Seattle, WA - Comcast - Page 24

robert4u: I've raised the same question's regarding software/firmware version and am currenly waiting for an answer, As to USB/Cable Modem/etc being enabled I would not count on this anytime soon.

Firewire is not even a feature we offer in the 5100 so it would do no good to enable something the box doesn't even have installed. The only thing that I really forsee being enabled soon is the DVI output.

Currently there is no need for us to activate the other stuff nor any support currently built into the interactive software, the only outputs that are not enabled on the box is the DVI-out everything else should be enabled it is on mine.

also adding a hard drive to the 5100 would be great but once again the current interactive software has no support for PVR functionality.

somewhere around 1st quarter of next year we will be switching to Microsoft TV for the interactive guide as well as offering the 6208. The 5100 would not make that great a PVR anyways it does not have the ability to record HD material in its supposed PVR cabability and its a much slower box than the 6208.

Jeremy

Cool that we get the MS Guide...will that require a hardware change??

The HOA cannot legally stop you from placing a dish except on a common property (i.e., if you lived in a condo or town house building with multiple occupants and a shared roof).

This forum is filled with info on this topic.

Do a search for homeowner and antenna or dish.

nope the guide is certified to work on all Motorola Box's

Jeremy

COOOL! Finally a userful guide...from what I have seen. Hopefully we can turn the banner off for us TIVO users

r0bErT4u,

Beep Beep Beep.....Back the truck up.

The 5100 a POS. What is your comparison? Oh thats right you have no comparison. Maybe you do though, a friend of yours might be using the Scientific Atlanta 3100HD STB for Cable HD.....No, it can't be that because if you saw what the SA 3100HD is like your would think the 5100 is a stroke of genius.

"Can you sense my sarcasm, because I'm laying it on pretty thick?" (favorite quote from Tommy Boy)

Seriously,
You can try to compare it to Dish but HD over Cable doesn't use the same technology as the Dish, this made the equipment completely different, which also means ground-up development.

The fact that Mototrola took this box to market "bare-bones", and listened to what the end-users had to say and have been making constant adjustments to the box for almost a year now. The SA box doesn't even allow for firmware updates or upgrade-ability on-the-fly. The 5100 is less than a year old. And in a little over a year from its debut, Motorola will have an updated 6200, and a 6208 with integrated PVR. That may or may not have all of the functionality you are asking for.

But you are not thinking about one thing....Every function of the box that is enabled, then has to be supported by the Cable Provider directly, not Motorola. That means essentially 3rd party support, which can, in ANY situation become more difficult for all parties involved. Which means alot more training on-the-fly and an expanded support team. Which is all good but doing this to everyone for everything at once is shooting yourself in the foot, big time.

There is alot to learn by the CSRs, the Field Technicians, and everyone involved, even the end-user, when a brand-new product is launched. And for them to know how it will work with all of these different features connected in thousands of different configurations, takes time....

For you and lots of others, the possible retail option of these STBs is your best bet. That way you can buy them with whatever features you want and complain directly to the manufacture if something doesn't work quite as perfect as you want. But this may not be supported by all of the Cable Companies in all of the areas. So you can only pray.

Good Luck....with getting the dish, Is it that much better than cable now, because I've used it in its full capacity and it lacked the support, IMO. But then again that was when it first started, should I have waited? (Again a little more sarcasm to finish off this waaay too long post)

Are you talking about the entire EPG, when you say banner?

Hello Miatasm,

In this area of Comcast (formerly AT&T Broadband) territory, the support & products are almost a year behind. I've read your many helpful postings, and I thank you ... but you're the favored Comcast subscribers. We, the red headed step children of Comcast, are being supported by ignorant monkeys. I hope the 6208 comes soon, because I'm stuck with them. I'm on the Platinum Package w/ High Speed Internet with no alternatives

Thanks!!!

Comcast has no preference over markets. You want someone to be mad at it, its AT&T why you ask?? because they are the company that didn't spend any money to keep the system in Washington up to par. Comcast has come in and has been spending millions of dollars upgrading equipment/cabling/fiber/etc. to get Seattle up to par with the rest of Comcast.

Think we've got it bad?? maybe you should talk to some of the people on here who live in say San Francisco/San Jose market where half of silicon valley doesn't even get HSI yet and then complain. For an X-ATT market we've moved a long way in less than a year and theres even more on the very near horizon.

So you cant have everything right now??? neither can most of Comcast you act as if all this stuff is available to "classic" Comcast Cable.

Lets see what do the "favored" markets have over us hmmmm VOD thats it! Everything else they get we get now.

Jeremy

Yes, I mean the little cheesy banner that stays on the screen for no less then 3-seconds.

You can change the display time by going into the OSD, selecting setup, and then selecting guide. One of the options will be flip bar display time.

Jeremy

If you go into the setup screen and make the box upconvert SD to 480p then it won't output any screens or the banner to the S-Video port. I just use the S-Video port for Tivo so this setup is ideal.

Today I also changed my Tivo (you need a shell prompt to do this) to ignore the 5100 for analog channels and only use it for digital ones. This lets me record an analog show while watching a digital one live and makes channel flipping with the Tivo more accurate.

alex

Jeremy,
I know you can crank down the time...that's why I said "no less then three seconds"

Alex: How do I tell it do to the upconvert??

I am also curious about how to tell it to ignore the 5100 for the analog...let me wander over to the Tivo Community and find out.

Turn of the 5100 and then press Menu right away. This brings up the setup menu. The second or third option down lets you select the format to upconvert SD content to and gives you options of 480P, 720P and 1080I.

The downside is that the box's scaler is probably not as good as the one in your TV. If you only use the box for HD content that doesn't really matter.

One of the threads on serial control of the Tivo has a script called "setup.txt" that allows you to change the Tivo to use it's tuner for analog and the 5100 for digital.

alex

Cool..thanks. At this point our friends at Video Only screwed up my HD delivery, so I am still on my 10-year old RCA.

What are the optimum settings for pre HD (my RCA) and what should I change them to when I do get the TV? (Note: I am using a S1 Tivo)

actually the options are

1.) screen format: 4:3 P&S, 4:3letterbox, 16:9
2.) YPbPr Output: 480p,720p,1080i - this is the HD output rez for HD material
3.) 4:3 override: off(uses whatever your HD rez on 2 is set at for SD material) 480i & 480P

Jeremy,
What networks have 5.1 audio? I usually see HBO, but what is the complete list?

Also, what are the video optimum settings for the above ?

Here in Seattle its as follows

104 - KOMOHD
517 - Encore
533 - Starz
534 - Starz East
538 - Starz Cinema
549 - HBO HD
550 - HBO East
551 - HBO West
574 - Showtime HD
575 - Showtime East
576 - Showtime West
578 - Showtime 2 West
580 - Showtime Showcase West
582 - Showtime Extreme West
591 - The Movie Channel West
593 - The Movie Channel Xtra West

Had to make a correction from east to west feeds.

Optimum settings will vary on the set but for most HD sets it would be.

1.) 16x9
2.) 1080i
3.) 480p

for #1 the only time you'd really use the 4:3 modes is if you had the box outputing to an SD only TV

In that case best would be
1.) 4:3 Letterbox
2.) 480i
3.) Not Available due to #2 being 480i

4:3 P&S is really only for those that want to watch HD material on an SD set and have the box zoom the picture to fill a 4:3 screen of course loosing the side information.

Sorry Jeremyfr ... You're one of the few people at Comcast (formerly AT&T Broadband) that isn't an IGNORANT MONKEY

I have, still am experiencing almost 2-years of crappy service with attitude, endless truck rolls, so called technicians damaging my property, wasting both of our time & money, and I don't see this endless support loop from hell changing. I'm so frustrated, and have to vent

Again, I apologize for my stereotyping of ignorant Comcast monkeys. I guess, all I can do is be patient and put up with the endless truck rolls & hours on the phone

It's ok rObErt, what kind of problems have you been having??

What I want: "native" setting for HD output.

The HDD-200 had this (I still use one with my BUD). ABC in 720p, HBO in 1080i, let me provide the scaler/processor.

I hope this feature makes it back in to the 6208.

This is the cheesy "how to" video some cable operators play in a loop to help new users grok the MSTV guide. But you can see the features of the guide. I am curious as to how they plan to integrate PVR with this.

http://www.microsoft.com/tv/MSTV_IPG_Overview.mspx

Oh, and will the 6208 be a dual tuner system?

MSTV will be a much more "user friendly" back end. Right now the TV guide that you see is the old onvue system which of course TV guide bought out. its all controlled via TV-Guides central system. MSTV will be a local system hence the huge box controller migration we've been going through to support both MSTV and VOD.

MSTV will allow new features to be added locally and in a timely manner. It will be a very easy system to program for new features etc without taking forever for updates to hit the box.

I really cant wait for this to launch as it will be faster/better, really its going to be all that and a bag of chips! hehe it will also be a much easier programming language similar to that of JAVA or whats used in Windows CE which means that it will be alot easier for the programmers to work with who will keep it running.

Jeremy

Damn you all beat me to it. That is, answering Vespa's question about getting rid of the guide for Tivo use. That just goes to show you this board is on the ball.

Yes the 6208 will have a dual tuner.

I am not sure if the topic police would nab me on this, but what the heck:

I am looking at getting a 16:9 HDTV (TUBE). I have been following the postings over in the direct view forum, but I wanted to ask folks local to Seattle what their feeling is on the retailer "Video Only" ? I got a deal (I think) on a Toshiba 16:9 Cinema Series (pre order it and we'll give you a couple hundred off) but I am REALLY afraid if I get it home and either don't like it, or there is a problem with it Video Only will say "screw you." I can't put my finger on it, but I just don't get a good level of customer service from them...it's quite the opposite: It feels like a used car lot when I walk in. It makes me very uneasy.

On the other hand, I have read good things about Sears.

Thoughts? Feel free to PM me any comments.

Thanks

Vespa: I can only speak on one experience of Video Only and it was years ago but here goes!

When I was about 14 my parents decided that it was time to upgrade the old 1983 19" GE TV to something a little bigger and newer. So we looked around at several places and my parents decided on a 25" RCA at Video Only. They had it for around 75 or 100 less than everyone else. So my parents decided to get it and $325 later we were at that moment proud new owners of what ended up being one of the worst TV's we ever owned but thats a different story and not anything to do with V.O..

At any rate at that time in my life my parents did not own a car we all rode the bus and walked everywhere. They were going to deliver the TV and it was going to take like 2 days to get it. Me being the impatient 14 year old that I was wanting to play my Super Nintendo on a at that time to me huge 25" tv was just too enticing so I tried to talk my parents into letting me carry it on the bus etc.

Well the Salesman overheard this and offered to deliver that night himself, mind you are house was a good 20 minutes from the store. He was very cool about it, and it was close to closing time. So my parents went out and caught the bus and I rode with the salesman and our new TV home in his car.

He carried the set up to our apartment and took it out and made the basic connections. The guy was totally awesome and I think that he is kind of what had inspired me to always try to go 110% when I did retail sales. So to me it was a very good experience today you would never see a person do this but I guess things change.

Jeremy

I can see from the specs on Motorolas site that it's a dual tuner boc, but then so is the 5100, but a lot of good that does you.

I guess what I want to know is will it be able to timeshift two analog ahannels at once? One analog + one digital, etc. If so, then it's gonna be a welcome, box clutter reducing addition to my rack.

Ya know Comcast should do an eraly deployment test to the folks on this thread. That's what I think. Yeah.....

It makes me sick yearning for new hardware from Motorola considering what a wonderful job (biting sarcasm) they've done supporting the 4DTV.

The 5100 is not a dual tuner box, its a triple tuner but heres the 3 tuners,

1.) analog
2.) digital
3.) docsis for cable modem

so the 5100 would have no way of showing 2 channels at once, as for the 6208 I wouldn't know for sure. Miatasm probably could get you a better answer on that.

Jeremy,
Great story...but I think those days are over. If anyone has any current VO experience, I'd love to hear it.