On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 08:54:10 -0600, Lazarus Long
wrote:

On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 16:46:38 -0500, Sean none wrote:

On Sat, 05 Feb 2005 20:39:01 -0600, Lazarus Long
wrote:



Honest to pete, this isn't splitting the atom, I'd use a SA DVR if
they'd get the damn thing work right.


Excactly.

You are just like me. I have Comcast which has a great product. far
superior to Tivo. I've heard others say good things about the lates SA
product but I don't have first hand experience.

Don't worry. Your cable company will get it right soon. It's
not splitting the atom.

Sean

I'll try the DVR from my cable company again this summer. But I don't
have high expectations.

Getting it right means recording reliably. That's not something
you've directly addressed.

My experience, which you seem to want to ignore is that the SA8000
sometimes simply wouldn't record. And if it did, wouldn't play the
recording through.

And the SA8000 lacks the niceties I expect in a DVR.

But this may have changed. I hope so, but as I said, I don't have
high hopes.


I'm going to be kind here.

I have not addressed recording reliability because it's a non-issue
for me.

I'm now going on my 3rd month with the Comcast DVR. I have not lost
1 recording.

Not a single one.

One of the things I used to do with my Tivo was before leaving the
house, check what was scheduled to be recorded and then switch to that
channel before turning the TV off. That's because that friggin IR
blaster was so unreliable. For shows I really wanted to make sure I
didn't miss I'd schedule a 5 minute manual recording on the same
channel just prior to the show.

Believe it or not. It still missed a couple of recordings due to bogus
channel changes.

That's all behind me now that I have the cable DVR. 100% reliable
channel changes and I get the bonus of being able to channel surf too.

Check out other recent posts about the latest SA box. It sounds like a
big improvement.

Sean

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 11:36:52 -0500, Sean none wrote:

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 08:54:10 -0600, Lazarus Long
wrote:


I'll try the DVR from my cable company again this summer. But I don't
have high expectations.

Getting it right means recording reliably. That's not something
you've directly addressed.

My experience, which you seem to want to ignore is that the SA8000
sometimes simply wouldn't record. And if it did, wouldn't play the
recording through.


But this may have changed. I hope so, but as I said, I don't have
high hopes.


I'm going to be kind here.

I have not addressed recording reliability because it's a non-issue
for me.

Excellent. Sounds like that issue might be fixed.


I'm now going on my 3rd month with the Comcast DVR. I have not lost
1 recording.

Not a single one.

One of the things I used to do with my Tivo was before leaving the
house, check what was scheduled to be recorded and then switch to that
channel before turning the TV off. That's because that friggin IR
blaster was so unreliable. For shows I really wanted to make sure I
didn't miss I'd schedule a 5 minute manual recording on the same
channel just prior to the show.

While my TIVO gets the channel change right 99% of the time, it does
in fact screw it up once in while. I'm using the IR blaster.
Fortunately, I can program my sat box to change channels. For those
shows I absolutely don't want to miss, I'll program the sat box to
change channels a few minutes ahead of the TIVO starting recording.


Believe it or not. It still missed a couple of recordings due to bogus
channel changes.

That's all behind me now that I have the cable DVR. 100% reliable
channel changes and I get the bonus of being able to channel surf too.

I'll give it that. It was a reliable channel changer. At the two
tuners is nice too.


Check out other recent posts about the latest SA box. It sounds like a
big improvement.

Sean

I hope so, we'll see. Depends if Time Warner has gotten any of the
new equipment.

Sean none shaped the electrons to say:
One of the things I used to do with my Tivo was before leaving the
house, check what was scheduled to be recorded and then switch to that
channel before turning the TV off. That's because that friggin IR
blaster was so unreliable. For shows I really wanted to make sure I
didn't miss I'd schedule a 5 minute manual recording on the same
channel just prior to the show.

I am completely convince you ****ed up installing you IR blasters.
Because I have never seen anyone who did it *right* claim such a lousy
performance. Errors on some boxes, especially Motorola, yes, no
question. But no where near as bad as you keep reporting.

I think I know why you have such a low opinion of TiVo - you couldn't
manage to set it up, something completely non-technical people have no
problem doing.

In my current setup with two TiVos, since June 2002, 100% success.

I'd never claim IR blasters are perfect for everyone, but you really
have to do something wrong to make them THAT unreliable. And even
when unreliable there are measures to improve performance (tent, stick
on emitters) that work well.

-MZ, RHCE #806199299900541, ex-CISSP #3762
--
URL:mailto:megazoneatmegazone.org Gweep, Discordian, Author, Engineer, me.
"A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men" 508-755-4098
URL:http://www.megazone.org/ URL:http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ Eris

On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 00:50:48 +0000 (UTC),
(MegaZone) wrote:

Sean none shaped the electrons to say:
One of the things I used to do with my Tivo was before leaving the
house, check what was scheduled to be recorded and then switch to that
channel before turning the TV off. That's because that friggin IR
blaster was so unreliable. For shows I really wanted to make sure I
didn't miss I'd schedule a 5 minute manual recording on the same
channel just prior to the show.

I am completely convince you ****ed up installing you IR blasters.
Because I have never seen anyone who did it *right* claim such a lousy
performance. Errors on some boxes, especially Motorola, yes, no
question.

Yup. I had a Motorola box and yes I had anywhere from 5-15% failure
rate. All it takes is 1 failure for a show you're dying to watch to
really **** you off. I had many many failures over the years I ran my
Tivo.

Sean

Sean none shaped the electrons to say:
Yup. I had a Motorola box and yes I had anywhere from 5-15% failure
rate. All it takes is 1 failure for a show you're dying to watch to

That is a very high failure rate. I had Motorola boxes when I first
got TiVo, before I moved to out of MediaOne/AT&T/Comcast territory and
into Charter territory. I guess we had about 6 months there, and in
that time (there were three of us in the house, one TiVo in the living
room (Series1) and I had one in my room (Series2)) we had a couple of
misses. I have a number of friends here in MA in Comcast turf, and
they definitely don't have failure rates that high on their Mot
boxes. Mostly spot in it would seem. We did have to run things on
'Slow' to be reliable with Motorola DCT boxes - but I use 00018 Fast
on my SA boxes.

-MZ, RHCE #806199299900541, ex-CISSP #3762
--
URL:mailto:megazoneatmegazone.org Gweep, Discordian, Author, Engineer, me.
"A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men" 508-755-4098
URL:http://www.megazone.org/ URL:http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ Eris

On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 14:42:27 -0500, Sean none wrote:


Yup. I had a Motorola box and yes I had anywhere from 5-15% failure
rate. All it takes is 1 failure for a show you're dying to watch to
really **** you off. I had many many failures over the years I ran my
Tivo.

Sean

You're right, that IS a horrible failure rate. I'd have moved on to
something else too.

My own failure rate might be around 0.1% I have to guess since a
failure is a rare event for me.

The failures that did anger me enough to do something was related to
the frequent cable outages that caused me to join DISH a lot of years
ago. I suppose they've (cable co.) improved since then. I hope so.

* Sean Wrote in alt.video.ptv.tivo:

I like the Comcast interface better than Tivo now that I'm used to
it.

Some people chew on Aspirin too.

--
David

IR Blasters??? They STILL use that archaic mode of signal switching
equipment? I thought that stuff went the same way SONY Betamax VCR's
did.IR blaster technology PREDATES WEBTV (which this poster still uses)
and it ITSELF is basically OBSOLETE.

SAC 441 wrote:
IR Blasters??? They STILL use that archaic mode of signal switching
equipment? I thought that stuff went the same way SONY Betamax VCR's
did.IR blaster technology PREDATES WEBTV (which this poster still uses)
and it ITSELF is basically OBSOLETE.


Unfortunately, until cablecard is widespread, IR blasters (and serial
port on a few models) are the only way for one box to control another.
It's definitely a subpar method, which is one of 2 main reasons
cablecard exists (the other being to allow reception of digital and
scrambled stations by standard hardware).

Randy S.

On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 20:18:48 -0800, (SAC 441) wrote:

IR Blasters??? They STILL use that archaic mode of signal switching
equipment? I thought that stuff went the same way SONY Betamax VCR's
did.IR blaster technology PREDATES WEBTV (which this poster still uses)
and it ITSELF is basically OBSOLETE.

So? It's working for me, slow and obsolete it may be.

Yes, I'd like new stuff, but I'm waiting for it all to come together.
The TV, the signal source and most importantly a recording device of
my liking. Particularly the recording gadget - a DVR is perfect for
this purpose. I can unequivocably say I'm not going back to that
1950's relic of having to be in front of the TV when something I want
to see is on.

And at a price that won't require me to remortgage the house.