Official AVS Motorola DCX series HD DVR Topic! - Page 3

Outstanding!

What's the best way to, first, find out when our local Comcast has the DCX's available, and second, how to get one - should it be as simple as taking the old box in and making a swap?

Subscribe to your local Comcast thread.

They normaly just grab the first STB in the Available to Distribute Cabnet in the office. Most CSR's will not even be aware of the various types or models. But it does not hurt to ask politely for the STB you want.

Thats the problem, no one cares and they'll just keep recycling old boxes until they run out of them. It's going to hard to get ahold of a new DCX box.

I just got one of these boxes....Ill give you guys some feedback once I get it running...RCN is my cable company.

Very nice box. HD is a little crisper and digital cable looks much better...250gb hd doesnt hurt either. Unsure if the mpeg4 compression gives you more space...need to record some more things.

My local Comcast agent (West Chester Area PA), very close to your area, indicates availability at end of third quarter or beginning of fourth quarter. This seems much later than your area, which is only a few miles away. Not sure what to believe......

Done! Thanks.

Is there a place for an Insight thread here? I've used search, but found nothing...

Where are you an RCN customer that you were able to get one of these. Here in the D.C. area, they are saying July or thereabouts. . .

lehigh valley pa. They JUST got them in monday.

Thanks. Interested in hearing more. Guess Pennsylvania was the first rollout and we'll have to wait a little longer.

I dropped by the local office to replace my failing 6412 box and they gave me one of these. I very much like it,

1. It's very fast and responsive
2. The picture quality is much, much sharper. I have no idea the explanation - picture quality is very high, no noise, very sharp, very clean.
3. It's much smaller and seems to run relatively cool. The old 6412 model was huge.
4. It has all sorts of touch sensitive buttons on the front - strange!

Overall, very impressed.

TWC Dallas is deploying the DCX-3200 HD-STB. It's much smaller and it uses a power brick. No extra electrical outlet on the box.

i just got the new DCX 3400 DVRs (3 of them) and im having an issue.

i have mine connected to my sony kdl32nl140 hdtv via a HDMI cable and all i see is a green screen with no picture. i hear the audio of the channel that its tuned into in the background, but for video all i get is a green screen.

i have noticed one thing though, when i unplug the HDMI cable and re-connect it to the STB i get picture for about 20 seconds then it goes back to the green screen.

* a couple of other notes:

i have another tv (sony XBR6 52 inch) in my main living room with the DCX 3400 HD-DVR and no issues with that tv, the issues are in my bedroom and my sons room (both tv's are the kdl32nl140). could there be a firmware issue? or an HDMI issue?

i also had the older DCH DVR's prior to getting the new DCX models, and i had no issues.

I'm having the exact same problem with my DCH3416.. I plug it into my receiver via HDMI and all I get is a green screen on the TV, this JUST started happening and I have no idea why, it used to work fine. If I plug the box directly into the TV no green screen but I get no surround sound.. any ideas as to what the problem could be? I get about 5 seconds of picture, no sound, and then the screen goes green. I've had this box setup like this for about 6 months with 0 problems, came home a few days ago and turned on the TV and green screen.. I didn't change a thing.

Green screen is/means HDMI handshake issues. My setup with my 3416 through my Denon AV receiver, when I turn it on I see a green screen for a split second before the video comes up. That green screen is the HDCP handshake.

Your cable op must have pushed some sort of update that screwed up the HDCP handshake over receivers/repeaters. Way back in 2005 this was a big problem with the first versions of firmware for the Comcast 6412 DVRs when they were just coming out. They would have problems with HDMI switchers/repeaters and AV recievers.

If a reboot doesn't fix it, then you'll have to convince your cable company that they messed it up with an update they likely pushed out early one morning.

Have been having some problems with my cable signal with Comcast. (See HDTV Technical forum.) They just put a DCX3400 on my set about an hour ago, but cautioned me that they have had the green screen issue and so have not "deployed" them here, in Denver, yet. (Fortunately, they also left my 3412 hooked up, too, but are not charging extra for that, since they are using this as a troubleshooting measure.)

I called Motorola support to ask about some settings that would be best and asked them about the green screen issue. The Motorola rep said that the issue was occurring with HDMI connections, but not component. He said that power cycling should resolve it. Of course, I have only had the DCX for an hour, so no problems so far.

hth.

Anybody know the availability of these in the Boston area? I requested one today though customer service but she wasn't too familiar with the models and said an installer would have to give me a call.

Also, I hope these aren't dumb questions, but is the "tv guide" menu any nicer, and does the DCX3400 use a different remote than the "synergy" remote included with the DCH?

Yes the DCX uses a different remote than the DCH. It has a similar button layout but it's dark grey. It uses the UEI XMP protocol which doesn't play nice with non comcast remotes. The guide is the same but nicer. It's tru2way complaint though which Comcast may eventually do some day. It will run the legacy iGuide and then go tru2way.

How is the guide the same but nicer? Isn't that an oxymoron? The same guide is by far means not nice at all. Unless they skinned it, like on the Panasonic Tru2Way TV's like shown in the video here.

Comcast has a bunch of these in my neck of the woods, but they are not issuing them to customers yet. They are awaiting a special firmware update from Motorola before release. My guess is to fix the green screen HDMI issues that a lot of the RCN / Time Warner people are reporting.

I can't wait for the firmware update so we can finally get these babies!

Thanks! To be honest I'm unfamiliar with UEI XMP, so I'll have to do some digging on that.

I don't expect a revolution, but the graphics on my current HD converter look like pixelated 8-bit NES graphics and don't use the native 16x9 aspect ratio.

Well I just had a visit from my installer (RCN) (Boston area), and he showed up with a DCH3416 in hand...arrr..noooo!!! (I had specifically requested the DCX and told them to call me *first* before coming and I'll wait a month or two to see if it's available). Oh well, I'll have to be patient and wait I suppose but I envy those of you that already have your hands on this thing!

I'm hoping the DCX can give a little improvement in terms of overall navigation/guide speed, nicer menu graphics, etc. And for me it would look much nicer in my living room! all of my "normal A/V" components are black, and my A/V cabinet is very dark brown/almost black, so the silver box sticks out like a sore thumb! And of course on my "wish list" is for a future software update to enable the USB/eSata external drive connection ports on the DVR box. I have 2 1TB externals and a 2TB Readynas hungry for bigger drives. I'm ranting now, but I was surprised that in this day & age these boxes, made to record HD, only have a 160gb drive as "standard". Ha ha ha! Seriously now

I don't know if this was just a unique problem I had, but my previous DCH HD box displayed pretty crappy looking graphics on the program guide, "info", etc. The text was very jagged, and the graphics were badly pixelated, as in "Atari" or "8 bit Nintendo" on an old CRT. I have had my provider push a reset and update to the box for an unrelated problem, but the graphics were always poor so I just figured it was old technology or poorly designed software.

However, this morning I just had it replaced with an almost identical DCH HD box except this one has DVR. To my surprise, the graphics look much better! They aren't as nice as I'd like, or even what I would consider "slick", "modern", etc but there is a BIG difference. Text is anti aliased and smooth, graphics aren't pixelated any more.




Wow, that panasonic demo was awesome! It doesn't make me want to buy a new TV since my samsung is pretty new, but if I were in the market for a new one I'd definitely be looking for something like that.

It used to pain me to "lose" great features built in to the set, but I guess that's the reality we have to deal with when using a cable set top box. I bought an aquos a few years ago for the cablecard functionality but that never really lived up to it's promise and died. Hopefully this "Tru2way" type of stuff becomes standardized and common in the future.

Like you, I can't wait to get my hands in this thing!

Maybe some of these guys that already have it can dig through all the settings and functions and let us know if there's any improvements!

RCN is working with Macrovision their guide vendor to enable the eSATA support. The guide doesn't support it yet. So it will happen some day. The DCX's used by RCN will have a 250 GB HDD though Motorola released a 320 GB version that isn't mentioned on their site.

Mine is 250GB. (Comcast)

The next firmware update will fix the green screen issue.

Anyone know if Cox will be using these anytime soon? I'm in Tulsa, Oklahoma and can't wait to finally have a larger hard drive than my 3416.

Does anyone who has the DCX3400 via Comcast know the codes for programming the remote? The new, dark silver one that they gave me has several keys that do not work, most importantly the "OK/Select." (I tried all of the codes on the pamphlet that they gave me, but I think they gave me the wrong one, because none of them work. Also, Neither Motorola or Comcast customer service has them either.)

The old remote from my 3412 works with this, despite thoughts from both my techs and on the boards that it would not. This is a bit of a problem for the moment, since I actually have both boxes hooked up to the same TV, as Comcast is doing that for signal troubleshooting purposes. So, whichever input is on works fine, but the one that is not on shows funny codes on the LED when I do things with the working remote.

I am loving this box. So far, no green screen issues, and my HL61A750 picture is even more beautiful with the additional fine tuning that this box allows...and I did not know that it could get more beautiful! This is just one of those pesky early-adoption things that can crop up.