Time Warner Cable Navigator - Page 528

I have an additional point to make in favor of native resolution: I have found that the conversion in most displays is superior to that of any cable box - largely because the display's conversion is often optimized for the particular characteristics of that display. For example (a simple one at that) a display with 768 resolution will be optimally converted for that display, while if one has a fixed output one will have multiple conversions when the "other" one is selected.

I do note that most Motorola boxes (I observed this on Verizozn FiOS) will only output ONE resolution - so you are automatically wrong on about half the programs.

Has anybody had their DVR constantly spin up the HDD on and then off. When the DVR is off. It goes one minute on, and then one minute off. All that spinning up and then off is not good for the HDD. It happens all the time when I turn the DVR off.

I have a 8640 with ODN 5.0.0_6.

Yes. My 8640 did it and both of the 8642's do it.

Finally entered the HDTV era when my dying 27" CRT was replaced by a 37", 1080p native JVC. I've had minimal issues traceable to TWC so far:
- Channel changing on my 4250HDC is consistent - a hiccup, blank screen, then the new channel. It may be just the TV - STB combo over HDMI. Not that annoying.
- HD content looks surprisingly good, as expected. Off air HD looks amazing!
- SD content looks slightly soft, but not as bad as Comcast. Without a 480 resolution selected, I saw upscaling artifacts introduced by the STB.
- Most (all?) SD channels have widescreen content letterboxed which results in windowbox on 16:9 displays. This is probably an upstream issue since I noticed that the channel logo 'bug' usually overlaps into the black border. Grrrrr. VERY annoying. Earth to content providers - our STB can do letterboxing for our 4:3 sets - get a clue!

If you don't like that momentary blank screen, which is the box changing resolutions, go under Settings, and change your Output Resolution to 1080i, deselcting all others. That will stop the flickering, but some critics like the box to output to the Auto resolution on its own.

Jack

It is a matter of picture quality and resolution not aspect ratio.

Thank you Gary,

Corrected above.

Jack

I am one of those critics who want quality displays fed with the native resolutions - but I should point out that the amount of delay in changing resolutions is a function of the display - not the cable box. Also, ones ability to see the difference is also a function of the display. So, if you have a good display and care about picture quality then you want the native resolution fed to the display.

Also... An AVR or other switching/processing gear between the box and the display can increase the delay significantly. On my setups where the box is connected straight to a TV I see differing-resolution channel changes tame 1-2 seconds to lock up... In the system running through the AVR it takes at least 5-6 seconds when the resolution changes.

I put up with it because the AVR has a premium scaler that does a better job than either the box or the TV does. However, once the number of HD channels increased to the point that I essentially stopped watching SD programming, I ended up turning off 480i, so I only have to deal with 720p/1080i channel changes. The only time I end up on 480i channels is pretty much VOD menus and I don't really care much about their PQ.

I had to laugh at this one....my aunt and uncle finally went HD about a year ago and I got to hook everything up and program their remote so it worked both the STB and TV. Showed them where all the HD channels were (in the 800's) - even made a cheat sheet for the major networks. Then showed them the difference between what an SD channel looked like vs the same thing in HD....made a big deal of it and spent 5 minutes showing them A/B comparisons

I visit there maybe once every couple months - one visit they're watching some NASCAR race on FOX...as soon as I see it I know it's "stretched" SD and I said "you know why this looks like "sh*t"? because it's not HD" They thought because the FOX "screen bug" said HD in it, they were watching in HD. Month or so later I come over and the Food Network is on - once again in stretched SD....so I switch over to the HD version and get "Wow - that does look better"......but they'll never get it.

Sounds like my in-laws prior to their passing. I'd love to know how many times they called TWC that their TV was broken when it was just on the wrong input.

Unfortunately, it sounds like my wife! I think she does it on purpose just to annoy me.

my kids are forever watching sd instead of the equivilant hd channel. even setting up recordings for sd shows. theyre 18 and 22..they should know better..but i gave up trying..lol
btw my new sharp is at least twice as fast at resolution locking than my old sony.

Same problem here. We have one of the best HD lineups of any market and my wife and kids constantly record SD garbage. I've go so far as to change the box from stretching SD to fill the screen so the see the black bars. Doesn't matter. I blame Time Warner here for having such bad channel alignment and no Guide Filter. If I could block out the SD channels, this wouldn't happen or at the very least push the AutoHD feature out.

The bright side is... you get more disk space for YOUR HD recordings.

I stumbled on something new last night that I haven't seen mentioned here before... My 8640 will now go into the full hardware diagnostics by holding [Select] until the mail symbol flashes, then pressing [Up]. This has always worked on the Samsungs but I had never seen it work on an SA/Cisco box. It is the same diagnostics menu that previously you could access by simultaneously pressing [Vol+] & [Info] on the front panel.

After trying all of the possible Output Resolution combos, I prefer the PQ when 480p, 720p and 1080i are all selected.
Amusingly, when I select just 1080i and Auto, 480p and 720p are reenabled but Not 480i. The STB is smarter than I thought .

@jcalabria, thanks for the 'full' diag info access. Wish I knew what much of it meant. BTW only [Vol+] & [Info] works for me - [Select] on HD channels gets me the new 'Enhanced' menu.

I haven't seen much stretched content on HD yet. Too bad the provider marketing folks aren't more honest about their understandably 'mostly HD' channels. Sadly, many of my fav channels are SD (ED?) only for now.

Slightly OT, but anyone heard more on DTA deployment?

"Auto" just means that the STB will read the EDID of your display and configure the settings based on the info received from the display. Selecting anything in addition to Auto is meaningless... it will always return with the EDID results.

Although most displays will accept 480i via HDMI, 480i is not officially supported in the HDMI standard. Since it's not officially supported, many displays do not include 480i in their EDID data even though they are capable of supporting it. This is why 480i was not selected after you performed an Auto EDID reading on your box. However, unless your display is one of the rare ones that truly does not support 480i over HDMI, you should manually set 480i, 720p & 1080i and leave Auto and 480p unchecked for true native resolution pass-thru out of the box.


Even if the enhanced menu pops up, keep holding the [Select] button until the mail light flashes, then press [Up]. The diags will still pop up on top of the enhanced menu. You can also just initiate the diagnostics on a non-enhanced channel. You can change channels after you enter diagnostics to read the levels/status of different channels.

yep

Man do I love Navigator!


The first qualifying session of the year in Formula 1 and my stupid 8640 decides to NOT RECORD IT. I know it is just racing but if the people who designed Navigator were standing in front of me right now bad things might happen to them.

OK, rant over. Time to go throw my DVR through a Time Warner office window...

Skipping scheduled recordings has really gotten to be routine!! For me (Signature with Samsung boxes), the DVR randomly skips, maybe, 1 out of every 5 shows (some weeks even more).

I'm largely a lurker here, rather than a complainer, but this is getting ridiculous.

-barry

The newer boxes are capable of doing a good job. Even the old MDN SA-8300 was a fast box, until MDN 3.1 came out in some divisions. MDN's biggest issue is the resident small hard drive. Inexperienced programmer developers and the lack of quality control in writing effective software code is Navigator's biggest fail. Navigator often cripples even the new advanced boxes, because the TWC programmers are not experienced enough to write and test quality code. When you design in house to save money, the effects of the product suffer. Than, you have to play catch-up with the competition. However, the competition in most cases, (not all, as many other cable companies have POS guides) see the value of a quality IPG.

Instead of putting time and research into Navigator development, TWC does not see Navigator as a money maker for them, nor an increase in subscribers for them. I have almost accepted Navigator's issues, cuz it's not going to get much better-if ever. They can't even get a good keyboard search system on all the boxes after six years in development, and you might have to get a multi-room box, or be a Signature Home sub to get it. That's ridiculous! The same is true with the lack of an essential permanent guide filter, manual recording, all the things that Passport did...........SIX YEARS AGO, with much older technology, and TWC still can't get it right. CSR's in many divisions and sales people, who are often independent contractors are not trained to know the differences in the ODN/MDN boxes.

TWC fails to even provide release notes on their website for any new changes or updates to the boxes! They don't even say what is being worked on for Navigator development. I think that in some divisions, the developers may try, but management at the corporate level for the reasons above, either doesn't know, or doesn't care about Navigator's shortcomings. The TWC marketing guys have the pom-poms out telling everyone that TWC Navigator is their TIVO. And because the average Jane/Joe six pack doesn't know crap about the technology, or a lot of times even what the requirements are for an HD broadcast, they don't have their equipment hooked up right a lot of the time.

TWC thinks if the general population customers are just content with Navigator, why should we spend our time and efforts enhancing it? A plus is that they have an excellent attitude about Road Runner, Digital Phone, and Mobile Technology development, and are doing a great job with that! Those other services are being compared and coming out to being among the best ever! Navigator, with only a few exceptions, remains the bastard-child, and the low-point of TWC services, and TWC could care less.

Jack

Let's be clear here, I don't care (even a little bit) whether it's a hardware problem or a software problem. I don't even care if the software was written by Time Warner or some other contractor. From my customer's point of view it's MY problem and thus Time Warner's problem. I wasn't posting with the hope/expectation of an explanation; I was posting to vent a bit, and, just in case TWC reads this stuff, to let them know that even some of their loyal customers are getting frustrated.

You say "TWC thinks if the general population customers are just content with Navigator...". I'm one of those general population customers who ARE content with Navigator. I don't love it, but hey it works. Well, at least it used to work. When a DVR (whether the problem is hardware or software) stops recording scheduled programs, then it ceases to be a DVR. It doesn't matter how good the guide is, how impressive the search is, how clever the UI is, or even how good the PQ is; if it doesn't record shows reliably then it's little better than an expensive boat anchor.

-barry

That's a good pont Barry,

We had a poster here on the Navigator forum who said there were far too many times that his DVR wouldn't "R." So after mutiple box swaps, tech visits, and line/signal checks failed to do anything, he was forced to switch to another provider...Direct TV.

Jack

We really only use it as a tuner with very little actual recording, so I'm not sure. As we try to watch up everything on the main 8300hd (so I can get it swapped out) ... and more recording are added to this 2nd box (to keep the 1st from filling up again) we might find out.

So, I'm going to swap one or both of my old "tried and true" 8300hd (MDN based) DVRs for either one of:

Cisco 8640 - 320GB - PiP (ODN)
Samsung 3270 - 320GB - NO PiP (ODN)

... or higher model of course, if they allow me to under the basic (non- Signature Home) plan.

Do you think my "Failed to Record" problems will go away then? What exactly is going wrong there anyway? Why does that happen?

Thanks again for all your help.

Really worried now after reading your post.

I am getting ready to change to these nicer TWC boxes, to get away from this same problem.

Several issues could be involved:

1.) Age of the box-gradual hard drive failure.
2.) The last MDN box update 3.1 strained the hardware in some divisions, causing the slowdown

Solution: Most likely need to replace the box with a newer model as you described above.

Jack

Anyone seeing this new issue? When I try to set up some shows for future recording in the Guide, I get the message "Unable to Record Now - Try Again Later." And of course later makes no difference - I can't record these shows. Never saw this message before until last week. One more "improvement" from TW??

I'm still experiencing missed recordings weekly on both my 8300HD boxes. I swapped out one of them, and tried to get a new Cisco or Samsung box. No way said our local TW office - all they ever stock are the 8300's. So where do we go from here? I'm currently posting on the TW Tech Support forum in hopes of getting some help, but nothing yet. I suggest others on here do the same - maybe if they hear our problems from enough people, something might be done someday. Hey, miracles do happen?
https://secure.dslreports.com/forum/timewarnerdirect

Also see my other post just above, about not being able to record from the Guide now. What a pain......

If all they have are SA-8300's, you could at least get an SA-8300HDC. The C models run the newer versions of the software, they are a bit slower, but they should stop the "Unable to Record" issues. If you have these issues, call TWC back and ask to speak to a supervisor to find some way to get this resolved. Maybe the more people who need their help, TWC might start rolling out the Ciscos and Samsungs in your division.

Meanwhile my SA-8300HDC has been working fine for about two years. It's slower than my SA-8300 was but not enough to complain. If it hiccups at all it's only for a couple of seconds to a minute or so, and that is rare. We had a tech out when a bunch of channels were coming in, and this had been an on and off problem for about a year or more. Reboot the box and the problem might come back days later. Thought we would need a new box. Two separate calls were needed:

1.) First guy put a new line drop in-problems came back a few weeks later.

2.) Second guy found and replaced a corroded cable in the back of the TV and for three months, no problems.

Keep posting issues at the Direct to Tech forum. You have to register first, if you don't already have an account there:

https://secure.dslreports.com/forum/timewarnerdirect

If they want to set up a service call, accept that service call and than report back to them by replying on your ticket how the issue went. Support tickets on the Direct to Tech forum stay up for 30 days! Just keep letting them know what is going on, and if you get this thing resolved, I just thank them and than use that forum again when an issue comes up.

As long as people are respectable to the Direct to Tech guys, they can be very helpful. That's one good thing about the Direct to Tech forum, they can look at issues that are specific to your case and equipment. So the more of you who have problems with your SA-8300 MDN (no C) boxes, (where this issue is coming up.) Open up a ticket at the Direct to Tech Forum. It uses secure encryption. On that forum for your first post, give your:

Name:
Account Number
State
City
Box Type/Model
Description of Problem

Than you will have a ticket open for 30 days, and set up on-going communication with you are the tech until this issue is fixed.

Jack