TWC Consumer Input Thread - Page 12

Diana could you let us know if Navigator dvr software will have the time channel recording option.I find this very useful.Also will manual recording still be available?

Could anyone who has Navigator let us know what recording options it has such as first run,all,time channel.Also are the manual recording option still available?

I just read about the new SA MCP-100 DVR with the DVD record in it. Does anyone know if TWC will be offering this anytime soon? Does ANY U.S. cable or satellite provider currently offer this?

AFAIK, not that anyone has heard or seen.

Ah, thanks for the data. Not so much times (Passport is weird about that, it isn't all that flexible) but picking a channel IS major. I have to assume that if you pick something on a specific channel, it WILL only pick up from that channel.

On a real quick read, I DO notice that it says 14 days... this is big because with Passport, one only has 6 days ahead, no more.

One real biggie for Passport folks involves the external drive support. Passport has a notorious bug whereby by the time you are recording to the external drive, you lose the ability to pause, rewind or fast forward "live" content. Like the phone rings, you pause it, you finish the phone call and pick up where you hit pause. Everyone seems to refer to this as the "trick play" bug, although I hate that term because we're talking about THE most basic allure of a DVR, the ability to pause and resume what you are watching. Yes, there are work-arounds, but they involve a LOT of work and many button presses to accomplish.

A longer term issue is that according to what I read, Passport cannot do SDV.

Of course, we DO know that there is no "customer" choice in any of this. Once they deploy it, that's it.

Oh, one final thought... it would not at all surprise me if certain features may only be available in certain areas.

Incorrect. The pause and resume function works just fine for those using external drives under Passport.

He is talking about 'trick play' - the ability to rewind a program that you had not previously chosen to record. It is well documented in the SA8300 eSATA thread that there are bugs with this and Passport when connecting an external drive.

xnappo

Nope. In his own words: "we're talking about THE most basic allure of a DVR, the ability to pause and resume what you are watching" (emphasis added). Rewind and Fastforward (the two functions that don't work under Passport) are obviously not the same as Pause and Resume.

Not to waste space, but he mentions trick play in the previous sentence:
"Everyone seems to refer to this as the "trick play" bug, although I hate that term because we're talking about THE most basic allure of a DVR, the ability to pause and resume what you are watching."

And the sentence before that makes it clear he is talking about live content:
"Passport has a notorious bug whereby by the time you are recording to the external drive, you lose the ability to pause, rewind or fast forward "live" content."

Regardless of whether worded well, the point is that Passport has a "trick-play" issue with an external drive that SARA does not have.

xnappo

Diana why does Navigator not have a manual recording option or a time/channel option?

farther uptopic Diana stated that Navigator is a work-in-progress so i think it would be a mistake to assume that the present look and functionality is final. my guess is that they are rushing it out to the Passport systems so that they can implement all the base features that are not possible on those systems.

Agreed. In particular I think they need SDV to add new HD channels. Most SARA systems have lately added MHD and A&E HD (admittedly not the most exciting channels) as switched channels. I am curious if Passport systems got these channels added?

xnappo

Which will make the Tivo S3 owners using one-way CableCARDs happy.
Does A&E-HDlite actually show anything in high-def?

Well, they are going to be showing The Soprano's in HD in January(even with that, the first two seasons are SD). But for the most part... No.

xnappo

1) Some of their reruns (CSI Miami) are in HD.
2) HDlite is a function of the provider (mostly DirecTV) not the network. (Or were you referring to the fact that they don't have a lot of HD content?). At least they aren't stretching SD material and trying to tell you it is HD like TNT used to do all the time (they still do that some)!

Yes.

What I don't understand is with the limited amount of bandwidth that CATV providers currently have to allocate to HD, why carry a channel like A&E which is either broadcasting HD in 4:3 format or up converting 480i?

Thanks... I could be wrong, but I sure remember reading that "pause and resume" was also broken. The issue was that "resume" meant the same as the "live" button, i.e. it "resumed" to real time.

^No. RESUME picks up exactly where the program was when PAUSE was pushed. The LIVE button has no effect when watching live programs.

While the rumors flew, I don't think there was anything related to my market, then again it's very hard to figure out because so few actually tell us what market, what hardware and software, assuming everyone is on the same cable system with the same hardware/software.

What I do know for sure is that TWC NYC Passport folks who previously believed the HD lineup was frozen until Mystro got deployed AND they started doing SDV, were in for a shock recently. Almost out of the blue, 2 HD channels were added AND 2 previously part time channels went full time. So it seems they aren't as out of bandwidth as we previously thought (btw, I looked very carefully after the additions to see if they "degraded," i.e. rate shaped other channels to fit them in. I could NOT find any evidence I could see and I note nobody else has. My "guess" is they were clever and took a tiny, tiny bit of bandwidth here and there, maybe both from HD as well as SD channels. What I KNOW is that they absolutely rolled connection speeds on Road Runner back. Something like 4 months or so ago, a lot of use noticed service was bumped up to 7 down/512 up. I think it was right before the new channels it went back to 5 down/384 up. Like I said, a little bit here, a little bit there.

Still, like a lot of other markets, we "lost" InHD2.So we have a slot open, and are waiting to see what's going to happen (in my market, we PAY for that channel on a HDXtra tier, so we have "lost" 20%; I managed to get in writing they intend to replace that channel, but no word with what).

Yes I thought TNT might be getting slightly better, BUT in the past month I've seen a new twist. Completely useless vertical squeeze. I saw a trailer for The Closer, a show that sure as hell is produced in 16:9 HD. So we have the same fat characters, BUT because it's a 16:9 image, black bars go top and bottom. This was WHILE I was actually watching a Closer episode. AND the final segment of the "live" show had th squeezed look (obviously a mistake, it SEEMED like someone pushed a button to go into this mode and simply forget to disengage it when they should have).

Really? I am SURE I had read more than one post that "resume" made it jump to live so one lost the "paused" portion. I tend to use this function a LOT, so this is interesting. Then again (thinking out loud) in most cases that I pause, I DO want to FF the commercials.

Yeh, I saw that too. They repeated that episode later (I recorded it to make an anamorphic DVD for my son) and the later showing was OK.

Actually, I think that TNT HD has become reasonably respectable (have more real HD than ESPN HD) - but their "stretched" commercials and promos (the Closer close is an example) does drive me buggy. Frankly, TNT has had some pretty decent stuff - the Closer is a great example and I liked Saved a lot too.

I wish TWC would add TNT and DiscoveryHD to our line up here at TWC/Adelphia Waterville, Ohio. We lost INHD2 last night. Looks like they quit broadcasting officially. Now it just shows a blank screen with "INHD" on it, and music.

Cable, as a monopoly, really needs to get their act together and start offering the same suite of channels. It really sucks that some locations get something that others don't. Can you imagine satellite providing certain channels to one part of their subscriber base and not another? Even though Cox is trying to standardize their lineup, that doesn't help much if TWC has more/different offerings. I know that isn't any different than the difference between Dish and Direct, but cable always seems to want to act as one big consortium when harranging the FCC, etc., it's time they acted like it with regard to customers.

As soon as TW implements SDV in my area, I will switch to FIOS so my Tivo S3 will still be able to receive all channels.

Since TW like all other cable companies is required to start using cable boxes with cable cards by July 2007, you would think that they could develop cable cards that would handle MPEG4 compression and handle their bandwidth problems that way.

Dave Hancock just posted comments about that very thing over in the 8300/SATA thread.

Decompression is not done in the CableCards (just decryption).

SDV is but just one consideration - there are lots of things that cable would like to do that one way communications won't handle (like networked DVRs, Start-Over, On-Demand, etc.). The TiVo's problem is that they couldn't continue to wait for the standards for bidirectional communications, OCAP, etc. to be developed before bringing out their HD box. They obviously felt that they had to move with what was available.

Comment on MPEG4: It is only (slightly less than) twice as efficient at MPEG2. I'm not sure that it is the TOTAL answer either - there will always be a newer, better technology just around the corner!

Question for Diana at Time Warner...

Over the holidays I recorded off of Time Warner Cable in Santa Clarita, CA the SD version TBS was airing of "Christmas Story" on the Motorola 6412 HD DVR. Much to my surprise, when we went to watch it several days later the functionality of playback controls for fast forward, rewind, etc were disabled for this recording.

Is Time Warner implementing restrictions to the DVR records via a broadcast flag?

Yes I do feel they are slightly better now! Back last spring, it seemed every movie (al of which were shot in widescreen) was shown in stretched SD! Now it seems most are done correctly.

Yes I thought Saved was decently done... but shed a tear, it was announced they were not going to produce any more of it.

Speaking of drama, has anyone heard ANY inkling about any HD moves on FX's part?

Oh boy, another 1000% agree from this guy!

That being said, I would guess there is a very complex calculation that goes on involving license fees charged to TWC and things like potential and actual subscriber bases in each of those many markets. But what about the local licensing agency?. We know the local license is what gives them an uncontested monopoly; but it also seems that there no real uniformity to what each agency "demands" for that license.