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ernliz
join:2001-11-25
Albemarle, NC

ernliz

Member

Cisco Explorer 8640 HDC DVR. Comments?

My TWC Samsung H3272 HD DVR is totally lame: slow, hangs, needs weekly reboots, the works. A known bad actor. My local TWC office offered me a replacement: the Cisco Explorer 8640.

Does anyone here have experience with this Cisco product? Am I getting into something really fine, or the other way around? Is the 8640 an old device or relatively new?

Please comment if you know. Thanks.

chamberc
Premium Member
join:2008-08-05
Addison, TX

chamberc

Premium Member

said by ernliz:

My TWC Samsung H3272 HD DVR is totally lame: slow, hangs, needs weekly reboots, the works. A known bad actor. My local TWC office offered me a replacement: the Cisco Explorer 8640.

Does anyone here have experience with this Cisco product? Am I getting into something really fine, or the other way around? Is the 8640 an old device or relatively new?

Please comment if you know. Thanks.

The Cisco was released near the end of 2009. The behavior however, of the guide is basically just the nature of the guide. It will act that way on all hardware. Navigator has been that way for years, and iGuide for even longer.
ernliz
join:2001-11-25
Albemarle, NC

ernliz

Member

Thanks, Chamb... but I'm more interested in the stability of the 8640. The Samsung 3272 is very erratic, slow, whatever. Is the Cisco unit hardware more stable, fast, and reliable? I could care less about Navigator, iGuide, etc....

Thanks.

hobgoblin
Sortof Agoblin
Premium Member
join:2001-11-25
Orchard Park, NY

hobgoblin

Premium Member

I have 2, they work fine.

Hob

chamberc
Premium Member
join:2008-08-05
Addison, TX

chamberc to ernliz

Premium Member

to ernliz
said by ernliz:

Thanks, Chamb... but I'm more interested in the stability of the 8640. The Samsung 3272 is very erratic, slow, whatever. Is the Cisco unit hardware more stable, fast, and reliable? I could care less about Navigator, iGuide, etc....

Thanks.

The problems you are experiencing are not related to your hardware. They are common to the software running on both of them. Navigator is the software. It performs the same on both boxes.
Satch
join:2009-11-25

Satch

Member

said by chamberc:

said by ernliz:

Thanks, Chamb... but I'm more interested in the stability of the 8640. The Samsung 3272 is very erratic, slow, whatever. Is the Cisco unit hardware more stable, fast, and reliable? I could care less about Navigator, iGuide, etc....

Thanks.

The problems you are experiencing are not related to your hardware. They are common to the software running on both of them. Navigator is the software. It performs the same on both boxes.

All true,

However, the Cisco's are faster than the Samsungs. You should try to get a Cisco box. My SA-8300HDC still runs good, but have to reboot about once every 30-45 days. Insider told me that the SA boxes and Ciscos can suffer from memory leaks causing the slowness.

What TWC did in my division around 30 days out was simply forced a reboot on its end last time. For those of you with ODN 6.0, have you noticed any slowdowns?

Satch

Del_Gue
join:2001-10-03
Lancaster, OH

Del_Gue to ernliz

Member

to ernliz
I believe we have had at least three or four 8640s go flaky over the last couple of years. The local TW office seemed to think the units had problems with power surges, but we have always had it plugged into a good surge protector.

That said, the 8640 seems reasonably responsive and there has never been a problem with swapping it at the local TW office. For us it is only a slight irritant to lose recorded shows and reprogramming recordings of our shows when the DVR goes wacky. You may feel differently.

BTW all of our 8640s have had 320GB hard drives. If your Sammy 3272 had 500GB you might miss the extra space.

juilinsandar
Texas Gooner
Premium Member
join:2000-07-17
San Benito, TX

juilinsandar to ernliz

Premium Member

to ernliz
If it's available in his area, maybe he should request the 8642 instead? Mine came with a 500gb HD. It's small and fast, especially with VOD.
ernliz
join:2001-11-25
Albemarle, NC

ernliz

Member

Thanks to all who replied. It seems like I may be a "little" better off with the Cisco unit (and I didn't realize that "Navigator" was the OS within each). And I don't have any other choices since our local podunk TWC office offers very few selection of devices. They had to search high and low for the 8640 they found for me.

If this doesn't work out well, I'll be back at this main site determining whether Dish or DirecTV is the better way to proceed.

mm
I Did It My Way
Premium Member
join:2001-04-07
Summerville, SC

mm to ernliz

Premium Member

to ernliz
I have two Cisco 8742's and they stink. Last night one of them decided to record nothing, it actually created entries in the DVR menu but when you selected any of the recordings it just returned to the channel which was a black screen. I had to reboot it to get the channels back but the recordings were toast. It happens probably every other week. I wish it had an option to reboot on a schedule, I found it gets really bad after a month.

The other 8742 often gets stuck in a skip mode which can only be resolved by booting it.

They lock up often, I never had a such a bad experience with a DVR. My prior DVR's were Replay, Tivo, DirecTivo and the FIOS DVR. They were all superior.
Satch
join:2009-11-25

Satch

Member

said by mm:

I have two Cisco 8742's and they stink. Last night one of them decided to record nothing, it actually created entries in the DVR menu but when you selected any of the recordings it just returned to the channel which was a black screen. I had to reboot it to get the channels back but the recordings were toast. It happens probably every other week. I wish it had an option to reboot on a schedule, I found it gets really bad after a month.

The other 8742 often gets stuck in a skip mode which can only be resolved by booting it.

They lock up often, I never had a such a bad experience with a DVR. My prior DVR's were Replay, Tivo, DirecTivo and the FIOS DVR. They were all superior.

Too many bugs regardless of boxes! TWC is going to be introducing the six-tuner DVR this summer. The Catch 22, is that it is still going to be Navigator based. If only TWC has stuck with Passport we would not even be needing to have these threads! There are very few people at TWC who realize that the poor design of Navigator, cripples even the top boxes.

Satch

hobgoblin
Sortof Agoblin
Premium Member
join:2001-11-25
Orchard Park, NY

hobgoblin

Premium Member

"If only TWC has stuck with Passport we would not even be needing to have these threads! There are very few people at TWC who realize that the poor design of Navigator, cripples even the top boxes."

My box is hardly crippled.
You sound a little like the SARAH troll.

Hob
Satch
join:2009-11-25

Satch

Member

said by hobgoblin:

"If only TWC has stuck with Passport we would not even be needing to have these threads! There are very few people at TWC who realize that the poor design of Navigator, cripples even the top boxes."

My box is hardly crippled.
You sound a little like the SARAH troll.

Hob

LOL!

Satch