Cisco 8640HDC HD-DVR Thread - Page 6

Thanks for the input. The reboot fixed it--glad it was so simple!

I just got a Cisco 8640 on Monday. I am having the same exact problem watching recorded shows. I am in the Charlotte area as well.

After a month of phone calls from Brighthouse and postcards in the mail warning of a pending update, it finally happened on July 20th. I was out of town. My fear was it would happen while out of town and it would mess up my scheduling. Their postcard recommended that everyone note the Picture size, Output resolution, Aspect ratio, audio settings, and closed captioning settings.

I returned to find the update applied, and all of my recordings recorded and settings unchanged. Immediately I noticed when I turned it on that it went to 1080i. So this version appears to have fixed the resolution issue.

It also adds the following features:
1) New functionality of the FAV button. Now you can use it to skip from FAV to FAV while browsing the Guide.
2) Improved searching capabilities (not sure what this means yet)
3) Ability to find future viewing times and additional episodes for a show in progress.
4) Ability to switch back and forth between two live shows and rewind each show at any time.
5) Power save option: box can be set to automatically enter power save mode after 4 hours of inactivity.

So far so good. It does seem to be more responsive than the old firmware.

Info:
Brighthouse Networks
Central Florida
Cisco 8640HDC w 320gb
ODN Version: 3.2.0_15 2009/12/07 09:24
Vizio GV47L 47" 1080P LCD TV
connected via HDMI cable

I'm on my third 8640 box and with each I had the screen flicker at different levels of severity. The flickering does not make it into the recordings. I thought it was a cable signal issue, but when I disconnected the cable from the 8640 I noticed that the TV screen was still flickering every once in a while. When I connect the TV to other components there is no flicker, so it's not the TV. I have also tested using different HDMI cables and the problem does not go away. Anyone out there experiencing picture flickering with the 8640 HDC?

1, 3, and 4 were features of Passport 3 years ago so finally 3 years later they added them to Navigator.

Be thankful not mad, trust me.

I just picked up an 8640HDC yesterday from the Oneida office in Central New York and it has the HDMI problem as well.

It defaults to 480i when I turn on the DVR when it should be displaying 1080i(Weather Channel HD is power on channel). The only work around I have discovered is to hit the aspect ratio button # and cycle through until it appears normal again and for some reason this switches it to 1080i. Really annoying!

It seems a bit faster than my 8240HDC and the extra storage is nice.

The other two work arounds are setting your power on channel to a sd channel or connecting via component.

3 out of the 5 "upgrades" they added were available when they had Passport. It only took them 3 years to add a functionality to navigator that Passport had LMAO

I received the 8640 DVR box here in the Raleigh area a few weeks ago, and last week attached it via HDMI to my new Sony KDL 40ex400. I seem to be having a more severe version of the "bug" everyone else mentions. If I turn off the TV for more than about 30 seconds, when I turn it back on I get either a black screen with "No Signal" or "Unsupported Signal", or blank light blue screen with no message at all. I have to unplug the cable box and then reboot it, at which time it functions normally the rest of the time that both the TV and cable box are powered on.

I have tried switching to an SD channel before turning off the TV, turning off the box 1st, turning off the box last, etc, and no combination seems to work.

Any suggestions (other than going to component cables)? This is very frustrating! Thanks in advance...

AFAIK, Raleigh was one of the first systems to get the patch for the resolution bug, so I think your problem is not related to that.

What happens if the TV is turned on first, then the box. HDMI devices should be turned on starting at the display and work back up the chain with the source device (the 8640) turned on last. Some combinations of devices are more tolerant of variations in startup sequence, but some aren't.

I have not played with any Sony TVs recently, but many reports here lead me to believe that Sony TVs do not fully participate in the handshake process unless that particular input is currently selected. Might want to check that out to see if it has any bearing on your issue.

Fortunately, in my case the 8640 doesn't seem to care what power-up order or input selections are made downstream of it (8640 > Onkyo AVR > Panasonic plasma TV).

+1,000,000

I've been researching HDMI with cable boxes because of my issues and it appears to be a combination or poor hardware and software design. No matter what I do with timing or sequence, I cannot get the HDMI connection to work because of the ridiculous HDCP handshake issue. I've actually stopped recommending HDMI to people now and will be using component cables on future installs because HDMI is so buggy. I'm pretty pissed recently with Time Warner over a number of things and this is just another.

When is Hollywood going to wake up and just allow for the removal of HDCP? It's a totally worthless copy protection. It's the same as all these restrictions they want to put on handguns. Doesn't help anything and only hurts the good guy.

Thank you for the reply. I just now tried turning the TV on before the cable box, and what happened was: TV on, light blue screen came up along with display info, then I powered on cable box, screen went black, then "unsupported signal" message. This happened after turning the cable box off first then the TV, as well as the reverse order of shutting down.

I've got a set of component cables coming from Amazon, hopefully that will solve it. I've been avoiding calling Time Warner because I've already had my boxes switched out several times over the past few months, but this is pretty frustrating.

DirecTV uncompressed? LOL! First time I've seen that confused statement.

After some more experiment, I've found that the following steps usually, but not always, result in proper function.

Turn cable box to SD channel
Turn off TV
Turn off cable box
......
Turn on TV
Turn on cable box

Sometimes though even after following those steps, when I turn on the TV I immediately get that light blue blank screen... just waiting on a set of component cables to arrive from Amazon now, crossing my fingers they get rid of this nonsense.

I called Time Warner (of Western New York) a few days ago to see if they had any information about the 1080i problem. Unfortunately, the rep was completely unaware of the issue. The only thing he could suggest was swapping the box for an 8300HD.

For the record, my 8640HDC with ODN 3.2.0_15 is connected via HDMI to my Onkyo TX-SR605 receiver which is then connected by HDMI to my Samsung LN-S4695D television.

I am going to return my 8640 for an 8240. There are too many issues with this box.

First there is the HDMI issue. Why should I have to fiddle with anything to get it to work? I am paying for this crap.

Secondly, it doesn't record properly. After many manual reboots it still does not record some shows for the full length.

And third it is always acting up. A few minutes ago it wouldn't let me stop a show from playing and I could not get any response from the box. It also displays strange things on the LCD on the box. When it should be displaying the time it will display the number 2 for example. It also drops audio many times during shows which I can't stand and it pauses shows sometimes!



I like the extra storage but how on earth did this useless piece of crap get the approval of anyone at Time Warner? Give me my 8240 back!

Is anyone else seeing vertical stripes in the CNY area? I am seeing faint vertical lines or stripes on certain channels such as HLN and Discovery. They are 1 inch wide each on my 46 inch screen and they cause distortion. They fill the whole screen and when I zoom using the DVR they increase in size so it is not the television. Bad input signal or bad video processor?

Hello All,

I just picked up 2 Cisco 8640HDC boxes. I kept one of my SA 8300HDC boxes just in case I don't like the new box. First thing I checked was the HDMI bug everyone is having. Sure enough, I have it too. To get around this for now, I setup my Harmony Remote to automatically go through the Settings menus to fix the resolution everytime I turn the DVR on/off. This is a large number of steps and it takes damn near 20 seconds to power everything on/off now!

I figure I can live with this bug for now, because having double the recording space is well worth it. I do have a few questions though:

- How is the reliability of the scheduled recordings on this box?
- Is TWC aware of the HDMI bug?
- Do you think TWC is working on a fix for the HDMI bug?
- Are there any other big problems with this box?

I can live with a certain number of bugs, assuming they will eventually get around to fixing most of them. These boxes are hard to come by, so I really don't want to go back to the 8300 if I don't have to. I'm assuming the hardware in this box is far superior to the 8300. The two things that matter most to me are 1) reliability of scheduled recordings, and 2) plenty of hard drive space.

Time Warner knows about the HDMI bug but they are ignoring the issue. As for recording reliability it may or may not work. At first my 8640 worked very well but lately it has become almost unusable. Shows record sometimes and not others, sometimes only half of the show will record. It literally just froze while I typed this.

I had some strange extra recordings when I first got the 8640, but I think they were due to some coincidental guide issues. Has not missed or cut off a single recording in the two months that I have had mine.

HDMI bug has been long ago fixed in a patch for ODN 3.2. Your question should be why your division hasn't issued the fix that has been deployed elsewhere many months ago.

My problem with the 8640 is just how friggin' S-L-O-W it is.

I noticed you picked up your box from the Oneida office, I'm also in Oneida. I hope that isn't a bad omen for me. I've only had the box for one night and so far it has recorded everything I've setup. I set up a few test recordings, using different recording options. I will keep my 8300HDC for a few weeks longer and see how the 8640HDC performs. Thanks for the reply.

That is strange that we don't have the same version as you. Are you in an area that gets updates sooner, for beta testing or something?

Actually, yes... but 3.2.0_15 has been out since January and has been rolled out to many systems. Systems still on 3.1 are behind the curve.

We are on ODN 4.0 now here... Charlotte is the first site to offer whole house DVR and 4.0 supports that but is otherwise identical to 3.2.

When you say that the HDMI bug has been fixed in ODN 3.2 with a patch... was this patch included in the 3.2.0_15 update? or should I be looking at a specific version of the stack? My box has stack version 1.4.5.1508. The HDMI bug is not as severe as when my box was running ODN 3.1, but the HDMI is still not working as well as it did with my old 8300HD. It takes a little while to sync with my TV. When I switch from a SD to a HD channel... first I get the full picture with sound, then it goes black, then the sound comes in and after a couple of seconds I get both the sound and picture. Once in a while I get voice/sound drops and once in a blue moon I get a screen full of white noise. Are you having a similar experience with your 8640HDC? Btw, I agree when you say that the box is slow, but maybe this is an issue that will be resolved in future releases. This is a new platform and I doubt that TWC spent too much time optimizing its performance before it released it.

I do not know if the patch was part of the main stack or another piece of software lurking in there. What I do know is that many months ago Raleigh already had 3.2.0_15 and was still having the HDMI issue on their 8640s, then a "mystery" download occurred that fixed the HDMI issue. I don't think anyone here know exactly what changes with the fix, other than it not being inherent in 3.2.0_15 itself. AFAIK, no system on any version of 3.1 has ever had the HDMI fix applied.

I have had absolutely no HDMI issues with my 8640. It is set to output all sources at native resolution (480i, 720p & 1080i turned on... 480p turned off) and it does just that every time without issue (it is connected to an Onkyo 876 AVR). When it is connected directly to my TV the resolution changes are very quick... but my AVR adds some delay similar to what you describe. It has been good both with 3.2.0_15 and now with 4.0.1_0. I don't know the stack version off the top of my head, but I can check later. It was updated with ODN 4.0 over a month ago.

FYI, our system (Charlotte) is a late comer to the 8640 party - Charlotte was THE Samsung 3090 pilot system and the Sammies are pretty well entrenched here... it was somewhat of a surprise that they gave me an 8640 as a replacement when my 3090 died last month. I would prefer the 3090 over the 8640 based on speed and the full screen guide, but other than that the 8640 has been trouble-free. The only relatively minor quirk I've noticed is that when coming out of a FF operation, occasionally there will be no audio... briefly pausing and restarting gets the audio back. I would say this happens 1-2 times a week at most (I watch virtually all of my TV via DVR time-shift, so that's not really all that often.