Just swithed to Comcast Cable - Stupid box?

[rickjs]

DTV wanted me to commit to 2 years of service in order to not charge me for 2 new DVR's, so i switched over to Comcast..

One idiotic "feature" of the DVR I have been told, and it seems to be true, is if you turn the box off, none of your DVR recordings will happen! I confirmed this with cust service, and was told there was no way to "lock" the power on... and I seem to have a couple of roommates that forget to leave the converter powered on.

Anybody have thoughts why this would be designed this way? ... and if it is crazy, wouldnt Comcast, that buys 100's of thousand Motorola boxs have some leverage to get that bug fixed?

This was not the case with DirecTV units, as they would record regardless of the power setting.. it would always turn on when the recording started..

My other frustration, is OnDemand does not let you fast forward more than slow speed... not fun if you need to move 45 minutes back to something..

Other than that, i'm adjusting... and it's great to have the remote commands react quickly with button pushes... versus the lag to have DTV respond

cheers
rick

[Bobby]

Which Motorola box do you have. When I had a 6412, it would turn itself on for a pre-programmed event and then shut itself off when it was done.

[ke4est]

to Satelliteguys

[Neutron]

Welcome to Satelliteguys!! :

We're switching to Time Warner cable tomorrow from Directv (similar issues, customer service SUCKS). Instead of the crappy DVR boxes from TWC, we are installing Tivo HD boxes with cablecards. You should check into it.

[jayn_j]

DTV wanted me to commit to 2 years of service in order to not charge me for 2 new DVR's, so i switched over to Comcast..

One idiotic "feature" of the DVR I have been told, and it seems to be true, is if you turn the box off, none of your DVR recordings will happen! I confirmed this with cust service, and was told there was no way to "lock" the power on... and I seem to have a couple of roommates that forget to leave the converter powered on.

Anybody have thoughts why this would be designed this way? ... and if it is crazy, wouldnt Comcast, that buys 100's of thousand Motorola boxs have some leverage to get that bug fixed?

This was not the case with DirecTV units, as they would record regardless of the power setting.. it would always turn on when the recording started..

My other frustration, is OnDemand does not let you fast forward more than slow speed... not fun if you need to move 45 minutes back to something..

Other than that, i'm adjusting... and it's great to have the remote commands react quickly with button pushes... versus the lag to have DTV respond

cheers
rick

Yep, we need to know the model number. My Motorola 6416 HD DVRs have a boatload of issues, but this isn't one of them.

However, what is the harm in simply leaving it turned on? It doesn't draw significantly more power, as it is always doing background processing. In fact, the general consensus for my 6416 is to never turn it off as several serious bugs such as lost timers and HDMI synchronizaton are associated with power off.

You might also want to type in the model number over at wikipedia. Many of the cable boxes have dedicated articles that discuss bugs, workarounds and hidden features. For example, most of the Motorola boxes have the ability to do a 30 second skip forward. It has been disabled on the default control, but an article on mine describes how to restore the feature. The wikipedia article also told how to disable the power button on the remote.

As for the on demand operation, you need to understand that you are receiving a special video feed from the head end office. When you hit pause and ff/rev, you are actually sending commands all the way back there to control the output video stream. You are not doing local buffering. The amazing thing is that it works at all.

[rickjs]

I've got one DCT3416 I, and one DCH3416. Thanks for the info for on-demand.. makes sense now... and i'll wiki my models later this eve to see whats up... I have no problem with leaving them on.. just all my friends are used to just hitting the on/off for everything.. so its really user error that they get turned off.... i just never had to worry about it before. I have to say, my favorite for use, was the original TiVo DTV boxes... easy to use, accurate.. the later DTV/DVR's (IMHO) never made it up to the level of TiVo.
Cheers
Rick

[tomk]

You can power off box. It will turn on. Don't worry.
I have both boxes