Samsung HD box in Brevard...

[Khandurian]

Well, here we go again! The last time BHN tried to release the samsung box here it bombed horridly. They just would not work at all.

So here it is 6 months later and now their going to try it again. I was hoping to hear that the techs and management were going to test the box before handing out to customers, but thats not going to be the case this time.

They were issued to the contractors to hand out during installs. God I hope they fixed all the problems.

Of course, I forgot to get the model that we have. I'll have that on Monday and post it in here.

[jcarrera]

... was hoping to hear that the techs and management were going to test the box before handing out to customers, but thats not going to be the case this time..

What made you think they would do anything differently than they always do? Suddenly get smart and logical?

[stevenl]

We have been giving the samsung boxes out for awhile.. Main problem we get / complaints are because of the software. The OCRAP software sucks on any box.

[Khandurian]

We have been giving the samsung boxes out for awhile.. Main problem we get / complaints are because of the software. The OCRAP software sucks on any box.

Ya, but don't forget Brevard is the last to get everything. Good to hear they were atleast tested somewhere else before we started handing them out again.

[XSwiftX]

I have had great success with the Samsung boxes. Very few hardware failures. Biggest complaint is the ocap software.

[jcarrera]

What does 'ocap' mean?

[LonghornXP]

What does 'ocap' mean?

OCAP stands for OpenCable Application Platform. Its simply a standard that allows software (program guide, user interface etc) to be written that can work on any OCAP device. So in most cases the headend hardware and set-top boxes need to support OCAP. In the past many headends were built for specific hardware. In the case of Bright House Central Florida they use the Passport system mostly with Motorola hardware I believe. Bright House Tampa Bay however uses SARA instead of Passport and they use Scientific Atlanta hardware. The problem was that SARA boxes couldn't be used on a Passport system and vice versa. So if Scientific Atlanta boxes became very buggy (as they are) a cable company is very limited on what they can do because they really cannot change software or use another Moto box with say iguide software as it requires Passport.

OCAP simply allows any brand box that supports OCAP to work with any software that conforms to the OCAP spec. For example the Tivo software that was designed for Comcast is built using OCAP. This is why only specific Moto boxes (DHC3416 etc) can run the Tivo software because they are OCAP compliant. This is why not all Comcast markets have rolled out the Tivo software yet. I do however believe that Comcast has a middlelayer type software that allows the Tivo software to run on headends that don't fully support OCAP yet.

To make a long story short OCAP was supposed to help make things better but as with everything OpenCable has done they created a system with rules that force it to fail just like they did with cablecard etc.

[jcarrera]

Thanks...good explanation.

How/when does/will it affect me? Any average customer? I have SA8300HD STB using Passport, in Brevard.

[stevenl]

It will only affect you when your DVR goes bad and needs replaced (they will put a new one with new software in) or when OCAP is working properly (or they just feel like it) doing a massive system wide software upgrade. Which is unlikely at least until their Passport licenses expire.

[jcarrera]

Do they have to run different head end software packages for each different load of sfw type out in the customer houses?