Motorola 34xx &64xx DVR "Official Thread" - Page 69

^^^It's rare, but I do get spurts where I'll have problems of that sort for a few days. Try having the provider reset the box.

When it freezes like that, stop playback, switch to a live broadcast for a second, then go back to watching the recording again. It may be necessary to reboot the box to get that to work, if it does work.

I have a Motorola DCX 3400 and am having problems with the color space. I have a Pioneer KRP-500M plasma and have the TV and cable box hooked up to a receiver via HDMI. To get the best picture quality I want to use RGB 16-235 color space. I have set all my devices to use this. I went into the options on the cable box and set it to output RGB but sometimes when I switch sources and come back to the cable box or even turn the TV off and back on then the cable box switches back to YPPB or whatever (not RGB) so my picture is all pink. I don't know why the cable box is switching color spaces automatically. So, what I end up having to do is go into the TV settings and change the color space every time I swap sources such as TV to PS3 etc. I never turn the cable box off so I would think it would hold the setting I have set it to. I do use a Harmony remote but like I said I do not turn the cable box off. Maybe the remote is sending some kind of signal to the box that is resetting something I don't know. Anyone have any help for this? It is really annoying having to change the setting manually every time I want to swap sources.

You probably have "HDMI control" set to "on" on your receiver or TV. Every time you turn the receiver or TV on they do a HDMI handshake and that's likely resetting the color space on your cable box.

I had to set HDMI control to "off" on all my devices to get them to play together nicely.

I checked everything last night and it still rest the color space when I turned everything off and then back on. I might have to try connecting the cable box directly to the TV to see if it stops and if it is the receiver that is causing issues. It is kind of a pain to get back behind the equipment to do this though

Did you figure out how to turn off HDMI control on both your receiver and your TV?

Yes I checked both and still no luck.

Try switching out the cable box.

If that doesn't work, you'll have to try your work-around. Run a HDMI cable from the cable box to the TV, and an optical or digital cable from the cable box to the receiver. If that doesn't work, the only other thing I can think of is the dreaded component video cables instead of HDMI.

Thanks for all the help Herman! The box I have is a new box. My old box did the same thing so I upgraded hoping that it was the cable box and it wasn't. I guess when I get back in town I will have to try the receiver bypass work around. I use a Harmony remote for my system and someone mentioned that changing the order the devices turn on fixed their problem but I tried that and it didn't work. The DVR is never turned off but do you think when I turn everything on that the TV or receiver should be turned on first? I might have to increase the delay between these devices turning on as well because right now they turn on at almost the same time so I don't have to wait for the delay

I have a Motorola DCT6412 w/ Comcast iGuide software. It works well except for a glitch we've been having when a second recording starts when a first recording is already underway.

Often -- but not always -- the second program won't record. It shows up on the DVR as a one-minute recording (although if you play it, nothing plays) with the message that the recording was interrupted.

A minute before the second recording kicks in, I get a dialog box with two choices: a) switch channels to record, or b) cancel recording. If I'm there, I select a), and it records correctly. But the highlighted default is b), so if I'm not there, maybe this is what it selects?

I'm pretty sure we experience this problem even if we make sure the DVR box is turned off when we leave the house. But I can sometimes avoid the problem if I set the channels so the DVR won't have to change channels.

We've seen the failure most often when the second recording starts one minute after the first (ABC's "Castle," for example, which starts at 9:01 Central most weeks). But we've also seen it with two shows scheduled to start recording simultaneously. One program records fine, the other fails.

Is there any workaround for this? Can the default be changed so it changes channels by default?

I have Comcast service in St. Paul, Minn. It's a DCT6412 (Phase II, I think), firmware 16.77, software 78.53 - A28p0-4.1005.r-8

^^^ Call Comcast and get them to reset your cable box.

Herman I ran an HDMI cable directly from the cable box to the TV and it is still resetting the color space on the cable box. I don't know what the deal is but it is very frustrating. My old box (different model) would also change but it would sometimes go a long period of time before resetting the settings. I just get tired of changing my TV settings every time I change inputs

^^^Are you sure you have HDMI control, or whatever it might be called, on your TV to "OFF"?

I will try and find the TV manual to make sure I have it turned off but I looked through every possible menu on the TV and only found one screen dealing with the control which I think is called "KuroLink". I set it to NO for all the options related to this. I will post a pic later on.

A question if someone could help as this thread is long and I haven't reviewed it all:

I have Cox Cable in Orange County California and have the DCT3416.

Will I be able to hook up the Hauppage HD personal DVR to this and how does it work? I have it outputting to my Plasma by HDMI so would I hook up the component outputs to the DVR and record that way?

Second--is there an ability yet to upgrade the hard drives on these?

Yes. You hook the Component outputs to the Hauppauge.
Yes. The upgrade works for the DCT6412, DCT6416, DCT3412, DCT3416, DCH6412, DCH6416, DCH3412, DCH3416, and any DCX models. It also now appears to work with COX cable (it used to be incompatible with the software that COX uses.) There is a guide on upgrading the hard drive to 1 TB. Search for my username. I think the thread is named something like "hard drive upgrade for DCT6412?". You'll need to search for it, as the last post is from a couple months ago. I do remember that my post which lays out the upgrade step-by-step is post #201 and appears on page 7 (if viewing the forums on a PC) of that thread.

-TNO821

My Motorola DCH-3416 has recently received a firmware update from Comcast (in the south San Francisco Bay area) and I appear to no longer be suffering from glitchy FireWire captures.

I have been doing heavy amounts of FireWire captures for the last 8 days without a single instance of FireWire glitching (and I have NOT been performing my "ritual" of changing both tuners to SD channels and placing the DVR into standby for ~30 seconds before beginning a capture). It has been, I believe, at least a couple of years since I've seen such effortless glitch-free captures. The only difference is a firmware update that I noticed last Thursday (May 23, 2013). I do not know when the firmware update was applied, as I've been doing a lot of international travel recently and hadn't really done any FireWire captures for several weeks prior to May 23. So for all I know this has been out there for more than a month and I'm just late to the party.

My new firmware\software version details for the Motorola DCH-3416 on Comcast are as follows.
Firmware: 16.90 (what the hell?? That number is smaller than the old version, which was 18.77. Very odd)
S/W Ver: 80.48 - a30.1210.r-27 (at least this number is going in the expected direction)
Model: ASTB-0x02c0 (This used to say DCT on the old version...maybe it's a new architecture and explains why the firmware version numbering is lower)
IR Blast: Yes (this used to be set to No on the old version)

My old firmware\software version details from a few months back were as follows.
Firmware: 18.77
S/W Ver: 78.53 - A28p0-4.1005.r-8
Model: DCT
IR Blast: No


Anyways, just thought I'd share that and let everyone know that FireWire captures may now be significantly less frustrating than they used to be, as long as this type of firmware/software update is more widespread than just Silicon Valley.

I got the update the beginning of this week, noticed some changes, the best is being able to use closed captioning without turning it off, just chose the option in the menu. if you miss some dialog, just pause, go to the menu, turn it on, skip back to what you missed and there it is. Don't know if you can use an external drive to expand storage. Have to wait to see if any new or old bugs appear.

Good point, I hadn't thought about the whole DVR-expander thing.

Wow, still amazed that there are Firewire diehards out there willing to put up with (and pay for) this ancient crap. On Comcast you're much better served with something Cablecard-based and not paying for a really bad DVR.

If you don't use Firewire, Comcast has later models of the Moto series with bigger drives etc., these old 12's and 16's are junk. Swap them out.

Info about the A30 guide software:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r27468977-iGuide-A30

Info about external hard drive support (being rolled out separately by Comcast):

http://customer.comcast.com/help-and-support/cable-tv/external-dvr-storage/

I am particularly interested in the upcoming e-SATA support. Here in Denver we got the new software on our DCH3416 a couple of weeks ago. My understanding is that the e-SATA port requires additional work on Comcast's end after the new firmware is rolled out. Once all STB's in a region have received the new software, it supposedly takes 30-45 days for the hard drive feature to become available (this according to what was posted in the Comcast support forum). For me, the feature can't come soon enough.

The rollout is going much slower than originally announced by Comcast (no surprise there). At one time they said all areas would have the new software AND the external hard drive feature by the end of March 2013. Obviously that didn't happen.

Thanks! That's good info.