I’m days away from getting our Xmas present to ourselves, a big screen HDTV. I checked with Cox and not only can I get a ton of HDTV channels bugt I can get an HD DVR for a trivial fee. It’s the SA8000HD model which is pretty new but I wanted to see if anyone else was using one yet. It claims to have 45 hours of recording capacity which indicates pretty high compression. Does anyone know if the compression level can be adjusted?
I have Comcast with the Motorola DCT-6200 (I think). It claims 40 hours SD recording, or 10 hours of HD recording. Do you know how large the hard drive is? HD is approximately 2 Mbit/sec bitrate, so you can do the math if you know the hard drive size.
Further compression is highly unlikely. For HD DVR, they just record the incoming data - it’s already digital, so there’s no encoding required. Compressing it further would be computationally intensive, and would certainly degrade the picture quality. So if they’re claiming 45 hours of HD recording, it probably just means they put in a monster hard drive.
To answer your original question - HD PVR is excellent. The only downside is that the Moto box is single tuner only, so you can’t watch one channel while recording another.
OK, I found the datasheet for the cable box you’re talking about here.
According to that, it’s a 2 tuner box, which is great, and has 2 possible harddrive sizes, 80 GB and 160 GB. It says the 160 GB has 20 hours of HD recording, or 90 hours of SD recording, so I’m guessing the 45 hours you were told is SD recording on the 80 GB drive. Doing the math, 2 MB/sec (my post above should have been 2 Mbytes/sec, not Mbits) for HD recording leads to 7.2 GB/hr, so 10 hours for an 80 GB drive is about right.
Hmmm…I’ll have to check the model number on mine when I get home. I have Comcast HD DVR, and I can most definitely record one show while watching another.
Oh, and to the OP, ye gods this is a wonderous invention. 
Hal Briston, I’m sure you do have a 2 tuner DVR - probably the Moto DCT-6208. The Comcast tech who installed ours told us to call them back in early 2005, and they’d upgrade us to 2 tuner. I think they’re phasing them in at different times in different areas.
Talk about perfect timing for a thread!
I too have bought myself an early Christmas gift of a 42" plasma from (don’t laugh) Walmart, for under $2,000. HDTV plasma. Picking it up tomorrow.
Cox Cable is coming Sunday to install the HD DVR box.
There is also a DVD recorder I am interested in buying for about $250 that records HD broadcasts, AND it has its own internal 40 GB drive! What I am wondering is if I get a few shows on the DVR I like, can I then send them to the DVD burner hard drive (for instance, save an entire series like Deadwood or something until I get a disk full) and then burn the disc from there?
And if I am not hijacking this thread too much, what kind of surround sound system do you all have? One with a built in DVD, or one that is just an amp with speakers?
Do you have a link to the DVD recorder? I’m wondering how you get the HD content onto it - if it’s component cable, you’re going to lose something in the transfer - digital in to STB, analog out over component cable, re-encoding to digital in DVD recorder.
I have a Cambridge Soundworks MegaTheater 510 - included DVD player, subwoofer, 5 satellite speakers. Great sound.
This is the one:
Hmm. I don’t think that records HDTV. You may be confusing HD=Hard Drive and HD=High Definition.
From the pics, it only has one set of component video connectors (the green/blue/red column), and I’m sure those are for output so you can watch your DVDs in progressive scan mode.
Your cable box may output HDTV content in SDTV mode on an S-video cable (mine does), and you could record that, but it would be in SDTV format only.
Thanks!
I thought I read an article in a consumer magazine that said this recorder could copy in HD - that is how I found out about it. And I could swear that on the box it said, “records in HD” but you are right, at least in this on-line description, it doesn’t make that claim. Still, think I am going to get it anyway as I like some of the other features.
One of the FAQs I read said that an HD recording can only be made with a digital HD VCR, and yes there are such things but very pricey. I am not aware of an HD DVD player or recorder at the consumer level.
DMark, let me know how you like the Vizio TV. Right now I’m planning on a 42" Panasonic LCD projection but I might be willing to spend a little more and get the higher resolution Vizio 42" that Sam’s Club has online. The Panasonic has built in dual tuners but that is a moot point since my cable box will have two tuners.
Despite the Walmart website, the in-store model is not Vizio, it is “ilo” - and from what I have read, it is a new line of electronics from Walmart. They have the ilo DVD burner for $149 plus the higher end ilo DVD burner as listed above. The ilo plasma tv is something that, according to the few press releases I have been able to find, Walmart has quietly released in a few test markets to see how it goes. One story implied they were being manufactured by a more “name brand” company, but being sold under the Walmart “ilo” name. Wish me luck, but from the specs, it looks like it has all the features of some of the far more expensive Panasonic and Sony models, at a far lower price.
But trust me, if I am not satisfied, there will be a very loud thread on the SDMB to announce the fact!
Got mine all hooked up on Sunday.
There are only 8 channels of HD, but some of those don’t broadcast all their shows in HD (like ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox), but on Cox cable they have INHD1 and INHD2 that has a lot of sports stuff, and some great IMAX films that they show. And HBO, Showtime show most of theirs in HD on the HD channels.
I have only used the DVR a few times, works great althou there does seem to be the occasional digital scramble (happened twice) but I don’t know if that was from the DVR or the digital reception - used to happen once in awhile with just the regular digital hook up I have had for about a year. It is a split second “glitch”.
But the DVR works great.
The cable guys totally hooked up my DVD burner incorrectly. Wrong type of cables to the wrong inputs…I spent a couple of hours on the phone with the manufacturer before we could undo all the crap Cox did. Of course, Cox claims no responsibility because, “we do not support technology other than the box to the TV”. I think I might be getting a dish system someday soon and telling Cox where to stuff their…well…
At any rate, at least the HD DVR box is doing what it is supposed to do, and it does have the “wow” effect when they are showing some awesome landscapes and underwater footage - plus there was a special on Rome and the picture was so clear you felt you were really there as they walked through the streets and went to the sites. Very cool.
DMark, IMHO small dish systems are a severe step down from digital cable. I used to have DirecTV and it was okay as I was comparing it to a poor analog cable system but I always see horrible compression artifacts like jagged color banding on my parent’s Dish Network setup. Cable isn’t perfect but I won’t switch to a mini dish.
I finally picked my TV and it will be delivered next Monday after we get back from a holiday weekend. I’m getting a 44" Zenith LCD projection model that was on sale at Best Buy for $1999 with 15% off accessories. We hemmed and hawed a bit and they offered us free delivery and another 5% off the whole package. They were displaying HDTV programming with proper connections so it looked great. I got the right digital cable for hookup to the box and for the time being I’ll just use the TV’s speakers until I decide how I want to rig my H-K reciever. I’ll be getting the HD-DVR after work today, Cox is using SA 8000 boxes.