reporting only 1 disk device.

I haven't looked too closely, but it seems to be no different functionally than what I read about ODN 3.1.0_11. If anyone has something specific they want me to check, let me know.

One annoying bug: Every time I reboot it loses my setting for Audio: Digital Output setting. I set it to Dolby Digital and it keeps going back to HDMI.

Same here b/s I use an HDMI cable for the Video only and composite cable to powered speakers. I guess it assumes if an HDMI cable is connected it is for both Video and Audio.

jcalabria

03-18-09, 09:43 PM

Best of luck. (not being sarcastic)
I am still having the DD audio output issue phousley is.
Basically, the only time that the HDC will keep the audio output setting as Dolby Digital is when I just watch TV. Anytime I switch to another input on the plasma, HDC is turned off or reset/unplugged, or powering the plasma on/off will reset the audio output setting back to HDMI.

Connections are:
SA8300 => HDMI => Pioneer5070 (I want the video only)
SA8300 => Optical => Onkyo705 (I want the audio only)

160gb for recording HD programming just ain't gonna cut it. I'll save for a Tivo and drop this (fill in the blank) back off at TWC.

Skid

Edit: All was kosher with ODN 2.4.10_11

My setup is similar...

8300HDC => HDMI => Samsung LN37A550 (video only)
8300HDC => Digital Coax => Onkyo TX-NR801 (audio only)

and I also have connected on the same box...

8300HDC => SVID => Panasonic DMR-EH85 DVR
8300HDC => Analog Stereo => Panasonic DMR-EH85 DVR
(For dubbing to DVD)

...and...

8300HDC => Composite => Onkyo TX-NR801
8300HDC => Analog Stereo => Onkyo TX-NR801
(Receiver Zone 2 out feeds an RF modulator for distribution to rest of house)

...but none of that should have any effect on the audio settings. I purposely rebooted mine just now (it hadn't been rebooted since early Jan) just to see what happens... came right back to correct Dolby Digital setting. Must be good angel farts around here. :p

nickdawg

03-19-09, 12:14 AM

I want ODN 2.4.10_11 back! (rant)

I still have ODN 2.4.10_11 on my 4250HDC. Oh how I wish I could TRADE you the (awful) ODN 2 from my 4250 for the ODN3 on your box.

...still waiting for ODN 3 here in NE Ohio!! :mad::mad::mad:

Skid71

03-19-09, 07:50 AM

My setup is similar...

8300HDC => HDMI => Samsung LN37A550 (video only)
8300HDC => Digital Coax => Onkyo TX-NR801 (audio only)

and I also have connected on the same box...

8300HDC => SVID => Panasonic DMR-EH85 DVR
8300HDC => Analog Stereo => Panasonic DMR-EH85 DVR
(For dubbing to DVD)

...and...

8300HDC => Composite => Onkyo TX-NR801
8300HDC => Analog Stereo => Onkyo TX-NR801
(Receiver Zone 2 out feeds an RF modulator for distribution to rest of house)

...but none of that should have any effect on the audio settings. I purposely rebooted mine just now (it hadn't been rebooted since early Jan) just to see what happens... came right back to correct Dolby Digital setting. Must be good angel farts around here. :p

Simply confounding my friend.
Head scratcher

Skid

Riverside_Guy

03-19-09, 09:09 AM

I afraid this may be the deal breaker for me. If TW won't put enough storage on their box to adequately support recording of HD material and then they break a system that could previously utilize an external drive, then I may have to start looking elsewhere. Especially when I have absolutely no control over the implementation of these bug-ridden releases.

Oh boy, can I empathize! I'm in a situation where using an external drive knocks out a feature (being able to FF and RW buffered content) that I heavily depend on, so no external at this time for me. So my "strategy" is to be very aggressive about quickly watching all recorded content. I try and keep it so there's never more than 10-12 hours of recorded HD. So far, it does seem to be working for me.

As for alternatives, there's not so much for me... OTA is NOT an option (big city, many very tall buildings blocking signals), it is possible (maybe) I can get a line of sight to the DTV bird, but being able to put up a dish would involve a long process of getting it approved by my co-op. PLUS, if I do go DTV, I'd have to pay a lot more for TWC broadband, something I can NOT do without.

Word has it that FIOS may be available in my nabe by third quarter this year. PLUS, TWC MAY start distributing the Samsung DVR this summer... AND we are all crossing our fingers they do it with the "standard" 320G drive in it, BUT I'm afraid they will still stick to the 160G. The thing that really is annoying is 1T drives are running under a hundred bucks AT RETAIL.

jcalabria

03-19-09, 10:23 AM

Simply confounding my friend.
Head scratcher

Skid

I'm really kinda dumbfounded that just changing inputs on your display makes the box lose the settings (I'm assuming you are talking about electronically switching inputs using the TV's remote/menu, not swapping cables). Normally, I don't believe that the DDC/EDID terminations change in real-time based on what mode the display is in.

What I'm wondering about now is... do you have your CEC (whatever your display mfg calls it's control over HDMI) turned on in your display? Maybe some control command is being sent out by the TV that the box doesn't like. If you have CEC turned on, turn it off and see what happens... its just a wild shot in the dark, but might be worth a try. Tonight I will turn my TVs CEC on (it has been off) and see if it messes with the box any.

phousley

03-19-09, 11:48 AM

I'm really kinda dumbfounded that just changing inputs on your display makes the box lose the settings (I'm assuming you are talking about electronically switching inputs using the TV's remote/menu, not swapping cables). Normally, I don't believe that the DDC/EDID terminations change in real-time based on what mode the display is in.

What I'm wondering about now is... do you have your CEC (whatever your display mfg calls it's control over HDMI) turned on in your display? Maybe some control command is being sent out by the TV that the box doesn't like. If you have CEC turned on, turn it off and see what happens... its just a wild shot in the dark, but might be worth a try. Tonight I will turn my TVs CEC on (it has been off) and see if it messes with the box any.CEC is definitely off on my TV. And remember, this only started happening when ODN 3.1 appeared. No TV settings changed.

My guess is that it is a new misguided "feature" in ODN 3.1 and that the reason it is not affecting everyone could have to do with differences in the way the TVs are contributing to the protocol dialog.

phousley

03-19-09, 12:13 PM

I just replaced the HDMI connection with component. The audio settings are now unaffected when the power is cycled. It is definitely associated with having an HDMI connection.

slickshoes

03-19-09, 12:17 PM

Still waiting for Navigator here, we got the notice in the mail 2 or 3 months ago...I actually want to try it out on my 8300HD box ...but they are dragging their feet as usual.

I'm in the same boat as some other people here, gonna wait for the new Samsung DVR to see if they cleaned up their act at all, and if they don't, I'm off to Dish, and hopefully they have their 922 out by then.

And to the poster who said he'd get a TIVO instead, I tried it and packed it up 3 days later and sent it back. It was pretty slow, interface (especially the guide) is totally dated, multiple button presses to get to recorded shows, and just too many stupid extras that I would have never used. I just want a DVR to record HD with some decent storage, and to function well. I don't think that's asking too much. We pay way too much for these services to constantly have so many issues.

jcalabria

03-19-09, 12:39 PM

I just replaced the HDMI connection with component. The audio settings are now unaffected when the power is cycled. It is definitely associated with having an HDMI connection.

Seems that way... which is why I wanted to at least eliminate the CEC as a possibility. Must be in some other part of the HDMI handshake... something that can be different from TV to TV, because some of us are not having the problem and some are.

abyssrules

03-19-09, 01:11 PM

i'll agree with that it says on the central ny time warner site we were to have starz on demand by march 16th ...i call all week then today they tell me were slowly rolling it out to parts of ny ....i would say more like a death crawl ....wow where is an update apologizing or giving credits to those that were anticipating it on or near the 16th . Hopefully fios makes its way up north by the end of the year i will be switching for sure. Fios's guide kicks navigator's butt.There guide alone is worth the switch for me.:cool:

check out this link :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T1Eyadq_7A

slickshoes

03-19-09, 01:15 PM

Yeah for sure...I know people that have it, and if I could get it, (I'm in AT&T territory) I would have had it LONG ago.

phousley

03-19-09, 01:39 PM

jcalabria

03-19-09, 01:49 PM

nickdawg

03-19-09, 05:05 PM

There's still one bug I had in ODN 2.4 that didn't get fixed in 3.1. The "TV Borders" setting allows the user to chose the shade of the borders when watching SD material: Light, Medium, or Dark. It is intended, I presume, to reduce the chances of screen burn-in. If you chose Light or Medium you get gray borders, but many of the SD channels (especially analog) produce a vertical black bar (about 3/4" on a 46" TV) between the border and the SD image. This is hardly going to protect anyone from burn-in.

Never even tried to set the borders to anything but dark... I'll try it tonight.

I'll never willing set it to anything other than dark. I suffered since 2006 with Passport FORCING grey bars on my screen. I was excited about Navigator as soon as I saw the black bars after MDN downloaded. I don't give a crap about screen burn-in, I'd still rather have black bars.

Also, I had the same issue on Passport. Whenever an analog channel is tuned, there would be a slight black line between the ugly gray side bar and the picture. It's still there too. On MDN, even though the bars are black, you can still see where the 'line' would be because the channel banner is not as wide as the 4:3 image.

alleg23

03-19-09, 05:12 PM

nyc is getting "upgraded" to 3.1.0.11

phousley

03-19-09, 05:53 PM

I'll never willing set it to anything other than dark. I suffered since 2006 with Passport FORCING grey bars on my screen. I was excited about Navigator as soon as I saw the black bars after MDN downloaded. I don't give a crap about screen burn-in, I'd still rather have black bars.I didn't say I used it. I'm just reporting that it doesn't work correctly for those who do "give a crap".

Skid71

03-19-09, 06:53 PM

I'm really kinda dumbfounded that just changing inputs on your display makes the box lose the settings (I'm assuming you are talking about electronically switching inputs using the TV's remote/menu, not swapping cables). Normally, I don't believe that the DDC/EDID terminations change in real-time based on what mode the display is in.

What I'm wondering about now is... do you have your CEC (whatever your display mfg calls it's control over HDMI) turned on in your display? Maybe some control command is being sent out by the TV that the box doesn't like. If you have CEC turned on, turn it off and see what happens... its just a wild shot in the dark, but might be worth a try. Tonight I will turn my TVs CEC on (it has been off) and see if it messes with the box any.

jcal,
Good thought, no dice. CEC not on.
For the most part, I'm a set-it and forget it kind of guy. Certainly in this case.
Thanks for the idea though.

Skid

rdgcss

03-19-09, 07:51 PM

I'm really kinda dumbfounded that just changing inputs on your display makes the box lose the settings (I'm assuming you are talking about electronically switching inputs using the TV's remote/menu, not swapping cables). Normally, I don't believe that the DDC/EDID terminations change in real-time based on what mode the display is in.

What I'm wondering about now is... do you have your CEC (whatever your display mfg calls it's control over HDMI) turned on in your display? Maybe some control command is being sent out by the TV that the box doesn't like. If you have CEC turned on, turn it off and see what happens... its just a wild shot in the dark, but might be worth a try. Tonight I will turn my TVs CEC on (it has been off) and see if it messes with the box any.

I have an 8300HD, so I have MDM. Up until the lastest version of MDN, this exact thing would happen. Anything that would cause a hand-shake between the 8300HD and my AVR would cause some of the previous settings in the cable box to change.

jnv11

03-19-09, 10:43 PM

There's still one bug I had in ODN 2.4 that didn't get fixed in 3.1. The "TV Borders" setting allows the user to chose the shade of the borders when watching SD material: Light, Medium, or Dark. It is intended, I presume, to reduce the chances of screen burn-in. If you chose Light or Medium you get gray borders, but many of the SD channels (especially analog) produce a vertical black bar (about 3/4" on a 46" TV) between the border and the SD image. This is hardly going to protect anyone from burn-in.

Also, I lost one of my recordings today. It recorded last night and it was definitely in the list this morning. It shows up in the Recording Log with a message that says "The set-top was unable to record this program (7)". The percent used indicator also indicates that the disk space was reclaimed.

That is not a bug in Navigator. That artifact is the fault of whoever is doing the MPEG-2 compression. Whenever an SD local analog channel, the TV Guide Channel, or The Weather Channel is watched; or when my division of Time Warner Cable is inserting a commercial, the black bar shows up. Apparently, TWC in my area is taking the analog feed and recompressing it. The same thing has to be done for The Weather Channel and the TV Guide Channel due to the requirement of local customization of this channel forces TWC to decompress it, customize it, and then recompress it. If it shows up on other channels, that is the fault of your local TWC division's back end, not Navigator.

nickdawg

03-19-09, 10:51 PM

That is not a bug in Navigator. That artifact is the fault of whoever is doing the MPEG-2 compression. Whenever an SD local analog channel, the TV Guide Channel, or The Weather Channel is watched; or when my division of Time Warner Cable is inserting a commercial, the black bar shows up. Apparently, TWC in my area is taking the analog feed and recompressing it. The same thing has to be done for The Weather Channel and the TV Guide Channel due to the requirement of local customization of this channel forces TWC to decompress it, customize it, and then recompress it. If it shows up on other channels, that is the fault of your local TWC division's back end, not Navigator.

Are those the only channels you see it on? I see this on every channel from 2 to 99, with the exception of a few like Nickelodeon, TLC, Discovery, MTV. The rest of the channels have the black line. It's also present on TWC inserted commercials.

jnv11

03-19-09, 11:01 PM

Are those the only channels you see it on? I see this on every channel from 2 to 99, with the exception of a few like Nickelodeon, TLC, Discovery, MTV. The rest of the channels have the black line. It's also present on TWC inserted commercials.

Yes, the only channels I see it on are the OTA analogs that are recompressed into MPEG-2, some of the digital subchannels of the OTA digital channels (which is the fault of that TV station, not TWC), The TV Guide Channel, the Weather Channel, and TWC inserted commercials. All others are free of this problem in my area.

nickdawg

03-19-09, 11:18 PM

Yes, the only channels I see it on are the OTA analogs that are recompressed into MPEG-2, some of the digital subchannels of the OTA digital channels (which is the fault of that TV station, not TWC), The TV Guide Channel, the Weather Channel, and TWC inserted commercials. All others are free of this problem in my area.

Here, the subchannels of the locals look correct(must be the station's doing). Is there any way to fix it on the other cable channels?

jnv11

03-20-09, 12:06 AM

Here, the subchannels of the locals look correct(must be the station's doing). Is there any way to fix it on the other cable channels?

Nope. This black bar is encoded directly into the MPEG-2 stream, so nothing can be done about it.

phousley

03-20-09, 12:36 AM

Then I guess we should see the same black stripe on Passport and SARA systems.

nickdawg

03-20-09, 12:41 AM

Then I guess we should see the same black stripe on Passport and SARA systems.

When I had Passport, the black stripe was there too. I've never seen a SARA system, but I assume it would be there too, since it is an encoding issue.

jcalabria

03-20-09, 02:48 AM

Just checked... only had the black lines on about 10 channels, and most of those only had it on the left side. Those that had it varied in width of the black line. The vast majority had the active video clear to each edge. Its definitely not a box thing.

holl_ands

03-20-09, 05:28 AM

It's an artifact of the QAM Encoders. We saw it first when they added Digital Simulcast.

Since it rarely occurs anymore, TWC-SD must have figured out how to tweak the delay settings...

jnuzzi

03-20-09, 08:58 AM

Hello everyone, I had to register just so I could post my experience also.

I am having the same issue with my Audio setting reverting to HDMI. I have determined that it gets reset when my TV powers on. I can power off and then on my HDDVR and the setting remains unchanged. However, if I power off and then on my TV the setting is reset to HDMI and I can hear the audio change.

I have turned off CEC on my TV (it was on by default) and it still happens.

This is VERY frustrating! :mad:

Riverside_Guy

03-20-09, 09:27 AM

Indeed I HATE light gray side pillars. But, I did solve the problem... and I think some others MAY be able to get the same results I did... try the following procedure. It may or may not work, but you don't have anything to lose except 5 minutes or so:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=16025778

phousley

03-20-09, 09:33 AM

in2fur

03-20-09, 02:36 PM

Riverside_Guy

03-20-09, 03:37 PM

There is a division that still has Passport. WOW how did they handle OCAP? Your division must have both ODN for OCAP and Passport for legacy boxes.

Exactly. Right now, one gets a ODN equipped 8300HDCs, all the 8300HDs in the field still are running Passport. "Word" has it that we may be the first to get the ODN Samsung DVR...

and sorry for the sidebars post, I saw so many comments about it, I forgot I was in a ODN/MDN thread.

nickdawg

03-20-09, 04:43 PM

Nope. This black bar is encoded directly into the MPEG-2 stream, so nothing can be done about it.

I didn't think there was anything an end user could do about it. But could anything be done to fix it from the head end? Since it is encoded in the stream, will the stripe be there forever?

Just checked... only had the black lines on about 10 channels, and most of those only had it on the left side. Those that had it varied in width of the black line. The vast majority had the active video clear to each edge. Its definitely not a box thing.

Wow, only 10. I have about 60 channels that look like that. Our system does have Digital Simulcast.

jcalabria

03-20-09, 05:09 PM

Wow, only 10. I have about 60 channels that look like that. Our system does have Digital Simulcast.

Yeah... that's about it, and most were not symetrical... left side only. The vast majority was clear edge-to-edge. Virtually of our analog basics are digital simulcasts as well.

alleg23

03-20-09, 11:43 PM

one of my boxes has just been "upgraded" again, but nothing has changed. other than the 3 reordings i had are no longer available.

i have a wd external box. the recordings are on the list, but if you try to play them, nothing happens. and if you hit display it says the start and start time as the same time. list says 0$ is used.

basically the same thing happened when it was first upgraded.

SiCantwell

03-22-09, 05:21 PM

I can't get anything in the program guide past Tuesday evening at 8. It's been that way all week, but now Tuesday is day after tomorrow. I wonder if something will change at that time.

VisionOn

03-22-09, 07:23 PM

I can't get anything in the program guide past Tuesday evening at 8. It's been that way all week, but now Tuesday is day after tomorrow. I wonder if something will change at that time.

have you rebooted?

slickshoes

03-22-09, 08:19 PM

Exactly. Right now, one gets a ODN equipped 8300HDCs, all the 8300HDs in the field still are running Passport. "Word" has it that we may be the first to get the ODN Samsung DVR...

and sorry for the sidebars post, I saw so many comments about it, I forgot I was in a ODN/MDN thread.

Whoa, whoa, whoa...yes please.

Yeah, like I said, still have a 8300HD that I've held onto til' this thing blows up, running Passport. We got the packet in the mail like 2 or 3 months ago saying they were going to be rolling out Navigator, but so far nothing. I check in with the TWC office every now and then looking for the new DVR's, might have to check tomorrow...

SiCantwell

03-22-09, 09:56 PM

have you rebooted?

Good idea. That did the trick, thanks!

Satch Man

03-23-09, 03:11 PM

Regarding Navigator's inconsistency in performance with external drives following updates:

Why couldn't TWC just pair up with a decent external drive manufacture, charge say a $5.00 extra/mo fee to subs that wanted it and than pair that drive and manufacture to co-exist together so that all Navigator updates would work with Ex-Drive support? SA/Cisco make the boxes, and later this year, Samsung. It does not seem right for customers to lose their extra storage with a second drive, just because the software does not support it following updates.

Jack

michaeltscott

03-23-09, 03:38 PM

Again, customers in the markets with Navigator (all of which were previously Passport Echo) have always used external drives at their own risk. TWC has never supported it and it's never been mentioned in the documentation of either Navigator or Passport. If you complain to them or ask for help setting it up, they'll tell you that they don't support it. Unlike other features that FCC regs suggest that they're required to support, nothing compells them to support external drives.

Selling support for it on leased drives is what I expected them to do, when I read this (http://www.hardwarezone.com/news/view.php?id=360&cid=10) PR from the beginning of 2005. AFAIK, that never materialized in any TWC system, so they've apparently lost interest in the idea.

I have to believe that an insignificant percentage of their DVR customers are geeky enough to have read about external drives on line and independently purchased and attached one, so pissing off customers isn't much of a concern.

nickdawg

03-23-09, 03:59 PM

nickdawg

03-23-09, 05:03 PM

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that new 85xxHDC box from SA also have a 160GB hard drive?

What about the Samsung box? Is it any bigger than the SA boxes?

michaeltscott

03-23-09, 05:04 PM

The 8300HDCs and 8240HDCs aren't very new, having been in use for nearly 2 years. The 160GB drives on the "legacy" 8xxxHD's and 8xxxHDC's are goofy-small given today's cost of HDDs (particularly considering that they just started buying the HDCs in mid-2007 due to an FCC fiat requiring that they start using CableCARDs in their leased boxes). I just ordered a 320GB 2.5" WD SATA drive to swap into my 60GB Playstation 3 for $55 on Amazon, e-tail--they've gotta be less than $30 at OEM 10K lot prices and cheaper still for 3.5" drives (I paid $65 for a 640GB 3.5" SATA drive a couple of months back for my PC). Let's hope that the next generation OCAP/tru2way boxes that they buy next will have at least 320GB drives built-in.

(Don't do much gaming on the PS3--not many exclusives or multisystem releases for which the PS3 is superior. I use it a lot for viewing video, both Blu-ray discs and high-def TV captures).

jnv11

03-23-09, 05:12 PM

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that new 85xxHDC box from SA also have a 160GB hard drive?

What about the Samsung box? Is it any bigger than the SA boxes?

You are right. However, the next generation after that, the 86xxHDC series, has an optional 320GB hard drive.

As for the Samsung boxes, I do not know if their drives are bigger or not.

nickdawg

03-23-09, 05:30 PM

You are right. However, the next generation after that, the 86xxHDC series, has an optional 320GB hard drive.

As for the Samsung boxes, I do not know if their drives are bigger or not.

Nice, "optional" 320GB. I'll say right now TWC won't take that "option", regardless of how cheap hard drives are getting. ;)

According to their website, it says "hard disk expansion up to 320GB". It sounds like everyone is still making these things on the cheap. Especially now that cable companies have so many HD channels it's foolish to have such little capacity. I saw a TWC commercial the other day of HD DVR. They said "you can record an entire series in HD". They weren't lying either. You literally can record an entire series, as in one! :rolleyes:

http://www.samsung.com/us/system/consumer/product/2008/05/09/smt_h3090twc/SMT-H3090_080205.pdf

danki6x

03-23-09, 06:09 PM

[QUOTE=slickshoes;16077408]Still waiting for Navigator here, we got the notice in the mail 2 or 3 months ago...I actually want to try it out on my 8300HD box ...but they are dragging their feet as usual.

There is a division that still has Passport. WOW how did they handle OCAP? Your division must have both ODN for OCAP and Passport for legacy boxes.

IIs there anyone in TWC-SoCal (L.A. region, not San Diego) that has Navigator? I think even the new boxes have Passport still. I started on this thread 2 years ago when it was told to us we were getting Navigator (and dreaded it then). Now we get a letter in early January saying over the next couple months we will get the great new Navigator (not dreading anymore, but it still has not come to anyone in the area that I have seen). /Dan

alleg23

03-23-09, 07:08 PM

2 hour 10 min bsg finale took 10% of the space on my h300hdc. with the wd plugged in, it would of been 2%. at the 10% rate, what thats like 20-22 hours of hd content?

im going to try the external drives again, but im afraid that a reboot will render them useless again.

btw, PIP was not fixed with the newer firmware. it still sucks ass.

michaeltscott

03-23-09, 07:57 PM

Nice, "optional" 320GB. I'll say right now TWC won't take that "option", regardless of how cheap hard drives are getting. ;)The 160GB drive was an option on the 8000HD when it shipped and TWC choose to go with it (I think that some early adopter divisions went with the 80GB drive). It's conceivable that they'll take the 320GB option on the Samsung.

michaeltscott

03-23-09, 08:12 PM

2 hour 10 min bsg finale took 10% of the space on my h300hdc. with the wd plugged in, it would of been 2%. at the 10% rate, what thats like 20-22 hours of hd content?That depends upon the bit rate of what you record, which can vary somewhat from channel to channel, and change as they make new business decisions. If they're using 16 of that 160GB as trick play buffers, as the last versions of Passport Echo they deployed around here did, then it will hold 20 hours of 16 Mbps content; I actually think that the drive that they used is a couple of billion bytes more than 160. (Assuming that 144GB is free after the reservation for trick play buffers, that'd make your BSG recording 14.4GB for 7800 seconds, or 14.77 Mbps). The highest bit rate HD channels on my cable system run some 18+ Mbps and the lowest around 13 Mbps.

in2fur

03-23-09, 08:38 PM

I've never used an external drive. Only reason why I even knew what it was(before arriving at AVS) was I had a NEW 8300HD in the crate that came with the instruction manual and accessories. I actually enjoy reading instruction manuals(I do!) so I read it and saw the part about SATA. Never had any need for it, although I might consider it in the future as we are supposed to get a butt-load of new HD channels every month, starting in April!

TWC should sell or rent these things in house. They're missing a huge money thing, ~ $5-$7 for DVR service + another ~ $5 for external hard drive rental.

Or they could always put better hard drives in the box from the begining! ;)

I think it is interesting the there is a SATA port on the box when the internal drive is IDE. I bet some nerd has opened the box and replace the internal drive, so why doesn't TWC just start replacing the drive as the boxes get recycled in and out of customer homes.

TWC won't rent external drive as they would never get them back, customer would end up using them for their computer storage or sell them on ebay. Least with the digital box it can be disabled and won't work unless on a paying customers account. They could not do that with an external drive.

The 8xxxSD box only has a 80g drive, I know of several friends who swapped out the SD for HD just to get more SD storage. Can you image how many box swaps they would have if they start purchasing Samsung boxes with 320g. They would have so many swap outs it would not be funny. I think TWC is taking the Henry Ford's Model T avenue here, Ford would still be making the Model T if he had his way.

hdtvfan2005

03-23-09, 09:18 PM

Nice, "optional" 320GB. I'll say right now TWC won't take that "option", regardless of how cheap hard drives are getting. ;)

According to their website, it says "hard disk expansion up to 320GB". It sounds like everyone is still making these things on the cheap. Especially now that cable companies have so many HD channels it's foolish to have such little capacity. I saw a TWC commercial the other day of HD DVR. They said "you can record an entire series in HD". They weren't lying either. You literally can record an entire series, as in one! :rolleyes:

http://www.samsung.com/us/system/consumer/product/2008/05/09/smt_h3090twc/SMT-H3090_080205.pdf

TWC's website says up to 35 hours. A 320 GB HDD would give you that amount of space. I could see them ordering the all digital 320 GB version. Most TWC divisions have digital simulcasts of the analog channels so they can deploy all digital boxes. Our division has even deployed some 8240HDC's which is identical to the 8300HDC but lacks the analog tuner.

hdtvfan2005

03-23-09, 09:29 PM

The 160 GB Samsung has both analog and digital tuners. I bet Samsung could easily produce a 320 GB version with both tuners. Of course I want the Samsung 320 GB box as much as everybody else. I would be one of the first people in my division to get it.

jnv11

03-23-09, 10:41 PM

I think it is interesting the there is a SATA port on the box when the internal drive is IDE. I bet some nerd has opened the box and replace the internal drive, so why doesn't TWC just start replacing the drive as the boxes get recycled in and out of customer homes.

TWC won't rent external drive as they would never get them back, customer would end up using them for their computer storage or sell them on ebay. Least with the digital box it can be disabled and won't work unless on a paying customers account. They could not do that with an external drive.

The 8xxxSD box only has a 80g drive, I know of several friends who swapped out the SD for HD just to get more SD storage. Can you image how many box swaps they would have if they start purchasing Samsung boxes with 320g. They would have so many swap outs it would not be funny. I think TWC is taking the Henry Ford's Model T avenue here, Ford would still be making the Model T if he had his way.

The problem with set top boxes is that they are engineered for low cost. That means extra work to determine if the hard drive in question will consume too much power and blow out the power supply unit. Many PC hard drives use too much power for a cable DVR's power budget upon startup in order to get the disk spun up quickly to reduce boot times. Drives engineered for cable DVRs tend to use less power upon startup so they take very long to spin up but consume far less power doing so.

As for using parallel ATA inside the box, this is probably because at the time of manufacture, parallel ATA drives cost less than SATA drives. My guess is that disk logic vendors were trying to move inventories of parallel ATA chips, while SATA chipsets were still in their infancy and were starting to mature, which could have caused their manufacturers to charge high prices. Now, such a design makes no sense to design today, but it probably costs too much to change the design to SATA on the inside on an existing design. Also, most SATA drives at the time of the original design I think were really parallel ATA with a translation chip to translate SATA to parallel ATA. This wastes major money. A native SATA design would also require high prices to repay the research and development costs, though these costs today probably are not as much a factor due to its maturity and therefore lower.

Today, it would make no sense to design a box with parallel ATA, but it makes no sense to try to reengineer a box that needs to be put through the end-of-life process as soon as possible in order to support internal SATA. Instead, if demand is still too great to send the 82xx/83xx series to EOL, all Cisco should be doing is fixing bugs and trying to wean its customers to the 86xx series.

hdtvfan2005

03-23-09, 11:33 PM

The problem with set top boxes is that they are engineered for low cost. That means extra work to determine if the hard drive in question will consume too much power and blow out the power supply unit. Many PC hard drives use too much power for a cable DVR's power budget upon startup in order to get the disk spun up quickly to reduce boot times. Drives engineered for cable DVRs tend to use less power upon startup so they take very long to spin up but consume far less power doing so.

As for using parallel ATA inside the box, this is probably because at the time of manufacture, parallel ATA drives cost less than SATA drives. My guess is that disk logic vendors were trying to move inventories of parallel ATA chips, while SATA chipsets were still in their infancy and were starting to mature, which could have caused their manufacturers to charge high prices. Now, such a design makes no sense to design today, but it probably costs too much to change the design to SATA on the inside on an existing design. Also, most SATA drives at the time of the original design I think were really parallel ATA with a translation chip to translate SATA to parallel ATA. This wastes major money. A native SATA design would also require high prices to repay the research and development costs, though these costs today probably are not as much a factor due to its maturity and therefore lower.

Today, it would make no sense to design a box with parallel ATA, but it makes no sense to try to reengineer a box that needs to be put through the end-of-life process as soon as possible in order to support internal SATA. Instead, if demand is still too great to send the 82xx/83xx series to EOL, all Cisco should be doing is fixing bugs and trying to wean its customers to the 86xx series.

I hear the 83xx/82xx series is already at EOL. TWC should have enough to last until this summer. By then the Samsung should be done testing.

michaeltscott

03-24-09, 12:11 AM

TWC's website says up to 35 hours. A 320 GB HDD would give you that amount of space. I could see them ordering the all digital 320 GB version. Most TWC divisions have digital simulcasts of the analog channels so they can deploy all digital boxes. Our division has even deployed some 8240HDC's which is identical to the 8300HDC but lacks the analog tuner.That's a pretty conservative estimate (rare for manufacturers), since 320GB (minus 16 for trick play buffers) would give you 35 hours of 19 Mbps content. I'd say that it indicates that they've ordered the 320GB drives.

kmh-f1

03-24-09, 06:19 AM

Here in SoCal (West San Fernando Valley) my 8300HDC was just updated from 2.4.10_11 to 3.1.1_3 (dated 2009/02/05).

strikefast

03-24-09, 08:17 AM

Same here in Raleigh. My 8300HDC got 3.1.1_3 last night.

jcalabria

03-24-09, 10:43 AM

Over the weekend I had started noticing that the black levels had changed on my 8300HDC/ODN3.1 box... On all channels, black was now showing as ~10% with a distinct purple-blue cast. I checked settings on the TV and nothing had changed for that HDMI input and TV was fine with all other sources. (Including the same TW channels fed directly into the TV tuner)

Last night I was flipping through channels and on one channel change the whole screen went to that same 10% purple-blue color and stayed there for all channels. All box-generated overlays and graphics still worked, but all content was solid off-black. Sound was OK. Tried several things (changed output resolutions, screen aspect, etc) to no avail. Finally rebooted box and all returned to normal after reboot, including proper black levels.

Anybody else ever see this behavior? This was the first time anything like this has happened with this box... we'll have to see how she behaves moving forward. Unlike others here, I have been happy with ODN and don't like MDN that I've seen... I dread the thought of getting it swapped for an 8300HD/MDN box. I want this one to hold out till the Samsung 8090/ODN box is available (which may be a while).

jnv11

03-24-09, 11:57 AM

phousley

03-24-09, 12:20 PM

jnv11

03-24-09, 01:03 PM

nickdawg

03-24-09, 01:06 PM

wx27

03-24-09, 01:42 PM

I use it a lot for viewing video, both Blu-ray discs and high-def TV captures).

By what means are you getting high-def TV captures on the PS3?

jcalabria

03-24-09, 01:47 PM

If you can get one of those, I'd get it and hold onto it. I was in the same place awhile back, although it was in 2007 so older boxes were more abundant. If you area has MDN 2.4.xx - I think it ends with a 14, the guide and menus will look the same as ODN3, except MDN performs better than ODN on these boxes.

Nah... seen too many 8300HD/MDN boxes (2.4.16, I think) at friends houses to know I don't want one... the admitedly now small differences in graphics and colors are a step in the wrong direction (ODN has crisper graphics and darker backgrounds), and the performance levels are essentially identical to my 8300HDC/ODN box.

nickdawg

03-24-09, 04:34 PM

Nah... seen too many 8300HD/MDN boxes (2.4.16, I think) at friends houses to know I don't want one... the admitedly now small differences in graphics and colors are a step in the wrong direction (ODN has crisper graphics and darker backgrounds), and the performance levels are essentially identical to my 8300HDC/ODN box.

Really? :eek:

I can't wait until we get ODN 3. Right now I have a very hard time believing that. Comparing the "old" ODN on my 4250HDC to the "old" MDN on my 8300HD, the MDN always won easily. The HDC box is painfully slow, even on the simplest things.

jcalabria

03-24-09, 04:46 PM

Really? :eek:

I can't wait until we get ODN 3. Right now I have a very hard time believing that. Comparing the "old" ODN on my 4250HDC to the "old" MDN on my 8300HD, the MDN always won easily. The HDC box is painfully slow, even on the simplest things.

...but it doesn't matter if really important things like delivering a usable picture can't be counted on... I hope my experience this weekend was just a fluke... its been good since before Christmas otherwise.

BTW, I got my eSATA cable... if my back isn't killing me when I get home later, I'll fire up the external drive. If it happens to work with 3.1.0_11, that will ensure that my box gets upgraded to 3.1.1_3 tonight. :rolleyes:

alleg23

03-24-09, 04:50 PM

I noticed that the DVR failed to record many shows today after today's software upgrade. Has anyone else with eSATA and ODN 3.1.1_3 had problems? I added a Western Digital My DVR Expander just before Obama's inauguration. Restarting the box got everything working again, but I do not know if letting the eSATA drive fall to sleep will cause it to fail again.

in nyc here, i disconnected my expanders for a bit because of the issues.

after the upgrade one (of two) of my boxes played previously recorded content. tunning it off and then on, cured it of that.

both boxes would list the shows, but I would not be able to play them.

I removed the expander, rebooted, added the expander and rebooted. I was able to record. was able to watch, then On friday night, got another upgrade. The show would list, but would not play. I had just finish watching the recorded finale of BSG. and was in the middle of watching another recorder show when the update came. couldnt watch either after the upgrade. Rebooting didnt help. removed the expanders for now.

how do ppl live with such small hardrives. recording the bsg finale again took up 10% of the drive space.

BenJF3

03-24-09, 04:55 PM

I hear you about paltry hard drive size. I had about 15 recordings and the drive was just about full. I added a 1TB drive and now have 27 recordings and the drive is only 10% full. Honestly, with the low cost of hard drives nowadays, it's inexcusable for a manufacturer to install anything less than a 500GB.

Skid71

03-24-09, 09:41 PM

jnv11

03-24-09, 10:05 PM

When I intentionally let the eSATA drive fall asleep, ODN 3.1.1_3 fails at any task that requires disk access, like reading the guide off of the hard drive when you advance it beyond today or tomorrow, playing something, or recording something. I have had to remove the eSATA drive to fix this, but this workaround reminds me of an amputation.

Another workaround is possibly to constantly record something, but I do not want to do that.

VisionOn

03-24-09, 10:37 PM

Acquired tastes I suppose, but 160gb for HD recording is not nearly enough.

With FXHD being added here next month I know my DVR can't take it. It's got to the point now where I can't record movies because it's sacrificing too much of my reserved weekly slots. Monday night alone is 4 hours of HD recording.

That's why I'm in the progress of assembling a HTPC. That way I can offload the network HD and just use the 8300 for cable based HD shows.

TheDaveMan

03-25-09, 12:00 AM

I noticed that there is a new diagnostic channel at channel 999, but do not tune to it when you are recording anything because this aborts the recording.

Also, the trick used to get to the AXIOM diagnostics in ODN 2.4.10_11 no longer works.
Thanks for posting that! I just checked 999 and I'm getting one of the camera feeds from my building's lobby. Not what I expected to see, and I don't get why and how it's there, but cool!

jnv11

03-25-09, 12:20 AM

Thanks for posting that! I just checked 999 and I'm getting one of the camera feeds from my building's lobby. Not what I expected to see, and I don't get why and how it's there, but cool!

Tell your building's security guards that information. They could really use that information.

As for the channel 999 thing, I meant to post that in my local forum, but thought that it might work elsewhere. Otherwise, I would have deleted that post.

josborne1

03-25-09, 10:15 AM

My 8300HDC got 3.1.1_3 yesterday. I tinkered around with it for 3 hours last night....so many re-boots. My end is results was as follows:
I lost all recordings on my external drive.
I lost most recordings on my internal drive.
I used my laptop to re-format the external HD so the 8300HDC would re-format. This worked and the additional drive space was recognized, but recording anything was not possible. I would see the REC pop up on the screen then break in half. Looking at the log it showed the channel was unavailable.

Bottom line.....You lose all recordings and the ability to use the external drive. This so blows. I did call TWC in Raleigh. I got some sympathy from the support supervisor because he has a similar setup at his place, but hadn't been home since the upgrade went out. He genuinely sounded upset that he lost all of his seasons of 24 he was apparently recording. He credited me for the month on all of my TV service.....so for me just over $100. Doesn't fix the problem, but helps to swallow such a bitter pill.

jnv11

03-25-09, 10:33 AM

jcalabria

03-25-09, 11:05 AM

josborne1

03-25-09, 01:29 PM

I had had no issue with my extended hd setup that I hadn't checked what software version I was running prior for sometime.

fsuinnc

03-25-09, 06:24 PM

holl_ands

03-25-09, 07:09 PM

jnv11

03-25-09, 07:34 PM

New ODN version is just as bad as the last version. still can't swap tuners without PIP, now really how hard should that be. Still can't swap tuners without losing buffered content on both tuners except on rare occasions (unless recording) and I don't understand why I can't keep the drive from falling asleep. I don't want it to ever stop buffering the channel the box is on whether I'm watching or not.

On another matter for all of you that think the drive is too small. (If you don't already know about it) check out channel Primetime On Demand (channel 539 here) it has the last 4 weeks of many shows from CBS, NBC,FX and USA. Heros, Chuck, All the CSIs and lots of other stuff. It's not HD but it is nice not to have to store the shows on my drive.

Actually, SDV and keeping both tuners active all the time do not mix. When one of the tuners is inactive, it cannot hold one of the channels in the SDV pool. If too many people tuned to one SDV channel, then another, and then turned their boxes off without deciding to record anything on those channels, the SDV pool could get maxed out for no good reason because these people are using two SDV channels and are watching neither of them nor explicitly recording them. Having immediate cutoff is a minor inconvenience, but can significantly reduce the chances of the major inconvenience of a channel not available due to the SDV pool getting maxed out. It is better that this feature has been dropped until nearly everything is moved to H.264 from MPEG-2 and analog, making SDV unnecessary.

One other minor gain in dropping constant dual buffering is that reading data carousels will be much speedier because the inactive tuner can be tuned to the much faster in-band data carousel whenever data access is necessary. When both tuners are in use, the out-of-band tuner is needed, and the out-of-band protocol is much slower than the protocol used on the in-band carousel.

nickdawg

03-25-09, 07:50 PM

michaeltscott

03-25-09, 08:21 PM

Actually, SDV and keeping both tuners active all the time do not mix. When one of the tuners is inactive, it cannot hold one of the channels in the SDV pool. If too many people tuned to one SDV channel, then another, and then turned their boxes off without deciding to record anything on those channels, the SDV pool could get maxed out for no good reason because these people are using two SDV channels and are watching neither of them nor explicitly recording them.I don't know what the proprietary protocols are in the various systems for SDV out there, but the Tuning Resolver Interface Specification (http://www.cablelabs.com/specifications/OC-SP-TRIF-I01-080130.pdf) probably generalizes them. In that protocol, there's a field called "tuner_use_status" in the resolve_tuning_req() message, having the following values:0x0 – Live full screen video (no HDD recording)
0x1 – Live full screen video (HDD recording)
0x2 – Live PIP or POP video (no HDD recording)
0x3 – Live PIP or POP video (HDD recording)
0x4 – Recording only
0x5 – Inactive
0x6 – Speculative Recording
0x7 – ReservedSo, when the UDCP (Unidirectional Digital Cable Product) requests parameters for a channel that it intends to tune, it has to tell the tuning adapter why it wants to tune it. When the UDCP's use of that tuner changes, it has to send an update message which contains a copy of that field for every tuner in the device. The tuning adapter presumably relays the information to the SDV system with the proprietary SDV protocol in use. The SDV system therefore has the information it needs to make an informed decision as to which channels are actively being used by subs on various network edge segments and which aren't, and it can release the ones that aren't. Tuners tuned to switched broadcasts which aren't being viewed or recorded can be dropped and the use count for that channel decremented. Tuners which are being used for "speculative recording" of switched broadcasts (TiVo's automatic "suggestion" recording or mechanisms like it) can be disregarded. When push comes to shove, use_status can be requested and users who've been "watching" a switched broadcast for a long time can be queried as to whether they're still watching, and, if they don't respond, that tuner can be dropped. Any channel which isn't being either actively viewed or recorded by anyone on it's segment can be torn down and its bandwidth allocation reclaimed. If the SDV pool is full and all the channels in it are in active use, then new requests for switched broadcasts that aren't in the pool already must be denied. If the size of the pool and the number of subs on each edge segment and selection of channels for switched broadcast have been tuned properly, things should never get to the point of service denial.

I'm using a Tuning Adapter with my TiVo and I can tune two switched broadcasts at once.

hdtvfan2005

03-25-09, 09:36 PM

jnv11

03-25-09, 10:26 PM

One of the features I missed coming from Passport is the tuners would still buffer live TV when the box was turned off. When Navigator came, I had a feeling this was the reason why-Navigator was installed here for SDV.

I don't know anything about the PIP thing. On MDN, you can switch tuners by pressing SWAP without the PIP box on. Only annoying thing is the damn banner appears when you change.

To be truthful, when I used to have Passport Echo, I told the box to automatically power down the hard drive to save power and to cut down the possible noise because a family chihuahua often sleeps on a doggy bed in the area near my family's television. This disabled the live TV buffering when I was not using the box for long periods of time (like when we were asleep), so I did not miss this feature too badly.

fsuinnc

03-26-09, 07:25 AM

Most of the Primetime on Demand content is available on HD Showcase on Demand. Thats if your division has it. We have it in San Diego and it's nice.
Thanks I hadn't noticed that one. Looks like the only traditional network is CBS so all the CSIs are there along with Survivor, that will make my wife happy. No NBC though, I'm more of a Chuck fan.

fsuinnc

03-26-09, 07:34 AM

BenJF3

03-26-09, 09:48 AM

Thanks I hadn't noticed that one. Looks like the only traditional network is CBS so all the CSIs are there along with Survivor, that will make my wife happy. No NBC though, I'm more of a Chuck fan.

I really wish they would add The Unit to the CBS VOD. It seems like every week the DVR misses it because CBS can't schedule right! One of, if not the best show on TV right now and they are killing it with a garbage time slot. Why can't the program guide update on the fly? I have added time to the recording and it still cut it short. It's getting to be a pain.

My only other main gripe with all the new VOD is that hardly any is HD. We just got Starz On Demand, but it's all SD. I'm starting to think I can live without the VOD and switch to a Tivo for better hardware and software.

jnv11

03-26-09, 02:27 PM

Is it possible that the new version of the AXIOM Java virtual machine now checks to see if the eSATA drive has some sort of DRM like the system built into in the WD My DVR Expander, and locks out disk access if it does not find any? If so, it is possible that homebuilt DRM-free drive and enclosure combinations would be made useless, and therefore cause the Navigator team to give up on eSATA?

If so, the ODN developers might not be able to do anything about getting DRM-free drives working again, but should be able to get the WD My DVR Expander and other drives designed with DRM for DVRs working again.

My experience showed that the the WD My DVR Expander was able to record and play after a reboot until it was allowed to go to sleep, which then caused all disk accesses to fail until the next reboot.

xenophonite

03-26-09, 02:37 PM

phousley

03-26-09, 03:30 PM

Besides, it seems like DRM is unnecessary since you cannot copy anything (useful) from the drive and you can't transfer the drive to another DVR.

jnv11

03-26-09, 05:22 PM

^Methinks it's just a bug. If TWC intended to shutoff external drives, it shouldn't work at all. But it does work for a while after each reboot.

I have the same issues with WD 750GB and Hitachi 1TB drives on an Antec enclosure. Everything worked great with ODN 2.x.

Methinks TWC is not focused on fixing issues with external drives. Some new feature probably interfered and they didn't notice or don't care because external drives are not likely part of the test plan before releasing code.

Are there any drives out there that have jumper settings to prevent going to sleep?

AXIOM is contracted out to Esmertec or Vidiom by Cisco, so I was pointing the finger at Cisco for asking Esmertec or Vidiom to ensure DRM capability, not TWC. However, I do point the finger at TWC for failing to ensure that eSATA works on DRM-encumbered drives like the WD My DVR Expander. The reason I thought of DRM was because the manual to the WD My DVR Expander said that it works with the Scientific Atlanta DRM solution in the 8300HDC to ensure that the content on the external HDD was secure, and that some drives totally failed rather than failing upon sleep according to the reports here, making me think that they were DRM-free.

michaeltscott

03-26-09, 05:41 PM

Besides, it seems like DRM is unnecessary since you cannot copy anything (useful) from the drive and you can't transfer the drive to another DVR.Doesn't matter whether it seems necessary or useful. TWC and Cisco/SA are bound by licensing agreements for both CableCARD and DFAST. Both agreements stipulate that if you record copy protected content received via those mechanism, it has to be stored in an encrypted form approved by the licensor and if transmitted in digital form to another device, it has to be done over an approved, secure connection.

The legacy, non-CableCARD devices are a different matter, since no licensing (that I know of) restricts them. It's probable that the content providers insist on protections.

PedjaR

03-26-09, 07:51 PM

AXIOM is contracted out to Esmertec or Vidiom by Cisco, so I was pointing the finger at Cisco for asking Esmertec or Vidiom to ensure DRM capability, not TWC. However, I do point the finger at TWC for failing to ensure that eSATA works on DRM-encumbered drives like the WD My DVR Expander. The reason I thought of DRM was because the manual to the WD My DVR Expander said that it works with the Scientific Atlanta DRM solution in the 8300HDC to ensure that the content on the external HDD was secure, and that some drives totally failed rather than failing upon sleep according to the reports here, making me think that they were DRM-free.

You seem to be the only one mentioning the falling asleep thing, other people just can't get it to work reliably, and upon reboot lose recordings. Since I also have WD My DVR Expander, I am very curious, as maybe the old 2.4.9_3 workaround (record something 24/7) will work. I'd rather do that ugly thing than be limited to 20 hrs. Can you verify:

1. does the drive behave normally until falling asleep?
2. upon reboot, are the recordings intact and playable?
3. any idea how long it takes to fall asleep? If you have time, can you try the "record at all times" workaround for longer than the fall asleep periood?
4. initial reboot after the upgrade, did it require low level formatting? My DVR refused to operate completely until the drive was disconnected.

jnv11

03-26-09, 08:40 PM

You seem to be the only one mentioning the falling asleep thing, other people just can't get it to work reliably, and upon reboot lose recordings. Since I also have WD My DVR Expander, I am very curious, as maybe the old 2.4.9_3 workaround (record something 24/7) will work. I'd rather do that ugly thing than be limited to 20 hrs. Can you verify:

1. does the drive behave normally until falling asleep?
2. upon reboot, are the recordings intact and playable?
3. any idea how long it takes to fall asleep? If you have time, can you try the "record at all times" workaround for longer than the fall asleep periood?
4. initial reboot after the upgrade, did it require low level formatting? My DVR refused to operate completely until the drive was disconnected.

I have the drive disconnected right now, but here is the behavior I observed before disconecting it and the answers I could get. I had to disconnect it quickly because Mom is such a big Oprah fan and would have been disappointed by losing Monday's episode.

Yes, it behaves normally until it falls asleep.
The recordings are intact and playable.
The sleep timer listed in my diagnostics says 180 minutes. I do not know if this is the time it takes the DVR to enter a low-power state and tell the eSATA drive to sleep, or if it is for something else.
Modern hard drives are low-level formatted at the factory using specialized equipment and do not need low-level formatting except when they have been near magnets strong enough to destroy the data inside them which would destroy the low-level format along with the data. Operating systems perform high-level formatting on hard drives. They only low-level format floppies these days which need both low-level and high-level formatting when they are formatted for the first time. You might have to reformat your drive using a PC, which will then force ODN to reformat it again. Both these formats would be high-level formats.

Take these answers with a grain of salt because I have not been able to do extensive testing.

PedjaR

03-26-09, 10:42 PM

I have the drive disconnected right now, but here is the behavior I observed before disconecting it and the answers I could get. I had to disconnect it quickly because Mom is such a big Oprah fan and would have been disappointed by losing Monday's episode.

Yes, it behaves normally until it falls asleep.
The recordings are intact and playable.
The sleep timer listed in my diagnostics says 180 minutes. I do not know if this is the time it takes the DVR to enter a low-power state and tell the eSATA drive to sleep, or if it is for something else.
Modern hard drives are low-level formatted at the factory using specialized equipment and do not need low-level formatting except when they have been near magnets strong enough to destroy the data inside them which would destroy the low-level format along with the data. Operating systems perform high-level formatting on hard drives. They only low-level format floppies these days which need both low-level and high-level formatting when they are formatted for the first time. You might have to reformat your drive using a PC, which will then force ODN to reformat it again. Both these formats would be high-level formats.

Take these answers with a grain of salt because I have not been able to do extensive testing.

Thanks, I'll probably give it a try over the weekend. I mentioned low level formatting because some others have no luck having their drive recognized otherwise.

jnv11

03-27-09, 01:24 AM

Thanks, I'll probably give it a try over the weekend. I mentioned low level formatting because some others have no luck having their drive recognized otherwise.

Actually, they are mistaking true low level formatting with finding and marking all of the bad sectors so that they will not be used and then filling up the remaining good sectors of the disk with zeroes, which properly should be called reinitialization.

A true low level format creates tracks and sectors on a hard disk drive. This was necessary in old PCs during the DOS days because stepper motors were imprecise ways to locate tracks, forcing the user to create the tracks to match the stepper motor and the orientation of the hard drive, and to arrange the sectors in a way to compensate for the slow speed of the then-standardized disk controllers and ISA bus especially when the processor of choice was an 8088, whose 8-bit ISA bus was too slow to accept data as fast as the disk could present them. The 16-bit ISA bus could accept data as fast as a hard drive of its day could present them, but many early disk controllers could not decode sectors as fast as the disk could present them. Later disk controllers were speedy enough to accept sectors as fast as the drive could present them. Now, low-level formats can only be done at the factory because modern hard drives now use self-calibrating servomotors which can stop anywhere on a drive in an analog fashion instead of stepper motors which can only stop at predefined points but are subject to unwanted position changing that cannot be compensated for except with another low level format. Also, disk controllers are now part of the disk assembly themselves, allowing them to become customized in the interface presented to the disk, while presenting another standardized bus to the computer, which needs a host bus adaptor to talk to that disk controller like a SCSI adaptor, an ATA adaptor, or a SATA adaptor. This customized interface between the disk and the controller allows drive engineers to squeeze out much more capacity out of the drive. Also, integrating the controller with the disk allows the engineers to select the optimum parameters to extract maximum speed from these drives. Due to these factors, low level formats are impossible on modern hard disks except in the factory.

slumpey326

03-27-09, 05:31 PM

TWC NYC digital audio question

after this new update that we had in nyc for time warner my dolby digital setting option on the cable box menu wont stay. I am using hdmi to tv for video and optical to receiver for audio. Before this update I had the audio option set to Dolby Digital and would get 5.1 just fine. When I would turn the tv and cable box off when I am not watching and then turn it back on when i want to watch again, everything stays,

Now when I set it to dolby digital, I get 5.1 but when I turn off the tv and turn it back on, it defaults to hdmi. It never did this before the update, would always stay on Dolby Digital setting. I have been using hdmi cable since the beginning.

anyone else having this problem.

phousley

03-27-09, 05:52 PM

^That seems to be a new bug/feature of the latest Navigator release. Several people have reported it. I switched back to component cables and sound setting stays set.

slumpey326

03-28-09, 09:36 AM

^That seems to be a new bug/feature of the latest Navigator release. Several people have reported it. I switched back to component cables and sound setting stays set.

I am hoping it will be fixed soon

PedjaR

03-29-09, 07:39 PM

I have the drive disconnected right now, but here is the behavior I observed before disconecting it and the answers I could get. I had to disconnect it quickly because Mom is such a big Oprah fan and would have been disappointed by losing Monday's episode.

Yes, it behaves normally until it falls asleep.
The recordings are intact and playable.
The sleep timer listed in my diagnostics says 180 minutes. I do not know if this is the time it takes the DVR to enter a low-power state and tell the eSATA drive to sleep, or if it is for something else.
Modern hard drives are low-level formatted at the factory using specialized equipment and do not need low-level formatting except when they have been near magnets strong enough to destroy the data inside them which would destroy the low-level format along with the data. Operating systems perform high-level formatting on hard drives. They only low-level format floppies these days which need both low-level and high-level formatting when they are formatted for the first time. You might have to reformat your drive using a PC, which will then force ODN to reformat it again. Both these formats would be high-level formats.

Take these answers with a grain of salt because I have not been able to do extensive testing.

At least for me, WD My DVR Expander does not work with ODN 3.1.1_3 any better than other drives. I had the drive reformatted on my PC, hooked it up and got the "Press A to format" screen, but no confirmation. It does not see the extra space, but it did manage in the process to delete one of my recordings (now it shows as "Set top was unable to ...."). I thought maybe that's a one time thing so I repeated the process, with the same result - I lost another recording, with still no extra space showing. Needless to say, the drive is now disconnected and I am in no mood to try again.

xenophonite

03-29-09, 09:04 PM

PedjaR

03-30-09, 12:10 AM

I've posted some detail in the comment section in link on how I got eSATA to semi-work with ODN 3.x. It's not the ideal solution but it sorta works consistently. So far, I've decided to keep the drive attached than to use just the internal.

http://baseportal.com/cgi-bin/baseportal.pl?htx=/xnappo/navigator&localparams=1&db=navigator&cmd=list&range=0,20&Id=64&cmd=do_mod

I was using the same formatting tool, and would keep on trying, were it not for the fact that it was deleting one recording from the internal drive each time I tried. Maybe 3.1.0_11 you have is a little bit better than my 3.1.1_3.

VisionOn

03-30-09, 02:19 AM

nickdawg

03-30-09, 02:44 AM

Flipping channels tonight I came across an "Enhanced TV" option on the DIY channel.

The options it gave were useless shortcuts to the guide and my recording list. In addition it looks more crude than images would suggest.

Is that what "Enhanced TV" is, the 'portal' to things like Start Over? Right now I only see it on channels with HD simulcasts. The Enhanced TV box lists the HD simulcast of the channel and pressing select tunes to that channel.

VisionOn

03-30-09, 03:20 AM

Is that what "Enhanced TV" is, the 'portal' to things like Start Over? Right now I only see it on channels with HD simulcasts. The Enhanced TV box lists the HD simulcast of the channel and pressing select tunes to that channel.

No idea. It's the first time I've seen it on any channel. I don't see it on any channel with an HD option.

Crazywoody

03-30-09, 08:25 AM

jnv11

03-30-09, 09:34 AM

Was reading on another site about Comcast/Tivo. Seems they are haveing problems simular to the ones Navigator had 3 yeras ago. Seems Comcast boxes with Tivo are failing faster than they can replace them.. Haveing many missed recordings, boxes freezing and search engine giveing strange results. Like Navigator it seems Comcast/Tivo was pushed out to fast before it was ready. Compared to Comcast TWC must be a couple years ahead of them on guide stability. One poor soul on the article went thru 8 boxs in a month.If you want TIVo do not get it from Comcast right now. Great plan pitiful execution.

According to one Esmertec press release (http://www.esmertec.com/fileadmin/Files/Press_releases/2005/2004/040504_pressrelease_Esmertec_Vidiom.pdf), Time Warner Cable was trying to get on top of OCAP back in 2004 by contracting with Vidiom to deliver an OCAP stack. Vidiom then contracted with Esmertec to license Esmertec's Java Virtual Machine to build the OCAP stack. This created the first deployable OCAP stack according to the press release. It is obvious that Cisco later licensed this work as their AXIOM OCAP stack and might have influenced some aspects of the design afterwards like possibly supplying library code from their SARA application for things that should be library code like closed captioning or the driver for the MPEG-2 decoder.

When I read the main part of the OCAP standard, the only way I could describe is trying to decode a SNAFU because it is basically a change log to create the standard assumung that you had a copy of the MHP GEM standard from the European DVB project, showing what needs to be changed from the MHP GEM standard to create the OCAP standard. Obviously, this is a very challenging standard to read. Is this what is tripping up TiVo's developers, Navigator's developers, and everyone else having problems with programming to OCAP?

Riverside_Guy

03-30-09, 02:20 PM

All I gota say is LSMFT.

hdtvfan2005

03-31-09, 12:08 PM

jnv11

03-31-09, 01:51 PM

The Samsung SMT-H3090 uses a Korean Alticast OCAP middleware. So it will be interesting to see how Navigator fares with a different OCAP stack. Cisco's new 8600 DVR series is also using an Alticast OCAP middleware. Alticast has Blu-ray and possibly DVB-MHP experience so that helps.

According to Cisco's datasheets for the 8650HDC (http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/video/ps8611/ps8612/ps8613/7015624A.pdf) and the 8652HDC (http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/video/ps8611/ps8612/ps8613/7014687A.pdf) boxes, Cisco still sells its Axiom OCAP middleware for these boxes. Is Cisco switching OCAP stack providers, or is Alticast's OCAP middleware a competitor to Axiom? I hope that this OCAP middleware does not break library functionality, like letting closed captioning crash or forcing the MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoder to downsample in the box in order to save memory like what was needed to deliver a generic software image that could run on the 8000HD and the 8300HD, causing the 8000HD to become a hunk of junk that converts HD to HD Lite.

Crazywoody

03-31-09, 05:41 PM

Check out a few of the Comcast/Tivo sites. Sounds like Navigator of two yeas ago. Oh the complaints sound so Simular to the old NAVIGATOR.

mfogarty5

03-31-09, 10:06 PM

So, Echostar made official yesterday what we discussed after CES. They are manufacturing a tru2way DVR for cable companies which should look and feel similar to the Dish network VIP series DVRs.

It has a 1TB hard drive and should have the same HD widescreen guide shown on the VIP922.

The good news/bad news is that it won't be offered at retail, only through cable companies.

We need to pressure TWC to offer this DVR!

http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/03/30/cable-customers-can-get-slingloaded-too-with-the-t2200s-tru2way/

jcalabria

03-31-09, 10:27 PM

hdtvfan2005

04-01-09, 12:31 AM

http://www.multichannel.com/article/191049-Cable_Show_2009_Time_Warner_Cable_Tags_Motorola_For_Multiroo m_DVR.php

So TWC will probably order the DCX3432 HD-DVR with MoCA. I bet the SMT-H3090's with a 320 GB HDD probably have it since they seem to want multi room DVR's. I too would love the DCX or the SMT-H3090 to replace this 8300HDC with ODN-3. The HDC's are ok but the next gen boxes are nicer.

michaeltscott

04-01-09, 01:56 AM

So, Echostar made official yesterday what we discussed after CES. They are manufacturing a tru2way DVR for cable companies which should look and feel similar to the Dish network VIP series DVRs.

It has a 1TB hard drive and should have the same HD widescreen guide shown on the VIP922.I wonder what's up with that? If it's tru2way, it should run ODN when attached to a Time Warner network. (Exactly where did you read that?)

According to this (http://production.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=700318&afterinter=true) article (pointed out by one of the people commenting on the engadget blurb), they're going to sample it to cable providers in June, and it won't begin volume production until Q4 of this year.

VisionOn

04-01-09, 05:36 AM

The good news/bad news is that it won't be offered at retail, only through cable companies.

We need to pressure TWC to offer this DVR!

I'm not seeing the good news there. I don't want TWC in control of any hardware I have to use or have to rely on them for support or software updates.

BenJF3

04-01-09, 07:06 AM

Riverside_Guy

04-01-09, 09:47 AM

This is why Moxi DVR's (http://moxi.com/us/home.html) are looking like a great alternative. I am hopeful Moxi will release a Tru2Way version with OTA integration. Best part about Moxi is no monthly DVR fee other than the CableCard. Downside is the hefty price tag. The guide looks sweet and can be customized.

There is also THIS. (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=16168304#post16168304)

Coulda sworn I read Moxie was <tru2way> but on checking further I can 't find anything saying it WAS <tru2way>.

However, they DO say that it can only be purchased through the local cable company.

nickdawg

04-01-09, 10:24 AM

Just like Santa Claus coming late at night, so did ODN 3 this morning. I awoke to the cable box clicking off around 3:30 AM and the screen said "CABLECard Firmware Update", the front of the box said "dnLd" and "CArd". After that it went through a normal boot cycle. When I came back, I thought the box was bricked or just f'ed up because the screen said the box is not authorized, call customer service. So I tried rebooting again, this time it went through a normal download. Once that was finished, it rebooted again. This time the OCAP screen came on and booted faster then I've ever seen it load. The front panel now says: "OCAP", then "Alt", then "APP". The s--tty "Mystro Countdown" still comes on(I prefer the "fill in the blocks" of MDN), but it seems a bit faster too.

Didn't get much of a chance to check it out at night, I'll do that later. But the first thing I noticed is the new, better color scheme and the new, better smaller channel banner.

slickshoes

04-01-09, 11:47 AM

abyssrules

04-01-09, 12:05 PM

You know with time warner it rains it floods ....i found out today no more fearnet on demand ....support tells me you can still stream the movies to your computer ...woooo big deal yea it's much better to stream them to a 17 inch monitor then a 57 " mitsubishi hdtv.... idiots ....i can't wait til fios comes further up north !:mad:

jnv11

04-01-09, 12:11 PM

Lots of good gear coming out of the cable show, but my god how many years are we going to have to wait for this. TWC is notorious for dragging their feet on everything. The motorola boxes announced are only going to be in the current Sara areas, so where does that leave us SA passport/navigator peeps. With the Samsungs? So TWC is still going to be running two completely different platforms? I don't get these guys at all..and here's what us Navigator/Passport people could be looking forward too... :(

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadgethd.com/media/2009/03/passport-tru2way_grid.jpg

Are you sure that they are for SARA areas? I would think that they are for Motorola areas that were acquired from Comcast and areas acquired when Comcast and Adelphia teamed up to liquidate Adelphia (which was bankrupt due to an accounting fraud resulting from massive embezzlement by the Rigas family that founded Adelphia), acquire Adelphia's customers, and make their areas more contiguous.

slickshoes

04-01-09, 12:20 PM

The image I posted is the new version of Passport that is coming down the pipe for us SA users. The motorola boxes only run SARA in certain areas, the SA boxes run Passport/Navigator. I was just pointing out what us current Passport/Navigator users COULD be looking forward too, instead of the 10 years behind Navigator, that we are just now getting.

jnv11

04-01-09, 01:28 PM

hdtvfan2005

04-01-09, 01:50 PM

Actually the TWC moto boxes run iGuide. SARA only runs on SA hardware. The Samsung DVR might still be deployed. Remember the DCX and Samsung DVR are OCAP/tru2way. That means they can deploy them in either Moto or Cisco/SA headends.

slickshoes

04-01-09, 01:51 PM

Gotcha, iGuide thats what I was thinking of, not SARA, my mistake.

michaeltscott

04-01-09, 01:59 PM

Best part about Moxi is no monthly DVR fee other than the CableCard. Downside is the hefty price tag.That's because Moxi has no monthly fees. It's like buying a TiVo with lifetime service, except that you have no choice other than to buy lifetime service.

Moxi's DVR looks nice, and has some advantages over TiVo, but given a choice I'm not sure which way I'd go (being a long-time TiVo user and owner of a Series3, I'm not going anywhere anytime soon :)). TiVo's got a dozen sources for downloaded and streamed video which Moxi currently doesn't; Moxi's got a nice, widescreen-oriented guide, but TiVo's working on that and will upgrade existing HD units with it when it's ready (they recently introduced an interesting widescreen search application). TiVo HD XL has twice the storage as Moxi, but is more expensive with lifetime service; TiVo HD is less expensive than Moxi, but has 1/3rd the storage. Nothing is stopping Moxi from implementing Tuning Adapter support--it's an open standard and they have the required USB 2.0 connection--but they don't have that as yet, and if your cable system is using switched broadcast, that would be a factor.

nickdawg

04-01-09, 02:48 PM

Passport CAN run on Motorola boxes with Passport DCT.

http://www.macrovision.com/products/service_providers/ipg_so/passport_dct.htm

Since the Samsung box is OCAP/ 2-way it can run either Navigator or this new version of Passport(pictured a few posts above).

http://www.macrovision.com/products/service_providers/ipg_so/passport_tru2way.htm?link_id=rightnav

Right now I'm REALLY asking myself why the hell TWC didn't stick with Passport. :(

jcalabria

04-01-09, 03:13 PM

Right now I'm REALLY asking myself why the hell TWC didn't stick with Passport. :(

Is that a general statement or are you finding things you don't like in your "new" ODN 3.1?

shooter21198

04-01-09, 04:15 PM

as nickdawg was saying TWC NEO has ODN 3.1
it actually works unlike the old version 2.4.xx
Pressing B on the remote to find shows doesn't freeze for once i applaud time warner

nickdawg

04-01-09, 05:08 PM

Is that a general statement or are you finding things you don't like in your "new" ODN 3.1?

I'm still exploring ODN 3.1. It's FAR superior to the previous version. But it's all crap when you put it next to that new Passport. That new Passport even looks better than Tivo. Just think TWC, you could have had the opportunity to say "our DVR is better than Tivo"(and mean it) and you blew it TWC!!

jcalabria

04-01-09, 05:18 PM

I'm still exploring ODN 3.1. It's FAR superior to the previous version.

Been telling you that, LOL. I know... its NOT perfect, but never having any 2.x version of ODN I could never understand/appreciate the headaches that went with it, either. I went from Passport on a Pioneer Voyager HD (ehhh... ok, I guess) to Mystro/MDN on the Pioneer (ugh!) to ODN 3 on the 8300HDC, which was WOW compared to either of the first two combos I had.

VisionOn

04-01-09, 07:55 PM

Right now I'm REALLY asking myself why the hell TWC didn't stick with Passport. :(

Can you hear the sound of laughing and a loud rustling noise?

That's the sound of TWC board members swimming in the money they saved by killing the Passport license and getting one of their kids to handle Navigator development.

BenJF3

04-01-09, 08:09 PM

I think Navigator is likely costing them more money up to this point. With all the added call volume, cancellations, bad press, truck rolls, and box swaps it initiated. Sure, Nav is MUCH improved now, but I would have rather seen TWC go to Passport as the standard guide for all divisions and offset the license fee with a small rate hike. They'd probably only have to get a few cents per sub and they charge that now to people who rent remotes!

Don't get me wrong, having an in house guide is not a bad idea if it is implemented and run well. TWC did neither.

Satch Man

04-01-09, 08:24 PM

Are you sure that they are for SARA areas? I would think that they are for Motorola areas that were acquired from Comcast and areas acquired when Comcast and Adelphia teamed up to liquidate Adelphia (which was bankrupt due to an accounting fraud resulting from massive embezzlement by the Rigas family that founded Adelphia), acquire Adelphia's customers, and make their areas more contiguous.

That new guide is going to be for SARA users? Is that instead of Navigator? At first I thought, "WOW!" But than I thought, "different." It looks like it might be little too much information at one time. (Unless you could have the option to hide the panels you didn't want to see, which would be cool.)

Remember Navigator users, we are supposed to be seeing Keyword Search later this year, and I have also heard rumors of "Remote DVR recording."

Jack

BenJF3

04-01-09, 08:27 PM

Yes, I know TWC is looking at adding remote DVR scheduling to counter D*. There is nothing concrete yet, but I have heard it talked about.

nickdawg

04-01-09, 08:32 PM

Additional changes to Navigator, including longer show descriptions, remote DVR management and other enhancements, are scheduled for later this year. Be sure to visit timewarnercable.com for more updates.

http://www.timewarnercable.com/northeastohio/learn/cable/navigator/default.html

mfogarty5

04-01-09, 09:34 PM

As is Panasonic.... more likely to be available at retail.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=16166561&postcount=50

Yes, but the Panasonic will run ODN whereas the Echostar box should use the same HD widescreen guide as the 922 that was shown at CES.

http://www.engadgethd.com/photos/dish-networks-vip-922-and-slingguide-unveiled-first-slingloaded-hd-dvr/1265702/

I wonder what's up with that? If it's tru2way, it should run ODN when attached to a Time Warner network. (Exactly where did you read that?)

According to this (http://production.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=700318&afterinter=true) article (pointed out by one of the people commenting on the engadget blurb), they're going to sample it to cable providers in June, and it won't begin volume production until Q4 of this year.

Michael,

I know you know a lot about this stuff, but I think you are forgetting about the memorandum of understanding(MOU) that was signed last summer.

"Here are a few other highlights of the MOU, as detailed in the filing:

# On-screen navigation display: "Multifunction IDCPs" are allowed to overlay the manufacturer's navigation control method over cable screens so long as the overlay is user-initiated for each use, is solely for navigation (i.e. there are no advertisements), is transitory, and appears the same regardless of the channel. Recent tweaks to tru2way, for example, allow for some forthcoming DVRs from TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO) to toggle between its navigation system and the operator's native guide. (See TiVo à la Mode .) "

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=156273&site=cdn

In addition, TWC has admitted that their own in-house guide will only be "good enough" and that they want CE manufacturers to come up with snazzier products.

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=170180&site=cdn

I'm not positive that Echostar will use the VIP922 guide, but it would be a shame if they didn't since they are allowed to.

strutter

04-02-09, 02:01 PM

a guy over in the Charlotte NC thread just posted that he got a Samsung DVR model SNTH3090 with a 320GB HD from TW.

jcalabria

04-02-09, 02:08 PM

a guy over in the Charlotte NC thread just posted that he got a Samsung DVR model SNTH3090 with a 320GB HD from TW.

He was in the Concord/Kannapolis system, but still the Charlotte division... hell, who cares, they have arrived SOMEWHERE and its very close to you and me, lol.

strutter

04-02-09, 02:24 PM

He was in the Concord/Kannapolis system,

yep, i missed that in his original post heading

but still the Charlotte division... hell, who cares, they have arrived SOMEWHERE and its very close to you and me, lol.

exactly. its so close i can smell it.:D

jcalabria

04-02-09, 02:44 PM

abyssrules

04-02-09, 03:06 PM

I don't know why time warner don't just admit it and say the navigator launches are essentially a waste of time and money and begin all over from scratch and roll out the latest cutting edge receivers that the majority of subs would be happy and content with.Go corporate wide and stop this divide and conquer where some divisions have the latest updated software and others have to watch channels in sanskrit mode with the lame sara optioning.:rolleyes:

nickdawg

04-02-09, 03:07 PM

I wonder if they are digital tuner only... I have noticed recently that even the last few "who-cares" stragglers appear to have digital simulcasts now (not that I would miss them, lol). Could be in prep for the 3090 rollout.

3090 rollout sounds correct. That's when NE Ohio will see those boxes! ;)

The part of the system I live in is the modern, decent part. We have Navigator since 2008, SDV since 2009 and Digital Simulcast since 2006. But there are other parts (Adelphia and Comacast) that still have analog under-100 channels. I'm not sure if they would buy 'digital only' boxes b/c that. Can the Sammy DVR run SARA? The analog parts of the system are still on SARA, so if the new DVRs are Navigator only, there's some hope we might get them sooner.

jcalabria

04-02-09, 03:39 PM

3090 rollout sounds correct. That's when NE Ohio will see those boxes! ;)

The part of the system I live in is the modern, decent part. We have Navigator since 2008, SDV since 2009 and Digital Simulcast since 2006. But there are other parts (Adelphia and Comacast) that still have analog under-100 channels. I'm not sure if they would buy 'digital only' boxes b/c that. Can the Sammy DVR run SARA? The analog parts of the system are still on SARA, so if the new DVRs are Navigator only, there's some hope we might get them sooner.

3090 rollout with ODN 1197.1.4_1. Still with 4:3 guide and no eSATA support. :rolleyes:

I don't think SARA (SA= Scientific Atlanta) will run on a Sammy.

Here's hoping the 3090 is not a bomberooski. Then again, if it does bomb, TW might be more inclined to use some TIVOs (yeah, right)

jcalabria

04-02-09, 03:43 PM

michaeltscott

04-02-09, 05:26 PM

I know you know a lot about this stuff, but I think you are forgetting about the memorandum of understanding(MOU) that was signed last summer.

"Here are a few other highlights of the MOU, as detailed in the filing:

# On-screen navigation display: "Multifunction IDCPs" are allowed to overlay the manufacturer's navigation control method over cable screens so long as the overlay is user-initiated for each use, is solely for navigation (i.e. there are no advertisements), is transitory, and appears the same regardless of the channel. Recent tweaks to tru2way, for example, allow for some forthcoming DVRs from TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO) to toggle between its navigation system and the operator's native guide. (See TiVo à la Mode .) "

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=156273&site=cdn

In addition, TWC has admitted that their own in-house guide will only be "good enough" and that they want CE manufacturers to come up with snazzier products.

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=170180&site=cdnI knew about TiVo's negotiation with cable to be able to make a tru2way-compliant DVR with both a "TiVo Mode" (with access to SDV tuning but nothing else) and a "Cable Mode", running the downloaded cable provider IPG, with access to all their interactive services (IPPV, VOD and whatever else they might come up with) but with no access to TiVo DVR functionality. I hadn't seen anything written about that MOU and didn't realize that that had been codified into it (thanks for the link), though it makes sense. It was difficult to imagine how OEMs were going to differentiate their tru2way products if they all had to run the cable providers' IPGs all the time.

I don't see in that article that you linked to where the TWC representative admits "that their own in-house guide will only be 'good enough'", though. What he said was:
For consumer electronics makers, tru2way offers tools to innovate and develop such a "dream set-top," Leddy said. While tru2way gives his company a way to develop a decent "middle-of-the-road" leased box with some advanced navigation features and access to "Start Over," "Look Back," and other time-shifting apps developed by Time Warner Cable, the MSO, he said, probably couldn't afford to build boxes with Blu-ray and some of those other fancier features on board.

That's primarily because the government sets the rate cable operators can charge for leased boxes, so there's a hard ceiling on how much return they can get on the investment, he said, noting that TWC buys more than 2 million set-tops each year.

Tru2way, he said, will enable CE makers to create more sophisticated devices "that you [the set-top maker] could sell to the high end of our customer base."This says nothing to disparage the quality of their IPG--it only admits that, due to regulated box rental prices, they can only spend so much on hardware, and can't afford to build in high-end features, like built-in Blu-ray, and access to non-cable video sources like YouTube and Netflix (truthfully, they could build in access to YouTube and Netflix if they wanted to); none of that requires an alternate IPG.

holl_ands

04-02-09, 07:00 PM

Although it is a big improvement over 4:3 Navigator Guide display (and HUGE vs SARA),
the VIP922 Guide display doesn't look much different than the VARIETY of tru2way displays
(up to 11x3.5hr grid) I've seen over the years at CES:
http://imageevent.com/holl_ands/ces2008

Slides 1 & 2: Fandango movie download control
Slide 31: Highlights
Slide 32: Grid 8 channels x 2.5 hours
Slides 38 & 53: Grid 7 channels x 2.5 hours with Video Preview
Slide 56: Grid 11 channels x 2.5 hours
Slide 57: Grid 4 channels x 2.5 hours with Full Screen Preview

And Fandango theater schedule/ticket purchase & movie download control (Slides 1 & 2):
http://imageevent.com/holl_ands/ces2009

It's too bad TWC failed to make ANY improvements in 'Gator Guide,
simply replicating Passport's antique 5 channels x 1.5 hours Grid.

Crazywoody

04-03-09, 09:14 AM

abyssrules

04-03-09, 11:45 AM

strutter

04-03-09, 12:19 PM

just picked up one of the 2 they had at the statesville office. traded a spare 3250HD for it and kept the old 8300dvr. havent hooked it up yet. it has a seagate pipeline HD 320 GB part number 9GC132-193. cable cards installed. came with no booklets or cableing. she said the same remote worked with it also. the conections in back are the following. 1394, e-sata, spdif, s-vid, y,pb,pr. 2 vid out, 2 left rca, 2 right rca audio out, digital out, hdmi, usb, LAN. and says Home Network on the front.
thats all i know right now.

jcalabria

04-03-09, 12:26 PM

<-------Second that crazy! Does anyone know if we will be seeing navigator soon ? or will it be tru2way software ? in my humble opinion it would make more sense to give us the tru2way upgrade then give us any type of navigator at this point. We are light years behind now... there wouldn't be alot of reasoning to give us mid range navigator or even the latest version other then being really cheap about it .We all know time warner is capable of leaving us in the dark !

If you had a tru2way device chances are TW would be downloading Navigator (ODN) to it. tru2way is a platform to run downloadable applications, not the app itself... so far it appears that TW has ODN in mind for their in-house offering but may be open to 3rd party apps under certain conditions.

Although they may not be fully compliant with the latest standards, if you have an HDC box (or new Sammy) you essentially already have a tru2way box... tru2way is just the public brand ID for Open Cable Application Platform (OCAP). We just associate the tru2way name more with devices coming from CE mfgs and OCAP with the cable ops offerings.
The tru2way™ brand represents the consumer-facing television technology platform from CableLabs. It's the new name for OpenCable and for OCAP™ (OpenCable Applications Platform), the cable industry's common software solution for two-way retail digital TV devices.

http://www.tru2way.com/ (http://www.tru2way.com/)

slickshoes

04-03-09, 12:49 PM

BenJF3

04-03-09, 12:53 PM

Agreed, we need to push up on our divisions to get new hardware!!

jcalabria

04-03-09, 12:53 PM

Get that thing hooked up stat!! We are all waiting on pins and needles for a nice review on everything...and oh yeah, pics!! ;)

Yes, quick!!! I may want to stop at the TW office on the way home and pick one up if available... I'm gonna be rewiring for my new receiver this weekend... might as well kill two birds!

abyssrules

04-03-09, 01:26 PM

jcalabria

04-03-09, 01:36 PM

http://www.samsung.com/us/consumer/detail/spec.do?group=audiovideo&type=digitalsettopbox&subtype=hdtvtuners&model_cd=SMT-H3090/TWC
is this the receiver were refering to ? i bet our local offices don't have it it all !:mad:

That be the one... they have hit the Charlotte Division... with reports of availability in Charlotte, Statesville and Kannapolis systems, at least. :D

As I've said a few times before... there appears to be some advantages to having TWC corporate engineering located here.

abyssrules

04-03-09, 01:51 PM

you have a guest room ? i would love to see this " bad boy(smt-h3090) " in action!

strutter

04-03-09, 02:16 PM

jcalabria

04-03-09, 02:25 PM

Jayhawk

04-03-09, 02:41 PM

I'm in KC and we have Navigator, and I'm wondering if people in other MLB team regions are having the same problem.

I want to record all of the Royals games, which are either on FSNKC-HD or just FSNKC. The problem is that you can't setup a season pass for baseball, so each game has to be recorded manually. When you try to record the program, "Record Series" isn't an option. We had the same issue last year, and it never got resolved.

Do users in other areas have the same problem with Navigator? Is it only for teams who's games are on FSN or does it apply to other channels too?

What information is in the guide that would allow season passes for one show but not another? Is there some kind of flag that has to exist?

Thanks!

strutter

04-03-09, 02:49 PM

On the 8300HDC, the ODN diagnostics were reached by holding the select button down till the mail indicator comes on, then hitting direction down.

May or may not apply to this hardware platform.

holding select on the remote for about 30 seconds, untill the CBL button light (on remote) went out then hitting down arrow got me into diag. no mail light on sammy unit. led on sammy says either DIAg or OIA9 cant tell for sure but looks more like the second. ODN Version is 3.1.0_11

PedjaR

04-03-09, 03:38 PM

all hooked up. no real issues so far. the guide, settings etc. fills the whole screen but it looks stretched or zoomed. and appears washed out, not quite as bright and sharp. the info banners look bigger, they stretch the width of the screen. scrolling through the guide and settings sub menus caused no hiccups, everything seems as fast as my MDN box. i get a very brief "Loading data" screen when i go to "find shows" in the guide.
Of course some things in settings are a little different from what i'm used to coming from MDN.
The old remote does indeed work this box, and my harmony still performs correctly. i assume this means the procedure for getting into diagnostics is the same. if someone will refresh my memory i'll check the ODN version.

I'm curious about the performance compared to 8300HDC with approximatelly the same Navigator version (may not be easy if you do not have 8300HDC; maybe you can compare vs 8300HD, there are some indications here as to how that one performs vs 8300HDC ). I am especially interested in how long it takes to display Recorded List, that is the slowest part for me (may need to have a few shows recorded to be fair).
I know it is too early now, but in a week or two maybe you can comment on stability as well (does it randomly reboot/miss recordings).
Twice the storage is a big deal with eSATA broken, so if it is comparable, let alone better, it will be highly sought.
About the guide: (you probably know this, but just in case): on 8300HDC it looks different depending on whether you are viewing HD or SD content. Try the guide with HD content and see if it is still strecthed and fuzzy, or sharp but fills in just the middle as 8300HDC does. If it is stretched anyway, is there a setting to get it to "normal"?

strutter

04-03-09, 04:53 PM

I'm curious about the performance compared to 8300HDC with approximatelly the same Navigator version (may not be easy if you do not have 8300HDC; maybe you can compare vs 8300HD, there are some indications here as to how that one performs vs 8300HDC ). I am especially interested in how long it takes to display Recorded List, that is the slowest part for me (may need to have a few shows recorded to be fair).
I know it is too early now, but in a week or two maybe you can comment on stability as well (does it randomly reboot/miss recordings).
Twice the storage is a big deal with eSATA broken, so if it is comparable, let alone better, it will be highly sought.
About the guide: (you probably know this, but just in case): on 8300HDC it looks different depending on whether you are viewing HD or SD content. Try the guide with HD content and see if it is still strecthed and fuzzy, or sharp but fills in just the middle as 8300HDC does. If it is stretched anyway, is there a setting to get it to "normal"?
maybe some one that had an ODN box will chime in and compaire them as my old box was MDN and i've never used ODN before. though i did play around with a friends when he first got it. ODN really sucked back then. this is light years better than that was. and so far guide loading speed has been equal to the MDN. the only difference is where the MDN may pause for a split second after pushing the button when scrolling through the settings the sammy shows a "please wait" for less than a second, if you blink you miss it. havent seen this while surfing the guide though. picture quality seems the same. Closed captioning fonts are a little less detailed especially when using a clear background. but no reboots when using CC so far. the info banners arent transparent any more. i noticed a "caller id" tag in the settings to turn it off/on. and also an "interactive pop up" tag to turn them off/on.
it hasnt recorded anything yet. i just got done setting up all my series recordings again. but i'll check that out when it fills up some.
definitely will report if i get any reboots not associated with a firmware update. and if it misses any recordings
the guide looks the same regardless if tuned to HD or SD channel. havent found a setting yet and i've been through them all. and i have the box set up to send all resolutions to the TV.

jcalabria

04-03-09, 05:19 PM

holding select on the remote for about 30 seconds, untill the CBL button light (on remote) went out then hitting down arrow got me into diag. no mail light on sammy unit. led on sammy says either DIAg or OIA9 cant tell for sure but looks more like the second. ODN Version is 3.1.0_11

Same ODN version as is running on the HDC's here in Charlotte Div.

jcalabria

04-03-09, 05:26 PM

maybe some one that had an ODN box will chime in and compaire them as my old box was MDN and i've never used ODN before. though i did play around with a friends when he first got it. ODN really sucked back then. this is light years better than that was. and so far guide loading speed has been equal to the MDN. the only difference is where the MDN may pause for a split second after pushing the button when scrolling through the settings the sammy shows a "please wait" for less than a second, if you blink you miss it. havent seen this while surfing the guide though. picture quality seems the same. Closed captioning fonts are a little less detailed especially when using a clear background. but no reboots when using CC so far. the info banners arent transparent any more. i noticed a "caller id" tag in the settings to turn it off/on. and also an "interactive pop up" tag to turn them off/on.
it hasnt recorded anything yet. i just got done setting up all my series recordings again. but i'll check that out when it fills up some.
definitely will report if i get any reboots not associated with a firmware update. and if it misses any recordings
the guide looks the same regardless if tuned to HD or SD channel. havent found a setting yet and i've been through them all. and i have the box set up to send all resolutions to the TV.

The changes you noted... CC working, opaque banners... are all part of ODN 3.1 and work that way on my 8300HDC. I would hope that the Sammy would run ODN faster than your MDN... because ODN 3.1 already had picked up the pace, even on an HDC.

Is the guide and banner stretched across the whole 16:9 screen? If it doesn't have new true 16:9 graphics (which I didn't really expect just yet) I would much rather keep the current ODN 4:3 graphics native aspect rather then stretching them. They look horrible stretched.

strutter

04-03-09, 06:30 PM

I would hope that the Sammy would run ODN faster than your MDN... because ODN 3.1 already had picked up the pace, even on an HDC

naw, i cant say that it is any faster. its pretty much the same. except the sammy shows a "please wait" for an eye blink only when surfing in the setting menu. in the guide if i push B to find shows i get a "loading data" message for maybe 2 eye blinks. where as the MDN paused for the same amount of time with no message. surfing programs in the guide is very responsive, same as MDN was for me.

Is the guide and banner stretched across the whole 16:9 screen? If it doesn't have new true 16:9 graphics (which I didn't really expect just yet) I would much rather keep the current ODN 4:3 graphics native aspect rather then stretching them. They look horrible stretched.
yes the guide is 16x9. it doesnt look like anything is cut off the top like it should be if its zoomed but everything just looks stretched horizontally. there isnt any more info or time slots visible like you would think there should be if the guide was designed for 16x9. its the same as the 4x3 just wider. and text is a lot bigger.
info banners are a little taller and cover from screen edge to edge. i can just see where the banner begins to curve on each end. and text is larger on them too.
i wish it looked better but i think i can live with it in exchange for a 320G HD.
i'll see if i can get some pics to post.

strutter

04-03-09, 06:54 PM

4,7,8 are guide and settings menu
5,6 is banner

strutter

04-03-09, 07:00 PM

^^^
hum.. my camera actually made the guide look brighter than it actually apears on my TV.
on my set the guide looks like one of those claritin comercials before they pull the film away and it becomes clearer. it didnt look like that on the old box.

sorry a couple are a little blury. camera must have moved but you get the idea.

BenJF3

04-03-09, 07:01 PM

All I can say is compared to SARA that looks incredible!

Hell, even the channel logos here are from the 80's (SERIOULY!) We still have the "lightning" TNT logo!!! You say the guide is 16x9, but does the set switch resolutions when you bring it up or is the hardware displaying an actual 16x9 guide?

Granted, I'm sure Navigator could use improvements and it is surely behind the likes of a Tivo, Moxi, or Echostar guide. However, compared to SARA that is a MAJOR improvement.

Next big question is: Will/Does eSATA work with it?

strutter

04-03-09, 07:40 PM

You say the guide is 16x9, but does the set switch resolutions when you bring it up or is the hardware displaying an actual 16x9 guide?

Next big question is: Will/Does eSATA work with it?

it doesnt appear to switch resolutions. when i push guide it comes up filling the screen.

good question. someone in the charlotte thread has asked the same thing. i dont know that esata functioning or not will change. i think its still going to be firmware dependant. meaning if it works now it might not later. but i dont know that much about it since i have never used an external drive.

heres a link to a short vid i just took. its a little shaky and lopsided because i was using a photo camera not a camcorder. its so old it doesnt have sound. but you can see when the guide first comes up, scrolling through the guide ( i was pushing the button very fast repetedly, not holding it down), the please wait message and the loading data message and their durations.

http://s295.photobucket.com/albums/mm139/onigiri-chan2008/DADS%20STUFF/?action=view&current=Captured2009-4-300000.flv

VisionOn

04-03-09, 07:56 PM

Granted, I'm sure Navigator could use improvements and it is surely behind the likes of a Tivo, Moxi, or Echostar guide. However, compared to SARA that is a MAJOR improvement.

That's only because you are stuck with a guide from 2000. Navigator is still from about 2005. ;)

RobbK

04-03-09, 08:35 PM

I picked up a Samsung box today as well, and here are a few observations I posted in the Charlotte thread a few minutes ago...

The bigger HD is definitely a huge plus. I browsed the diagnostic, and it had an approximation of 80 hours of SD recording. Does that sound right?

A few other observations. One of my gripes about the 8300 was that the analog channels were SO much louder than the digital channels. On this new Samsung, all the channels appear to be the same volume. And it is the louder volume as well. I use to watch analog channels at a volume of about 10 on my TV, and digital channels at about 50. Now, they all sound good and loud at around 10, which is a big plus for me as well. No longer do I have to jump way up and way down in volume when changing channels.

I also tried connection to my LAN. I could never get the "Home Network" light on the front to illuminate. During the initial boot POST, it turns on for a second as a test. So, I know the light works. But, when hooking it up to my LAN, i got nothing. My router couldn't see it. So, I don't think the LAN is active.

I also hooked up an external hard drive to the firewire/1394 port, flipped the hard drive switch to on, and got nothing either. The drive didn't spin up nor did the drives light illuminate. It seems the firewire port is deactivated as well.

So, basically, the box really doesn't offer anything more than the 8300 at the moment, but the bigger HD and the faster processor are welcomed additions. I hope TW pushes out some software/firmware updates and gets some of the extra ports like the LAN and firewire ports activated. This would be very useful in streaming video and audio around the household.

jcalabria

04-03-09, 09:39 PM

4,7,8 are guide and settings menu
5,6 is banner

They look like the standard 4:3 ODN 3.1 graphics just stretched horizontally to fill the screen... exactly the same as if I stretched mine at the TV.

michaeltscott

04-03-09, 11:21 PM

The bigger HD is definitely a huge plus. I browsed the diagnostic, and it had an approximation of 80 hours of SD recording. Does that sound right?320 GB should give you 37.5 hours of HD recording and 193 hours of SD, assuming 16GB allocated to two 1 hour trick-play buffers, HD content with an average bit rate of 18 Mbps and SD content averaging 3.5 Mbps. That 80 hour estimate would be for 8.44 Mbps content (also assuming 16GB dedicated to buffers), more than twice what SD digital cable runs on the systems I've lived in.

hdtvfan2005

04-04-09, 12:21 AM

BenJF3

04-04-09, 04:49 AM

They look like the standard 4:3 ODN 3.1 graphics just stretched horizontally to fill the screen... exactly the same as if I stretched mine at the TV.

This may be the case. However, strutter made it clear that the guide always displays in full screen now (16x9) whereas with my current 8300HD it is either stretch to fill the screen on SD content or shown in 4:3 on HD content. I like the fact that it's at least consistent now. Big problem is that our division apparently has no plans for Navigator anytime soon. :mad:

I can't really state how much I hate SARA at this point. The only thing keeping me happy with it is that the eSata works and it's reliable. The biggest pain in the ass is NO search! I basically have to scroll through the guide.

jcalabria

04-04-09, 09:31 AM

This may be the case. However, strutter made it clear that the guide always displays in full screen now (16x9) whereas with my current 8300HD it is either stretch to fill the screen on SD content or shown in 4:3 on HD content. I like the fact that it's at least consistent now. Big problem is that our division apparently has no plans for Navigator anytime soon. :mad:

I can't really state how much I hate SARA at this point. The only thing keeping me happy with it is that the eSata works and it's reliable. The biggest pain in the ass is NO search! I basically have to scroll through the guide.

I understood what he meant, and my point was that I would prefer that it be consistently unstretched 4:3 if thats what the graphics were layed out for. It'll be great when they have graphics designed for 16:9, but there is no reason to stretch the older layouts until then. I never see stretched graphics on my 8300... why would I want to start now. (I never use any form of stretch-o-vision.)

Hopefully its only temporary, and in the meantime that little knot in my gut that the stretched graphics would give me will at least be soothed by the larger HDD and the monumentally better looking BLACK physical appearance.

BenJF3

04-04-09, 09:34 AM

I hear you- Right now I think only Moxi is deploying an actual HD 16x9 guide. I agree that I'd like to just see a consistent guide!

jcalabria

04-04-09, 09:48 AM

BTW, for those interested in every last bit of dirt on the Sammy, you may find a few additional tidbits over in the Charlotte TWC forum.

strutter

04-04-09, 11:42 AM

i linked to this page in the charlotte thread
so heres a link to the charlotte page
may eliminate some cross posting
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=16195370#post16195370

PedjaR

04-04-09, 12:33 PM

I hear you- Right now I think only Moxi is deploying an actual HD 16x9 guide. I agree that I'd like to just see a consistent guide!

It generally takes them forever to add a new feature. Then, adding a couple of simple features almost always means breaking existing features; several months later, there is bug fix release to fix the newly introduced bugs only; just as you get used to it being bug free, here we go again.
So, for them to get the software to make use of hardware's ability to draw on 16x9 screen to actually show more info, while doing what it does now if hardware can not do it, seems like way too much work. I think they'll rather wait until all of the old boxes are gone (and they will be eventually gone if new ones have twice the storage and a faster processor and are otherwise the same), and then start thinking about maybe considering doing something about the 16x9 thing. Should be downloaded to our boxes within a year or two from that time (and you can bet it will break something you use all the time).

jcalabria

04-04-09, 12:48 PM

It generally takes them forever to add a new feature. Then, adding a couple of simple features almost always means breaking existing features; several months later, there is bug fix release to fix the newly introduced bugs only; just as you get used to it being bug free, here we go again.
So, for them to get the software to make use of hardware's ability to draw on 16x9 screen to actually show more info, while doing what it does now if hardware can not do it, seems like way too much work. I think they'll rather wait until all of the old boxes are gone (and they will be eventually gone if new ones have twice the storage and a faster processor and are otherwise the same), and then start thinking about maybe considering doing something about the 16x9 thing. Should be downloaded to our boxes within a year or two from that time (and you can bet it will break something you use all the time).

Do I detect just a bit of frustration/bitterness there??? :rolleyes:

hdtvfan2005

04-04-09, 01:24 PM

jcalabria

04-04-09, 01:47 PM

The Samsung HD-DVR doesn't have an RF modulator. If you use that for your home distribution system then it might cause a dilemma. I personally could care less if it didn't have one since I don't like the idea of using a Home distribution system anyways that uses RF. I do however like the idea of a multiroom DVR. A home distribution system that uses RF modulation wouldn't fit our household.

I still use use RF distribution to the rest of the house but all of my sources, including the 8300, are switched (via composite/S-video plus analog audio)through Zone 2 in my AVR, which feeds an external modulator. It works OK for me (since I still have all those dirty nasty SDTV's littered around the house) but I still have all those extra connections to maintain even though the main local connections are mainly HDMI. Lotsa cabling back there with as many sources as I have (guess I should finally can the VCR... at least its S-VHS, lol) A simpler method would be good, but if it requires renting more boxes from TW its probably still a no-go for me.

nickdawg

04-04-09, 04:58 PM

I understood what he meant, and my point was that I would prefer that it be consistently unstretched 4:3 if thats what the graphics were layed out for. It'll be great when they have graphics designed for 16:9, but there is no reason to stretch the older layouts until then. I never see stretched graphics on my 8300... why would I want to start now. (I never use any form of stretch-o-vision.)

I agree. That one point alone makes the "New Sammy" a dud to me, until that is fixed. I also NEVER use any form of stretch-o-vision and I will not watch any channel that is broadcasting a stretched show. That means I would have to never use the IPG on the new Sammy, since it is stretched. ;);)

And remember it was I who spoke out against the 16:9 guide, "what's the deal with the 16:9 guide...". My fear was they would use the space for advertisements, to make it fit the screen. I'll admit I never saw this one coming. It's shameful they would pre-stretch the UI and give the customer no choice to get rid of that hideous stretched mess. TWC is just catering to the lowest common denominator, the ones who think Family Guy is HD because it is 'full screen' on TBS HD :rolleyes:. Which is really funny, since most of the people interested in the 16:9 guide are people here who despise stretchovision and can spot it easily.

slickshoes

04-04-09, 05:13 PM

this just proves once again how out of touch and how far behind they are compared to the competition, and begs the question why are we with CWC again?

nickdawg

04-04-09, 06:36 PM

In order(1 being best and so on):

1. CHANNEL BANNER. The CHANNEL BANNER is normal sized. Finally :D! Words could not describe how much I HATED that huge, clunky, boxy looking atrocity molesting the bottom of my screen. The new, Passport-ish banner is beautiful. And it doesn't block half the screen.

2. BOOT TIME. I've noticed that the boot time since I've had ODN 3 have been surprisingly fast. The SA|OCAP|AXIOM screen when the box says "Alt" used to take forever to load, and the "Mystro" "L" sequence was longer too. Used to take at least more than 5 minutes to boot. Today, it booted very fast. Faster than the MDN on my 8300HD. It's nice that an annoyance like has been fixed.

3. "B" SEARCH FEATURE. Totally fixed. Awesome. One of my favorite features is now the 'cursor' moves all ways. If you are at the last letter on the right side of the screen, pressing > (right arrow) takes you back to the left side of the screen. If you are at the last letter at the bottom of the screen, pressing v (down arrow) takes you back to the top of the letters. Makes it more efficient to select letters, instead of having to push < (left arrow) multiple times to get from F to A. Also, on the single tuner box, the audio/video no longer cut out while it is "Loading Data" when B is first pressed. Also, holding down the arrow button moves through multiple letters, instead of having to press the arrow multiple times.

4. THE IPG. Much better descriptions than MDN. Things like Letterbox, HD, and even show category are included in the descriptions. ODN 2.xx did have Letterbox/HD tags, but the category is new. I like this feature, as it was one from Passport. Remember "Program Type:"? The colors are better, and it is more responsive and does not get 'hung up' as much as it used to during browsing. Also, the 1/4 video window in the top corner shows the entire picture, not part of it cropped, as MDN does.

5. NEAREST TUNE. I LOVE this feature!! It's like Passport's "entering a nonexistent number in the guide takes you to the next channel" but 10000x better because even entering a nonexistent number into the channel banner tunes to the next channel. It's especially helpful on these HD boxes that have channel numbers spread out in the 400s range. Just entering a 400 number takes you to that area. I remember this being one of the biggest things I missed going from Passport to MDN.

Now, the things I do not understand:

1. AXIOM/ Vol +/- then CH + MENU. Where is it? Pressing VOL +/- no longer makes the mail light flash anymore. Is there no way to access the 'expanded' diagnostics screen? That was a bit of a bummer.

2. INTERACTIVE POPUPS. It's now an entry in Settings under DISPLAY. The option is ON or OFF, but it doesn't do anything. Even when it is off, the "Press SEL For Enhanced" message still appears. Maybe it's a 'reserved for future use' kind of thing?

Overall, I like ODN 3.1.1_3. I like it more than MDN. Most of these features are absent on the current version of MDN and it almost feels "naked" next to ODN 3.1.1_3 now. I almost want to chuck my 8300HD in favor of an 8300HDC! :D

jcalabria

04-04-09, 07:05 PM

I almost want to chuck my 8300HD in favor of an 8300HDC! :D

OMG... never thought I'd here that from you, lol.

Charlotte must have been one of the first to get ODN 3.1 and that is all I've ever had on my 8300HDC... never could understand the badmouthing of the HDC/ODN combo since it always looked/worked better than any MDN box I'd seen.

The Axiom diagnostics have never been available on either of the two ODN versions I've had... yours is newer than mine... seems to be normal for ODN 3.x.

Never tried to turn off the popups... except for HBO & SHO, they appear only on SD channels I never watch, mostly for Start Over, so they don't really bother me.

nickdawg

04-04-09, 07:18 PM

OMG... never thought I'd here that from you, lol.

Charlotte must have been one of the first to get ODN 3.1 and that is all I've ever had on my 8300HDC... never could understand the badmouthing of ODN since it always looked/worked better than any MDN box I'd seen.

Did you ever have the "blue" ODN? If not, then I can see how you can't understand the complaints. I originally had the 'blue' ODN back in 2007, when it was still very new, and awful. Now, it's better than MDN, especially with the HD tag in the guide. It's nice to know that a show is HD ahead of time, rather than tuning to the channel, checking for stretchovision, etc. Of course it won't work on Turner networks, of course! :rolleyes:

It took me some time, but I finally got my thoughts about it together as a kind of review. And it's nice to be giving a good review, for once.

nickdawg

04-04-09, 07:24 PM

jcalabria

04-04-09, 07:31 PM

Did you ever have the "blue" ODN? If not, then I can see how you can't understand the complaints. I originally had the 'blue' ODN back in 2007, when it was still very new, and awful. Now, it's better than MDN, especially with the HD tag in the guide. It's nice to know that a show is HD ahead of time, rather than tuning to the channel, checking for stretchovision, etc. Of course it won't work on Turner networks, of course! :rolleyes:

It took me some time, but I finally got my thoughts about it together as a kind of review. And it's nice to be giving a good review, for once.

ODN 3.1.0_11, which looks exactly like your newer version, was loaded onto my HDC about a week after I picked it up in late December. Whatever version was on it when I got it was also some form of ODN 3.x and was only slightly different in coloring and lacked series priority setting.

My Pioneer Voyager HD had Passport from when I picked it up in 2005 until it was "upgraded" to an underwhelming (blue on blue) Mystro/MDN mid-2008. I swapped it for the 8300HDC in December, mostly because I got a new TV and needed a working HDMI output. The DVI out on the Pioneer stopped working after the Mystro/MDN upgrade.

hdtvfan2005

04-04-09, 07:31 PM

I agree. That one point alone makes the "New Sammy" a dud to me, until that is fixed. I also NEVER use any form of stretch-o-vision and I will not watch any channel that is broadcasting a stretched show. That means I would have to never use the IPG on the new Sammy, since it is stretched. ;);)

And remember it was I who spoke out against the 16:9 guide, "what's the deal with the 16:9 guide...". My fear was they would use the space for advertisements, to make it fit the screen. I'll admit I never saw this one coming. It's shameful they would pre-stretch the UI and give the customer no choice to get rid of that hideous stretched mess. TWC is just catering to the lowest common denominator, the ones who think Family Guy is HD because it is 'full screen' on TBS HD :rolleyes:. Which is really funny, since most of the people interested in the 16:9 guide are people here who despise stretchovision and can spot it easily.

The 16:9 guides do show more space if it's utilized correctly. There was a guide at some show that could do 8 to 9 channels. It had about 2 to 3 hours of TV listings. Even the Tivo HD is stretched. The Samsung can do 16:9 HD graphics but they are too cheap to make it. It could be something in the BCM chip. The Samsung uses a BCM architecture. However, you'll need the Samsung once they start doing MPEG-4 but that might be for a long time or if you want Home networking.

jcalabria

04-04-09, 07:37 PM

I can add a 3 to the "things I don't understand" list.

3. DEVICES MENU. What's the point of it? It always seemed a bit out of place on ODN 2, but now it is even more out of place. Why didn't they just put these settings into the regular Settings menu, rather than having a different menu? It seems like some freak of nature attempt to copy SARA's Quick Settings and General Settings menus. This one is even more weird now since it still has the loud color scheme of ODN 2 (lots of bright blue, grey, white).

I don't know this, but my guess was that the Devices Menu existed in a different, lower software layer than ODN... it is so completely different in both look and operation. A basic internal SA menu, possibly? Went there for initial setup and really haven't had much need to access it since.

nickdawg

04-04-09, 08:00 PM

The 16:9 guides do show more space if it's utilized correctly. There was a guide at some show that could do 8 to 9 channels. It had about 2 to 3 hours of TV listings. Even the Tivo HD is stretched. The Samsung can do 16:9 HD graphics but they are too cheap to make it. It could be something in the BCM chip. The Samsung uses a BCM architecture. However, you'll need the Samsung once they start doing MPEG-4 but that might be for a long time or if you want Home networking.

See, that's what I was hoping for with the new Sammy: a correct 16:9 guide that shows more channels and time. If we cannot have that, my second choice would be a 4:3 guide shown in 4:3 the way it currently is. Words can't describe how disappointed I am that something great fell flat on something so ridiculous. It's like they're taking a few steps backward with this.

I doubt we'll see MPEG-4 through TWC for a long time. We're just starting SDV. That has to be years away. Plus I doubt I'll be seeing the new Sammy in my division anytime soon, we don't seem to be at the top of the TWC food chain. But I still dream of that larger hard drive! ;)

Interesting... even the Tivo HD is stretched. I think that says alot about the way many HD channels broadcast, almost everyone seems to be catering to those who "want the screen filled" rather than real 16:9.