Official AVS Motorola DCX series HD DVR Topic!

It's not going to be released to MSO's until 2H 2008 (Q3). Don't expect it until the end of this year or early next year. Comcast has lots of stock of the DCH3416.

The mysterious Panasonic DVR that hasn't been released anywhere had a 250GB hard drive. The eSATA port isn't enabled on the Motorola boxes sadly. On the SA boxes they are.

Just got back from the Comcast Cable Office. Someone there is testing it.

Said there is NO CLOCK. Just shows the channel.

I really need a clock.

It's also smaller. Smaller than 17" wide.

Maybe they will change this when they distribute this.

Hopefully...

The clock is an OPTION on the current boxes. I gotta believe it is an the DCX as welll.... (it can show current channel or clock).

FUNCTIONING ones??



I don't think you are correct. I think Comcast has been buying as few as possible. As soon as the DCXs are available - they'll aquire them and start using them.

OK. I've been waiting almost a month.
I thought someone else would do this....

But I have to ask.

Why do you HAVE to have a clock on your DVR?

You can't tell me there is no where else to put a clock in the room.
A cheap wall clock is about $10 or so.
Does it maybe have to be in one spot?
Or LCD so you can see it in the dark?

Any news on when these will be released?

http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/01/03...mpeg4-hd-stbs/

They should become available in the fall, i.e. late this year.

And then it may be some time before they reach your local area for distribution by your service provider.

yeah I thought about that, it'll prolly take into 09 sometime before these boxes are in the cable co hands ready for deployment... And I am sure the cable co will try and charge you an extra 5/ month for the upgrade...

It sure is a slick box though...

There is some talk about the DCX boxes in the DCH thread:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=789805

My guess it that it will be Q4 08 or Q1 09 before Comcast will get them. But then again, they may not get them at all.

depends on what you're recording. In theory if any of the 34xx/64xx DCT or DCH series are availible to you, you should be able to get 20 hours or more recording time of Digital SD programming

3416s / 6416s should provide over 20 hours of Analog or Digital SD... and just under for HD.

The DCX series as I understand it will feature a 250 gig hard drive (going by current naming conventions that makes the base model most likely the DCX3425)

I just received notification from Motorola to order boxes for testing, which means chances are you won't see these on the market till after next Feb.

The primary advantage (once external expansion is activated) you'd have going from DCT or DCH to DCX is native MPEG4 support - which *if* systems start migrating to would allow for a huge reduction in bandwidth usage.

Of course that would also require massive changes to the headends to upgrade the outgoing video streams *and* require everyone to have MPEG4 support. (rendering Mpeg2 boxes unable to watch those channels)

But I definately would not expect to see these before 2/19/2009

I think he's very correct...

simple logic

1) Card based boxes will eventually be retailed to the public
2) Cable boxes aren't cheap
3) Cable companies can't afford to scrap old boxes

Right now MSOs are buying up DVRs as many as they can afford, as fast as they can be produced and still coming up short.

Once OCAP (http://www.opencable.com/) based applications become the standard (which should happen within the next year) Then the box market will boom. Because until then, you have to make sure you either buy a box that has its own application system (such as a TIVO) or one your cablesystem already supports by Legacy API applications (such as buying a Moto DCH6416 in a market that uses 6412s)

Because of the FCC's encryption mandate of 07/2007 which required the seperation of the encryption function (which stopped the sale and manufacture the older non CARD based boxes) MSOs are buying only what they have to to meed new demand while everyting is changing.

Once the changes have settled in, I suspect bean-counters everywhere will allocate as few dollars as possible to new boxes, especially if the customer can buy their own

Afterall if you had to buy me a car out of your money and rent it to me... and I'm not willing to pay more than $30 a month for the "car" rental and usage fees...Would you buy me a Porsche or would you buy me a Pinto?

Nice. Way to go Comcast. So now we have to wait a year after CES for them to come out.

If not longer - and that's not just Comcast... that's pretty much everyone
and that's providing issues don't come up on the supplier end (like Digeo had with thier latest DVRs)

Which means by the time the DCX does come out, something new would have been shown at CES '09.

BINGO

With luck we'll see external HD expansion enabled on the 64xx/34xx platform well before then

The 3 DCX boxes now have their own page.

DCX3400 DVR/HD

DCX3200 HD

DCX100 Digital

Looking at the PDF file for the DCX3400, you can see "REC 1" and "REC 2" on the front display. It also looks like there are no buttons, but will have a touch-interface.
http://hnevents.techknowmoto.com/wp-..._specsheet.pdf
Now we just have to wait until 2009 for Comcast to have it!

Any new news on this? I'm dieing here with only 15 hrs of HD storage on my DCH3412. Comcast is rolling out more and more HD channels, which is great, but they don't seem to recognize it is making their chinzty DVR HD storage pinch more and more.

I notice Moto's page is silent on hdd size. Is that because each cableco can designate the hdd size they want? Or even those get installed after they leave Moto?

Edit: Ahh, I see they show as 160 GB (barf!) or 250GB on Moto's page. Even 250GB seems on the small side given the price of storage these days. Is it safe to assume they are storing as mpeg-4 locally, making that 250GB a bit better?

Look really closely on that PDF spec sheet. Zoom in on the front display. There is a 1080p indicator!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wonder if it has dynamic native HD output?

Just bringing back this old thread. I guess the new DCX boxes (DCX3400/3200/100) are still not out for Comcast yet?

Over the weekend, my DCH3416 started the "delay" and take 20 seconds to change a channel or show a menu. I removed some old DVR programs, but didn't help. So I had to unplug the unit for a few seconds to resolve the problem. This is the first "delay" that I've had using the DCH3416 since I got it a few months ago. I hope it doesn't turn into the problems I had with the DCT!

Good find, but there are no 1080p HD programming. I guess it would have to upconvert from 1080i/720p to 1080p. I wonder if it would also upconvert from 480i (but would probably look bad).

The PDF says a 160GB drive is standard, but 250GB is optional. I hope Motorola gets them with a 250GB, but a high-end HD/DVR box like this sould come with 320-500GB standard!

that's odd, the write up and request I got for sample boxes went straight to what wuld be a DCX 3425... I would think just like the jump from 5200 to 6400 they'd drop the lower sized drive (fortunately there are no such things as 6408s!) but then again they did do a 6412...

it's all wait and see... unfortunately I was denied my request for some DCX6425 test boxes to be sent here. (I got lucky with DCH 6416!)

Why were you denied? That limited of a supply already?

Nah, corporate prefers that sort of thing be done in our labs - since I'm not in a lab enviroment I usually don't get test equipment until just before a roll-out in my area... unless there's something in that testing that delays a launch (for example I had a BMC9012 for a good 6 months before we could safely launch those!)

As far as I know, the DCX- boxes are not yet being mass produced by Motorola.

Beyond that, there is no reason to believe that any specific head-end will be getting DCX-series boxes anytime soon. It will probably take several years after Motorola starts mass-producing the box before most customers will have it as an option.

Has any..1 seen some special info from the company?