Pace CableCARD HD Boxes (TDC779X, TDC778X and DC757X) - Page 7

Bummer. I have a Sony HT-SF2000 with HDMI input/output. After reading your post, I went to Wal*Mart and picked up an optical cable. There are two TOSLINK inputs on the receiver, SAT and VIDEO1. I was hoping I'd get Dolby by simply using the SAT input. Nope.

But when I plug it into the VIDEO1 input it passes Dolby fine - just no picture!

I looked at the inscrutable manual and thought maybe it was a simple deal to select a different sound source for the satellite input, but no.

Anyone have any ideas? This receiver seems determined to get audio over HDMI.

Later on this evening: Sheesh. I was looking at the Home Theater in a Box forum to get ideas. For some reason, my SAT TOSLINK input doesn't seem to work as expected, but as I mentioned before, the AUDIO1 TOSLINK seemed to pass Dolby fine. So I ran the HDMI from the PACE directly to the TV and use the receiver to process just the audio from the PACE. Seems to work ok - although there's a great volume difference between Dolby and non-Dolby shows.

Hopefully the Dolby over HDMI will be fixed soon so I can recover my TV's extra HDMI input.

Did you go into the setup menu on you receiver and change the input?
I have an Onkyo 705, and I had to change my input setting.
I left my cab/sat as HDMI input, but I had to change my 'Digital Input' (which is the audio input area on my receiver) from HDMI to Optical 1.
Depending on your receiver...you will need to make similar change.
Hope this info helps!

I'm a noobie myself and am learning all of this by trial and error with a little help from various AVS Forums.

I'm using the settings: Optimal stereo, advanced, No compression, matrix.

It "appears" ALL channels from the PACE output some sort of basic, 2-channel stereo Dolby. Only the high definition channels can be expected to have surround sound - and not all shows have it. I don't subscribe to any premium channels, so that limits my current surround sound experience to National Geographic-HD, TNT-HD, KTUU-HD, WealthTV(?). KTVA-HD, and KAKM-HD(?). Not sure if NFL-HD has surround sound.

What puzzles me the most is that one digital optical input on my receiver doesn't seem to work properly, but the other one does. I've given up on getting Dolby 5.1 over HDMI until they figure out what went wrong.

Did you check my suggestions in post #182? This may fix your problem with the optical connection. Also, if you change from 'no compression' to "high compression' you will get better sound. I thought it was the opposite, but my cable tech told me to try it on high compression, and it really does make an improvement!

Bill

When I tried to change the audio source, it appeared that the receiver was designed NOT to allow any of the useful changes I tried.

I'll try high compression on the sound - although it's fairly good now.

So the indicator lights for Tuner 1 / Tuner 2 indicate if you are time shifted, unless you are at the end of the buffer? I believe it has been stated the only way to go to true live TV, or I guess the term would be no trick stuff, is to tune away and tune back to a channel. I did notice the light does go out when Live TV is pressed. Based on the no trick stuff comment, I would assume when you press 'Live TV' you are going to the end but still reading from the buffer thus still time shifted, although very slightly. This is really not a big deal, just curious. I guess the main intention of the light is to indicate if you are live no buffer/end of buffer live?

Is there a quality hit taken when reading from the buffer / recording. Is the exact stream buffered / recorded, or is an internal compression done? Are recordings done in native resolution? For instance, if you have 720p set as the only output to the display at the time of taping, will a taped 1080i show be converted to 720p and then saved?

As far as feature requests, I know this is probably a TVG thing, but I bet you can get to their ears a lot easier than I can... It would be nice if you could mark partial part of show for deletion. For example, if you have a 4 hour football game where you have already watched the 1st half, if you could mark a point and delete the 1st half saving recording space for something else, allow the box to reorganize itself, etc. I'm not sure if there are legal implications (that's a shame if so - but that's a different discussion) in doing this since it is somewhat obvious feature?

So I just called my Cable Provider about my Pace Tahoe squeaking, they said its normal, even when turned off, so I guess I have to live with it (because im not going back to SD and I love DVR) the squeaking doesnt happen as much as when I first got it but its still there, I might call back at a later time and talk to a different customer service rep just to get a second opinion (why should a $400 cable box squeak?) I wish they still sold the motorola box.

It came with the NexStar 3, and seems to be good quality as far as I can tell. The odd thing is that it was working fine for a couple of weeks, and then began to freeze, stutter and lock up.

If it were an ordinary computer, I would have thought it behaved as if it was memory-bound.

Mine doesn't squeak. Can you isolate the noise to a specific area of the box, e.g with the old tubing hose pseudo-stethoscope trick used by auto mechanics etc? Maybe you could even record it and post it somewhere with a link, so those who know more about the box can help identify it.

Do I see that recording from the firewire/1394 output of the Pace box to a computer is possible? Can lindend or someone else who has experience with this please let me know whether this works? Thanks...

I had the dreaded frame-skipping problem today during the football playoffs. It was also apparent on episodes of the Tonight Show recorded from the same local NBC channel in the past couple of days.

I discovered how to change the 3:2 pulldown on my TV, but that had no effect.

Finally, after several hours of this, I decided to check some other HD channels. I switched to National Geographic HD at 720p for a few minutes. I couldn't see any problem. Then I switched to TNT-HD (1080i I believe). No problems there either after a few minutes. So I switched back to the problematic NBC local HD channel. Now it was fine!

There seems to be something that's confusing the PACE box. I have GCI cable in Anchorage. HD is relatively new here and sometimes buggy.

But it's a hopeful sign that SOMETHING I did seemed to correct the problem.

My wife let the son know the PIN for our box.
Now I can't figure out how to change it.

Thanks for the quick answer...

Well, as a Mac user I'm not so interested in the bugginess on the Windows side (insert smiley here)...but what happens on the Mac? I hook up the firewire cable, and then what?

No, no macroblocking... just frame-skipping - most visible on scenes with panning. Sort of like trying to watch a badly converted PAL video.

As you can imagine, this is very annoying to try to watch, especially football where they pan across the field all the time.

And it hadn't happened for a week or two. Next time it happens, I will experiment some more with switching to different HD channels to see if I can replicate the "cure".

Just got home with my new exchanged Pace Taheo, no more chirping, I can finally watch tv in peace without it sounding like there is wildlife in my home (with the exception of 2 cats ) they also gave me a new remote (i guess its the new one) much nicer the the old mini motorola remote.

Based on this, and inspired by the fact that according to the manufacturer of my combo eSATA enclosure, the SATA connection in this case is a simple pass-through, I will go home and try again. It may be possible that in the process of rotating the DVR back and forth for various other operations, the cable got misaligned, or some other similar problem happened.

Note I do not give up on my theory that the unit is memory-starved, since poking around on the front-panel diagnostics seemed to show very little SDRAM memory left when I encountered this problem.

All in all, it would be nice if the unit were offered with a much larger internal hard drive as an option, since (a) you said earlier that some firmware tweaks were done on the included drive, and (b) most people just want the extra space and don't care whether this is accomplished using eSATA. A terabyte (or even half) is comparatively cheap, and would alleviate most peoples' need to go for external space.

Can I also suggest that you try to classify combo drive enclosures that have problems as to whether (like the Nexstar 3) they claim to be simple pass-through, or instead process the SATA signals in the chip set? I cannot see how a simple pass-through connection could introduce problems in a combo enclosure, but perhaps there is a way.

Added note:
There is additional discussion of cable end length problems here, including a link to trimming instructions in a PDF file here.

Well....I just got through sapping out my TDC778x for a new one. It developed a very loud buzzing noise, which it did whether it was on or off! The lady at Buckeye said that she has had a few returned for the same reason...not good.
Also, when I would FF to get thru commercials on recorded shows, half the time when I would hit play it would start at the spot that I started to FF. This was VERY annoying. I would have to FF 2 or 3 times to get to where I wanted to be. I hope these 2 issues are not inherent with these boxes. We'll see what happens when I hook the new one up once I get home from work.

I will definitely do that if this box does it. My parents have the 775 box, and it is quiet...but it too has the FF issue.
A friend of mine has the 778, and you can hear the hard drive...but only when the box is on and it's not as loud as the one I turned in. Mine would make the loud buzz for awhile, then sop for about 5 seconds then go back to buzzing. It did seem to be giving off ALOT of heat as well.
I'll hop on here if I have any issues with ne box before returning it.

Thanks,
Bill

If it matters when I exchanged it the reason of exchange was (this is what they wrote all i said was it was chirping) was a fan bearing.

I believe I had the frame skipping issue last night.

I had just turned on my TV/DVR and the first thing I did was open up my recordings list and delete a bunch of programs. There were several long HD programs deleted, multiple 3+ hour sporting events and a couple 30 min SD shows. I then started to watch a SD DVR program. The video would skip few frames and then catch up. Audio was in looked to be in perfect sync when the video wasn't skipping. I assumed it was the program, so I exited and went to watch live TV. Same thing on SD channels and HD channels. It was very annoying.

I ended up going into the diagnostics to see if anything looked strange to the novice I am. When I left the diagnostics, the problem was gone - even in the DVR recording that was having issues. The only thing in the diagnostics that looked any different was 1 over run or overflow listed (I forget where) which I don't believe I had ever seen before. The uptime was listed as 17 hrs 10 min. This was strange since I hadn't lost power. The time would have corresponded to ~ 2 AM so maybe the cable company did something, but my firmware and guide versions were the same.

That makes sense...that would produce the sound I was hearing.
The new box is silent...I haven't had a chance to check the FF issue.
Keeping my fingers crossed!

I think I saw the frame skipping last night on several HD channels. There was no pixilization or audio loss.

I have the 778X with 9.62 firmware on Buckeye Cable.