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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."
I was almost salivating when I read the article, until I realised that I live in the Bronx.
We have Cablevision here, and the service just plain sucks. I'm paying sixty doallrs a month for basic cable with no premium channels. They have a monopoly here, I can't switch cable providers, and my building won't let me have a dish.
The only thing I can count on is for their prices to go up. I can't even get 24/7 pay-per-view porn like they do in Manhattan.
It costs twenty dollars a month for basic channels 2-13 recpetion. Twenty bucks! Some people don't pay that for internet access!
When are they going to regulate cable companies who can't regulate themselves.
...is this story a blatant product placement? It reads like MarketDroid(TM) output. Nevermind that it's freakin' -enormous-...
Please help metamoderate.
There is a potential privacy issue here. However, if they "anonymize" the info, I see no problem.
In fact, this could become a great improvement over the "nielsen" ratings model. We all know that the Nielsens are problematic. The sample size is way too small. Too many excellent programs get cancelled due to "poor ratings".
It would be awesome if what people were actually watching would get credit. A lot more quality "niche" shows would probably be more viable. Especially in the cable markets.
I say, that this would be great so long as they:
1) Allow individuals to "opt-out" for ANY reason.
2) Anonymize all the information that is streamed from the box. Make the specific source code open source so geeks can verify that "big brother" isn't watching what they are.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
I've seen Time Warner's digital cable.. yes you dont have to compress it becuase it's already compressed. And it's horrible at that.. Just look into a dark area of a picture and you'll see the compression adjusting and all kinds of artifacts.
DirectDvr for DirectTv is much better becuase the picture quality is higher due to the extra bandwidth the satelite can play with.
Can anyone take some pictures of their TW unit? With the serials blurred of course... would love to see the back and (for the daring and screwdriver handy) insides...
I'm in Oshkosh, WI and I've had one for about 4 months now. Overall it's great, but there's little things that I wish they would iron out with a firmware upgrade. When you choose to record all episodes of a show it records all occurances, so you might record the same show 5 times in the same day if it's aired multiple times on multiple channels. It also has a tendency to crash once in a while and need to be factory reset. The AV inputs and the firewire connectors can't be used right now. But overall it's a great box, and well worth the money. I work 2nd shift and it lets me catch all the shows I miss during primetime and the ability to pause live tv is especially useful when my wife (seriously I have mod points and I got a wife) is feeling extra emotional. I work for Charter and I'm still waiting to see the DVR they have rolling out this fall in Minnesota.
If you are contemplating RCN, rub your face with a cheese grater instead, it will be a much more pleasant experience.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Tivo and Replay TV (I guess that's still sonic blue) have so many patents on DVR technology that it's not even funny. Tivo, inc. has said for years that their policy is to let the market grow and once in reaches a critical mass they're going to enforce their patents. Watch for it. Time Warner is a big investor in tivo so my guess is that there is some cross over technology here and backdoor agreements.
I've had two DirecTivos for years since they came out and not a single failure of the modem. I also have experienced only a few odd lockups and not in recent memory.
You don't have to be a fanboy to speak well of a product. TiVo isn't just a DVR it's a damn good DVR.
I kinda find that a little bit hard to believe. I used to work for Time Warner cable as a High Speed Data installer, and I know that once a week the DCT (Digital Cable Tunter) guys had to chase "Non-Responder" tickets...boxes that had stopped talking to the head-end.
;)
I do know that when you get a SA DCT, they come "golden" from the box--meaning, as long as your tv doesn't get "hit," you'll get all of the premium channels that they have, but not the pay per views. Once that box is hit, and you scan through a channel that you're not subscribed for, it'll call the head end to see if you've 'subscribed' to the channel, and will be polled regurally to see if you've ordered any Pay Per Views. (by the way, the stories about people putting filters and getting all the pay per views that they want, is false--the box only has about a $100 limit, and that filter basically puts the box on the Non-Responder List--meaning you'll have a tech out within a month to make sure everything's hunkey-dorey.) The reason that they won't take a $50 and leave your box un-hit is because it's still listed as on your truck until it's hit...and then the cable guy's responsible for the equipment...and they don't want to have to have that $500 box taken out of their paycheck
I disable sigs...do you?
Sounds great, but what about monitoring your viewing habits?
Who cares! If you're so ashamed at what you are watching that you're scared somebody might find out then maybe you should stop watching it in the first place.
Frankly, I WANT advertisers to know what I watch. If they can get accurate data maybe the shows me and my friends watch have a chance of surviving beyond the first season.
From what I know and understand about the way DCT's work, even if you could do something like this, you'd only have 24 hours to do it before it would reqired to be "hit" again, or, it'll CYCO out (Call your Cable Operator). If you've got enough gumption, or enough free time, or enough money, anything can be done. I believe that the protocol is encrypted, and that the communications protocol is well kept. Then again, I'm just a former HSD Technician, and I really don't know a whole lot about the DCT side of things.
I disable sigs...do you?
The digital cable channels look fantastic - you can really tell the difference, especially when you pause the picture.
I imagine that Time Warner NYC is just like every other cable company in the US and the first 60 channels give or take are analog.
If so, how do those channels look with this device?
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
Does this give you a direct feed from the front end demodulated signal?
The reason why PVRs on digital television make sense is because they're relatively easy to implement. Just record the demodulated feed on to the harddrive. Then when playing back feed the transport stream in to the decoder from the HD rather than the front end.
I was wandering through Best Buy last week (new store opened in NYC so I was curious).
Panasonic (I think), had a PVR with a built in DVD-R drive. The concept was that you could watch the show, and then if you wanted to keep it, burn it out. Neat idea, didn't see any other company steal it yet.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
I have both the DVR (since January in Syracuse) and 2 tivos. The FF speed on the TW offering is much much slower than the Tivo one, so you do see commercials, albeit at high speed. No programming skip buttons there. They did a study and found people still get the gist of commercials played at high speeds. There are channels you can not record (on demand, and some pay per views) and they do have flags to prevent you from recording regular digital channels, but all are disabled so far. It also does get much slower with the more programs you record. I would say the only adventage over tivo is the ability to record 2 channels at once. Other than that, tivo rocks it's world
I've had one of these boxes for two or three months in Indianapolis, IN. It's a piece of shit.
It does the very basics of what it claims with mixed results. If you tell it to record every episode of a show, be prepared to get every episode. In theory it should be able to detect a repeat of an already recorded show but in practice mine records lots and lots of repeats, quickly filling the drive. If the drive does fill up your shows scheduled to record will be ignored without warning. And sometimes your shows will be de-scheduled for no apparent reason at all.
To make things worse, the hardware quality is absolutely wretched. The first hard drive in mine died after three weeks. The replacement must have a bearing problem because it makes a very audible whirring noise. It's annoying, but not as annoying as blocking out four hours to wait for a cable guy to come fix it. The last guy who came out told me that about half of the units they get are DOA, usually with bad drives. Oh, and the picture quality on analog channels is worse than my previous non-DVR cable box. Artifacts and color banding galore.
So basically this thing sucks dead maggots through a straw but it's still slightly better than no DVR at all. The dual tuners, low price, and easy setup (all in one box, no phoneline, no IR blaster) are what keep me from buying a real DVR like Replay or Tivo. Still, I wish I had the option of paying 3x as much for a better piece of equipment. Cheap-ass Time Warner (oops, I mean Brighthouse!).
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.