Charlotte, NC - Charter

Hey blackcap-
what channel do you get FOX Network on>?

While DirecTV gets themselves sorted out, I am having Charter come out and install their HD DVR and HD package. I have only used Charter for my internet access the last few years.

Is there anything I should look out for at installation? I looked for what type of DVR would be used for this area but have not had any luck. I am in Sherrills Ford...

I hope the HD quality is pretty good in this area.

Thanks for any comments or suggestions...

CT

I have Charter Cable now hooked up with the Moxi HD DVR. I had forgotten just how bad the "regular" cable channels look. That is why I switched to DirecTV back in 1997. They look as bad now as they do then. The HD channels (limited number as their area) look as they are supposed to. The Moxi will take some getting used to..,,

CT

Nice summary blackcap93, thread added to the Thread Index.

Does anyone else have a problem with the ABC HD channel? The picture is fine for the most part but has continous "flashes" of the screen getting brighter and then dimmer. This is not happening on any of the other HD channels....

Thanks

CT

Has anyone compared these two HD quailities. The sprint/Dish people called again last night begging me to move from charter cable with Moxi box to their deal. It's hard to decide since i haven't seen the quality of Dish's HD.

Currently Charter: ~100 channels, Showtime, 4 local HDs and ESPN, HD-DVR (80GB drive) analog lower channels. 3.0 MB cable = $130/mo.

Possibly Dish/sprint: ~180 channels, Free Show/Cine/HBO/Stz (for 6mos), 5 HDs + local (OTA???), VOOM package (~9 more HDs), NON-HD-DVR (Dish 625 box) 180GB drive and all digital channels and HD NON-DVR (Dish 811 box). 1.5 MB DSL = $79/mo

The only down side i see is no HD DVR without going to Dish 925 box with 250GB drive BUT $250 lease or buy @$700..

What do you feel is the best deal? Has anyone gone from Charter HD to Dish or visa-versa?

Opinions completely welcome. Dish lady is calling back tonight to see if i'm going to do it.

I went from Charter to Dish to get HD. Then back to Charter when they got HD.

Charter's HD package is pretty much the same as Dish, EXCEPT, Dish can't give you HD Locals. This is what made me switch back to Charter. Also, the SD quality on Dish is poor compared to Charter. Dish over-compresses these.

I have subbed to both Dish and Charter, but I will say that it is real hard to compare the two providers since Charter is different from region to region...

I can tell you that Charters Moxi DVR is a piece of junk though..

I recently had 2 of them installed in my home and they lasted about 5 days before I returned them for their standard HD STB..

First and foremost, the Moxi box noticably degrades the HD PQ compared to Charters standard HD STB..

The audio is 100% absoutely horrendous on the Moxi boxes..

The DVI ports do not work on the Moxi boxes..

20% or so of all recordings turn out badly...

The user interface is positively hideous...

I would not reccomend a Moxi box form Charter to my worst enemy

My experience with Charter and their HD PQ had been excellent up until about 2 weeks ago when they added a new HD channel..

Up until they added that new HD channle I would have reccomended Charter in my area to anyone that desired HD PQ at its finest...

They have had nothing but problems since that new HD channel has been added though...

So many problems Im almost to the point of cancelling...

It was a great ride while it lasted

Ok. got the service installed and complete dissatified with it. Let me cound the ways:
1. NO LOCAL HD.. so that means no ABC/FOX/CBS/NBC (Lost, CSI, 24, CSI: Miami, Threshold, West Wing, etc....) 90% of our favorite shows.
2. I have to PAY for the HD DVR unit $250 to lease it (buying it is over $700).
3. Requested the VOOM package. Didn't tell me on the phone i'd have to pay $99 for 2nd satelite dish. Can't get CBSHD (the only network HD they offer without 2nd disk and i have to be "eligible" for it).
4. Compared side by side on 16:9 55" TV in POP (pictures side by side).
HD ---
Charters: Bright, colorful, rich, clear
Dish: Washed out colors, lines running through the signal (tested with SHOHD)
Digital ---
Charters: Clean, detailed, pretty good quality
Dish: Blurry, seems to be too fuzzy (tested SHOWE)
Analog (charter) to Digital (Dish) with PBS:
Charter: decent quality, too "grainy"
Dish: too blurry/fuzzy (wife said "made her sick to watch it...)
5. Digital DVR/HD box. To watch HD i had to get 811 box and then hook up the DVR box in another room and run the signal back to the main (HD) tv. So watching an HD show on DiscoveryHD.. then i had to go pee. Hit pause (force of habit) .. nothing.. WTF? Ah.. i remember no HD DVR.. so switch to Ant B for DVD.. hunt down DiscoveryNON-HD.. hit pause.. REALLY have to pee now.. come back few minutes later... and forced to watch Digital ONLY TV. Let my wife use the TV for 2 hours.. Asked her for her opinion... "Too complicated.. i thought we were getting local HD and HD DVR???"
6. I LOVE the Moxi guide.. i've never been a fan of Grid style. I liked old DirecTV a little but that CRAP motorolla has been pushing and calling a grid with only 30 minutes of forecast has ruined my opinion of grid.
7. No LOGOS.. I like them, makes it easier to figure out what i'm looking at in the channel listing.
8. Too hard to find stuff. I took me 10 minutes to find certain channels, SCIFI, DISCOVERY, HBO, etc...

So after 3 hours of DISH at 11pm i went and uninstalled the Dish box and put my moxi back on the TV.

I had the Motorolla box and the Moxi, and noticed no difference in quality on the HD, now the digital seemed to be maybe 5% quality drop and the analog are about 15% quality drop.



No issues here for me, i use optical to my reciever. I get audio dropouts sometimes, last year, during like CSI and 24.. but that was related to poor cable run (i had it amped and had forgotten about it). That's fixed.


This is CHARTER issue not Moxi. Adelphi and others are reporting they work in latest software but you have to hook up the DVI and then restart the box to initiate it.


I've maybe had 3 recordings out of 300 (record a lot), that go bad. That's 99% good. Only issue i have is every blue moon or so it doesn't record what it's supposed to, simple reset and it's good until next blue moon.


I found it hard at first, but now i fly through it and get to what i want much faster than i used to with old moto interface and newest Dish interface. I like the UI very much.


What channel was that? PBSHD? My HD has been wonderful. There does seem to be issues during highly watched TV shows like CSI in HD and it might be due to how many people are watching it and that fact that it's more data being sent out, maybe a bandwidth issue.

When are they planning on rolling this out?

Also i hear that Charter is chaning the channel lineup. You don't happen to have advanced copy of this do you?

I posted earlier in this thread that I was getting Charter with the Moxi. I just wanted to update my previous post....

The above quote is the absolute truth. To anyone reading this thinking about the Moxi -- you need to read the Moxi thread on the AVS Forums before you go with it. I will not go into all of its problems here, just read that thread.

I got rid of Charter after one month and went back with DirecTV. I picked up a HD Tivo to use with it along with an antenna to pick up my HD OTA.

I could not be happier.

Just to update everyone. I hear that the DiscoveryHD and the new channel line-up will roll-out together on Oct 31st midnight. This is from a tech that came out to work on my Moxi box.

Blackcap93

Thanks for starting this thread and providing the valuable information for Charter Subscribers in Hickory, Boone etc..
Some Charter viewers may wonder why UNC-HD is only available 3 hours a day (8p-11p). We have offered to provide 24 hrs. via a direct fiber to Hickory head-end (like we do in many areas such as Charlotte, Triad, Raleigh Durham Fayetteville with Time Warner) and have offered to pay for the $38k for fiber construction from our microwave site near Hickory but Charter has not agreed to this. We hope we can get this worked out.

Regards,

Chief Engineer - UNC-TV

first post here...great forum btw....I am in hickory and have charter w/moxi box. alright experience so far for me, only real complaint seems to be with our signal strength in the house..(we have 3 moxi boxes and have some trouble sometimes...nothing major though) I think this makes our menu navigation SLOW, there is severe lag when trying to execute a command(record, get info etc.)...I do have a general complaint about charter carrying the MLB/NHL package and no nba package....NHL?????? I just dont understand that at all....just a personal complaint though ...one more...just checked the new channel lineup with hopes of TNT hD....to no avail....oh well, at least we have espn.

also I wonder how long it will take charter to get mtv hd...and also other new hd chanels coming up in the future.

Does anyone perhaps have any insight as to why Charter does not have HD service in Wilkesboro/North Wilkesboro? I'm over 40 miles away from the towers in Winston-Salem so OTA wouldn't be foolproof or inexpensive.

I suppose not!

Sincerity:

I am from Hickory and have a Charter Moxi Box. CBS HD is not that good. The NCAA games have a lot of pixels. How is your CBS HD? How about your analog 2-77?

My CBS is great about 98-99% of the time. During high bandwidth times, evening, along with watching a highly watched show, CSI or CSI:MIAMI, i can see some pixelation. Sometimes on LOST and 24 as well. But in general it is really great. Last year when we first got it, it was pixelation CITY! Every HD channel but HDNet, HDNet Movies, HBO and Showtime were always pixelation from 8-11pm M-F. I thought, "this really sucks", and my wife was often upset about it. We even recorded 24 on both analog and HD just in case. But then after talking with this guy over at Charter's Business Services (he's in charge of the HD/Pipeline data stuff) he thought it was a signal issue. We had someone come out and indeed he found a powered splitter that i had forgotten about between the outside and the Moxi. It was sending boosted signal to the box and was way too high. After he removed that, 99% of the pixelation problems went away. You might want to see if someone can come out and do a signal test on your box. Since you have 3 you might have A) not enough signal or B) too much due to some boosting. Also i think RadioShack sells a little coupler you put between 2 cables that has different switches on it to put a limiter on your signal and allow you to switch different amounts of limitation, to see if that fixes the issue. They talk about it fairly often over in the General MOXI AVS thread.

Indiix2

Last night I almost had to hook up my OTA antenna because Survivor was breaking up so badly. Only CBS seems to be affected. I wonder what the symptoms of too much signal are. It may be my imagination but it seems my SD channels have washed out colors. Looks like another visit from the Cable Guy.

charter has added 792 and 797. Are these new HD channels? Anyone know?

yea thank goodness we got TNT HD in time for ONE....ONE PEOPLE nba high def game nice. but glad we finally got one of the few channels that are completely dedicated to high def...

otherwise cbs high def sucks...as other people have reported. also analog 2-7 are ok...at best. 2 is almost unbearable sometimes. although we seem to be having less problems these days.

I live in Hickory(Charter) and have 2 Moxi boxes. Same distances from incoming cable line. One works great, the other you can't watch HD after 9pm. Lots of pixelation. any suggestions???

Hello all,
I'm trying to get some info. for my mother-in-law who lives just outside Morganton and apparently can get Charter. She currently has D* but wants to upgrade to HD. I've looked into the cost of doing so on D* (of course no pricing yet on MPEG4 HD DVR). I'm now looking into Charter.

I can't get through on the their 800 # (which is a little disturbing). Can someone give me a breakdown of cost for:

Whatever Tier of service you need for HD
Cost for HD DVR (and what model and does it have HDMI active)
Cost for cable internet (if combined w/ above)

Also, what has customer service been like. My in-laws only remember the bad old days of Falcon Cable (they actually drove over their box b/f returning it to them when they had D* installed) and are a little hestitant to switch. Of course I'm a little hesistant of D* HDTV (and this new untested DVR) given they compress the signal so heavily.

Your thoughts and input are most kindly appreciated.

- Zebras23 (via Washington DC forum)

channels and program guide messed up...
Anyone else having this issue on Moxi boxes in hickory around the Nov 6-11 time period?
I have reset it, hit the triggers, shut it down for a little while, tested my cables, change cables, boosted signal and turn off the cable modem. But nothing seems to help. We have no guide info and when i hit MOXI i only get the CHANNEL buttons. There are no channels up and down (on the vertical axis) i can pause, rewind, etc.. and watch all tv and hdtv. Just w/o program guide i can't record anything.

I think it may have something to do with the new iguide they are pushing on the older motorolla boxes and should finish that push later tonight. But it would be nice to know if others are or are not having this issue.

No issues here indiix2. Been running the same.
Noticed Charter has delayed launching their guide tho.