Bit the bullet

[ncted]

I ordered TWC service today on a trial basis. I hope I don't have to take advantage of the 30-day money back guarantee. I got 2 SA 8300HD DVRs. I will be running for at least a little while with both DirecTV and TWC, so I can compare the 2. I realize the SA8300 isn't as good as the TiVos I have with D*, but it seemed pretty close today when I was playing around with the 8300HD with the Passport OS at the mall. Wish me luck!

Ted

 

[JamesJ]

you will be fine with either choice, heck even dish isnt bad (well the channels, now their service and their legal is another thing I dont care for!) but I loved both Directv and Time warner, only thing keeping me with Directv is this little thing called the sunday ticket, if Time warner ever gets that, I will camp out overnight at one of their branches to get cable.

 

[ncted]

Yeah, I went to D* initially to get a decent DVR. The SA8000 with SARA sucked badly. The SA8300 with Passport is lightyears better. Luckily, I don't have any requirements for Sunday Ticket or similar packages which lets me switch as I want. Right now, my reason for switching is TWC has come up with a much better HD offering. D* wants me to pay $299 for the new HDDVR, plus the monthly fee, and they don't even offer all the HD locals because their spot beam is too small, so CBS and Fox won't play ball. Anyway, I am hoping TWC works out. I'd really like to take full advantage of this HDTV I own.

Ted

 

[JamesJ]

My wife and I will be there with you, after football season is done! I am sad as i wont see the steelers that much, but.....I am like you, right now i cant afford High HD costs (I actually sold my Hr10-250 for 250 to help pay some bills while my wife "transitions jobs". But anyways its also costs, My time warner cable company offers DIgital cable, plus road runner, plus digital phone, for 120 a month, and that includes a HD DVR. Also HD pack is only 6.95 extra, which I dont have to have, but if I want movie channels, I can get all of them, plus all their on demands, and still only pay 157 a month, which my phone bill, plus internet, plus Directv all cost WAY more then 157 a month. so Right now Cable and their triple play in my area are huge. Plus the only reason I switched was because of service problems, but We found out two weeks ago we had a cut cable underground that fed both of our houses (my neighbor and I's house) so they ran seperate Rg11's to our house, and i have been over to my neighbors house, and they have perfect reception now (we both had the same problems). So all in all time warner is a good decision.
and the prices are for ever,as they are not promotional.

edit:here are there prices

http://www.discoverneo.com/calculator/SHPriceCalculator.php

 

[ncted]

Well, I can't really take advantage of the triple play, although they offer that here too. My company pays my RoadRunner bill directly. I pay $27 a month for AT&T CallVantage versus $40 for TW Digital Phone, and I get extra features TWDP doesn't seem to offer, like call filtering. So, I would be paying about $20 more per month than with D* for what I have there, but I get better HD (hopefully) and no rain fade. I lost most of 2 days during Ernesto!

Ted

 

[ncted]

Well, things are not going as well as I had hoped. The SA8300HD is better than the SA8000HD I had before, but the interface is still pretty frustrating at times. I have 2, and they are both behaving clunky and slow during playback. The menu, guide, and other interface operations are very fast, but the play, rw, and ff while watching a live or recorded show are frustratingly slow to respond. It can take several tries to get ff or rw started and to return to normal playback.

On top of that annoyance, my local CBS & Fox stations have decided to implement their own censors. On top of what the corporate censors already mute or remove from broadcasts, WRAL/WRAZ now also mute vulgar speech, such as "pissed" or "damn" from CBS & Fox broadcasts. The big problem with this is that the mute for each instance lasts 5 seconds, so one can miss significant dialog as a result.

At least with D*, I can also get the Greensboro CBS station which does not do this extra censorship yet.

Ted

 

[JamesJ]

I wont be going with TIme warner either, as we have decided to get the HR20, I know I know what about all that saving money talk, well it went out the window, we are cutting back other places, plus we are in a two year agreement, and I dont want to back out of that, I try not to do that kinda stuff!

 

[ncted]

Well, when I went in to return my TW DVRs they asked why I was cancelling. I told them about the slow reponse to playback commands. The CSR told me all I needed was a software update to fix that, so they applied the patch while I waited, and I am going to give TWC another shot since I still have 3 weeks left on my 30-day money back guarantee. This will give James some time to give us some solid feedback on the HR20 which I hope will help me make a decision to go with that, stay with TWC, or stay with SD D*.

Ted

 

[texas16309]

TWC SA8300DVR is the only reason I left. I couldn't stand it. In Austin, TX they run SARA which is a pile of crud and slow as a seven year itch. If they do like Comcast and Cox and roll out Tivo software to their DVRs, I'd go back.

The SARA interface looks like a bad Atari game. I also hated the one or two second black screen when I hit pause before the paused image came back. It was never instant like on D* or E* boxes. Guide is terrible and it isn't designed for HD like the 622. SA (Cisco) needs to get more power in those boxes and a real DVR software suite.

 

[riffjim4069]

Besides my cable company offering little HD and providing horrible service, the SA8000HD and SA8300HD DVRs with SARA were horrible...even my Sony QAM/ATSC HD DVR with free TV Guide On Screen was light years ahead. Even if cable was to suddenly offer lots of HD and cheap reliable services, it would be very difficult to give up use of my Dish 622s.

 

[ncted]

My SA83000HD has the Passport software. Menu/Guide is very fast compared to my D*Tivos, but playback controls can be a little clunky. TWC actually carries all the local HD channels, of which D* only offers 3 (NBC, ABC, CW) and Dish offers none right now. The SA8300HD actually has the "snapback" feature missing on the new HR20 from D*.

edit: I also like the screeensaver function on the SA8300HD.

I would really rather stick with D*, but I have this desire to actually watch HD on my HDTV.

I have used the Dish DVRs at a friend's house. I like the 30 second skip, but other than that I find them a little quirky compared to the D* Tivos. Barring any more problems with the SA8300HD or D* suddenly offering CBS and Fox locals in HD, I will likely switch to cable permanently at the end of me 30-day trial period, but I am keeping an open mind.

Ted

 

[Hall]

Well, when I went in to return my TW DVRs they asked why I was cancelling. I told them about the slow reponse to playback commands. The CSR told me all I needed was a software update to fix that...

So, did you fall for the "software update" excuse ?? Did it work ?? I'm guessing not.... Cablecos set-tops are automatically updated so there's almost no way you're box was out of date in regards to software.

 

[ncted]

So far, so good. No playback issues so far. I watched them manually apply the update. They said new installs could take up to a week normally to catch up. Seeing that both DVRs came in plastic wrap, I would not be surprised to hear they were not up to date right off the installers truck. My biggest concerns with these right now is capacity (only 160GB!!), the slightly clunky interface (getting used to that), and the crappy remote design (not sure I'll ever be able to tell List apart from Play in the dark).

Ted

 

[Hall]

My biggest concerns with these right now is capacity (only 160GB!!) ... and the crappy remote design (not sure I'll ever be able to tell List apart from Play in the dark).

Eventually you should have the option for adding your own external HDD. It's designed for it and some cablecos have it available but no TWC's that I've read of.

The remote is bad, isn't it ?? I went from Dish's DVR remote which just felt right to TWC's. I hated it at first and never did grow to like it. It seems as though you need to use two hands to operate it... Went back to Dish and within a week I was used to their remote again and can operate it almost without looking at it. It really helps that the interface is very quick and responsive too.

 

[ncted]

Yeah, I went by BB yesterday to check out the remote on the D* HR20. It seems a lot more user friendly. Starting to lean in that direction a little more, especially since I noticed a pronouced hiss on SD channels DVRed on my SA8300HD and also SD channels are dimmer on SA8300HD than my D*Tivos. Finally, I had many audio/video sync issues last night while watching recorded HD content on the SA8300HD. I am having a hard time convincing myself to pay more for that.

Ted

 

[Jankhomie]

Do you notice HD differences between D* and TWC? I keep reading/hearing about HD-Lite on D* and E*, so I thought TWC would be the choice, but TWC HD offers the fewest. I'm debating who to hook up my Westy with...

 

[ncted]

The only HD I ever have had from D* was all HD-Lite. I definitely tell a difference between it and the OTA HD signals I sometimes receive. It was "softer." Some of the TWC HD channels are "soft" looking as well though. That said, these HD-Lite channels are still all much better than SD or ED broadcasts. Right now, I get more HD channels from TWC than are available from D*. I expect that to change over the next couple of years in D* favor, but TWC is piloting SDV in my area which should allow them to even the score. Neither is what I really want which is full-res HD with Tivo.

Ted