[ALarryR]

Time Warner is now offering Digital Cable here in New York City.

Does anyone have this service and if so can you tell me what Cable Box, Manufacturer and model, that they are using?

Also, what connections are available on this cable box, both input and output?


Any experiences using this box with ReplayTV would also be appreciated. As an example, I currently use the RF output and the composite video outputs on my CFT2200 Box as inputs to ReplayTV.


Thanks,

Larry

 

[holycrap]

I have this box. It works fine with the Replay.

It is a Scientific Atlanta Explorer Digital Home Communications Terminal.


Input is via coax.


Output is via coax, RCA audio and video and S-Video and Digital Audio!

There is also a USB port. The manual shows an ethernet port and option fire-wire ports, but neither is on my unit.


There is also some sort of "VCR Commander" output to control VCR channel changes and some sort of bypass that will allow you to feed an analog signal to your TV which seems to by some sort of add on item, not part of the box. THe wonderful folks at TWC know nothing of it, but Scientific Atlanta says this will basically allow you to have the box to pass a digital signal (only through COAX) to your VCR while your TV can use its own tuner with an analog signal, also on COAX. I'm guessing that the RCA/SVideo outputs will also supply the digital signal.


One really nice feature is that you can see show information and scroll through a program menu while it puts the program you are tuned to in 1/4 of the screen. A pretty neat feature that Replay might want to think about.


There are two things I miss about the old box that were not replicated here:

1. The WINK service - as slow as it was, it was sometimes nice to check on a baseball score with that system; oddly, it is nowhere to be found.

2. Sleep feature. While it is here, it does not have the pop-up warning I remember from the older unit - meaning that if you're not paying attention the sleep timer shuts off - which as minor as it may seem, my wife sleeps fine with the TV on when I am trying to catch the end of a ballgame, but if I turn it back on when it shuts off, she wakes up.

3. Stupid shape of remote; functionality of info and guide not replicated on Replay remote (at least not with the SA codes).

If you are going for it, ask them about the deal they have with Roadrunner service. They offer a $100 package with 4 premium movie packages (6 HBOs, 5 Showtimes, etc.) and the cable modem. They don't seem to advertise this package, but it is a great deal.



[This message has been edited by holycrap (edited July 16, 2000).]


[This message has been edited by holycrap (edited July 16, 2000).]

 

[ALarryR]

Thank you for the input.

Regards,

Larry

 

[DrJoe]

There are several posts on this topic, if you want to see the long story. Do a search on "digital cable" or "DrJoe"...


I believe the "vcr commander" deal is a pass-through to let the analog signal RF signal to go to one device while you send the output from the cable box to another -- for instance you can record off the box and watch from the RF on your TV. It doesn't come standard and we don't have it yet in Austin -- a year ago Time Warner said it would become available -- but who knows? Still not here.


There are some fixable issues with the Explorer 2000 box. When you do the search above, you will find several threads on changing channels and channel surfing. Basically, you need to force the remote to send 3 digits when it changes channels. By setting the device code to 8477 instead of 0477 you will do this.


Tuning speed is variable due to the nature of digital cable -- it isn't necessarily "digital"!!! The majority of the "lower" channels" are really the same analog channels you get with the regular cable service -- no digital picture, no digital sound. They tune using an internal tuner in the box. The "upper" channels, and a few lower are "digital". These channels tune faster than the analog channels do. I compromised between timing (regarding the blue "no signal" screen) by fine tuning the remote so that the black channel-changing screen is a little short for the analog channels and a little long for the digital channels(I believe it was 200 ms -- check in the other threads).


Setting up the channel guide takes a few minutes -- you need to x-out a BUNCH of channels -- all of the music and pay-per-view channels are in the guide. This is a nice feature if you want to record pay-per-view movies or events -- some satellite services don't have the listings.


A note on audio: One consideration is that there is an AC3 out on the box but no AC3 dolby digital support on the Replay (or TiVo) unit. I have come to the conclusion that this doesn't matter: the "digital audio" you get through the box is TWO CHANNEL DOLBY DIGITAL(DOLBY DIGITAL 2.0)... This is NOT dvd type dolby 5.1!!! The box takes the digital signal and converts it to composite audio out -- if you feed this into a dolby pro-logic surround receiver, you can get 4-channels of audio. If you feed the AC3 signal into a dolby digital receiver, it will convert the digital signal to composite, run it through the pro-logic decoder, and give you the SAME 4 channels of audio. I find no difference in the sound quality between having the cable box convert the audio and having my digital receiver do it. So just feed the composite audio to the replay unit. Beyond this -- ONLY the digital channels have the AC3 output -- so for the lower channels (all the networks, TNT, TBS, etc) you need to use the composite out anyway!


A nice thing about the box is that it has an RF out AND a COMPOSITE VIDEO out AND an S-VIDEO out. I run the RF out to a second TV, the CV-out to a A/V receiver, and the s-video out to the Replay unit. I use a splitter to send the composite audio to both the replay unit and the av receiver.


The reason to do this: Fixed by the 3.0 software release! Split the cable RF between the Box and the replay RF in (if the VCR-pass-through feature ever gets used you can skip the split!). Set up the RF input for regular cable and the Line 2 (s-video) input for digital cable. The digital channels will be 001-999, the analog channels will be 1000-1099. Now when you schedule recordings you can choose which source to use -- if there is a movie you want to watch on a digital channel with the box, you can record an analog channel over the RF feed with the internal tuner. And vice versa.


A final note on channel surfing:


Channel surfing on just about anything not using the internal tuner of the Replay unit is slower than it is without the unit. By using the fixes above you can cut channel changes from more than 10 seconds to less than 2 -- but because you have to send the signal to the Replay unit, it has to send it to the cable box, the cable box has to change the channel, -- you can't go THAT fast. If too many channel change signals pile up on the cable box too quickly, you'll pop to the wrong channel. I think that it is worth the trouble though!


hope this helps!



Joe


[This message has been edited by DrJoe (edited 10-20-2000).]