Moxi HD DVR - Page 60

I checked with Comcast Customer Support again and they told me that because of the familiarity with TiVo hardware, the install techs could set up the mCard CableCARD on the TiVo HD almost from memory--the configuration takes about 8-9 minutes.

Good thing that you didn't get the S-card. It won't even work in the Moxi. Both Cisco/SA and Motorola ceased production of S-cards long ago. M-cards are the only ones made now. I'd ask to speak with someone else at Cox.

I'll toss my hat in.
Been lurking here for 4 or 5 months. Finally bought my 3 tuner Moxi + 2 mates when the live TV feature was released.

I've been waiting years, literally years for someone to offer a legitimate whole house solution. Moxi delivers. Is it perfect? No. Is it the best whole house solution - yes, by a long shot.... actually, is there any real competition? - I don't think so.

I've been messing with HTPC's, media streamers, DLNA clients, video over LAN, etc for *years* trying to get decent delivery of centralized content to multiple TV's. Everything else has been clumsy, short-lived or both.

Until Now.

For those who are also lurking and undecided or concerned:

1) Moxi tech support is phenomenal just like everyone here says. I watched my Comcast installer call his fellow installers to rave at the concept of me bringing up a chat window and instantly getting a knowlegable rep. Oh gee, then the Moxi rep said "call me at this 800 number" and had the receptionist greet me by my first name when I called and direct me to his extension 30 seconds later. Crazy good. Like they're showing off!

2) Hard drives are pumped out so fast, under such great price demands that large batches of defectives are inevitable. I work in IT (as I'm sure many others here do), and I can't tell you how many drives of all makes and models I've seen fail in my lifetime. Hundreds for sure; I personally replace about 25 every year in all kinds of devices. Moxi cannot be blamed for failed drives - only their response. However, I would like to see the file system exposed for backup and expansion purposes. Alas, I do not have the low level skills to tackle this.

3) Comcast M-cards are no problem in the Moxi. The installer and activation people won't have a clue, but that doesn't matter. Just *insist* that the installer bring multiple M-cards. It seems these are rather finicky, and just like hard drives, have a high rate of failure

4) If you can't get past this statement "but my Tivo...." , then the Moxi probably isn't for you. Actually, there's probably nothing for you but a Tivo branded device, and that's okay. Really - you should buy what makes you happy.

5) Yes, you can get good performance over a wireless network. For fun, I tested both the DVR and the Mates over 300mbps 802.11n and 54mbps 802.11g. Amazingly, even HD content streamed satisfactorally over the 54mbs connection for me. Obviously, it is not ideal, but can serve in a pinch. My master bedroom currently has a Mate connected via G for the last 4 weeks; excellent performance. FWIW, I use DD-WRT wlan devices in client bridge mode. Like everything else, your experience will be a direct result of network planning and implementation. If you don't really understand ethernet, you will likely have poor performance with wireless. Everyone should have good quality cat5 or better running to each unit when possible. Everything else (including MoCA and Powerline) is a compromise or an experiment (like me).

6) I have no clue why some people are convinced that the 2 tuner units are superior to the 3 tuner unit. I've read and reread the posts, and still can't work it out in my head. You'd have to pry that extra tuner out of my cold,de.... uhhhhhhhhhhhh - you get the idea.

7) Everyone has their own experiences, but it's clear to me that the Moxi DVR is pretty well tuned and responsive assuming you don't have local cable provider/M-card issues. It is somewhat relative to the rich visual presentation. You can't get something for nothing. That's an Isaac Newton thing, right?

What's undoubtedly true is that the Mates are still in their developmental infancy with respect to live streams and interaction with the DVR. I'm banking on optimization and enhancements in the near future. If this never happens, it will be disappointing, like potential unfulfilled - but not something that would make me mad. The system would still be delivering something I cannot get from any other platform.

8) BIG FUTURE BONUSES - can and will Arris deliver bigtime content natively like Netflix, Hulu, Vudu? Wouldn't it be great? I'm only 50/50 (at best) on this prospect. Is the money there for it? The market for $500-$1000 TV watching devices can't be very big, and Tivo and the Cable providers clearly have the bulk of the market... without the recurring revenue ala Tivo, Moxi is economically disadvantaged (bless their hearts) - But, its what makes watching this thing develop fun and interesting.

9) Am I a Moxi schill? No............ I hate the Moxi button (on the remote), I hate the freaking out of the Mate when I unintentionally hit a VOD channel, I hate the Mate's lack of a grid guide, record initiate, record delete, I hate the proprietary file system, blah, blah, blah.

It's still the best thing since sliced bread or broadband internet.
And my wife loves it. Good riddance, single room Comcast Motorola HD DVR. Go lock up in someone else's living room.

FIN

Thanks, Domino. I am glad I didn't get the S-CableCard from Cox.

I spoke with someone at the local Cox office in Orange County. The guy assured me that only S-CableCards are available and that he had no information on if or when the Multi-Stream CableCards would be available for Orange County. I would love to put an M-Stream CableCard in my Three-Tuner Moxi, of course.

I will keep on top of Cox and call them every month to see if things change.

Regarding hard drives in DVRs: Years from now we'll all be happier when DVRs have solid state hard drives. (I use an Intel SSD in my laptop, and I love it. My laptop with Win7 is booted with IE open and ready to go in 17 seconds.) In the meantime, we all just have to hope we get lucky with the hard drive Moxi sends us. (But of course, the same goes with TiVos and Cox's Motorola DVRs, which also have had a lot of returns due to hard drive failure over the years.)

FWIW, Pipeline HDDs seem to be the choice of Samsung as it appears they are all so equipped. Not to mention, but some can be easily upgraded to a larger capacity Pipeline drive (specifically the 3090 from it's OEM 160G drive to a 320G drive).

tollie27,

This could be one of two issues.

1. The M-Card is failing or

2. The M-Card slot is failing

It might be worthwhile to have Verizon bring a replacement M-Card to swap out. According to MitchTheD and a few other posters in TivoCommunity, Cable Cards can be very fickle. I would do the easiest thing here first by changing out the cable card if this continues to be a problem. If the replacement card does not fix it, then proceed with maybe a Moxi swap.


[quote]
h.

Great first post! I am agreement with you here. I played with MythTV.. streamers and extenders.. It required too much babysitting.... Moxi makes it easy and really requires no additional effort.
....


The drive can be backup for recovery purposes using G4L in RAW rode. However, no one has actually been able to traverse the file system to get to the contents
....

I hope so. I am leaning towards that they will deliver on this...





You might be able to get some help with your cable card for cox using the Cox cable Card thread at Tivo Community.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb....php?p=7782624

First, thanks AcaoAcao, for the link. I saw a post there that confirmed Cox in Orange County, CA, is only offering S-Cards.

Riverside Guy, one great thing about ReplayTV was the ability to easily upgrade and/or replace the hard drives. The ReplayTV software is posted all over the Internet.

It would be nice if we could easily either upgrade the hard drive in the Moxi or replace a broken hard drive in the future when the warranty expires. Maybe someday this will be possible?

Officially the answer to this is NO. You will need to send in the Moxi unit for repair/replacement.

Unofficially YES you can, you can remove the drive whenever you want to create a backup. You will need a computer with two SATA ports and/or USB enclosures and use a program called G4L (Ghost 4 Linux) and of course a spare 500GB harddrive.

Boot up using Ghost4Linux. Select Click and Clone and select RAW mode. It takes about 2.5 hours but in no time you will have a backup harddrive for the Moxi.

Any way to do this with a larger drive that holds more programs?

As of right now, we have not discovered a way to expand the internal harddrive.

However, if you need more recorded programs with a larger drive... the easiest way is to get upgrade using an eSATA drive.

You can connect up to 6TB of extra space to store your recording.

I currently have a 1.5 TB SATA drive connected to my Moxi that allows for about ~220 hours of total HD recording.

So, you've been able to clone a drive with media on it which then can be returned to the Moxi chassis and then be read by the OS, i..e., played to the TV? Also, have you figured out what file system is used?

JF

I'd bet a week's pay that they have M-cards, not S-cards. M-cards work just fine in S-card hosts, hence the confusion. They stopped making S-cards in June of 2005, IIRC.


If the solid state HDD has a large enough read/write number. I'd be happy if USB flash drives or memory cards (both user replaceable) could be used. BTW, Cox uses Cisco/SA HD DVRs in many of its locations. The new multi-room DVR is a Cisco/SA.

Domino92024 wrote: "I'd bet a week's pay that they have M-cards, not S-cards. M-cards work just fine in S-card hosts, hence the confusion. They stopped making S-cards in June of 2005, IIRC."

Domino, I just called Cox again and spoke to a brand new person. I explained that I had a Moxi DVR that takes Multi-Stream CableCards. The rep told me that in my area I could only get a Single-Stream CableCard.

On a different note: My replacement Three-Tuner Moxi arrived today. The set-up went perfectly. (I'm hoping this third unit has a perfect hard drive.) Except for that the channel scan won't pick up channel 13, KCOP, out of Los Angeles. I wish Moxi included a way to manually input the free QAM frequency. Cox in Orange County transmits channel 13 free QAM on the frequency 118.6. But for some reason, the Moxi doesn't read it during the channel scan.

Anyone out there know how to force Moxi to pick up a specific free QAM frequency manually?

Thanks.

I have not personally done this.

But we have two users (belliaroad being one of them) who have. They removed the internal drive and cloned it and returned the cloned drive to the Moxi Chassis. It started up and was able to read the OS and the recordings.

However, he was unable to figure out what the file system was...

It looks like I can't use the Moxi HD DVR with Comcast. I just talked with Comcast Customer Support and they told me that they highly recommend getting a TiVo box because the Comcast installation technicians are familiar with the service menus on TiVo boxes and could almost install a CableCARD on a TiVo box from memory.

I would have loved to get a Moxi HD box, but between Comcast not thrilled about using a Moxi DVR and the fact Moxi boxes seem to not recover gracefully from system crashes (based on what I read here), that will rule out using a Moxi HD DVR with my Comcast cable line. Unless somebody here can tell me otherwise....

You really don't have to do very much in the service menus for a cable card install. On the Moxi this is what you do:
1. Press the Moxi button.
2. Browse horizontally to Settings, and select the CableCARD option.
3. Look for “CableCARD Pairing” or a listing of the CableCARD ID, Host ID,
and Data.
4. Press OK.

This will bring up a screen that has all of the information that Comcast needs. The steps to find this information are on a quick start guide packaged with the Moxi.

After the installer reads a few numbers off of that screen all of the other setup steps happen back at Comcast and the steps should be pretty much the same for any cablecard device. If there are any problems open up a live chat with Moxi support. They are friendly, helpful, and probably know more about setting up Comcast cablecards than the person your installer will be on the phone with.

As for the hard drive failures I'm sure you can find evidence of that with every DVR if you google it.

Unless you have specific information otherwise, I'm not convinced that there is an OS on the disk. Also disk utilities vary in their ability to recognize file systems. If the drive is partitioned, reading Block 0 might give some clue as to how, i.e., the software used, the partition was created. Also if a MBR or GUID Partition Table exists, then reading it will tell you the OS. But if there isn't an OS on the disk there might not be a MBR. Alternatively, reading the BIOS Parameter Block in the Volume Boot Sector should indicate the file system. Embedded systems eg. ARM controllers, often use uncommon file systems and it might very well be likely that Moxi uses an alternative file system as well; ADFS, whefs or some other animal. There are utilities to do this. One needs to sniff harder at the drive.

JF

1. If you gonna get a Tivo, then you gonna need an M-type card as well.
2. I've needed to reboot my system three times thus far which works out to be maybe 5 times a year. And the reboot is seamless.
3. If a TWC NYC technician can set one up in my flat within ~20, then I'm sure a Comcast tech can do the same.
4. Moxi has a generous return policy if you can't get it to go.

NB Give the interface a chance; you won't miss the grid guide (which is there if you really, really want it.) You'll quickly find that the Moxi guide is a sweet thing to use.

JF

I live in Phoenix, AZ, a Cox SA/Cisco area using SDV. Is there any advantage to purchasing the 3 Tuner model giving the current Cisco tuning adapter only supports 2 tuners (from what I have read and verified by Cox CS)? What happens to the third tuner? What exactly happens when attempting to use the third tuner?

BTW, I have sent several emails to Moxi over the last month through their website and have never received a reply back. Based on the feedback here I would think Moxi would be more responsive to potential new customers.

Third tuner is dormant and cannot be used. The unit will ignore it.

3-t advantages: More memory for faster operation in the 3-tuner model. Small potential for a 3 tuner TA to be released reactivating the dead tuner.

If this is correct (and they're not all reading from the same old script), then they are selling 5+ year-old cards which don't meet the current cable card specification. According to Cable Labs, all cards made since June 6, 2005, must meet the CCIF-2.0 and CCCP-2.0 (multi-stream) specifications. Tell Cox (a supervisor, hopefully) to get rid of those antiques and get some cards that meet current (which have been in effect for 5 years) specifications.


Have you tried a few dBs of signal amplification?

Quote:
Originally Posted by midas89
On a different note: My replacement Three-Tuner Moxi arrived today. The set-up went perfectly. (I'm hoping this third unit has a perfect hard drive.) Except for that the channel scan won't pick up channel 13, KCOP, out of Los Angeles. I wish Moxi included a way to manually input the free QAM frequency. Cox in Orange County transmits channel 13 free QAM on the frequency 118.6. But for some reason, the Moxi doesn't read it during the channel scan.

Anyone out there know how to force Moxi to pick up a specific free QAM frequency manually?

Domino92024 wrote:
"Have you tried a few dBs of signal amplification?"

Thanks again, Domino, for any and all suggestions. My Moxi's Coax is connected to a Channel Master signal amp that is giving what they say is a 7 dB boost. (I did the channel scan with the coax connected to the amp and with the coax just straight from the wall, many times). Every available Free QAM station comes in loud and clear, including the TV Guide Channel and all the Music stations, except 118.6 KCOP Channel 13. Cox says the 118.6 QAM frequency is being transmitted just fine. They said they tested it on a TV with a built-in QAM tuner. But for some reason, the Moxi doesn't list it after repeated channel scans. My guess is that it is a Cox issue. I just wish Moxi had a feature built in where you could manually enter in the QAM frequency.)

This is NONSENSE! Did you not read my reply post? All my Comcast tech did was to insert the Mcard into the Moxi then call Comcast activation and read back the numbers from the TV screen and it was done. I did ask him if he had done a Moxi DVR before and he told me mine was the first one in his work area.

Hell, my TWC tech thought it was a Tivo. He didn't notice that huge glowing logo on the front until after the card was installed and he was on the phone getting it activated when he said "Oh it's not a Tivo."

I told him it was like a Tivo but without the subscription fees. Makes no difference to the install as long as you can bring up the CC menu in the guide.

I think the Sony PS3 sets the proper stage... none of this nonsense about this drive works, that one doesn't... as if the drives are the issue. Not to mention there's a business opportunity for THEM in offering boxes with larger HDDs. From a cost standpoint, I seriously doubt a 500G drive costs them more than the 160, yet I (and I suspect MANY others) would easily pony up another hundred bucks or so for a 500G drive DVR over the 160.

Do you know for sure that you can put that cloned drive IN the Moxi and have it function correctly?

Do I understand this correctly? If I record a movie on HBO on a Moxi, I won't be able to get the movie off of the Moxi so that I can watch it on my laptop on an airplane?

What about the other way - if I rip a DVD on my laptop, can I transfer it to the Moxi for viewing on the bigger screen of the tv?

Ah, that does seem to answer my question... as for the file system, most likely some Unix variant. If a Moxi CAN access up to 6T, we aren't dealing with the limitations of various m$ disc formats...

Correct currently there isn't a way to get a show off of your moxi to view it on a computer.


There is a way to play movies that are on you computer on your moxi. You will not transfer the file to the moxi but if the computer is on the same network as the moxi it can play the file.

Operon. You may be correct regarding the OS. At this point, we are not sure where the OS resides since we have not been able to traverse the file system.

When the users successfully clone the drive they used RAW mode so it ignore file systems and OS and just do a bit by bit copy.




Here are the post of successfully clones and instructions for G4L.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...3#post18205723

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...1#post18179581

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...7#post18182747

That being said, it sounds like you are well versed in linux? or file system technology. Do you want to take a crack and try to decode the mystery for us?



YES. IT WORKS. See above links.