Orange County, CA - Cox - Page 17

I have heard a date of Septembr 13th for the dual tuner 6412 upgrade by Cox and I have heard sometime this fall.
All recorded programs regardless of souce: analog, Digital or HD digital go to the Hard Drive. Recording from channel 7 should take less space on the HD since channel 7 is 480i video and channel 707 is 720p video even for SD programs.

I heard "by the end of septemper" for dual tuner support...

But here are my thoughts on this thing so far:

1) I like the TiVo software/interface better, but it's liveable.

2) I think the 6412 has better PQ on recorded material (SD and HD obviously) than the TiVo. I used to frequently record HD material on my TiVo and then watch it zoomed in widescreen. Which was better than nothing, but not great.

3) The fast forward (slow/one click) is way too damned fast. Again, TiVo better, although the high speed (fast/three clicks) is great.

4) I already miss my 30 second skip button

5) I really don't like that if you are watching live TV and hit record the buffer doesn't get added to the front of the recorded show. TiVo gets the show from the begining by using the live tv buffer.

OK. Here are my quick thoughts... keep in mind that I have never had a Tivo, so this is all new to me.

Took the 6412 home and hooked it up in less than 1 minute. Just switching out my 6200. So far I have only used the Component connections and I am looking forward to replacing those with DVI here in the next week or so.

Picture quality (SD and HD) seems to be the same between the 6200 and the new 6412.

I really like the new guide system though. It is much easier to read and it is cool that they now have a picture window in the right corner. I always hated that when you went to the guide on the old boxes that all you saw was the guide and nothing else. Downfall is that it is much slower to scroll around through the actual guide system and you cannot just hit the scroll up or down to see what is on in the stations. You have to use the guide.

The DVR works flawlessly so far in both SD and HD (finally I can record). I especially like that when you you are on a paticular station that it remembers where you started watching and at any time you can go back to the beginning (It is not recording but seems to store it in a buffer). You can pause live at any time is another cool feature too. Remember this is all new to me.

Now on to a few questions that I have.

1. How can you tell how much space is left on the HDD.

Currently I have Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones (HD) and Johnny English (HD) and 2hrs of Olympics (SD) recorded, but nowhere can I find how much space is left.

2. How long will it remember a station that you are on (not recording/Live)?

Say I am watching HBO HD and started watching at 6:00 pm. till 11:30 pm... can I rewind all the back to 6:00 pm? How long is the buffer?

3. Is DVI going to have that much of a better picture quality than Component?

This odd thing happened only once so far..so I hope its a fluke. I was watching a movie I recorded in High Def...it was "We were Soldiers" and in the middle of the movie, it spontaneously rebooted! It was recording something in the background (stargate atlantis if it matters)...and after it came back, it resumed recording atlantis and I was able to go back to watch the prerecorded movie. interesting eh?

As for not being able to record the buffer when you're watching a show..that does suck...but I remember my old replayTV had the same problem..its obviously not an easy thing to implement for some reason?? OH well. I can live with it..its not a big loss.
what I really can't wait for is dual tuners....that will be most excellent.

Warning - LONG Post

OK, I've spent the weekend with the 6412, some observations:

In many cases I'll be comparing the 6412 to the stand-alone Sony Tivo that I've had for about 3 years.

For someone who has never owned another PVR, this box will be the coolest thing since ...well, since you got a TV in the first place. It will completely change the way you watch Television.


The Good:

Although two tuners isn't supported yet, it will be great when it comes out. Standalone Tivo's only have one, Directv Tivos have two.

Picture Quality
1. HD recording looks excactly the same as live HD - simply stunning! It is fantastic to now be able to timeshift HD and to record some of great shows you always wish were on when someone comes over and wants to see what HDTV looks like.

2. Recorded Digital Cable Channels(100+) also look identical to the live program and looks better than what I get with the stand-alone Tivo. In the interest of space I won't go into the technical reasons why this is the case.

3. Analog Channel(1-100) recording quality on the 6412 is different but roughly equivalent to the Tivo best quality setting. In either case, the box(6412 or Tivo) tunes the channel, digitizes and MPEG compresses it before writing it to disk. They do look different, Tivo seems to be sharper, which also makes pixels more visible, where the overall look with the 6412 is kind of like soft-focus. No visible pixels, but a softer picture. Which is better is pretty subjective.

Recording Playback & control of live TV
1. The 6412 has nice graphics which are newer/cleaner graphics than the Tivo, i.e. the time bar when you pause/rw/ff a show.

2. I'm used to the audibe beeps & sounds from the Tivo interface, so I miss those on the 6412.

3. The 6412 does not have the "auto backup" feature that the Tivo has when doing highs-speed rw & ff. Basically with the Tivo, you can do high-speed ff through the commercial, when you see your show come back on & press play, it automatically starts back a few seconds from where you pushed play, which, after a little practive is always right where your program starts. I live by this feature and really think it's better than the 30-second skip hack that many other Tivo users swear by. Bottom line, the 6412 has neither of these features.

4. It took some time to find, but you can skip forward/back in 15 minute increments in a program with the 6412 as you can with Tivo. To do this on the 6412, start ff(any speed) and then press the Right Cursour/Menu key. This skips you to the next 15 minute "tick mark" on the timebar of the program. The same thing works in reverse with the rw key and Left Cursor/Menu key.

4. In a pre-recorded program you can pause and then move forward one frame at a time by pressing the Right Cursor/Menu key. This does not work with the Live TV buffer since this key brings up current program info. Right now, you cannot go back one frame at a time with the 6412.

5. One really cool feature I noticed - If you leave a program paused, after about 6 minutes a "screensaver" mode kicks in. The paused picture is put into a small window & moved around the(now black) screen so you don't get burn-in. VERY NICE!

The Passport/Echo Guide Interface
1. The guide is MUCH nicer looking than anything I've ever seen from cable before & even be nicer looking than the Tivo's. Putting the current show in a window so you can watch it while in the guide is nice, but takes up a lot of screen real estate. Looks a lot like the Dish PVR I've seen.

This is where we get to

The Bad:

The guide, while a pretty face, also has some serious usability problems.
What I've noticed so far:

1. If you want to record a show that comes on in 20 minutes it's pretty slick, bring up the pretty guide, scroll to the program and press select.

2. If you want to record a show that's on at noon tommorow, not great but not too bad. Bring up the guide, use the "day +" key to move to tommorow and depending what time it is now, you'll have to move no more than 12 hours in half hour increments. So, maximum clicks to get to the correct time - 24. That's a bunch but not too many.

3. The real usability problem comes if you need to search for a program by name. Example: I saw an ad for one of my favorite HD shows, "Peter Gabriel: Growing UP Live", so I decided to make that my first scheduled recording. Since I didn't catch when it came on I decided to search by name.
To do this you bring up the guide and choose search by name. Then you scroll to the letter "P", not too bad so far. Problem is, once you're to "P" you can't type the next letter of the program name, but have to scroll through ALL the listings that start with "P".
So now you scroll through "P" listing a page at a time. Each "page" is only about 6 listings since most of the screen is taken up by the pretty window showing the program you were watching before going to the guide. This is kind of tedious but OK until you come to listing for "Paid Program" after scrolling forever in these, I decided it might be easier to scroll the other direction in the P's starting at the bottom. That was also incredibly tedious, especially once I got to the listings for "Programa Pagado". I went back later and decided to count the number of clicks. Going backwards, I counted 46 pages of "Programa Pagado", plus at least another 50-60 clicks to get the rest of the way to "Peter Gabriel". Going forward I counted 300, yes THREE HUNDRED pages of "Paid Program" before I gave up. By then I was on Wed. listing and the listings went through Saturday. So I was probably about 200 more clicks away from being done with the "Paid Program" listings.
Now, "Peter Gabriel" might just have been on an unlucky letter of the alphabet, but this is a serious useability problem right now.
On the Tivo, you have an onscreen keyboard and usually after typing in the first 2-4 letters, you can see your show and scroll to it. For most shows this is a 5-10 click process from start to finish.

The Ugly:
I also ran into the following issues which are not really interface design issues, but bugs.

1. As has been mentioned before, you often get "Subscription Service" messages when going to a subscribed channel. You can channel off & back on and it usually fixes it. This is fine if you're watching live TV but has much bigger implications if it's a scheduled recording and you're not there to babysit it. (see below)

2. With my scheduled "Peter Gabriel" program, I came downstairs about 10 minutes after it started and noticed the red recording light was not on. I immediatly turned on the tv and got the "Subscription Service" logo and the show wouldn't come on. Channeling up/down fixed it so I could see it, but the scheduled recording was not going as it should have. I looked at the recordings list and saw it listed as a 1-minute recording program, but there was nothing there. My best guess is that the "Subscription Service" bug in turn caused this program not to record. Rather than recording the "Subscrition Service" logo for 2 1/2 hours it chose not to record at all.
Fortunately they were re-running the show that night, but if this had been a single run program or series episode I would have been S.O.L. and extremly upset about it. I set it up to record later that night and 10 minutes before start time tuned to that channel and left it there to make sure there was no "Subscription Service" problem. It worked this time and I now have my first great reference program.

3. Sometimes while playing with live-tv, the screen picture doesn't always come back after pausing. In one case it came back about 2/3 obscured by random pixelization. This was not just a display issue, but when I would rewind well to before the issue and play it back, the pixelization would reoccur when I got back to that place. So it had been recorded bad. In this case, the pixelization did not stop occuring until I channeled away and back to the program. Fine if you're live, but not if you're 20 minutes behind live and lose that 20 minutes by channeling away.


Summary:
Great recording quality, the makings of a pretty good interface, and some potentially critical bugs.
Hoping some of the usability issues get improved upon & especially that the bugs get fixed.
My Tivo is definitly not going away in the forseeable future, but if they get stuff fixed, improve usability & upgrade capacity a bunch, the $14 a month I'm paying Tivo is going to start to bug me.
The 6412 isn't going anywhere either. Especially at the bargain price of $4.95 a month for HD recording. With HD Tivo/Directv or Dish it costs you $900 to just get on the bus and the same $4.95 a month Cox charges to stay on the bus.


For now, I'll try to use the 6412 only for HD content & schedule conflicts & see if it misses any other scheduled recordings. With only 12-20 hours HD capacity, it's gonna be pretty tough. The 2 1/2 Peter Gabriel will stay on for reference material & I'll probably get a snippet of sports and some nature-type stuff for reference as well. This will probably leave me with 8 hours or so of room for time-shifting HD stuff once the fall season begins.

Tiresius, thanks for the comprehensive review... gives me a very good idea as to what to expect when my box arrives. I could relate to your comparisons to Tivo being a long time ReplayTV owner (I have 4 ReplayTV boxes). With ReplayTV I am spoiled with complete navigation control - automatic commercial skipping, 30-second skip, next/prev scene skip and complete random access to any portion of a program - i.e. type in the number of minutes to jump ahead or back, etc. With the 6412 navigation control is very limited, not even a 30-second skip. I was pleased to see at least a skip 15 min option, so thanks very much for explaining how to do that at least.

I noticed you didn't mention anything about management of recorded programs, space management, schedule conflicts, etc., most likely because you don't have much recorded yet so didn't have to deal with any of that yet, but I expect to be very annoyed by that too.

All in all, though I have to say from everything I've heard this PVR sounds better than many other PVR boxes offered by Cable and satellite providers. It's not completely dumbed down which is nice to hear.

The other thing I will want to test once I get my 6412 is to see if I can extract recorded programs off the box, including HD recordings. With the 6200 this is already possible via the firewire interface and Windows XP, and supposedly will work for the 6412 for either live tuner capture or for pre-recorded show capture (once you start playing back a show).

hi moyekj,
when do you get your 6412??

I was getting those annoying "subscribe to this channel" bug a lot initially but I haven't been getting them recently. No idea if its because I called in and used the automated "reset" process to reload my box. whatever that did.

I noticed a strange "bug"...when setting it to record a series for stargate sg-1...it was going to record duplicate episodes! in the scheduled recordings screen it showed the duplicates they were coming on at different times on the same channel. kind of stupid eh? i'm surprised it doesn't screen out duplicates like my tivo. i manually removed them and all was fine.

anyway, i think its perfectly usable...yea its not as sophisticated as tivo..but oh well..it records HD which is damn nice...and you can save recordings until manually erased...so that's nice.
i do like how when it asks you something you can quickly choose from option A, B or C...you don't have to move up and down and select a menu item. of course if you hit the wrong key that would suck, cause you could erase something you didn't want to. now that i think about it...there's no confirmation screen...when its finished with a recording, it just says, stop and erase or stop and save...and boom if you hit the first one (a) you've lost it!

I normally like to quote things, but there is way to much in the last 3 posts so hopefully everyone can follow along...

Tivo Beeping noises... LOL my g/f misses those as well.

Peter Gabriell, funny that the first thing I recorded and it was because of my g/f as well... frankly I didn't like the concert, I'm not a Peter Gabriel fan, but I enjoyed watching the HD and thinking how cool it was.

I am VERY anoyed by not being able convert the live buffer into a recorded program.

I am VERY annoyed as you are by the pitiful ability to search buy name for a program. The over ability to schedule programs is very poor. It is however probably the best cable guide and cable based DVR software I've seen or heard about (meaning actually released and in the wild).

The "subscribe to this channel" bug comes and goes

You can screen out duplicate episodes, you need to go into recording options.

I DO NOT like the A B C buttons, because I use a universal (HTM MX-500) and had to map them to my LCD screen which makes them a pain to get to with my thumb. I'd FAR rather scroll with the cursor (where my thumb already is) to highlight an option and then click select to confirm it.

Yes you can take live and recorded shows off the box (by re-playing them) via 1394 as transport streams. However... they are difficult to play on anything but a very high end computer, require roughly 8.4 GB per hour, and can NOT be transfered back onto your DVR to watch later. So, perhaps useful if you have a high-end HTPC that's already configured to display directly to your HDTV, otherwise not so much...

Regarding the guide - There ought to be an options to:
1) Select text size / number of lines per screen in the grid. I have a big TV and would be very happy reading more lines of smaller text, but I know that programing wise this would be difficult.
2) Choose between showing the live/replaying program in the corner or using the full screen for the guide
3) Better search by name ability for scheduling recordings

I am probably going to keep my TiVo for SD for a while and use my 6412 for HD only for a little while, but I keep changing my mind daily... so the TiVo might go tomorrow. I just need to figure out how to transfer my 15 season passes from TiVo to the 6412...

Is everyone sending this coments to Cox as well as posting them here?

moyekj,

I agree, not being able to save live buffer really stinks.

You are correct on recording management & season pass type stuff, I don't have enough recorded to comment yet. I suspect annoyances there too. For example, I've found no way to determine space available.

I suspect I'll get around to playing with the firewire as some point, but as was pointed out, it's not that useful once you get it onto the computer. -yet.

jb510,

I was not a Peter Gabriel fan either, in fact, I still can't STAND Sledgehammer because it got SO overplayed on MTV back in the day. This concert changed my mind, and it's great reference, especially when he's in the ball. We bought the DVD after seeing this, and there is a huge difference in how good in looks in HD compared to DVD. Picture =way better in HD, sound =way better on the DVD.

Also agree to the comments the 6412 it is by far better than any past cable PVR offering, or even any other past guide on non-PVR's. When they fix a few things and improve useablility in searching it will be a worthy rival to Tivo & Replay. It'll still lose, but it will be "good enough" for the masses who know no better. That's the big scary thing that Tivo & Replay have to be scared about, because they just can't compete on price with the likes of Cox, TimeWarner, Comcast, etc.

I wish Tivo would score some licensing agreements with someone other than Directv - specifically Cox. I'd pay a $5 or so premium over the "standard" PVR fee for the Tivo interface.

Cheers,
Ray

First off thank you to all of you for your very informative posts.
I have noticed almost all of the same pros/cons listed in this fourm over the past few days. The most annoying being the subscribe to this channel bug. I called Cox to ask when this issue was going to be addressed. The specialist said that the bug did not exist and that the issue was with the gain in my cable line. I doubt that this is true. I had zero issues with the 6200 and the gain window is the same for both boxes. Anyway they are sending a service rep tomorrow to check the lines. As for PQ I have found that 720p with the 4:3 default off works best for my Sony 60XBR800. The DVI output is somewhat washed out so I am sticking to component. This is an issue with the Sony, the DVI is not true all DVI, the Sony 800 series uses the same circuits as the component.

niesman

Well initially I had a problem with playback of captured HD transport streams too since I'm using a laptop, but it turns out if you use the right player, and more importantly the Sasem decoders, you don't need a high end computer for playback. Media Player Classic does a good job of playback, consuming about 30-40% CPU on my laptop when playing back HD streams. It worked OK with the default decoder and even better when I switched it to use the Sasem decoder. That being said there are some problems with the transport streams themselves which cause glitches that not all players can handle properly, so playback can be hit or miss at times. The real problem is the size of the files as mentioned, so they can't really be archived to conventional DVDs - can't wait for blue laser DVD players+writers with 25G disk capacity to be released in the USA.

Not soon enough!! Unfortunately I didn't become aware of this thread or the HD PVR offering until a few weeks ago - last I had checked on Cox OC PVR offering months ago it was supposed to be SD only which I had no interest in. So I didn't sign up until about 1 month ago so probably am on the bottom of the list... may be a blessing in disguise since hopefully some of the quirks/problems mentioned already may have been resolved by the time I get mine - and even the dual-tuner upgrade is likely to be in place before I get mine.

I must say too that NBCHD Olympic coverage was disgraceful and the amount of artifacting in the HD stream was just intolerable - in fact I find the network HD feeds to be pretty bad in terms of compression artifacts. INHD1/2 and Discovery HD seem to be WAY better in that respect. I didn't expect HD to be Nirvana for picture quality, especially coming from a cable provider short on bandwidth, but also didn't expect to see such blatent compression artifacts. I don't know if it's Cox or the broadcasters to blame.

For me it was a replacement for the original HD Box, a 5100 if I remember correctly. The only complaint I have is that they wouldn't let me move the old box up to my bedroom to hook up to my GWIII.

I have only seen the subscription bug once. Boy what an improvement in PQ for both SD and HD.

Unlike all you TIVO people, I have two networked ReplayTV boxes. I'm probably going to keep the one in the living room just to be able to play shows recorded in the bedroom on the 100" screen even though it isn't HD.

As far as the cable guide goes, it really is sluggish although once it starts fast forwarding it's cool. My two biggest gripes are the difficulty in finding shows and, unless I'm missing something, my inability to block the display of stations I have no interest in seeing in the grid. I realize I can select favorites, but that only helps if you want to surf through the favorites. I don't do that, I scroll through the cable guide and 75% of the channels are ones I have no interest in seeing. The old Gemstar guide let you do this but not the previous or this new Cox guide.

My 6412 definitely has the auto-backup feature when watching a program with the buffer. I was watching CSI:Miami last night and when I was "triple bar" fast forwarding, I would press play and it would back-up almost perfectly with the fade-in to the show. I was very impressed with this feature.

I haven't tested it with pre-recorded shows and maybe this is where you were trying to use this feature.

yea I did notice a lot of compression artifacts on the olympics HD feed on cox...you notice it when there's a lot of action on the screen, just not enough bandwidth being allocated!! but when there wasn't much motion the quality sure was beautiful.

anyway, I wanted to mention that my 6412 does have the auto-backup feature too. If I fast forward at twice ff speed (hit it twice) and then hit play, it backs up a few seconds.....i tried this several times and it works. I dont' know if it does it if you only fast forward at 2x speed....

You're not missing anything... this is by design. I think Cox wants to make sure you see ALL channels in the guide, especially all the PPV crap to try and entice you to buy. I find this very annoying - as you mentioned with the Replay you can completely hide all channels you don't want or subscribe to. I like the Replay guide so much better that I will select the Replay input on the TV and use the Replay guide for guide surfing and tuning to a channel. If it's an HD channel then I'll switch input back to cable box - it helps to have a good universal remote to do this easily.

Not pretty, but couldn't you use one of the freebie programs and break up a show into several DVD's for now after you've saved it to your PC?

I signed up long ago, no word so far from Cox, but I'm not in a hurry after reading all this. Are you saying the new software's search capabilities is that different from the 6200's software?

If I was to search for Peter Gabrial with the 6200....Once I'd found it the first time, I'd hit a button 3 times, then right arrow, and it shows me all Peter Gabrial material for the next week. If I'd only hit the button (forget name, am at work) 2 times, then right arrow....it would search all the "P's"...taking a year.

And the Sound of the show....HD vs DVD. Are you taking the digital output (optical) from the 6412 to your receiver? It should be the same HD or DVD. I "do" notice a big difference cause my current HTB Receiver has no digital input (but built-in progressive scan dvd) so DVD's always sound much better. That will change soon though.....already have my new receiver purchase planned now thats its finally out!

I may see if my email contact at Cox is still good, reference them to the new traffic here on the 6412.....

JET

With my experience the software for the 6412 is as good if not better than the 6200. I think the compraros are mostly to other DVR software like ReplayTV or Tivo. As far as your Peter Gabrial scenario, that still works like it does in the 6200, so long as you've found it on the regular guide. And if you did find it on the regular guide, it'd probably be easier to just record the "all instances" including repeats.

I think for the most part, the "bugs" with the system have already been addressed in a post a few pages ago (the bugs are already known). There are some quirks and usability issues for many users who already own Tivo/ReplayTV, but those seem to mostly be outweighed by the fact that this machine can record/playback HD.

Having never owned/used a DVR prior to this, I think this is a great great addition to my home theater, and can't wait for the dual tuner software to come out. My gripe? The guide is slower when you're viewing an HD channel vs. a regular channel. I'm guessing it's because it takes a lot of work to take the HD feed and compress it into the top right corner vs. a regular SD feed into the top right corner...

-T

The HD feed is transmitted in MPEG2 compression format. This means that the entire screen is only updated about every second or so and only changes to the screen are transmitted till the next full update. Therefore it can take a second or two for a complete HD image to be able to be displayed. This is also why you may see some pixelation or smerring on high movement activity because the transmitting station has not allocated enough bandwidh to handle the volume of quick changes.

I also think that this is a great addition to my home theater. Since I have never had a Tivo... this is all new to me. I own several DVD Recorders that do similar things along with a few DVD-RW's, but this is a nice new addition and I think the bugs will soon be corrected. Just a matter of time as all things new are. I do think that the guide is too slow to scroll through, but it isn't something that is going to turn me off of the new device.
One glaring problem is that there is no way to see how much space is available left to use on the HDD. I am guessing that is why it will delete the oldest recorded programs on the HDD to make room for the new stuff... that is unless you have locked a program on the machine... then what does it do?
I do wish that when you hit the Up and Down arrows on the scroll pad that it would show the next stations... like the older boxes do. Now you actually have to go to the guide.
Otherwise this is a great little device. Has anyone hooked it up with DVI yet? I am currently using Component and want to know if it is worth it to upgrade to DVI?
One last note... since I have several rooms in my home, I got Cox to send me out a 2nd DVR box. So here in Lake Forest (next to their local office) they seem to be in decent supply.

S

Wow! When I asked for a second box they said "no!". Maybe I should try asking someone else. With whom did you speak with skfields01?

Regarding the HDD available space, yeah the system they use is pretty weak. Basically when you go to "LIST" then when you are running close to filling up the box, *AND* you have recordings scheduled, then there will be an hourglass next to the programs in lowest queue priority on your list. And when you scroll to it, the item listed will say "3 days left" or "2 days left" or "less than 1 day left" meaning there will be a recording within that many days that may/will erase that item listed. Kinda confusing, but I guess it works...

-T

A few folks mentioned the auto-backup when fast-forarding worked for them. Thanks for the tips, I'm not sure why it didn't work when I first tried it, but I'll try again. -probably me.

Jet, you mentioned that with the 6200, once you find Peter Gabriel, you can click and see every time it comes on for the next week. This is still true on the 6412, it's just finding something in the first place that can be killer. If you know it's coming on, but not when, you're in trouble.

Knowing that the box starts with the title of the currently highlighed show when you search by title may be helpful though. For example:
Say you know the movie "Every Which Way but Loose" is coming on, but you don't know when, so you want to find it in the guide by Title.
The normal(crappy) way would be to go to Guide, Search by Title, scroll to the letter 'E' and then page through EVERYTHING in the E's until you get to it.
A trick shortcut would be to find a known show whose title starts with the same first few letters as the show you want. Then go to Guide, By Title, and you would be alphabetically on that show and could scroll from there. In my example above, I would go by time in the Guide to "Everybody Loves Raymond", which is on every single night, switch to By Title, and viola, I'd be within a few screens or "Every Which Way but Loose".

Yeah, I know a terrible kludgy workaround, but possibly useful till the feature design gets fixed.

Had another bug-type incident last night. We were watching Fear Factor(yeah I know) and I had to run an errand for about 20 minutes. So I paused the show and left. When we came back to the TV about 20 minute later, the screen was black... turns out the 6412 was powered off. Nobody was in the room, so we have a ghost or it powered itself off. We thought, no sweat just turn it on and it will be in the live buffer, nope, buffer was empty when we turned in back on and I even got the "Subscription Service" message when the box first came back on. I know Cox claims this bug doesn't exist and is a signal problem, but a LOT of us are getting it. I had a 5100 for a year without any "signal "problems". Whatever is was, I missed the final stunts and winners of last nights couples Fear Factor.

We then watched CSI and had no problems at all.

Cheers,
Ray

neyugnt,

Not sure who I talked to. Just talked to a random guy at the OC sales office.

I just received a reply to a tech support email that says you can have a second HD box, just not a second HD DVR box. I guess it depends on who you ask at Cox. Different reps give out different answers.

Tiresius


The exact same thing happened to me last night at around the same time. I was scrolling through the guide and the box rebooted! FYI, The people at tech support know nothing about the subscription bug. A Cox field service rep was just at my house. My signal gain is smack in the middle of the gain window, to quote the filed rep "damn near perfect". The bug does exist. The rep confirmed that the dual tuner firmware roll out is Sept 13 and this firmware update should resolve the issue.

niesman

Well the people arn't talking to each other. If you go back to Steve Wilcox's post 0f 8/20 he reported that Cox told him the subscrition bug is oa know issued with the box.

Well the people arn't talking to each other. If you go back to Steve Wilcox's post 0f 8/20 he reported that Cox told him the subscrition bug is oa know issued with the box.

Thanks for the info guys! I've never had a PVR, so it'll be all new to me also. I am looking forward to it big time...another few weeks wont matter now that the Olympics are history.

I've never gotten the service error with my 6200 (or the 5100 before it) Now my old 2600 DTV box got moved to the bedroom when I got HD. It's been giving me fits a long time on digital channels. Major picture breakup/blockiness etc....and I recently saw that service message too on it. Wierd. Not called them in, cause I still need to get into the attic and switch out the Amp up with the quality one I bought awhile back. Then I'll know its not on my side. Waiting for cooler weather!

Has anyone taken up these bugs to Pioneer? It is their software.

JET,

Remember that the Cox signal levels may vary even before the cable enters your house. On "bad" days, I see more of the service errors and it may be due to a weaker signal to my house.

I understand that, but I want to make sure things in my house are up to snuff. They say you have pay a service charge if they find the problem is on your end. And I know the amp up there is 12+ years old (previous owner, pre-hd, most likely RS) and over the years I've added a lot more tv's and things like cable modems too. I feel better at least knowing its there!

I have one of these Electrolines

http://cgi.(e b a y "dot" com)/ws/eB...tem=5717246940

Learned about it here in one of the equipment forums. They've got all sorts at this ebay store

http://stores.(e b a y "dot" com)/El...-Cable-TV-Amps



Once I get that in then I'll be calling them!