Getting a TWC NYC SA8000 Tomorrow. Will Report

[Nyy7]

I am a fanatical TiVo supporter, but alas, with an adopter personality I
couldn't pass up saying YES to a phone call yesterday from Time Warner in NYC.
They are slowly rolling out the new SA8000 boxes and somehow I have been
labeled as 'man who can't say no!'

I'll report back when I have put it through it's hoops.

( Assuming anyone cares!!)

Bruce in Belle Harbor

[Ima]

In article >,
(Nyy7) wrote:

> I am a fanatical TiVo supporter, but alas, with an adopter personality I
> couldn't pass up saying YES to a phone call yesterday from Time Warner in NYC.
> They are slowly rolling out the new SA8000 boxes and somehow I have been
> labeled as 'man who can't say no!'
>
> I'll report back when I have put it through it's hoops.
>
> ( Assuming anyone cares!!)
>
> Bruce in Belle Harbor
>
>

We havent heard back. Did TWC not show? Have you been stuck on phone
trying to get it to work, or are you too embarressed to report how
inferior it is to Tivo?


=

[Nyy7]

>We havent heard back. Did TWC not show? Have you been stuck on phone
>trying to get it to work, or are you too embarressed to report how
>inferior it is to Tivo?

Well, I am still putting it through exhaustive testing. here has been no sleep
for me in the past 60 hours, while I try and trip it up.

Seriously, the guy showed on time. he knew nothing about the box and I tried my
best to rush him out.

When he called in to register, he told the phone tech that I seemed to know
more than him about it and I was anxious to get started.

When I said i was a TiVo fanatic, I meant it. Decal of TiVo man on rear window
of car and rear door of house. Drink my coffee out of the TiVo latte mug...but
this box is preety cool.

You cannot say too much about recording two shows at once. The PIP is cool.

It being July 4th weekend and me living at the beach, I have not completely
stayed inside to play with the SA8000.

I really enjoy being able to check the "now playing" and "to do" lists while
still watching Tv in the upper 1/4 of the screen. The guide is great. Easier
to record from than TiVo.
The big drawback is the search software
( no wishlists and very cumbersome searching for programs.) I have read that
the "season Passes" ( I have not learned the new jargon yet!) are not reliable.
We will see.

Digital picture and sound seem a bit better that TiVo!

All in all, very satisfied. And you cannot beat the price.

Bruce in belle Harbor.

[Ralph Snart]

On Mon, 07 Jul 2003 09:56:46 -0400, Stan > wrote:
>My cable guy set up the box expertly but was otherwise clueless. He said the
>instruction manual for the box is not yet available in NYC. He also told me
>that the box can record up to 100 hours and that I can record 2 shows while
>watching a third, neither of which I believe to be true.

if the SA8000 is similar to the DirecTV Tivo (which i believe to be the case),
then the record-two-while-watching-third is not only possible but something
i do many times a week. the only caveat is the third item has to be a
previously recorded on the hard disk item. not a big deal.

100 hours would be possible with a big enough hard disk and/or low enough
bitrate. on the DirecTivo it works out to about 45 minutes per gigabyte,
so my 40GB system stores about 30 hrs of content. (directv streams are
variable bitrate so it's impossible to know in advance exactly how much
disk space any given program will require but the rule of thumb seems to
be ok.)

>The PIP works great, with the inner window able to go from tiny to
>medium-size; it's slightly translucent as well.

i wish my directivo had that!

>Recorded a whole movie although I didn't hit the record button until
>30 minutes into it (or did I dream this?).

if it's similar to tivo then that's very possible. there are continuous
30 minute buffers for both of the tuners, so if you are 30 minutes or less
into a show, and have been on that channel since the show started, you can
hit record, and the device will stuff the buffered material into the
recording along with whatever follows. great feature, i've used it a lot.

>Some minor digital hiccups - occasional fragmented image, a recorded movie
>sped up for a few seconds for no reason. Biggest glitch is that the box
>totally seized and rebooted after recording the Sopranos causing me to miss
>the first 30 seconds of Sex and the City. Life is hard.

i hope they work those kinks out.

-rs-

[Matt Ackeret]

In article >,
Stan > wrote:
>What problems there are revolve more around the guide than the hardware.
>Choosing to record every episode will give you repeat episodes if, for
>instance, a station runs the same ep. at 7:00 and 10:00. If the guide is

Is there a way to prioritize the repeating recordings?

So at least you're able to put shows you care about *above* that one and
override the duplicate recordings?


(I ran into an example of trusting the To Do list last night too much..
I checked the To Do list, seeing that it would record Crime & Punishment
at 10 and Dead Zone at 12.. Sometime after 11, I went into Now Playing and
saw that it recorded Dead Zone at 10.. I know there was a daily sometime
after 8pm, so I suspect that it got the data, and as a matter of processing
the data, it re-runs the code to check Season Passes.. and recorded the 10pm
Dead Zone instead of the repeat at 12.. Yes, I have *now* moved the
Crime & Punishment SP higher than the Dead Zone.. But I wish I could
"lock" the To Do list at some point so it doesn't rearrange things like this.
This means you can't always trust the To Do list. And yes, the 10pm Dead Zone
*was* in the guide data previous to the new call.)

[Stephane Beaudry]

> Seriously, the guy showed on time. he knew nothing about the box and I
tried my
> best to rush him out.
>
> When he called in to register, he told the phone tech that I seemed to
know
> more than him about it and I was anxious to get started.

My guy was the same, didn't know much and obviously couldn't answer any of
my questions. He was so proud to show me that he could control the TV with
the Remote, I had to explain that I won't be using the remote since I use a
Universal Remote.

> You cannot say too much about recording two shows at once. The PIP is
cool.
I am running two Tivos because of the number of Conflicts I have during the
TV Season, just to think that I can handle most of it with one Cable PVR, it
sure simplifies the Setup.

> The big drawback is the search software
> ( no wishlists and very cumbersome searching for programs.) I have read
that
> the "season Passes" ( I have not learned the new jargon yet!) are not
reliable.

They call them Season Tickets, since it is the Summer, I only have Season
Tickets for Tech TV shows, one thing that has happened a few times is that
it will only record about one second of the show and stop there, it hasn't
been a major problem since Tech TV repeats their shows, but I have to pay
attention to the recorder daily or I risk loosing something, so for
reliability, I will use my Tivos during the Prime TV Season.

[Stephane Beaudry]

> Here are my early observations, having never used a dvr of any type
> before....
>
> My cable guy set up the box expertly but was otherwise clueless. He said
the
> instruction manual for the box is not yet available in NYC. He also told
me
> that the box can record up to 100 hours and that I can record 2 shows
while
> watching a third, neither of which I believe to be true.

One thing that annoyed me the most was the lack of documentation, all I got
with the box was the reference card for programming the remote. I wanted to
know the capacity and the only strait answers I got was on the Scientific
Explorer site (http://www.scientificatlanta.com/consumers/Exp8000.htm), the
cable company is simply not up to speed yet.

> The remote control is a thing of beauty - really well designed considering
> the number of tasks and devices it handles.

I guess my gripe isn't with the remote itself, but the navigation software
that forces me to use the A B C buttons, I would prefer the ability of
simply moving a cursor to my selections, like Tivo.

> The box itself is elegantly designed, but much larger than I expected. It
> also gets *very* hot on its underside.

It's a good thing you didn't get one of the original Tivos, they were much
bigger then the Cable PVR, I find the size just perfect. But since it
relies on expelling heat through the top, that makes one more device you
have to find a shelf for, with the Tivos, you can pile as many as you want
on top of each other, and other devices can rest on them (not as obvious
with the smaller Series two, but the Old Series 1 was perfect for that).
>
> The PIP works great, with the inner window able to go from tiny to
> medium-size; it's slightly translucent as well.

Are you using the Coaxial Digital Out, I find that often for the Analog
Channels I loose the audio on one of the tuners, the recordigns seem to work
fine, I don't have that problem with the simple Composite outputs, just
wondering if anyone has experienced that...

> All the dual tuner stuff is nice. Recorded a show while watching a
recorded
> show, recorded 2 at once. Instant replay button plays back the previous 10
> seconds. Pause live action. FF and Reverse in variable speeds like a dvd
> player. Recorded a whole movie although I didn't hit the record button
until
> 30 minutes into it (or did I dream this?).

Nope you didn't, in fact you have a 60 minutes buffer for each tuner. Have
you experienced a pausing effect when you Fast Forward, I haven't been able
to determine the pattern, but often when I FF it will simply pause on an
image and won't budge for several seconds until I convince it to continue by
hitting the FF key again, I sometimes have to do it several times, it's
really annoying.

> Some minor digital hiccups - occasional fragmented image, a recorded movie
> sped up for a few seconds for no reason. Biggest glitch is that the box
> totally seized and rebooted after recording the Sopranos causing me to
miss
> the first 30 seconds of Sex and the City. Life is hard.

My box will reboot at the weirdest times, but it hasn't happened during a
recording. My old Digital Cable boxes used to do the same thing, I think it
picks up something it doesn't like in the calbe signal and freaks.

>
> What problems there are revolve more around the guide than the hardware.
> Choosing to record every episode will give you repeat episodes if, for
> instance, a station runs the same ep. at 7:00 and 10:00. If the guide is
> wrong you'll end up as I did with an episode of Bonanza when you were
hoping
> for Alfred Hitchcock Presents. On the plus side, the color-coding, the
ease
> of recording, and viewing what you've recorded make the guide livable.
Also
> nice that recorded shows keep the guide info. But there are way too many
> channels and programs out there to be handled in a menu-driven guide. It's
> crying out for a keyboard. The fact that there's a usb port on the front
of
> the box gives hope for the future.

One thing that I have noticed by talking to others and reading different
posts, we aren't all at the same software version (and I can't even figure
out how to get to the status page to find out). For example, I complained
to a friend when I got the PVR that I couldn't record the Screen Savers
without getting all the recordings, then he got his and couldn't understand
what I meant, well I went in again and now I could select the 4:00PM
showing, before it was only allowing me to pick the first showing in the day
which was a repeat of the previous day, so somehow I got an update. For
HBO, I tell it to only record my Series Tickets on Sunday, that way I don't
get the repeats during the week. The Cable PVR is really lacking in the
ability to figure out if it has already recorded a show, Tivo added that
early in the Software, but I remember a time when I had to record the
Sopranos manually so I didn't get all the repeats during the week, so I
assume that the Cable PVR will get up to speed soon.

[Stan]

On 7/7/03 2:55 PM, in article , "Ralph
Snart" > wrote:

> On Mon, 07 Jul 2003 09:56:46 -0400, Stan > wrote:
>> My cable guy set up the box expertly but was otherwise clueless. He said the
>> instruction manual for the box is not yet available in NYC. He also told me
>> that the box can record up to 100 hours and that I can record 2 shows while
>> watching a third, neither of which I believe to be true.
>
> if the SA8000 is similar to the DirecTV Tivo (which i believe to be the case),
> then the record-two-while-watching-third is not only possible but something
> i do many times a week. the only caveat is the third item has to be a
> previously recorded on the hard disk item. not a big deal.
>
<Snip>
> -rs-

I stand corrected, you're exactly right. And if you try to watch a live
station while recording 2 others it gives you the option of ending the
recording of either of the 2 shows.
-Stan

[Stephane Beaudry]

> newbie here (see my other post). Is this a regular Digital Cable box
available
> for TWC subscribers in NYC? I currently have the Scientific American
> "Explorer 2000" box. I was going to hook it into TiVo but now I'm
wondering if
> I should just buy this thing (provided of course it is possible in my
area).
> Thoughts?

Acutally, you can't buy the Box, it is simply provided by your Cable
Provider, availability is increasing and more and more people are getting
access to them.