Moxi HD DVR - Page 99

It's all in the router... I doubt the Moxi cares, I think it just requests an IP and gets one from ther DHCP server that is running IN the router. Sounds like your router is capable of doing what I said above, essentially pre-assign specific IPs to each specific device (.i.e. each Moxi pieces MAC address).

However, I do not THINK it HAS to be done this way. I THINK you can not enable any MAC filtering or IP assignments in the router and it will do it's thing.

I think Riverside_Guy is right. MOst modern routers allow you to assign an IP address to a specific MAC address...

So I just got the 3 room bundle. Right after I got the tracking notice that I realized that I want to have a 3-turner Moxi & a 2-turner Moxi instead of a 3 turner Moxi and 2 mates.

So I have (2) New, un-open Moxi Mate in the original Arris box, anyone want to a trade me a new 2 turner Moxi for it?

As stated previously, I programmed a button to pulse the "*" button. There in order to bring up the grid menu, I press it twice. For the DVR menu, once.

I however am THOROUGHLY annoyed by the remote situation as well. I'm having problems, sometimes requiring multiple button presses at even less than 10feet away. This is with the original remote or my Harmony One. This problem, and the ability to be able to save my series online, and the ability for FULL editing of series, queue, and priority are my top concerns. I wish that Moxi would address these issues/concerns.

nG

I think part of the confusion is there are two slightly different uses of the term "static IP address":

• From the client (i.e. Moxi, RTV, PC) perspective it means manually assigning an address to the box instead of obtaining it via DHCP.
• From the DHCP server (i.e. router) perspective it means statically binding an IP adress to a MAC address. The client in this case still uses DHCP to get it's address. It's "static" in the sense that the client will get the same IP every time, as opposed to getting a random address from the pool.

The way you have it set up should be fine - i.e. if you use a separate part of the address range for Static IPs you set on the clients vs. the DHCP address range, you will not have a conflict.

I think it's a good idea to set static IPs on your router for any DHCP devices like Riverside_Guy suggested, but it's not necessary. I wouldn't bother with MAC filtering though, it's almost zero security (since the addresses can be easily spoofed), and you have the overhead of administering the table (you'd need to add the ReplayTV and any other devices, plus guests who want to use your network, etc). It's really meant more for wireless but it's just as useless there - if you're using wireless make sure you're using WPA (preferably WPA2) and pick a good password.

very dismayed by the lack of remote response, i may have to buy another repeater. i just got rid of the last of the spiderweb of emitter wires in my system though, not happy about having to put them back.

comcast screwed me over on the CC install so i'm still QAM only. but, i decided to play around a little and schedule some recordings, etc. i scheduled online which was cool although i couldn't find a way to change recording options there? changing recording options on the device is fairly cumbersome... i do not like that right arrow means "close" instead of "next menu" - i keep hitting it by mistake. and again, the animations make it take longer than it should.

I assign the MAC address of all my devices (including my Moxi and Mate) to an individual IP on my router and DHCP to the modem. Works fine.

Ok, I programmed my Harmony One (I had no idea what to use for the Model #, I dug up MR-1500T3 from Amazon). The response to remote commands seems much better but we'll see if I still feel the same way in a week.

Someone was asking about "Guide" - Harmony did not seem to have the "Lens" command so I learned it from the Moxi remote (as well as "Star"). I made a sequence "MoxiLens2" which was just "Lens, Lens" and assigned that to "Guide" - it seems to pull up the grid reliably (would be nice if pressing it again would get rid of the guide, but...). I didn't change any delay settings. If you're having trouble getting it to work you might want to try relearning the "Lens" button and see if it helps.

Hm... might be able to use "Lens" to get to other parts of the UI, i.e. "Lens, Left" should be the "Channels" guide, "Lens, Right" for search, etc. Haven't tried it; I've had enough playing around for tonight but could be promising. BTW, has anyone tried looking for other discrete codes? Maybe I'll see if I can get my Pronto to work long enough to try.

I want to thank everyone for helping me through my networking panic this AM. Part of my problem is obviously that I dont' understand many of the networking terms & concepts, and part of the problem was that I'd been without sleep for 24+ hours at that point. Since I'm not 18 anymore, my brain doesn't function so well with all-nighters anymore. The problem I was running into was that without DCHP enabled, the router requires assignment of an IP addy + a MAC addy. With other equipment, in order for them to access the network, I've had to assign an IP addy to a MAC addy in the router settings and also set the IP addy in the device. Perhaps Moxis don't require that, but it didn't occur to me to try assigning an IP addy & pairing it with the Moxis MAC addys in the router & seeing if that would have worked.

Very gratefully, when I enabled DCHP in the router, it saved all the already configured device IP + MAC addys. Of course, I have a hard copy of how I set everything, but with everything else going on, I didn't have time to reconfigure everything . . . and leaving computers without Internet access until tomorrow would have made me very unpopular in this house.

In any case, thanks to all the help here, my networking problem with the Moxis was resolved before the cable dude showed up -- thanks so much!

Now that the Moxis are at least quasi-working, I have some questions . . . and comments I'd appreciate input about.

First, for those of you who've had the experience of bad hard drives, were there any early warning symptoms? The reason I ask is that one of the two 3-tuner Moxis seemed to have difficulty with the initial setup procedure -- it was extremely slow & seemed to hang during the initial "critical update" and again when it was "downloading graphics." IOW, it took four times as long for one of the units to complete the initial setup as it took the second unit.

Second, the TWC CC process didn't go particularly smoothly, I'm sorry to say, and the tech was making excuses (for lack of a better word) from the time he walked in the door as to why things weren't going to work well. When he was having problems, I suggested the TW National CC HelpDesk as posted here, and he said it doesn't exist anymore. He also said that TWC M-CC only support two tuners. When he was having problems with a couple of our HD channels, he first said that since the HD channels are free, TWC doesn't guarantee reception. Then he said that our signal has been split too many times, so that's the problem. He finally left with two HD channels not working & attributed it to those channels having technical difficulties. He was completely unimpressed with the analog dongle & said it wasn't very well thought out and it was crazy for the Moxis not to natively support analog channels because "no cable companies in the country" will be all digital in the near future.

Then, about 30 minutes after he left, both Moxis quit working. One developed a frozen picture & inability to change channels, and the other gave me "no signal detected" on all channels and a very sluggish system. That prompted call #3 to Moxi tech support today.

For the unit with the frozen picture, he had me unplug the unit, wait a bit, and the plug it back in, which resolved the problem.

For the unit with the "no signal" on all channels and sluggish response, he had me unplug the CC and then reseat it. Then, there was no CC detected. He finally had me unplug that unit, wait two minutes, and then plug it back in, and that resolved the problem. He also got the logs to try to isolate what the problem was.

Question: does anyone have any suggestions as to what happened to make both crash at the same time?

Backtracking a bit to the TWC dude's comments about our signal being split too many times . . . I'm concerned. He said that their signal only supports five TVs or cable boxes at most -- can anyone explain that to me because that's the first I've ever heard of that. While I don't have our Mates hooked up yet, he said they each count because they are drawing from the same coax albeit by proxy, if I correctly understood. TWC certainly didn't say a word to us about that when they rented us four cable boxes . . . and our cable modem for Internet . . . and then the our digital phone service.

If "five devices max" is accurate, then we're in deep doo-doo. We've got two 3-tuner Moxis, two Mates, one analog dongle, one cable box, and a PC tuner which puts us over the five device limit. But, we also have high speed Internet. And digital phone. And we'll need another analog dongle because we have some non-negotiable channels that are still analog. And we have some ReplayTV units we want to keep in service.

Initially, the TWC tech said we'd need to have a contractor rewire (replace the existing coax) our house because TWC has found that the wiring in older houses is problematic. At that point, my dh looked like he wanted to throttle me. When I pointed out that TWC had run/rerun most of the cable in our house within the last five years or so, that's when the tech brought out the "five outlets max" explanation & basically said we're expecting too much from cable service.

Question: have others encountered that limitation? If so, is there any solution other than scaling back equipment needs?

Now, I do think we've got some kind of signal problem at our house, whether the problem is where it comes to the house or within the house itself. Prior to the Moxis being hooked up, we've had intermittent problems with some of the HD channels. I don't understand the technical part, but TWC came out in January & replaced some wiring when we weren't able to receive at all some quasi-local HD channels due to poor signal strength-- after doing their thing, all was good. The problem recurred in March & April when they moved some of the HD channels & then we started getting intermittent reception (i.e., the channel would give an error message but resolve itself in 1-30 minutes). At that point, the tech who came out in mid-April said that if the problem persisted, they'd start trouble-shooting from the pole, but then things were fine. A week ago Monday, the intermittent reception started on a different HD channel we watch once a week but quickly resolved itself until this Monday when it was out for 25 minutes or so. When TWC called yesterday to confirm the appointment for today, she said she'd add it to the ticket.

Question: since hooking up the two Moxis, we can't get that HD channel as well as another at all through the Moxis or through the remaining cable box. Given that I used existing coax (unhooked from two cable boxes) without further splitting, why would that one HD channel plus a second be a problem now? It seems to me I read somewhere in this thread that Moxis need a stronger signal than cable co boxes, but I can't find that now . . . am I remembering correctly? If so, is there a solution?

I know I'll have further questions, but that's probably (more than) enough for now.

I will add, though, that even my dh can "see" a significant increase in the picture quality we're getting through the Moxis on the HD channels that are working as opposed to through the RTVs I've been trying for months to show him the difference by having him compare the HD picture through the cable box as opposed to the non-HD picture through the non-HD RTVs, but he kept saying that he didn't see any difference. His comments today vindicate me

Seems to me a router can't do much of anything without DHCP when there are more than one device hooked to it. Pretty sure all routers have it set by default.

The issue of "static" IPs has little to do specifically with a Moxi... for me, such "pre-assigned" IPs make for recognition of what device in the routers log.

Agreed, yes I know MAC's can be spoofed, BUT I have seen in my log attempts to connect (wireless) being thwarted by this method (several times a day for a week or so and they got the idea to not try it again... I suspect it was someone being dumb in my building, probably a school kid). Can't say for sure if an attempt to connect that got stymied via my WPA2 password get noted in the log... pretty sure I've seen no such notices.

Not exactly. My condo has 30 year old wiring and has had signal issues from time to time. It had 3 splitters - 3 TVs and cable modem.

I was able to pull one of the splitters through the wall and eliminate it because my living room TV, with the Mate, no longer needed the cable. I suppose if you have "legacy" boxes you want to keep using, you might not be able to simplify though.

My install was tough and took several tries finally having to have two guys from TW's engineering dept come out. I also had a few reboots and freezes in the first week or so, but everything got settled in and has worked great ever since.

Dave

sslund, it sounds like you had a pretty crummy tech. There are amplifiers available that can boost the incoming signal before any splits and allow you to have more than 5 connections. In simple terms, every time you split your incoming cable, it reduces the signal strength - adding an amp helps offset that loss. A caveat though - it IS possible to over amplify and that can cause signal troubles as well.

As for your tech's comments that the Mates 'count', that is totally false. They receive all of their data via your private Ethernet network and have zero impact on CATV signal strength.

I had to learn the Lens command as well. I didn't bother with doing a double command for the grid view as I am getting used to the standard Moxi channel list (although, I'm not 100% sold on it yet). As someone else suggested, I mapped the "Zoom" command to the "page up" arrow in the middle of the remote. I mapped the "ticker" command to the page down arrow. I also put duplicate versions of the buttons (Moxi, Ticker, etc.) on the LCD portion of the remote for those in my family that can't keep track of the mapping.

Overall, the Harmony One is working well. I haven't quite gotten comfortable with reliable and fast commercial skipping. That will take some practice.

He is just ignorant. Multistream cablecards support up to 6 streams. He just never encountered a unit with more than 2 tuners before.


Sounds like it was an issue with the signal.


Each time you split the signal you do reduce the signal strength. There are limits to how many splits you can do, can't say it's 5 though. As far as the Moxi mates are concerned, they only connect to your network and have nothing to do with the cable signal strength at all.


He can take signal measurements for each line. It sounds like he had more excuses than congress.



Sounds like there are some signal issues in general and he was just making excuses for things.


Try temporarilly removing some of the splitters, so that you only split it 2 times (to each of the 2 moxis and then see if those channels come in. If it doesn't work then they need to fix your signal.

Got my 2TB drive today.

Quick format took 20 seconds.

Full Windows format took 2 hours to get to 10% before I cancelled it. So we are looking at around 20 hours for a full format (Quick format + checkdisk).

sslund - i had some signal issues at my old house with similar symptoms and it is very frustrating to debug. The only real way to pinpoint the problem is with a signal analyzer but unfortunately they're really expensive ($1000+) and even if I'd had one I'm not sure I would have known what I was looking for.

I disconnected the feed coming into my house, took my cable box and cable modem (which was also having problems) outside, and hooked them directly up to the pole. Since I was still having problems, it showed pretty conclusively there was an issue on the cable co side. After several fruitless visits from the cable co over the course of several months, I finally got a couple techs who were absolutely fantastic. They were intelligent, didn't treat me like an idiot, and were actually interested in solving the problem instead of just swapping out equipment, blaming my wiring, and other useless stuff. They drove around the neighborhood with me on the phone and had me look for interference on an analog channel while they messed around on the poles. Eventually they found a bad connection (probably 1/2 mile from my house) and replaced it, and after that I never had another problem. For once, I was impressed with the cable company.

I agree with what packetlosss said, the guy either didn't know what he was doing or didn't care. "5 TVs" sounds like BS in itself considering you can only really split a cable in two (multi-way splitters are just cascades of 2-way splitters). So if he said 4 or 8 it would make a lot more sense. Really, all you can do is try to narrow down the problem - if there is noise it could be originating on any line, due to a broken shield, bad splitter, bad connection, etc. Any unused runs (including empty splitter ports) are supposed to be terminated (search for 75 ohm coax terminator, they're pretty cheap). Crimp-type connectors are also suspect, you can buy a compression tool like the cable co uses for $50ish. If all else fails you can buy an amp, I feel like the one I bought was a waste of money because signal strength wasn't my issue, it was the noise. A good cable tech should be able to tell you what the issue is. Needless to say I spent a lot of time and money trying to resolve the problem within my house before I got a good tech...

Can anyone confirm that the 4 finger press still works to get into the initialization menu?

I tried this today and can't seem to get in. It worked for me a couple of days ago...

Crap is right I was going to install my 2 TB drive this weekend!! I knew I should have done it 2 weeks ago when the 2nd Moxi arrived.

Dave

Booooo Moxi.

That was a bonus feature which was very useful to increase the longevity of these units and improve functionality. Removing it just sent Moxi down in my estimation.

Void the warranty fine, but removing the ability completely is just kicking the small Moxi fan base in the groin for no good reason. That's not going to engender any positive user feedback.

Hm... I took that as an implicit endorsement to more or less "have fun, just don't cry to us if something breaks" - but I guess that was the wrong interpretation. Or, perhaps TheMoxiGuy was just the messenger and someone else in the company decided to pull the plug.

Either way, I definitely think it's a short-sighted move. Having had DVR drive failures in the past, being able to replace it myself (even if not officially endorsed) was a big plus.

I certainly hope Moxi's plan isn't to fleece people on repairs, but who knows. I think it's more likely that it got brought up in a meeting or something and someone had a knee-jerk reaction to just disable it.

Who knows, maybe they're genuinely concerned about someone's kids wiping out their recordings accidentally. Maybe there's still a way to trigger that mode that's harder to do by accident.

Would be nice to hear something from MoxiGuy, if he's still allowed to post here. I guess there's little doubt he was at least communicating some of what went on here back to the ranch - which is definitely a good thing and something I wish Moxi (and other companies) would encourage.

Then he should be communicating how one of the most popular questions around Moxi is "can you replace the hard drive?"

We did finally have a very positive answer that could answer that question and in doing so would attract more users. Now it's just one more bullet-point less compared to TiVo.

I sure wish they fixed the bugs and enhanced the features that needed it as fast as it took them to remove one of the most vital backup features.

You can still do a bit copy to create a backup, but each drive is tied to the unit, so you will need a backup for every Moxi you own....

MoxiGuy, can we please get some clarification on if this was completely removed?

Funny, but my unit still presents the "Installation" screen. How new is your Moxi?

I think we all have the same software build. Me thinks that there was a change in the ROM OS for the new units that shipped recently. But I'm only guessing.

What version of the software do you currently have? Mine has 6.1.1.3B4BR. Just tried it again and it still doesn't work for me. The first red light starts blinking after the screen refresh and then nothing.


So you're thinking they pushed a firmware update that only affected newer units? That is possible, since I've only had mine for about a week. It did however bring up the initialization screen 3 or 4 days ago.

Also if I remember correctly, Midas89's 2 tuner Moxi is an older model.

The fundamental problem here is I considered this insurance that if my drive goes bad i could easilly replace it. Now it seems clear that I can't rely on that so I might as well just image up a backup drive since we can't rely on it being there when we need it.

Damn... I did too, I even commented how enlightened a move it was NOT to disable it. I did agonize over posting the details in the first place because I KNEW it was a possibility it would be "removed."

Dumb move. First, it would only be a VERTY small subset of their user base who would know about this... and a smaller yet set that would do it. BUT, I get asked a LOT from the kinds of folks who would never even try something like this for advice... and it becomes a negative in that it USED to have a very good feature but it was TAKEN AWAY. Call it a bit of negative buzz.

Exactly... I love the "ROM OS"... wouldn't exactly call it that, but it very much IS the right idea. It HAS to be a routine that comes from on-board silicon like a EEPROM... of course, that IAS a kind of assumption, they COULD have used a plain non-writable ROM... but that would be massively stupid (IMO).

Speculation about older/newer units may be what is going on. OR it COULD be possible the key sequence was changed.

BTW, there's never any field service, right?