whyerhead
join:2001-12-01
Covington, KY
 ·Insight Communicat..
|  DVR Box Review, Northern Kentucky
Well well well. DVR's are now available to the general populus. Lets take a look at this cookie.
Deep down it's a good box. Hardly any crashing was noticed during the 2 day test period. However, when it does go down, it goes down worse than Monica Lewinski. It takes around 30-45 minutes to restore EVERYTHING. Menus will not function. It will display a nice "Please stand by" message if you hit the menu key before it has had time to restore.
Tech specs:
Seagate Technologies 80GB harddrive (Model ST380012A)
No RF bypass on this box. Is this system wide?
Diagnostics are accessed by turning off the box, hitting MENU MENU then OK on the remote control. d15 is really interesting. It appears the box uses port 5555 for communicating upstream.
Postivies
It will translate HDTV channels into a regular televison!
The DVR functionality rocks. 40 hours, and it will allow you to do discretionary scheduling i.e. you can record a block of time without
On-Demand TV loads a heck of a lot faster
The menus are pretty once they're loaded and they give you a color scheme choice.
Negatives
Load time after a power failure.
Ad's from TV Guide interactive appear on EVERY screen.
No more localsource. (Yep, no more blackjack)
You have to hit OK before you can browse other channels with the up or down arrow.
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Hi, I'm whyer, and that's my Insight! |
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IGGY
No Guru Just Here To Help
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-30
Chatham, IL
1 edit | My take on things - in a very long thread »DVR service questions / review
Had to have Insight send a signal a few times to fix minor things. But always been very responsive at getting everything back up. Never had to wait the 30 or 40 minutes your seeing. Were did you find the info about the hard drive being a Seagate? No mention of this on the Motorola site from what I've found. And no mention of it in the installation .pdf file. »www.iggyz.com/494288-001.pdf WARNING - working .pdf file - file will load when this link is clicked.
"It will translate HDTV channels into a regular television!"
Now this I don't understand. And no one has given me a straight answer on it yet. A technician who came to troubleshoot something for me stated the same thing. It's always been my understanding only an EDTV or HDTV unit could in fact process and receive an HDTV signal. The EDTV of course showing the HDTV at a lower quality. How is it that the Motorola box seems to buck this technological standard? Does it just convert the HDTV to NTSC in some way?
"The DVR functionality rocks."
From what I've been told. It should rock even more after April of this year. Be nice if the firmware update came sooner. But April isn't to much longer.
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Test Your Security
Team Z Member
Cable Modem Diagnostics
InsightBB 3000/384 XP PRO |
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whyerhead
join:2001-12-01
Covington, KY
·Insight Communicat..
| reply to whyerhead
Go into Diagnostics on the converter.. Turn the box off, Hit MENU MENU, then hit OK go to d14
It should show the following:
HARD DISK DRIVE STATUS
NUMBER OF DRIVES INSTALLED: 1
DRIVE NUMBER: 1
MODEL NUMBER: ST380012ACE
LOCATION: INTERNAL
TYPE: IDE
TOTAL SIZE: 80 GB
Strip off the CE of the model number, and go over to www.seagate.com
The HDTV thing I don't understand either. Most of our local channels display a small box on the screen with the program running in it. However, it is watchable. The other channels though run in full screen, which I don't understand either, The audio quality is excellent, but the video is about the same as regular television.
DVR:
I remember seeing that post. I can't wait for the firmware upgrade either..
One thing I do miss though is the ability to skip ahead in On demand.
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Hi, I'm whyer, and that's my Insight! |
|
IGGY
No Guru Just Here To Help
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-30
Chatham, IL
| Yea I'd been to that area before. Just hadn't thought to to take the model number and plug it into Google. Doh!! on my part. I'm a Seagate fan. I've had one that came with a Dell about 4 years ago that has been spot on.
"Most of our local channels display a small box on the screen with the program running in it."
This is fully explained in the .pdf I posted above. I wrote about it in my other post. It's by design so to speak.
"One thing I do miss though is the ability to skip ahead in On demand."
I still have the ability to fast forward and rewind with ON Demand content. Or is there another feature I missed previously that your talking about?
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Test Your Security Team Z Member Cable Modem Diagnostics InsightBB 3000/384 XP PRO |
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whyerhead
join:2001-12-01
Covington, KY
·Insight Communicat..
| said by IGGY  :
"One thing I do miss though is the ability to skip ahead in On demand."
I still have the ability to fast forward and rewind with ON Demand content. Or is there another feature I missed previously that your talking about?
There's another feature im referring to.
If you look at the image im attaching there is a button next to the fast foward button to the right, right before the exit button is a button that looks like >>| it is a skip button, it allows you to skip ahead like 15-30 seconds in the program, theres also a skip back button on the left side of the rewind button. Also I miss that bar entirely.. heh.
I guess im just centimental
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Hi, I'm whyer, and that's my Insight! |
|
IGGY
No Guru Just Here To Help
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-30
Chatham, IL
| I must have never used it all that much. The DVR seems to have a replay feature that allows I think the last 30 seconds to go back quickly and do a replay. But I can never get it to work consistently. For the most part I'm happy with the new service. But there could be a few tweaks. I think some or all of those will come when they update the firmware.
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Test Your Security Team Z Member Cable Modem Diagnostics InsightBB 3000/384 XP PRO |
|
IGGY
No Guru Just Here To Help
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-30
Chatham, IL
| reply to whyerhead
"Insight Digital with DVR & HDTV gives you access to High Definition Television: (HD-compatible television set required)"
The Insight website states this. But it seems the cable box doesn't agree. Considering a few people and installers have stated that the HD stations can be seen using a regular NTSC tv.
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Test Your Security Team Z Member Cable Modem Diagnostics InsightBB 3000/384 XP PRO |
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