Moxi HD DVR - Page 111

Hey MoxiGuy,

- Any plans to make FF and REW work with the Medialink feature? I tried other DNLA enabled players with the same files with PlayOn and they are able to FF and REW so it's probably the Moxi that can't do it yet.

- Can we get call letter abbreviations for the channels in the list and guide? If the channel is missing an icon, then if haven't memorized it you have no idea what channel it is. Something like TW does like ABCHD or HLNHD?

- Can you manually stretch a channel? Sometimes an HD channel is showing an SD program 4:3 and I'd like to stretch it. Since there is no HD designation in the guide (another request), I don't know when I record if it will be 16:9 or 4:3 so in that case I'd like to stretch the program. Would be nice for playing files over Medialink to as many of them I have are 4:3.

Thanks!

Not really true. Favorites is a subjective thing. I might have my list of favorites that I want to set, but my daughter and her friends might surf all day making it look like some channels are favorites when they are not (if favorites were based on how often a channel got tuned).

They could easilly implement a favorites list that can be put together similar to the channels list.

What would be nice is if by hitting one button on the remote you could switch between favorites, SD, HD, ALL in the guide (grid or single channel guide). This is pretty similar to how it works on the Dish DVR.

Subjective to you personally, but not to the box. It assumes from it's programming that "They watch this the most, so that must be one of their favorite channels" which is perfectly reasonable.

It doesn't allow for other variables because that's not what it's designed to do. The filter is designed to make the process simple for the viewer by picking channels you like to watch without the hassle of going through them manually. Sure, it might limit the control you personally have but the Moxi doesn't seem to me to be a box that's designed for gearheads. I'm mostly fine with that.

I'd kinda disagree with the gearhead statement, I think everyone who watches tv and uses a DVR a lot, has the potential to turn into a gearhead as far a DVR gearhead anyway. I do think the Moxi is a bit cumbersome in the graphical interface. I think they spent a lot of time reinventing the wheel, it does so many great things and I will definitely continue using it, but in my opinion for it to be more mainstream, it needs more of a traditional interface for people that are used to that.

My mother is 80 yrs old and I wanted to set them up with some Moxi's, but I'm not sure how well she could get along with it.

I also wish there were more one button pushes to get to various places, to get to the traditional grid guide, you have to press a button twice, to get to recordings you have to press one button(but sometimes the Moxi comes up with a different screen than the recordings).

The Moxi reminds me of some websites that are so graphically enhanced that I can't find anything at times or I have to go through several screens to get to where I want.

It's all in the software, so it certainly is possible to have multiple organized guides for each person in the family. Certainly a reasonable request.

As with ANY request, it runs up against priorities, which are many and varied. My guess is with Moxi, it tends towards providing functionality that benefits the most users with a side helping of how difficult it may be, and what they think is a better draw for NEW customers. And I'm leaving out tons of others... it really can get pretty complicated and we're not even talking ROI!

But for most users the only DVR they have is the one provided by their cable/satco and for the most part they are limited in what they do. I would guess most users of DVRs never venture beyond the ability to record a TV show. They are probably also the same people who couldn't program a VCR.

Everyone I know that isn't me barely goes beyond the basic features of a DVR. Of course that isn't helped by the fact they are stuck with TWC and you can't do much with that anyway. Still, they don't even use any of the features on their equipment. For them a DVD player just plays DVDs and the DVR just records TV. They are also the people who want their TV as bright as possible. I introduced my mother to the DVR five years ago and she still forgets that she can pause live TV.

If the Moxi had one channel menu and one big red button on the remote for record I think they would be pretty happy with it.

Well, apart from the price.

Yeah, I hear you, I guess actually anyone who owns a Moxi is more inclined to be a gearhead. Tivo has all the publicity, but I'm not sure it's translated into money making for them. I'm not a big fan of the Tivo, I think the Satellite DVRs are easier to use than Tivo. Of course I was a DOS fan and would still use the command line if I could in a lot of instances

I just want Moxi and Tivo to succeed, I don't want to be totally dictated to by the Cable and Sat providers on the equipment that I have to use and without competition I can see things getting pretty stagnant.

I agree the price entry is a tough one, it's really the most reasonable when you consider the Tivo and the monthly guide fees and the monthly rental on the cable and sat boxes.

Moxi just needs more exposure and positive PR like Tivo seems to have in abundance.

The only reason I moved to Moxi was that I grew to hate the TWC software and when they removed a feature - grouping favorites in the guide - that was the final straw.

So while I would love more customization options (like being able to remove a lot of the main menu items that I don't use) it does fill the role I bought it for in giving me at least the same functionality I had previously with TWC. Which is really all I was asking for, so mission accomplished in that respect.

In the end I think if the Moxi fulfills that expectation of anyone switching from cable/sat they won't really look to what it doesn't do.

Could it be better? Of course. But for now it is better than a lot of the alternatives. As long as Moxi keep adding features and making tweaks to keep it at least as good as a cable provided unit then I'll be happy. I think even if Moxi added something ultra-cool and groundbreaking cablecos wouldn't care anyway. TiVo (and others) have been adding cool features for a decade and companies like TWC are still happy to let their customers think it's 2005.

I'd like an update on this too. Thanks to Best Buy I've got a free movie each month to use up and I don't want to bother hooking up the PC to the TV these days.

http://www.cinemanow.com/DevicesMoxi.aspx

FYI: The following was posted today on the TiVO Community Forum:

ConsumerReports did a DVR shootout and gave the big thumbs up to the Tivo Premiere over the Moxi.

"While we like seeing more choices in the standalone DVR market, TiVo is, and remains, the clear winner in our shootout. The Premiere XL is well designed, easy to use, and comes packed with a bigger hard drive that can store more HD programs. The upgraded search function, which seamlessly searches live TV, recorded programs, and online services, is a big improvement, and the addition of the capacity meter finally addresses a long-standing, common gripe among users. For some, the annual subscription fee on top of the upfront hardware cost remains an impediment, and it would be nice if wireless was built in rather than offered as an option. But if you want more features and storage than what you'd get from a standard cable DVR and don't mind paying a bit more for it, TiVo is still the way to go.

Despite a few significant shortcomings, there are some things to like about Moxi, starting with the colorful, fresh look of its interface and no recurring service charges. The Moxi HD DVR capably performs its basic mission of recording programs, and we like its multi-room, the ability to add lots more storage, and the long buffering time for live TV shows. And the unique SuperTicker feature, which brings a lot of useful content to your TV screen.

While we liked the look of Moxi's interface, actually using it wasn't intuitive; when combined with the remote's confusing control and button layout, you expect a decent learning curve. Other drawbacks include the lack of any ATSC tuners for receiving free over-the-air HD broadcasts, and the need to purchase a separate adapter kit ($130) to get analog cable channels if your cable company hasn't yet gone all-digital.

But the real deal-breaker for us is the inability to directly access online content. Given how easy it view streaming movies and TV shows these dayseven on inexpensive Blu-ray players and videogame systemsMoxi's work-around, which requires PlayOn software to be running on a Windows-based PC, seems antiquated and kludgy. Also, the lack of a Wi-Fi option means you'll need a wired Ethernet connection, which could be an issue for some.

As an unproven newcomer, Moxi is in the unenviable position of not only having to be better than the DVRs provided by cable, but also superior to TiVo's latest offerings. In at least this iteration of the product, Moxi exceeds what cable provides, but falls short of topping TiVo's newest model, the Premiere XL."

Kerry

I couldn't agree more, I'd be thrilled with this functionality. It should just be a more modular system; need more tuners (for MoxiMates or recording), just add another Moxi DVR. Need more TVs, just add more MoxiMates. No need to pair or work with any device individually (schedule all shows on the website and the DVRs should just share the load or record to whoever has more free space, etc).

This would be an incredible upgrade (for those of us with quite a few TVs and the need/desire to have DVRs at each one).

I have another post detailing my request in more depth, but, in essence, we are asking for the same thing.

Also, the ability to have 10 MoxiMates and 1 DVR would also be very nice. I don't really need to watch 10 different things at one time, I just have 10 TVs, and want DVR and my shows at any ONE of them at a time. Right now I can only pair 2 mates per Moxi; I'd like to be able to extend that (but still only use 2 mates at one time; that's OK by me).

What is holding you back? You can currently pair as many Moxi Mates as you want with one 3 tuner Moxi.

Moxi recommends that you should pair 2 Moxi Mates to one 3 tuner Moxi... however, you certain go above 2 Moxi mates.

Are you sure about that? I've had long conversations with Moxi about this subject, and they seem to think that you can only pair 2 mates with a 3 tuner Moxi. Are they just giving me the recommendation (even though I tried to explain my use case to them in detail, I don't want more than 3 tuners, I just have more than 3 TVs) and not the "what it can do in the real world" answer?

Also, there's another issue here; the ability to have several mates and 2 (or more) DVRs on the network and the mates just "roam" to an open Moxi for live TV streams. There's no reason that each mate needs to "pair" to a Moxi; from what they told me (tech support) I could force it to find a different Moxi, but it would require a reboot (of the mate and the Moxi) before I could move from one to another.

Is this a good time to buy a MOXI or should I wait?

I have been evaluating whether or not to buy MOXI and if so, which model/combo to buy and where (Amazon has free 2 day shipping with Amazon Prime, but the MOXI site offers a 30 day guarantee and a bundle discount).

I finally decided on the 2-tuner MOXI bundle with one MOXIMate but when I went to the web site, the 2 tuner model was no longer advertised or available for order. Additionally, when I went to order the 3 tuner bundle, it was out of stock, along with all other MOXI products.

One concern with going with MOXI over Tivo is that the MOXI DVR is dependent on the MOXI website and if MOXI goes under, then the DVR will probably lose functionality (or stop working all together).

I can understand focusing on a single model (the 3 tuner), but the fact that they do not have any of the equipment in stock raises my suspicion that the company is either having a cash flow problem or perhaps working on getting a new model into production.

Should I hold off on my purchase and wait for the other shoe to drop? I might just try the Comcast DVR...

-Miles

I am quite sure about this. Keep in mind you will be limited by three tuners on one three tuner Main Moxi. So yes you can do it but you may run into challenges if you are recording three shows at once and other situation like this....

I currently have a 3 T moxi with two moxi mates... I plan on getting a couple of more Moxi Mates... the reason is because like you I have a lot of TV but only three people in my home.... We like to watch TV in multiple areas..

Moxi officially recommends 2 Moxi Mates with 1 3tuner moxi but Moxi do not limit you to only 2 Moxi Mates.

I would avoid the Comcast DVR. Moxi or even Tivo is miles ahead of the Comcast DVR.

I would avoid the 2 tuner Moxi because:
-There is only two tuners
-Half the memory of the 3 tuner Moxi.
-Phased out by Moxi (according to the Moxi Guy)

HOWEVER, the 2 Tuner is $100 cheaper than the 3 Tuner


As for Moxi being out of stock?.. well business has been good for Moxi... they had items on backorder.

As for financial viability.. Moxi is owned by Arris which is a billion dollar company. Arris has made it a point to demo Moxi in many trade shows and Moxi has been voted solution most likely to succeed..

Moxi will be here for a while.

Thanks, both Moxis & both Mates are & have always been plugged directly into my router.

I have called -- and emailed -- until I am blue in the face. The logs have been sent at least two and possibly more times. And (in addition to the extensive troubleshooting I did), to absolutely rule out a network problem, I hired a networking consultant to troubleshoot, and the problem isn't with my network.

Customer Care did extend my 30 day trial period, but what I want is a unit that works as it's supposed to since y'all have my money.

I don't mean to sound testy, but I think I've been more than patient.


See above -- I don't think Moxi is ready for more exposure until they can get a better handle on basic customer care and quality control. As an early adopter, I've actually got a pretty high tolerance for working through technical difficulties, which not many people have. However, I have never had a situation like this where I've gotten a piece of equipment that failed to work properly out of the box and then gotten the run-around for this flippin' long. If they want to take until the cows come home to figure out what is wrong with this particular Moxi, I don't care as long as they give me what I paid for in the meantime. To not do so is unacceptable, and my dh has told me more than once that I should just box everything up, send it back, and get our money back.

Plus, there was that batch of bad hard drives discussed here which doesn't reflect well on quality control, either.

Other than the one Moxi not being able to correctly receive content streamed from the other, I suspect I'd be pretty satisfied. I've not commented too much because things that are a huge annoyance to me now might not be so huge if the multi-room solution was working they way it should.

The inability to delete recorded shows, for instance: since the one Moxi can't receive streamed recorded content, we tend to not watch from it much and instead watch from the other Moxi or one of the Mates. The Mates don't identify which DVR a show is recorded on (what's with that, anyway???), and it's become a real PITA to run from room to room figuring out which Moxi has what we need to delete -- those hard drives fill up pretty quickly, so it's something we have to stay on top of.

Also, the inability to move recorded content to my computer to regain real multi-room functionality is currently a huge annoyance that might just be a blip on the screen if the malfunctioning Moxi wasn't malfunctioning.

The inability to schedule from Mates is an annoyance, too, but a more minor one.

Frankly, because our expensive (two 3-tuner Moxis, two Mates, one analog dongle, and one still on backorder) multi-room solution hasn't worked properly out of the box, I've not played around with things too much or given any more thought to further expanding functionality by adding more Moxis or external storage. I can't even teach my dh how things work because what's most important to him are baseball & politics, and since that's still analog here, and since the main Moxi can't receive streamed recorded stuff . . .

I'd really love to be able to sing the praises of Moxi, but given the huge unresolved problem we've got with the one Moxi, I just can't in good conscience do so. Yet.

sslund,

It does seem like you are having quite the challenge with Moxi. As a customer, you do have the ultimate deciding choice.

If I were in your shoe, I would return all units.

If it frustrate you as you have indicated, then it is not a item you should keep around.

Good luck on your situation.

Hi oreoden,

I'm lucky enough to be able to shop now for when my 5-yr-old TiVO dies, it allows me to wait a month or longer. Aside from not needing another DVR right now here are a few other reasons I feel good about waiting:

1) Moxi's recent discontinuation of their 2-tuner model concerns me. Quite often that suggests restructuring, if nothing else, some planning/marketing problems.
2) I'm wanting see how soon Moxi starts their own forum as promised.
3) I'm watching to see if Moxi_Guy visits the asvforum more often as he said he will, an indicator of trustworthiness and Moxi's commitment to support.
4) I'd like to see a few less posts of things being slow or awkward, or unintuitive, that is to say, if Moxi truly listens and quickly implements the suggestions proffered and features wanted.
5) I think it took too long for Moxi to publish their most recent update. It reveals that they don't have a skilled manager supervising their software Geeks every minute to fix things, perhaps publishing daily builds as with OpenOffice.

Re: Concerns about Moxi going under.... I can't imagine Arris, Moxi's parent company, risking ruining their reputation by letting Moxi die. Hopefully enough Arris employees and investors buy a Moxi and therefore have an investment in perfecting the product. Too bad we don't have access to the stats as to how many Moxi and Arris employees had a TiVO and are happy having switched to Moxi; and, how many have switched back from Moxi to TiVo.

That being said, I presently have plans on getting a 3-tuner Moxi when my TiVO dies, providing our TWC's Tuning Adapter supports three tuners. Or, if TiVo stops the ads altogether, Yah sure!!!

Bottom line: As much as I like TiVO I think the competition will do TiVO good; somewhere along TiVO's CEO stopped listening and made survival more important than service.

Kerry

But that brings us to the biggest problem with the Moxi. The interface is cluttered and frustrating to navigate. That was my first observation as well as my wife's. Just to put things in perspective, we had Series 1 Tivo's back from day 1 and have had Dish 622's and have used Cablevision DVRs. Out of all of them, the Moxi interface is the most clunky to navigate. Sure if all you want to do is go to your recent recordings it's one remote click. Once you need to go to the menu however, you just have to scroll through tons of clutter items. The Dish DVRs were actually quite well designed in this respect. There were many shortcuts you could initiate on the remote. Even in the list of recorded items you could press the numbers on remote to jump to the first item that starts with that letter. When you have a lot of things recorded, it's a real timesaver.

For the Moxi to be truly successful, the first exposure experience needs to be better. To most the interface is cluttered and very little information is displayed on one screen.

Personally, I like grid views since you get more date in one screen. For example, if you want to see what items are set to record OR what won't record due to priority, you need to visit 2 different screens. This clearly shows that the designers never did much conflict resolution. Likewise, you need to visit each item individually to see what day and time slot they are for. With a grid view, you can take this all in at once.

Here's the problem. The Tivo premier is half the DVR it should have been. It's barely and upgrade from previous models. I could have gotten lifetime for free as i have a grandfathered series 1. Unfortunately they decided to stick with 2 tuners. Likewise they decided not to support DLNA. No support for an extender unit. 3 tuners and DLNA support would have allowed me to consolidate equipment. An extender allows me to sleep in peace in my bedroom without the whir of a hard drive.

As far as drivespace, Moxi even does that better than Tivo. Why pay $300 more for a 1T drive when you can buy the base model and plug in whatever drive you want (a 1.5T goes for around $99 these days). Likewise, if your drive ever dies, you can get up and running by just plugging in a new drive (and doing the 4fp). No need to keep images lying around and hooking up your drive to a pc and executing linux commands.

As far as I'm concerned the only things Tivo does better is OTA support (which I didn't care about anyway - but understandably some people do) and the ability to transfer shows to your pc (nice to have, but I don't care about that either).

Wifi support. I wouldn't recommend using wireless for streaming video. Supporting it would be telling people it's ok to use it and open themselves up to tons of support calls. Tivo can support it because they don't do live streaming - which also causes problems for people who's provider sets the CCI byte.

To be honest, I'm not sure why anyone would buy the 2 tuner model. You get 50% more tuners and double the memory for $100.

From their perspective, it simplifies manufacturing since they don't need seperate assembly lines for two units.

I agree they should streamline the UI. The designers must have spent a lot of time on Nintendo DS's and love pressing buttons.

As far as release cycles go. I think they beat out Tivo by a long shot. I remember waiting forever for Tivo to come out with updates.

The number 1 feature on their list should be delete/schedule from remote moxi/moxi mates. This is something that Tivo seems to not be interested in providing (extender/whole house solution) and in my mind makes the the Moxi much more useful. Perfecting this should help their sales.

I don't have a Tivo, had one of the older SD Directv models awhile back, but the Drive space plus they gave for Tivo did seem wrong.

I agree completely about the interface, it sometimes requires 9 or 10 button presses to just get to certain sections and the button presses aren't always totally responsive. I like the grid view best and don't see the real benefit of all the graphical stuff, I don't doubt it is responsible for some of the sluggishness too boot. I'm really not a big fan of highlighting the center of the selections whether it be horizontal or vertical and I'm kind of a fan of the screen staying steady while the highlighted selection moves around instead of the whole list scrolling with every push of the button.

I would really like more one key commands to get to certain sections, I wish there was at least a plain jane interface option. Another problem I have with the graphical stuff is that if one of your channels or in my case several don't have a logo associated with them, then all I get is a Channel # and the little square, if I don't know the Channel #'s then I don't even know what station it is.

That's your opinion, mine is different. After using the TW dvr for the past five years the Moxi interface is so much better it's hard for me to imagine how you, or anyone, could think otherwise.

For one thing every screen in the TW listings had some ad for Bose wave radio or something. When you would scroll down, the cursor would pause on the Bose ad before moving on.....now that, to me, is a "cluttered" interface, and from what I understand Tivo has the ads as well.

Dave

I agree with Packetlosss with this. (This great feature was available with ReplayTV. And if ReplayTV can do it, Moxi can do it.)

On a different note: The latest Moxi update was mainly to fix a huge bug where the Moxis can think the hard drives are full when they really are not. So far, all is good now. Plus, both of my Moxi remotes are still considerably more responsive since the update.

Simple answer, If you're on a SA/Cisco Cable System, and the Cisco TA only supports 2 tuners, the third tuner and $100.00 is sort of wasted. Unless you allow for possible future Cisco TA updates and/or IP based SDV tuning.

Similar topic sort of: Also, I don't know what the max tuning frequency is for the Moxi, but Cox cable will eventually add new HD channels on SDV above the 800MHz range on their "Plus Package" http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/10/c...-multiroom-dvr

Moxi making their product Tru2Way compliant up to 1GHz would certainly be a great product. Arris and Broadcom already have Tru2Way licensing.

You are starting to sound extremely paranoid.

Discontinuation of the two tuner says to me nothing more than they had a bunch of two tuner models lying around unsold with the release of the three tuner and they lowered the price to clean out the inventory. I expect they will do exactly the same thing when Moxi 2.0 hardware is released.

As for trustworthiness, that's just being ridiculous. Again, Moxi posting here is voluntary and far beyond the commitment level they are required to do.

All these potential "signs" you keep bringing up ... what did you expect? When Arris bought Digeo last year that was either a good or bad indicator of their future. We have no idea if that had a beneficial or detrimental effect on the Moxi or it's team, but the fact the product is still here and they are still updating it should be the only indicator that matters.

As long as the product does what it advertised, everything else is irrelevant. When you bought a Moxi they never said "forum coming soon and tune into AVS for constant updates!"

Having a Mate means 2 essential things. One is tuning to a "live" channel. Even if you have a 3 tuner "main" DVR, what happens if it is recording 2 shows? ONE free tuner for those 10 Mates? The issue I see with watching a recorded show off that main DVR is there has to be a limitation in how many unique streams it can manage. I can easily "see" that having more than 3 Mates with a single main unit can be troublesome. Not to mention that about 95% of the base have 2 tuner models.


I think this is simply a Mate software issue. I think they have the infrastructure to be able to have a really seamless networking experience. Of COURSE in setting priorities they HAVE to look at exactly how much of their current market needs more than 2 mates. Or even one mate... at least in my market (urban city). I could SEE it being better for Moxi to give priority to something that sells new boxes to new customers over expanding what they can do for the 10 TV set households!

While your point is certainly valid, there CAN be a downside. Billion dollar companies can be almost vicious is how they deal with parts they acquire or treat kind of separately. Those "parts" CAN be making money they CAN be hitting their corporate dictated numbers, but still can be cut. A while back, I was working with a small group (part of a Fortune 250) of maybe 50 people. Business was tight, I was working on a medium range set of technological advances to reduce costs, and while this was going on, they did manage to make their numbers. BOOM, one day, gone. 50 people out of work... a lot of cool stuff I was working on down the drain. Why? They weren't "growing" fast enough. Making a profit, yes. Still, gone.

Not to mention businesses will also purchase other companies for their skillset and technology with the intention of using them on something completely unrelated.