Time Warner Cable Navigator - Page 583

I have also seen You Tube videos of those guides, plus Windows Media Center on Windows 7, which is nice as well. It's too bad that those companies don't offer the type of VOD selection that TWC does. Plus, there are the local channels and local VOD programing which is really nice. Navigator, I think for most of us doesn't have to come in a fancy box, just be friggin reliable across divisions and that's what has not happened.

When you really get down to the reasons why it hasn't happened: Programers don't know how to write and test code. TWC doesn't care too much. TWC would rather invest money in Digital Phone, High Speed Internet, and Mobile Technology, which seems to be the case, the net result for those having issues is this:

"If the DVR won't "R" what good is it?" That's really what this is about. And in your case Ben, I'd be so pissed at what you've gone through with Navigator, that I would demand free DVR service, (The $10 or $11 off the account) for an indefinite period of time, until TWC gets off their a$$es in the Syracuse area and makes the guide and DVR reliable. I think everyone should do that who are having more than occasional problems with the DVR because of the guide.

Jack

I'm getting complaints form almost every TWC sub I know about missed recordings among a slew of other things. I can't say I've missed 20 in a row, but I have certainly missed more many.

I've found myself needing to do more cold boots lately than ever before. I know it's time when a program doesn't record for no good reason. All is well and good for a week or two after the reboot.

I had to do a cold reboot two days ago, once again the box locked up.

But, the entire week with NO recordings??

I mean absolutely nothing recorded, weekly or one time recordings. The box didn't "lock up" just was very unresponsive, taking five seconds to acknowledge a command. This is one of their newer Cisco w/ a outboard PS DVR's.

The VOD is really nice and right now it's the one thing that I wish the Tivo had the ability to use. I don't remember where I heard it, probably on this thread, but Tivo is working with TW so their boxes have VOD. Sounds great for me but who knows if and when it happens.

The code for ODN 6.0.0_17 has been pushed to my boxes.

That hasn't always meant that an upgrade is immediately imminent (in the past, new ODN code has been preloaded and left dormant for a month or more before it has been made activate, and sometimes an entirely different version gets loaded before it gets activated).
Edited by jcalabria - 10/27/12 at 10:03am

My friend said that ODN 6.0 is mostly under-the-hood fixes (including DVR and SDV reliability) and the version after will be more "visible" changes. I couldn't get any more details though...It will be interesting to see if they add any features. He said we will have to wait until sometime next year to find out...

I showed him some of these posts about major issues, and he actually defended Navigator! His point was that Navigator is just the visible part of the set-top and a lot of the video and recording issues are actually the set-top manufacturers fault. He said TWC has been having just as many issues with the manufacturers and that each new ODN that comes out also includes new manufacturer code for each set-top.

jcalabria - have you noticed any difference from 5.2? could you also post your manufacturer code version (which could be found after holding select and pressing 'up'?

Could somebody else with an 8640 running 5.2 post their manufacturer code version too, to see if it's different?

Thanks for the info!

See if you can find out from your friend if the Cloud Based Search will be a part of ODN 6.0 or in the release after that. I know that the advanced search filters are MSO activated and deactivated from the head-end. Any updates for MDN in the pipeline?

Would love to hear your friends explanation, or any techs explanation for Ben's non-stop problems, and his customers, in Syracuse.

Jack

That is bullsh*t of the thickest kind. If it's a hardware issue, then stop buying it from SA/Cisco. All these others like Tivo and Arris are deploying set tops with stable and full featured GUI's. Somehow Aptiv gets Passport Echo to run very well on OCAP boxes too. As I've stated before, there are solutions to the problem that Time Warner management just refuses to acknowledge or implement. I've offered to pay a slightly increased rate for an Arris Whole Home Gateway. I'm now at the point where I'm just biding my time with the two sat providers and watching for the right deal.

In my (very) personal opinion, I wish they'd take a year off with no "visible" changes. Just spend the entire time and resources on "DVR and SDV reliability".

Granted there are a lot of usability changes that I would like to see, but they all come in a very distant second to reliability. I'd rather have an unsophisticated tool that works reliably than a terrific tool that's flaky. Just my 2 cents.

-barry

Ben has a point here,

Remember that the boxes worked fine with the Passport software a decade ago and Cox has Passport on these boxes today with little to no issues. If Navigator's flaws were hardware related, other guides and manufactures would be having the same problems with the boxes as people have had with Navigator issues. The other guides work fine on the boxes, with maybe an occasional hiccup or two, but nowhere near the extent of Navigator's issues. And I know people with other cable companies and different guides that use the same boxes and speak from experience.

I refuse to let the Navigator Guide off the hook with regard to TWC's issues with cable TV service problems. TWC, your goal is to show us here at the AVS Forums, a guide that can be stable and reliable across divisions and set tops with reboots, pixiation, and missed recordings, occurring no more than maybe once or twice every six months. Than I will accept that Navigator has met reasonable stability proficiencies across all state divisions. But until than, Navigator will be the crux of most TWC TV service issues.

Jack

The 6.0 code has been loaded to my boxes but they are still running 5.2.0_9. This is very typical prior to an imminent upgrade... at the actual time of the upgrade all they do is send a command to execute the new code which is already sitting on the box. For past upgrades, actual execution of the newly loaded (but dormant) code has taken anywhere from a few days to well over a month after it has appeared on the boxes. Seeing it sitting on the box just means that the upgrade is coming sometime (relatively) soon.

As far as 5.2, other than the slowdown that occurs after about a month with no reboots, I really have had no problems. I was out of town on business the week before last and my 8640 flawlessly recorded over 30 programs between Sunday and Friday, including multiple correctly negotiated conflict resolutions. This was not an unusual occurrence... recording reliability has been very good here. Whatever system-level variables that exist that can affect Navigator's performance and reliability have fallen together the right way here... and it's not just me... the Charlotte TWC thread has been quiet as well.

I did witness an oddity last night that really isn't a big problem but is annoying and probably should be tweaked in the box's logic. Contrary to my typical routine, I actually was watching TV live last night... and the shows I was watching were also being recorded as regular series recordings. In the 9pm slot I was watching/recording CSI: NY on CBS and recording Fringe on Fox. At 10pm, the box was scheduled to record Blue Bloods on CBS and Haven on SyFy. Instead of the tuner that was already on CBS just staying there to record Blue Bloods, the tuners flip-flopped... the Fringe tuner changed to CBS for Blue Bloods and the CSI tuner changed to SyFy for Haven. If I hadn't been watching live I never would have known or cared that it had happened this way, but watching live it just seemed like an odd thing for it to do.

I interpreted my friend's comments a little differently - he didn't say the problems were hardware related, rather that some of the problems were firmware related, hence me asking about the manufacturer version #. I believe the manufacturers have True2Way firmware running underneath, and designed especially for, the visible layer - Navigator.
Edited by firemoth88 - 10/27/12 at 4:38pm

I have the same situation above.

Jack

Charlotte area with Signature Home. Exact same experience here. Are we just lucky?

I've noticed the ODN 6.0 sitting on the box for well over a month now. I'm very skeptical of any big improvements coming. I really think TWC will limp Navigator along. They just don't care about it. They know that customers are leaving because of it, but they know the majority of subs just don't know any better and will take the abuse.

Well said. They're counting on the people that don't know any better to keep making them $$$. The one thing Time Warner has going for them is phone and internet but I can't imagine Diectv wouldn't get into that aspect someway or another in the near future. That's the main reason holding me back from switching to Directv and when Google finally gets their internet going here I'll probably go ahead and ditch TW for Directv.

I feel the same way. The best we'll get is a mass distribution of the Advanced Search filters on more of the legacy boxes and for some reason, I have a feeling that this will be it. I'll bet even than, they won't do what is so simple and default the search to ALL for the keyboard. Customers will have to press six buttons to set it to "ALL." Or even just a simple make the basic keyboards search for all words keyed into the keyboard by default. OR have it so that the customer can choose what he/she wants the default setting to be and it stays that way until changed in settings. I have neighbors and friends who keep missing their shows, because they falsely think that the keyboard finds everything keyed into the system. And of course why would they think anything different? This is 2012. Any keyboard should be able to search by keywords. However, than I have to say, "Nope, any keyboard EXCEPT Navigator. Welcome to 1995."

I will submit that with the exception of the 30-45 day slowdown, I have not had too many issues with Navigator. Just lucky I guess. However, so many things that TWC has done with the service have become so disappointing. If Navigator represents quality control on a broad based scale, it certainly has NOT achieved reliability standards or feature standards associated with modern technology. Let's look at the specifics of some of the disappointments:

Navigator Letdown#1 ODN 4.0 (Florence) was a build that was supposed to have Auto HD. For Ben's division, this was not as good as a guide filter, but at least it would stop his family from watching SD content when the HD channel exists by Auto tuning to that station. Users, with smaller hard drives who wish to conserve space could turn off the Auto HD in settings. However, test runs showed that this feature bricked a bunch of boxes because head-end nodes were not ready to tune into a bunch of HD channels all at once. The operators turned it off until ready.

Navigator Letdown #2: Finally ODN 5.2 and MDN 3.5 activate it in some systems. For about three days or so, Ben's got about 70 channels on the Auto HD. The next day, it goes down to about 15 channels. WHAT A DOWNER! And once again, not a problem for the competition, where you can Auto HD any channel. But Ben's division dangles the winning lottery ticket, than takes it away.

Navigator Letdown #3: Last year, I get all excited because Navigator 5.0 got keyword search. But than, find out that you can only get a feature, available TEN YEARS AGO on boxes with much less memory, by paying more money to get a Whole House DVR or Signature Home subscription. Why should the consumer have to pay extra for a technology offered by the competition a decade ago, as a standard part of the service?

Navigator Letdown#4: We are told that a revolutionary new guide is coming, but get little more than a new color scheme and some minor changes where Access Menu becomes "Find Channels" and Find Shows is now "Search." The "What's on Now" from the old version of the A button is gone. Now "Find Shows" just brings up a list of channels and locations. But only selected channels are shown. There's no locals and that feature just doesn't mean that much. "B" Search still brings up the dumb "Search by Title Only." The Guide Filter? Nice, but it only works on the time grid. A true 2012 guide filter should have the ability to filter the search screens.

Navigator Letdown #5: Too much inconsistency across divisions. Missed recordings, reboots, pixiation, clueless CSR's and techs. "Work arounds" for bad code.

I mean seriously, and I am speaking for the good divisions now. What can you honestly say is modern, reliable, and consistently functional with regards to this software? Six years and we get a couple of menu changes and a mild color scheme, with the same issues that Navigator had when it first came out?

We are all sitting here like Ralphie in A Christmas Story waiting for his Red-Ryder BB-Gun, which, using that analogy is a reliable guide across divisions, with feature sets that reflect modern technology. But talk to anyone associated with the guide at TWC and they are like, "Changing the guide and making it modern is dangerous. We don't want Customers shooting their eye out!"

This would be funny! But the harsh reality is how much longer are customers going to have to pay monthly fees for a guide that has been one letdown after another? It just doesn't seem right.

Jack

The Walking Dead didn't record on Sunday Night. No Signal was the explanation but I went to AMC HD and it works fine. I even checked the signal from my Tivo and it was strong as every channel is. I called Tivo since I couldn't get a straight answer from TW. Tivo investigated my issue a little further and said my RS Uncorrected was at 396 and it should read 0. I've had this issue before and TW never did anything about it other than fiddle with some wires and update the coaxial lines. Tivo suggested I get an attenuator or a low pass filter if TW could not resolve my issue. Anyone ever hear of an attenuator or low pass filter?

Yea, TWC may apply return amps, aatenuator or other signal leveling devices, but they will likely not do much for you since you have a Tivo. They should, but they won't. They'll likely blame it on the Tivo and try to convince you to get one of their POS DVR's. Consider yourself lucky as one member missed a whole week of recordings. This is one reason, I'm leery of investing in Tivo with Time Warner.

I ran a couple of searches and didn't see a thread on my problem. If I missed it, I apologize.

On 10/27 a show I was watching froze. I reset the box (with power still plugged in). This unfroze the video, but it made the clock display 5 hours fast. In my List, all of the recordings show they were recorded 5 hours later than they were. e.g., a show recorded at 4:00 pm said it was recorded at 9:00 pm.

I power cycled the box. Still 5 hours fast.

Called tech support. They had me power cycle. No change. They "sent a signal" to my box and then had me power cycle. No change (except that it disabled my HD channels). They got my HD channels back, but the time still shows 5 hours fast.

The tech guy said that "a technician is now working on this." He thought it might be a problem with time zone settings on TW's end.

I've reset the box daily, but no change.

I have a Cisco HD DVR. I'm not at home so I can't confirm which model number it is.

I can still record and watch shows, it's just annoying that my clock and guide display 5 hours fast.

Anyone had or heard of this issue before? Any suggestions for fixing this?

I had three shows in a row set to record on ABC Sunday night 8PM to 11PM (Once Upon a Time, Revenge, 666 Park Avenue) - no other shows set to record on Sunday - disk is only 48% full. Went upstairs about 8:30 and the "Record" light was on on the 8300HD). Yesterday when I went to watch them, none of them were in the recorded programs list - talk about pissed. I've had dropped recording once in a while, but never three in a row like this. Thank goodness I kow all about torrents.

I've never had any problems with the Tivo! TW did a switch with some of their channels a few weeks ago and one of them is AMC HD. Something to do with SDV. That's when the problems started. I don't BS and I can assure everyone that Tivo with TW Cable Card and Tuning Adapter is better than TW DVRs, hands down. In the 2+ years I've had Tivo I can't think of one recording problem, one signal issue, or channel freezes that I've had. It's a weekly occurance with my TW DVR.
What should I tell the TW Tech? Is there a way to fix the RS Uncorrected? Should it be at 0? Could this be the reason why the Walking Dead won't record on AMC HD?

Is your DVR run throught a Receiver? If is turn your receiver and TV off when you reboot the DVR. Mine use to always show 7:00 if my receiver was on when I would rebooted the dvr, whould show right time is receiver was OFF>

No receiver. Just straight from the wall into the box.

I have googled the hell out of this, but I can't seem to find any other people with this problem. No matter what forum or blog I look at. I'm feeling lonely.

I'm not blaming the TiVo and I know it's superior to Time Warner's garbage. I'm merely stating that getting TW to support it may possibly be an issue. TiVo engineers had a solution some time ago for SDV which would eliminate the need for tuning adapters. They wanted to use an IP back channel to the headend. The cable companies basically refused to listen so TiVo users were stuck waiting for buggy tuning adapters. TW wants you using their box and no one else's. In the minds of the people at TW, their DVR is the best and they can't fathom why anyone would want to switch providers or use another. This was evident in a recent chat session where it was like pulling teeth to find out how much my service was going to be when I drop cable and/or phone keeping just Internet. The rep actually had the nerve to stay that I wouldn't have to worry about what the rate would be or the modem fee if I just remained a Sig Home subscriber.

Like I said, never had problems with it until last week. The TW people think I'm crazy for using a cable card, tuning adapter, and paying an extra $15/month for another DVR. I tell them that's what I have to do to get a suitable DVR! They laugh but I have a better DVR and a better overall experience watching tv than the rest of their customers. TW is a joke and I hate calling them for anything but I think I might have to break down and do it to get this issue resolved. I thought I had a Tru2Way Cable Card but I think I have the one that came before it. Could this be the reason why I'm having issues?

Samsung boxes in San Diego got a new OS/Middleware update to v5.0.2.8. ODN is the same at v5.2.0_9 and this release fixed some related to the Middleware interfacing with Navigator. 

This could also mean that ODN 6.0 could hit sooner, rather than later.

Jack