| reply to KevinG79
Re: Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 I've got this box... and it's crashed twice already just this morning. I've only had it for 3 days, but so far I am very unimpressed. Extremely slow, switching between different channel types (plain cable channels 1-60 and digital channels) often causes the system to lock up for a long period of time. And VERY often certain channels just won't lock in for a VERY long time. Sometimes 5 minutes or more.
The PVR functionality is nice (when it works. I've had it spontaniously "forget" to record something already), but this model is pure crap. I hope they are going to replace them with something else. |
 RavnwolfForge Your Own Path
join:2001-03-24
Tifton, GA | When we first deployed the units last year around September, we first noticed the delay in changing channels. SA knew about this problem and was testing a firmware update to address the problem. We pushed that firmware out in January and it helped, but only a little. Then we became aware of another problem where all of the scheduled recordings were disappearing from the menus. SA rushed out an emergency firmware update due to a leap year bug.
Overall, the 8000 series is a pretty good unit, but not the best. The fact that it is a dual tuner unit for the cost is pretty good considering that DISH offers their dual tuner unit for about $500 - $700. DISH offers the single tuner unit free with select packages and contracts. IMHO, the DISH units are better than the SA 8000 units, but then again, the fact that digital typically works on a 2way cable system is a plus (whereas sat still requires a phone line connection to push the PPV buys, etc. back to DISH or DirectTV).
SA did with the 8000 what they typically do with their units; they put non-functioning ports for "future" expansion. Also be aware that the 50 hour recording time is if you record nothing but digital programming. We discovered that since we have an analog tier (channels 2-99) that our customers get with all digital packages, when recording analog channels, it requires twice the capacity on the DVR, effectively reducing the recording time to 25 hours sometimes.
Most of our customers are happy with the DVR once we finally were able to get over the training hump and make them realize the advantages.
Our next step is to start rolling out the HD versions of the 8000 units as we have more and more customers that get our HD programming, but also want the ability to record it.
Anyway, just thought I'd post our experiences in regards to the 8000 units. We are a small municipal system and sometimes we can deploy the newer technologies faster than the big MSOs because we don't have to test it to death to satisfy internal policies. 
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(Work):Telecommunications Superintendent, Municipal Broadband Cable System; (Home) 3 Windows XP PRO workstations, Windows XP PRO Laptop w/ wireless nic, Windows Home Laptop w/ wireless, RedHat 9.0 Server, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise, Wireless PDA |
