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After years of dismissing cable companies as technology laggards stuck on the ground as satellite TV took viewers into orbit, my head is suddenly spinning around.

Comcast (www.comcast.com), the cable provider in just about every Bay Area city, at last introduced an integrated DVR receiver locally Dec. 9. In typical Comcast fashion, the announcement was made before the customer-service department got briefed, causing several days of needless confusion. But the new box now seems to be in relatively good supply, and any back orders should be cleared up by the end of January.

That box is the Motorola DCT6412 (http://broadband.

motorola.com/dvr), with a 120-gigabyte hard drive that can hold about 60 hours of regular television or about 15 hours of HD or any mixture of the two. It's a dual-tuner design, meaning you can record one show while watching another or record two shows at once -- with one or both in HD. You can even watch a previously recorded show while two other shows are being recorded.

DirecTV charges $999 up front for its HD DVR receiver, while Dish Network charges $549. To get those prices, you need to sign a one-year service contract.

Comcast's up-front price for the Motorola box: zero. And there's no contract; if you don't like the box, you can return it right away with no penalty.

There is a monthly fee of $9.95 a month for DVR service and an optional $5 a month for HD, if you want high-definition channels, on top of whatever digital cable plan you choose. The total, $15 a month, is comparable to what you pay with an HD DVR from DirecTV or Dish Network. TiVo, the San Jose company that pioneered DVRs, charges $12.95 a month for its non-integrated, non-HD DVR.


You get the DCT6412 even if you don't yet have an HD television. It's a kind of Trojan horse -- when you eventually upgrade to HD, the box will be instantly ready to start displaying and recording HD shows.

Also, Comcast's dual tuners require only a single cable line. Dual-tuner satellite receivers require a second line from the dish to the receiver, so installers have to drill a second hole in your wall. Nor does the Comcast box require connection to a phone line, as do satellite receivers.


I got a Motorola DCT6412 on loan from Comcast at my home Dec. 17, so I've had nearly two weeks of viewing experience. I found the box easy to use, both for recording shows on the DVR and for accessing shows through On Demand. Picture and sound quality for both standard definition and HD was equivalent to satellite. On Demand had enough choices that I found a fair number of shows I'd want to watch, even though it doesn't offer any prime-time series from the big networks.

I did encounter a few small glitches, as did a friend of mine down the street who got a DCT6412 a week after me. We noticed very occasional pixelation, where a part of the picture would degenerate into small, colored squares. And we both initially encountered some bugs in the DVR functions, although the problems disappeared after about two days.

Overall, however, I'd rate Comcast's DVR and On Demand service as equal to or better than anything satellite offers now. And there's no risk in trying the Comcast DVR yourself, since you don't pay up front or sign a service contract.

Not that the market will be standing still. At the big Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, I'm anticipating announcements from DirecTV and Dish Network that should heat up the competition even further in 2005.

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