Got a DVR thru the cable company today
 

the scientific atlanta explorer 8000.

Looks pretty slick. It words as a reciever and a PVR, has 2 separate tuners, and only costs an extra $8 a month, which is less than the TIVO monthly charge. Pretty slick eh?


So while I still detest the anti-sattellite ads on TV, I'm still going to stick with cable.


However, it still thinks that I use the guide to see whats on in 2 hours from now rather than now; go figure....

I got one too. I moved the Tivo up to the bedroom. The interface and software doesn't come close to comparing to Tivo, but the DVR from the cable company does have some advantages. First, if you already have digita cable, it doesn't cost musch more. Second, it can record two shows at once. The third reason is that it (I think) doesn't have to compress and uncompress the signal, so everything gets recorded in the best possible way. It also has dolby digital sound, which was a big plus for me.

I do find that it crashes a lot. But as a suplement to my TIvo, I can't really complain at all.

I have had this for 4 months and it is graet. It will freeze up on you once in a while or act very slow while changing the channels but thats the price you pay for first generation electronics.

yup, I've had the same thing for a couple of months now.
And as others have said it has it's faults.
But I still can't beat the price (it's only $4.95/month for me).

The problems I've had:
It's SLOW at times.
Much slower changing the channels or searching to see what is on than the previous digital cable box.

While recording one show (or two) and playing back another show at the same time, it's SUPER hesitant to any commands.
Like when I fast forward a commercial, and hit play again it won't respond for up to a FULL MINUTE and by then I just missed a few minutes of the show, and have to rewind, then ofcourse the SAME problem happens and I'm back to the beginning of the commercials.

I've had the thing completely crash twice. Well atleast it didn't lose what was already saved. But it didn't record my two shows for that day, because it was "down" and had to be reset.

Other than that I've had an overall good experience with it and well worth the money for me. Saves me a lot of time, and very useful for me.
I'll record two shows at once while watching one already recorded (to skip commercials).

This thing requires a lot of maintenance from me. It keeps losing the shows that I ask it to record. With Tivo, I can "set it and Forget it".

I also noticed how slow it can be when recording 2 shows while watching a third. In that situation, I found it helps to never fast forward more then the second setting. At first I found that annoying, but then I realized how much it was doing, and I was glad it worked at all.

The worst crash I've had with it, it erased ALL my shows plus all my scheduled recordings.
Overall, I'm still happy with it. One of my friends got one. He had been listening to me pushing my Tivo for over a year, yet he resisted getting one. He finnally got the timewarner DVR, to try it out, since it was much cheaper. 2 weeks later, he came to me and said "OMG, you were sooo right about everything!" It was very gratifying. Now if only Scientific Atlanta would license the Tivo software, this thing would be perfect.

I have a ReplayTV, but if my cable company offered one of these for $10 a month or less I would jump on it for a secondary recorder. Comcast uses Motorola boxes out here, so I'm hoping they offer the DCT5200 when it's available. I recently got the 5100 for it's HDTV capabilities and even without HDTV it's a nice upgrade from the old slow box. Especially for the digital audio output (finally!)

I think the latest firmware update has finally fixed all the problems with this unit. I have no reason to not recommend this model to anyone

I have the SA 8000. It is basically a piece of shit. 1/3 of the time I want to start a recorded program, it doesn't want to comply. Of course, I already have 2 Replays, so fortunately I use it sparingly. Fall will be the real test.

delaware county pa WHEN?

Yeah, but it's <i>cheaper</i>! Why pay for quality when you can get something that kinda works some of the time and mostly sort of does the same thing in a way. ;)

das

That's my feeling about the one we got from TW. We keep it in the bedroom, although now that I think about the Dolby Digital thing; mebbe moving it to the main TV isn't a bad idea, hmmm...

I used to have all these problems, but the newest version works just as good as any other 2 tuner DVR

Is there a reason you're in this thread, oh directionally advantaged one? ;)

Incidentally, when I turned on the piece of shit tonight to watch Nip/Tuck, it said that a software update is coming in a week. Hopefully this improves things.

Figured I'd mingle with the commonfolk for a bit ...

das

Frankly, despite my location, my disdain for the whole dish vs cable thing has really died down. My ex-roommate, who lives right down the street, has 4 TVs in his living room (including a 65 inch HD) & has Sunday Ticket . Except for when I went to Skins games, I was over there pretty much every week last year.

I can now cover 4-way conflicts although the POS does provide some headaches. The only remaining negatives are no Travel Channel and no ability to subscribe to Playboy TV monthly. The Travel Channel is no biggy since that same roommate has WPT S1 on DVD (which I am now borrowing). I'm sure he'll get this season on DVD as well.

OK, Here's the deal : You have to turn off the Atlanta Scientific POS at night or it'll screw up your recording programs. Something about it overheating. Very annoying, but preventable if you just think about it at night. It'll still record when turned off.
The software update has been great. Now it works much more like a TIVO, even recording new episodes of your selected shows. No more filling up the HD with 20 copies of the same episode of The Sopranos.
No it's not as good as a TIVO, but at least it's functional now. Love that I can record two shows at once. Recording Amazing Race and Real Sports right now...

I've certainly found that it performs better when it has been off for some time. Plus it is loud as shit when it is on (if it has something in the record buffer).

I just upgraded to HD DVR through TWC and I'm pretty happy considering there was no cost increase. Hell of a deal considering those cost quite a bit w/ satellite.

What's the HD recording capacity on the cable version?

Surprised to see this thread ressurected, but since it's here figured I'd update my situation ....

I got rid of the TW DVR after a couple more months of use. It crashed too many times, several times it wiped out all my recorded shows. I ended up buying an 80 hour Series 2 Tivo when they were on sale last year.

I'm glad to hear that the TW DVR is working better. My in-laws have one and they like it, but they mainly use it as a VCR.

We've had the TWC DVR, I think the same as the OP, the 8000, for about six months. I can't go back to not having a DvR, but there were some things I preferred about the Dish Network PVR508.
* No monthly fee for DVR services [TWC is 8 bucks or so, i think.]
* Searchable guide [search by title or actor] [the only way I've found, on the TWC, is to go to a certain date/time slot, or browse through alphabetical lists. Really time consuming.]
* Dish PVR seemed more stable, and definitely operated faster [channel changing and event management. The TWC one does 'freeze up' almost at random, and requires a reboot probably once every couple of weeks.
* You could delete a bunch of stuff at once, rather than having to delete one by one.
* I don't know if this is Dish vs TWC or PVR vs. DVR, but the picture on the TWC box ranges from 'excellent' to 'crappy'.

Things I like about the TWC DVR:
* Two-tuners; record/watch two things at once. [Combined with my TV's built-in PiP, you can actually watch three things at once. Not real practical, but kinda neat.]
* Series/name-based recording, versus DishPVR's date/time based recording.

I am waiting for them to release the HD DVR, currently we have both an HD box and the DVR hooked to the same tv, and it's somewhat a pain. They keep putting it off.

Never used Tivo. The different DVR's have different advantages/disadvantages, but any DVR is better than none.

I'll take "Things I Never Thought I'd Hear for $200, Alex"

Ron Popeil IM'ed; he wants his catch-phrase back.

Sorry, couldn't resist.....

And since no one's said it--welcome to the wonderful world of time-shifting! Your life has now changed. You'll never watch live TV again. :)