Time Warner Cable NYC Begins DVR Distribution

MikeTRose writes "Today's NYT Circuits section has an article about the proliferation of digital television choices for cable and satellite customers. They mention that Time Warner Cable will be starting to offer DVR cable boxes to New York City subscribers in September 2003. Apparently the time-shifting features of the new Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 (flash demo) set-tops are unusually powerful, as I got mine in Brooklyn this past Tuesday. 80 GB drive, which equals an estimated 50 hours of digital cable programming (no quality controls a la TiVo or ReplayTV, everything is as-broadcast). Programming interface is integrated completely into the slightly-updated channel guide, and you hit one big ol' record button to save a show. The tuner can handle two channels at once, so you can watch one/record one, or record two programs while watching a prerecorded show (similar to the DirecTV TiVo units if I recall correctly). Works great so far, and there's no quality problem with recompressing the digital cable as there is with standalone DVRs, nor is there the annoying 2-3 second channel change lag while it caches video. At less than $10 a month -- no cost to the subscriber for the box -- that money we were saving for a TiVo is up for grabs."

Comments

I have one

[astrashe]

I've had one of these boxes for two or three weeks, in Lincoln, Nebraska. It's great.

It costs an extra $5 a month, on top of the standard digital cable rate, and there were no hardware or installation charges. There's very tight integration with the program guide - when you browse through channels, you can see whatever you're watching (live or recorded) in a small window, and it's easy to program things.

The digital cable channels look fantastic - you can really tell the difference, especially when you pause the picture.

I've never used or even seen a tivo, so I don't know how this box compares to those, or specifically to the feature that lets you skip commercials. This box has a nice fast forward feature, with three different speeds, and when you drop out of it, the box tries to line you up with a scene change - in practice, it's pretty good at letting you hit the end of the commercial exactly.

At first I thought they were offering this because a DVR would make an ideal pay per view platform, but the box doesn't add anything to the PPV functionality of the old digital cable box. Time Warner has a system they call "iControl" that lets you pause, rewind, fast forward, etc., a PPV program, and the new box uses the same system, instead of its own disk.

Apparently they've been sending out a few software updates to these boxes. I was a very early adopter here - I had to keep calling the cable company, to see if they were out yet, to get mine. The installer told me that there were a lot of glitches early on in the roll out, but I haven't had many problems.

It is possible to trigger a reboot in the box by overloading it - I'm not exactly sure what causes it, but if you're doing several things at once with it, you can sink it. This has happened to me two or three times.

The really cool thing about these boxes is that they have USB and Firewire ports on them. But there's no software support for them. If you could extract video from these things, they'd be perfect.

Re:I have one

[ultrapenguin]

try this place:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&t hreadid=269141.

Requires an Apple laptop/desktop, firewire cable, OSX 10.2+, some C++ skills, and a large hard disk.

Re:I have one

[mckwant]

the TW DVR has something that's supposed to be similar, but it does a lousy job at maintaining itself. For some reason, if you ever schedule anything at the same time (which is possible with the second tuner), it cancels your season's pass without telling you.

I pray that people will use TiVos more than they use these crappy boxes, because I could go on about their inferiority, but, well, it's TW.

I mean really, even the grandparent admits it "reboots when you overload it." My TiVos only reboot when I unplug them. Just sickening.

Re:I have one

[astrashe]

I'm not familiar with tivo's season pass, so I'll just describe what this box does.

You schedule recordings from the program guide -- you can page through a grid and pick the shows you want to record. When you select a program, you get a pop-up menu that lets you record the one episode, or the entire series.

If you record the series, it will only record it on that channel, by default, but it will record it all times.

But you can go into another menu (series manager) and change the options -- there you can tell it how many episodes of a given show to keep, whether or not to record it only a specific time, or at all times, etc.

It's pretty good, for the most part, but it's not terribly bright about some things. For example, I like south park, and I want it to record all of the episodes. But it will keep a second copy of the same episode on the disk, even though the program guide has enough information for it to know that it's the same program.

I stopped recording dennis miller live on HBO, for example, because of that problem. When you get HBO here, you get 12 english channels, and they have dennis miller all over the place, with a ton of duplications, especially across the time zones.

The main feature that tivo has that this doesn't, as far as I can tell, is the thing that suggests programs for you. This box only records what I tell it to record, or what I watch.

Re:I have one

[Yottabyte84]

TiVo is smart enough not to duplicate recordings. The other nice feature is wishlists. They let you record by actor, keyword, director, etc.

Re:I have one

[akiaki007]

Not exactly. I believe prime time, the networks are all broadcast in HDTV, and by definition, that's not analog. Also, here, HBO is channel 32 and that's digital along with a bunch of other channels (ESPN, etc). I have satellite right now because TWC doesn't recognize my building as existing (it's almost 1 year old) and the quality is awesome, so I expect TWC is the same.

on a side note, because TWC sucks, I also don't have internet at home (i just moved into a sublet) and am in serious withdrawal...

Re:I have one

[markhb]

I've had one of the TW boxes since the beginning of this year (Southern Maine is one of TW's favorite test markets), and you can do a standard "record channel x on schedule y" (where "y" is a particular date, every <particular day of week>, every weekday, etc.), independent of the program guide Check the manual for the "Scheduled Recording" option; it's in some unexpected place on-screen. I'm not sure if the odd placement is the fault of TW or Scientific Atlanta, but my hunch is the manufacturer.

Oh, BTW, according to SciAtl at the DVP product page, the HDTV-capable DVR cable box will be available to cable operators in October-November. Can they get any more tech in one box?

Re:I have one

[Gleep]

your channels are digital because you have satellite but that is not true of cable. channel 32 on any cable system in the country is analog until the FCC rules for carriers and their analog distribution change. once they release cable providers from having to provide these analog channels then you will probably get digital hbo on channel 32 over cable but not until then.

Re:Uh huh

[MikeTRose]

it's pretty safe to assume that they have complete access to information regarding what shows you've watched, what you're recording, etc

Scientific Atlanta FAQ says that no channel choice or program info goes upstream from the box to the provider. FWIW.

Re:What is the downside?

[generic-man]

One of the biggest hang-ups with DVRs is that some of them could automatically skip commercials. My ReplayTV 5040 does a passable job of skipping commercials: about 80% effective overall, so 20% of shows must be fast-forwarded manually. Sometimes, during those 20%, I get lazy and watch the commercials anyway.

ReplayTV's old owners, SonicBlue, faced litigation from many large TV networks over their ad blocking, so the forthcoming 5500 series will not have the automatic commercial skip functionality. TiVo's investors include some players in the TV programming industry, so TiVo has never supported automatic commercial skip. (Source: PVR Compare)

ReplayTV caved in to industry pressure. TiVo is part-owned by big industry players. Of course, these new set-top boxes will have feature sets dictated by content providers.

Don't like it? Build a Linux-based DVR, which should be feature-complete by the time The Simpsons' 16th season premieres.

Re:Great! Oh...wait a minute...

[zztzed]

The cable company here charges $30/month for channels 2-13. I think if you want all the channels (including digital ones) it comes out to $80-90. And of course there's the receiver rental fee. So it could be worse.

Also, the owner of your building cannot prevent you from installing a satellite dish under one meter in diameter. See here for details.

Wait and see....

[gad_zuki!]

>I thought for sure that would be one thing. I thought that they would restrict the speed so you were forced to watch commercials.

Call me cynical, but it would seen suicidal to wake up the sleeping DRM right now. Wait till Tivo et al are out of business and then push the new licensing agreement on them. I mean, why *wouldn't* they do that. The cable industry isn't exactly really into ethics or competition. They have a history of signing exclusive municipal deals, fighting off shared access, and a few months ago comcast told all its cable modem subscribers that unless they order their video service then the cable modem service will cost 10 dollars more.

Heh, just wait to see what they've got in store for him, especially when HBO, TBS, or whoever says, "We wont do business with you unless you stop skipping our commercials." Tivo and Replay would be immune to that, the cable companies aren't.

You really don't want your content provider to also be your hardware provider.

Your building can't stop you from having a dish

[Anonymous Coward]

Under FCC guidelines, a Homeowner's Association or a landlord cannot prevent a homeowner from installing a satellite dish less than one meter in diameter on any property where the owner has both direct or indirect ownership and exclusive control. In some cases, a Homeowner's Association may be able to require the owner to adhere to certain guidelines, such as professional installation and proper screening. Furthermore, there may exist regulations on satellite dishes in historical districts.

In regards to rental property, FCC guidelines permit a leaseholder to install a dish less than one meter in diameter on areas that are under exclusive use of the tenant. Prior consent from the landlord is not required if the leaseholder intends to install the dish on an area where they have exclusive control (i.e. a patio or balcony).

For more information on satellite installation rights and regulations, please see the zoning section of the SBCA Web site at: http://www.sbca.com/government/zoning.htm.

Re:Compression

[astrashe]

I'm pretty sure that it doesn't recompress. I have one of these boxes.

First of all, the box, beyond being a DVR, is also a normal digital cable box -- it has all the same functinality. If it does recompress, it would have to decompress the incoming signal then recompress it, all in the same box. I just can't imagine anyone building that. It makes more sense for it to just dump the incoming data stream to the disk, and defer decompression until you're watching it.

Second of all, there's no visible difference between a live digital cable program and a time shifted program, although there isn't much of a difference between live and timeshifted analog cable programs either.

I haven't used a tivo, and I'm sure those are very nice as well (or better, for all I know), but this is a very sweet box.

Yet another reason why I buy Japanese

[Anonymous Coward]

http://panasonic.jp/dvd/recorder/e200h/spec/01.htm l

160GB HDD, 24x DVD burner, EP mode = 212 hours HDD capacity, Input slots for SD card etc...

One catch, I have to wait until September 1st for this baby. :(

DishNetwork has had this for years now...

[wernst]

DishNetwork has been selling and/or leasing what it calls PVR's (personal video recorders) for two years now. The one set-top box integrates the whole record-to-hard-drive-from-the-program-guide since day one, including Pay-Per-View and the movie channels.

There is only one quality mode, and it is indistinguishable from "live" digital satelite TV. I've NEVER encountered a program I couldn't time-shift. Oh, and there's a 30-second commercial skip button that works out of the box on the remote.

So why exactly is this development for cable TV "news"?

Re:Compression

[rusty0101]

I would have thought the box is recompressing the signal after converting it to analog just like every other DVR on the market.

I don't know where you are getting your information, but while stand alone tivos, replays, and if they exist stand alone ultimate-tvs all do compress the anlaog signal they receive, direcTiVos and DirecTV UltimateTV receivers simply decrypt the digital stream from DirecTV, and re-encrypt it before storing the digital stream onto the hard drives. This is why there is no "compression setting" on these systems. The compressed stream from DirecTV is about as compressed as the high compression setting of a SA Tivo, while being about as high quality as the low compression(high quality) setting.

There is some variability between manufacturers on the playback quality. The only time I have noticed pixilization on my Philips DirecTiVo has been duing bad rains. I have heard people complain about the quality of playback on other units.

Go to Google and look up "Tivo Community DirecTiVo playback quality" and start looking for reports of quality to determine which system may be best for you.

So far as I know no digital broadcast system is streaming Mpeg-4 yet. There may be a couple of Internet based companies trying it out, but it is too cutting edge for most businesses these days. If you want to get the rights to do so, this may be a way to sell cable over DSL. You will want a lot of bandwidth at the head end however, even though you will not have a lot of customers initially. I would also recomend using multi-cast to get around bandwidth issues initially. Figuring out what networks to multi-cast and what to uni-cast will be an ongoing decision making situation.

-Rusty

Re:Is that per box?

[arudloff]

Here in Orlando, it's roughly $10 a box. Here's the catch though: It's in addition to the rental fee your already paying, so..

We have two digital cable boxes and pay something like $6 for the first upgrade, and $12 for the second.

Overall, I love mine. TiVO has a better interface by far though, but it kicks the crap out of the ReplayTV we have in the living room. The best part is the dual tuner and the picture in picture.

Oh.. And.. Check this out.. On the box, hit the button between the direction arrows and the enter button and hold it until it beeps. At that point, hit them again.. It's the diagnostic screen where you can view the units IP and all sorts of fun stuff. It looks like it might not be long before cable modems and your cable box become the same unit.

Decent box, horrible software

[jonabbey]

I've had the SA 8000 in Austin since late last year. It is great having the DVR functionality, but there have been a _lot_ of bugs, and a lot of missing features, at least with the Cable backend TW-Austin is using. Some franchises are using a cable back-end made by Pioneer, and their SA-8000 boxes are far more featureful.

Those interested in reading user reports on this device should visit the Yahoo Explorer 8000 Group page. Misery loves company, as they say.

I've has one for months in Austin... it's okay...

[Halo-]

We've had them in Austin, Texas for some time now. In fact, I'm watching a show I "time-shifted" earlier right now. I have to admit the technology is cool, but not as rapid as you might think.

For one thing, if it is recording something, expect the remote to be sluggish. Like 5-10 second response times when it's feeling especially pissy.

I've also had a few cases of corruption a long time ago when I was recording two shows at once (yep, you can do that, but two's the limit) Both shows came out garbled and pretty much unwatchable.

Sometimes it locks up. You'll need to unplug it for a bit and let it think about what it did wrong. Oh, and when they don't turn it on until it gets the clock signal, they mean it. That, and sometimes I've lost everything which was stored after a power outage. Which is strange, cuz you would think the hard-drive would be okay with that...

I realize I've listed a bunch of negatives here. I do like the device, and it's worth the few bucks a month.

Now if I can just continue to resist the urge to explore those USB, FireWire, and other interesting bits, things will be grand. :)

Re:What is the downside?

[phaetonic]

I have had the PVR from Time Warner for roughly three months. There are a few channels I've found which brings up a box saying it is not allowed to be recorded if you try to record. Channels like Cartoon Channel in Spanish, Music on Demand, Local Radio, and I'm ASSUMING HBO and other premium channels.

Re:What is the downside?

[heinousjay]

I have Comcast DVR, and they won't let me record the music channels or the on demand channels.

Everything else, including the movie channels and regular pay per view, is fair game.

Check TiVo out first

[macwhiz]

I haven't used a SA 8000 myself, but I've talked to people who have. I've also played with other "advanced" SA boxes, like the 3100HD. I own a TiVo. Based on all that, I'd recommend anyone considering the SA 8000 take a good look at a TiVo first. The consensus seems to be that the SA 8000 looks good only so long as you don't know what you're missing.

The SA 8000 has these advantages:

• No up-front cost
• Dual tuners
• No need for the IR dongle
• Better recording quality for digital channels
• Doesn't require phone line connection

However, the TiVo has advantages over the SA 8000:

• Season Pass function is far smarter about multiple shows, reruns, etc.
• Suggestions feature will often record things you want to see that you didn't know to record
• Rarely if ever crashes
• Doesn't lose all your shows when the power goes out or the box crashes
• Isn't tied to your current cable system -- operates without the cable line attached, can be taken with you on vacation or to a friend's house
• If you are comfortable with computers, can be easily modified
• Better user interface doesn't get in the way of watching TV
• Can play MP3s from your home computer when connected to your home LAN*
• Can display JPEGs from your home computer when connected to your home LAN*
• Can be programmed remotely from any web browser -- so if you're at work and you realize you forgot to record a show (or you are about to stay late), you're a few clicks away from having no problem*

* Requires Series2 TiVo and Home Media Option (extra cost)

The Season Pass is the key to DVRs. The power of the DVR is the ability to say, "I want you to record every new episode of ER." The DVR then figures out which episodes are new, when they come on, which ones to record, etc. My understanding is that SA's DVR has a fairly rudimentary ability to record shows by name. The Season Pass has an ability to distinguish reruns from new shows, determine when a show is on six times in a week and record it just once, automatically determine which of six showings in a week doesn't conflict with other recordings, and even record shows based on keyword searches of the actors, title, or description. What point is there in owning (or renting) a DVR if it's as cumbersome to use as a VCR?

Some important points about the SA 8000 that aren't immediately obvious from the hype:

• Although it does record digital channels without recompressing, it must compress analog channels itself. Any channel that you could get without the digital converter box is still analog, even with the digital box.
• If your cable connection is out, and the box can't get authorization to operate from the cable company, you may not be able to watch the stuff on the hard drive.

In my opinion, SA has work to do on their line of digital boxes. My 3100HD was plagued with issues. It had trouble with digital sound. It would occasionally reset for no apparent reason. It seemed to degrade analog channels quite a bit -- its comb filter was terrible. From all the reports I've read, the 8000 is even worse, suffering from annoying, crippling bugs that haven't been resolved in a year of deployment. I question whether or not SA is dedicated to making these boxes work properly, or if they're "good enough" to generate extra revenue for cable system operators.

The TiVo works great, it's stable, it's the standard to which others are compared, and I own it. I can modify it. I can use it as I see fit -- it doesn't require "authorization" to work.

Don't get taken in by the "invasion of privacy" FUD. Yes, the TiVo will report back on your viewing habits. The data is anonymized. Personally, I like the idea that my viewing habits may be scrutinized by the networks. Too many good shows that I like are taken off the air for "poor ratings." I firmly hope that someday, TiVo data is taken as seriously as Nielsen est

Re:What is the downside?

[Slurpee]

I thought that they would restrict the speed so you were forced to watch commercials.

An earlier post said that to get the DVR you had to pay an extra $5 per month. Thats $5 per subscriber. I'm not sure how much advertising profit they get *per subscriber* currently, but I'd bet it would be a *lot* less then $5 per person. Cable companies get revenue from two main sources. You, and the advertisers. They have no problems shutting out advertisers if you will pay them to.

Don't forget the $5 they get per subscriber is almost pure profit. They have to buy digital boxes anyway, so why not keep the extra revenue themselves? Plus by owning the technology themselves, they set up lots of other revenue stream possibilities. "Premium" adverts that can't be skipped, targetted advertising, and all sorts of other benifits.

And until advertisers start saying "I won't pay to advertising on your cable network cause they can skip my advert", the cable company is still earning their advertising dollars.

Unlike the RIAA, the cable companies know that technology progresses, and generally look to the new technology for new revenue possibilities (don't think they'll let you pirate movies though).

If they see a market for a product...they will go for it. If they can create more products by going digital and DVR, they will do that.

(background...I've done iTV dev work for cable companies, and have heard a little about the types of revenue models possible, but I certainly wouldn't call myself an expert)

Re:Compression

[FireBreathingDog]

Ok, perhaps I should have been clearer - forgive me for being a bit hung over tonight (work party). I can understand DirecTiVo units simply storing the DirecTV MPEG-2 stream on the hard drive. What I was specifically asking about was non-recompressed digital cable signals on a DVR

The digital cable I have (TW) seems to use MPEG-2

Re:Pictures?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had one for almost a year now in Albany, NY and I, uh... have a "friend" who has been trying to take it apart and figure out a way to rip the video off of the internal hard drive, (no luck so far sorry). I have , I mean, my "friend" has taken some nice photos of the connectors on the rear of the unit and the motherboard and hard drive inside...

Please mirror these photos if you can, I don't want to lose the good graces of my web provider: mirror me!

The Explorer 8000 is a piece of junk

[mpeskin]

I had this box in Austin for 4 months or so, and it was such a piece of junk it singlehandedly convinced me to switch to satellite (DirecTiVo - a HUGE improvement).

Problems I encountered (in rough order of annoyance):

• Loud chattering hard drive was constantly annoying - especially when NOT watching TV!
• Unbelieveably obtuse interface modeled on existing crappy Scientific Atlanta program guide
• Poor picture quality for analog channels
• SLOW!
• Nearly useless, duplicative, "record all episodes" feature (TiVo season pass is orders of magnitude superior)
• Bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs! The fact that SA was too proud to put a reset button on the front panel is unforgivable.

• Frankly, I expect technology to work (and as a software developer myself, I have little patience for products released with OBVIOUS software/firmware bugs). My life with this box was a teeth-grinding experience, and now that I have switched to satellite I will never look back.

  I don't really blame Time Warner, per=se, for these problems, but rather their insistence on using Scientific Atlanta equipment. SA's attempts at manufacturing high-tech equipment have been laughable - they should have stopped with good-old analog cable boxes, which they actually knew how to make.

  Remember, the equipment you get from the cable company was designed and manufactured to please the cable company (i.e. it's cheap), not you!

Comcast also has DVR

[Biff78]

About a month ago Comcast started experimenting with DVR in Arlington, VA (Outside DC.) I believe that this is the only region in the country that currently has Comcast DVR. If the choice is popular here it might expand. The equipment appears to be the same as mentioned in the article an 80GB HD with 50 hours of capacity as is. The equipment was free and the service costs $9.95 a month. The service very good but doesn't have all of TiVo's features. For example, no predictive recording.My only complaint so far is that it sometimes causes a delay in channel response when channel surfing. The channel won't change for 2-3 seconds and it will then catch up by flipping through multiple channels at once.

Read slashdot in the morning, pick it up same day

[dialt0ne]

Yup, I got my Time Warner DVR today. AND I'm already recording some shows for my wife. I just filled out the form on www.twcnyc.com, they called me and I was able to pick it up - with no installation fee - the same day.

I have to agree with some of the other posts that the changing of channels is a little slow, but the cost comparison makes it worth it. PLUS, if I don't like it I can just swap boxes again (Time Warner has offices close to me so it's not an issue) and not have to worry about the investment cost.

The fact that the monthly recurring cost was less than ReplayTV and TiVo was the closer for me. I already have the cable modem package, so it's only $6.95/mo.