I heard a pretty in depth review of the TV stuff on the Giant Bombcast this week. The person reviewing it was using a Directv DVR. The general summary is that it works really well for some things and not at all for others. First it doesn't sound like there is any way to watch DVR recordings without using your remote.
Second, the Kinect voice recognition seems to have trouble with channel names. ESPN was the main example he used but he said this is also true for HBO or other families of channels that start with the same name. He said if you say "Xbox watch ESPN 2" (or ESPNU, ESPNews, ESPN Classic) the kinect stops listening after it hears ESPN. It thinks you wanted to watch the main ESPN channel no matter which words you say after that. He also couldn't get it to recognize AMC. He said it would bring up other channels like A&E and Spike TV instead. Speaking of Spike TV and other channels with "TV" in them... He said the Xbox would just think he was saying "Watch TV" instead of the channel he said. Some other channels like TVG apparently aren't recognized by the abbreviation they use in the logo and on your guide. You have to say TV Game Network instead but when you say the TV part at the beginning it confuses the Kinect. He said he was able to get it to recognize some of these problem channels by adding them to the favorite channel list. Apparently the channels in your favorites list get higher priority from the Kinect voice sensor.
One other issue is that for some reason it strips out the Dolby Digital 5.1 track from your cable/satellite box. You can choose to have it convert the DD5.1 to PCM 5.1 or DTS 5.1 but this is still in beta and apparently it doesn't work with all cable/satellite boxes. By default, it just turns your DD5.1 audio into stereo PCM. There is currently no way to just pass the DD5.1 audio through unaltered. Depending on how well the conversion works and if there is any loss of audio quality that would be enough reason for me to skip the TV integration feature. If it successfully converted my Hopper audio to PCM 5.1 with no noticeable quality loss I would probably still use it. There is no way I'm going back to stereo for all my Dish programing though.
I couldn't get the XB1 to control my 722, but I have an equipment off to the side and it doesn't bounce the signal at an angle. I actually wound up going to a Comcast place nearby to get one as neither Radio Shack nor Best Buy carries just the IR blaster cable. I described to them what I was looking for and the clerk went to a cabinet and handed it to me and said "You're my first to ask for this, I guess we better bring a lot more of these in". Looks like a good quality one with a jellybean size emitter and a long cord. I will test it when I get home later.
As for the surround sound issue, there is a check box deep in the settings menu that lets you click "surround sound (beta)". It passes through unfiltered 7.1 sound, which I verified it worked as it pinged each speaker in my setup during the setup process. The Dolby Digital or DTS light doesn't light up on my Onkyo receiver though, and says PCM multichannel. I read an article that said this was due to last minute triage that bumped this item for a few months after launch, so it should come back soon. This also affects those of you who want to use Dolby Headphone signals.
Here is my question.... I used to use the optical out port on my 722 to send to my receiver which worked fine. Now that I am passing it through the HDMI port only for sound, does the 722 output a Dolby Digital signal that way, or is it only via the optical port, until they add the feature back to the XB1 in a future software download?
I picked up my unit at Best Buy (I was hooking it up around 12:20 am last night, and the software download went smooth..... I'm guessing the process will be slower as more systems slam their servers trying to download, but it did it in about 3 minutes last night over a 20MB broadband connection), after preordering it and got a Day One box. Controller is a little weird (thumbsticks are skinnier and taller, but have rubber tire like pads for better grip), the triggers have rumble built in (will nest it with Need for Speed Rivals tonight). One note, the Smartglass app is for 360 only. You have to download a different app for the XB1 smartglass app. My hulu plus subscription automatically came over when I logged in with my email, so you don't have to reenter all your access emails and passwords.
