SA 8300 HD Tips & Tricks -- SARA - Page 2

Yes, you can have multiple connections.

Yes, you can record any channel/program, HD/SD.

Probably, as far as I can tell using the 8300 and my Hitachi, both Component and S-Video connections.

I don't know anything about the 4200 or Panny. For example, I don't know if the Panny cannot stretch Component because the 4200 cannot output 480i for the SD channels or if the Panny cannot stretch Component no matter what.

If your Panny will not stretch Component, regardless of the resolution (480i/1080i), then you will get bars on all your SD recordings if you view them on the Component connection. However, I just recorded an SD channel and it will playback on the S-Video (and presummably Composite) connection. So, you should be able to use that to stretch the image to fill the screen, if that's what you are doing now. If the Panny can stretch 480i on the Component connection, then you probably won't even need the S-Video/Composite connection. I don't, but I have them hooked up because they were there from the previous box.

Terry, it doesn't bother me that you are skeptical, I'm skeptical too until I see something for myself. However, I never said the 8300 is all-knowing. I simply said it skipped Y&R Thursday, even though it records every other weekday, including other Thursdays. I'm sure we can come up with all kinds of situtions where we think it should or shouldn't record and it does or doesn't. So far, that's the only situtation someone asked about and I;ve checked it to my satisfaction.

Your JAG thing is certainly a bug, but it is rather limited in scope. I'm going to have to make a note of the DST for next spring. Even though Arizona doesn't change, I'll have to remember to check the scheduled recordings to make sure they are still correct.

The time-slot should not be high-lighted based on a scheduled recording if the program is not on at that time. The high-lighting keeps you from using the IPG to record the replacement. You can set up a manual recording for the slot and it will record, I've done it, but you shouldn't have to do it that way.

I'm not sure what you are saying about the Speed Channel thing. Are you saying that you scheduled 2 recordings, that they were still scheduled after they aired, and that they didn't record when they aired? Can you elaborate a little more?

I don't know if this is a serious question or not, but I'll answer it anyway.

There is no commercial skip. However, the FF has 3 speeds (4x, 10x, and 30x) and once you get adept at using one of those, along with the Replay button (backs up 8 seconds), you can skip commercials with ease.

I believe it's been pointed out in the other 8300 thread that the 8300 uses a SATA1 connector and external drives use SATA2. It may be the other way around, but the point is they are both SATA and you need the appropriate SATA1>SATA2 cable.

If you are replying to my post, I've done that and I 'think' I'm getting different results. I just hit Record and checked the LIST. There is a recording for 23 minutes and that appears to match how long I've had the program on. I'll play with it some more to see if I get similar results with whatever is on next.

The interesting thing is I then selected that recording, stopped/erased it, then hit Record again. This time I got only 17 minutes when I was expecting either something more than 23 minutes or just the minute or two since I did the stop/erase. Each time I do this, I get progressively fewer minutes, but there doesn't seem to be any pattern and the length does not correlate to the time the program has been on or the time since I started recording the last time.

EDIT: I was watching Billiards on ESPN and did not change channels or anything. It was scheduled for an hour in the IPG. I waited until 50 minutes into it to hit Record. Well, all I got was the last 19 minutes.

Since another episode is showing now, I erased the other one and hit Record (I'm 15 minutes into the program). Now I get 45 minutes in the LIST, but I see what is happening and why I previously got decreasing numbers. When I look at the LIST while it is still recording, it shows how much time is remaining to be recorded, not how much time has been recorded. So, that answers that question.

But, I still will only get 45 minutes when the show has been on for 15 minutes already and should have been in the buffer. It had stopped recording when the previous program ended (as it should have), so nothing else was going on during this time to mess up the buffer.

As soon as this program ends, I'm going to switch channels and try something that is not on back to back. This time I will try less than 30 minutes in and see what I get. Then I'll try nother one less than an hour in again. I'll post my results.

Come on folks, I know THAT, but now I'm really perplexed. I could swear I hit Record 15 minutes into a program I was watching today and all I got was the point where I started recording to the end, 45 minutes out of 60. However, I did it again 4 minutes into another program and got all 2.5 hours. I did it again, 47 minutes into Cold Case, and got all 60 minutes. I just did it again 13 minutes into Desparate Housewives and again got it all.

The first program was one episode of a Billiards marathon on ESPN-HD. I tried it a couple of times during the marathon and one time I appeared to get part of the previous episode and some of the current one, at least according to the gauge when I hit REW. I suppose something could have been messed up in the IPG, even though it looked okay to me. Or it could simply have been that the buffer doesn't clear as each program ends in the IPG, especially if it has the same name.

I guess I am just going to have to keep an eye on it. It's only something I was doing to test things, so it's not a big deal for now. Tomorrow I'm off and there is a SportsCenter marathon on ESPN-HD, so I should be able to do some testing then.

Okay, I wasn't able to use SportsCenter to reproduce what I 'thought' I did yesterday, so I'm going to drop this subect (thank goodness, I know ) until I can definitely reproduce something.

No, you cannot search by title like your Tivo. You can only schedule what is currently in the IPG and only as far ahead as the IPG, usually a week. You could schedule a manual recording based upon some other database, like TitanTV, but it's easier to simply keep track of future programs and schedule them as they show up in the IPG. I've heard that Gemstar (where many cableco's get their IPG data) is working on upgrades for later next year, but only time will tell what comes of that and just how much added functionally will be available as a result.

I think the 3 biggest problems with the IPG right now are; the lack of a 'first run' flag, the 1-week limit, and the lack of a search by title. Their current way of displaying programs by titles leaves too much to be desired and I rarely use it. It would be a lot more useful to me if they sorted the entire week and then simply displayed the air date along with the other info. I don't want to have to search day by day, it's way too tedious. I use TitanTV or something else to give me a list and then simply use the IPG to actually schedule it. Fortunately, my wireless notebook is right here, so it's not that difficult.

Jim, hookbill is exactly right. IMO, the current title option in the IPG is nothing more than an alphabetical list, one day at a time at that. As it is now, it is virtully useless to me. You have to navigate to the first letter, then scroll through all the titles to find the one you are looking for. That can be a bit time consuming and tedious, especially when the next letter is in the middle of the alphabet and you have to decide to scroll forward or backward, etc.

That wouldn't be so bad, but you have to do this for every date in the IPG. If it at least grouped all dates together, you would only have to do the title lookup (I refuse to call it a search) once to find what date it's on, if it's even on that week. Unfortunately, grouping a full weeks worth of data would make the lookup even more tedious as there would then be just that many more titles to scroll through.

I don't know how Tivo works, and I'm not complaining that we lack Tivo functionality, but if you are trying to find a program in the IPG, you shouldn't have to go through the lookup process as many as 7 times to find something. I'm sure there are a number of reasons why they implemented this option the way they did, but I just find it much easier to go to TitanTV and do a 'proper' search there.

And, FWIW, HDTV Magazine's site has been developing a really cool HD guide that lists titles by grid like everyone else. But, they also have an option to find movies/episodes/shows/sports on selected channels and sort them by time/date or title. It also let's you download the search results in CSV format for import into Excel, etc., so that you canmake you own guide. You can also right click on a movie in the guide and it interfaces with IMBD for more info than you'll ever need. Rigth now the database covers 2 weeks, but that may go to 56 days at some point.