Comcast Motorola DVR box ... anyone experince this?

[FulciLives]

Hello

I just bought me a Pioneer DVDR-531H-s which is a stand alone DVD recorder with a built-in 80GB HDD.

I went to my local Comcast locatioin because my stupid Motorola box broke and I wanted to replace it ... also wanted a 2nd box so one is dedicated to the TV and one to the Pioneer DVD recorder.

They kinda talked me into the Motorola DVR box that they have ... it is free the first month then only $9.99 after that and a 2nd box is something like $5.99 extra anyways so I figured OK why not.

So I hooked the regular non-DVR box up to the Pioneer DVD recorder and the DVR box to the TV.

I was playing around with it ... recorded some Japanese anime from Cartoon Network and a movie from Sci-Fi and damn I am impressed ... the quality looks as good as the original ... though bear in mind I am at the moment stuck with using a 20 inch TV so maybe that is why I can't see a difference ... but it is impressive as far as I can tell.

I intend to copy stuff to the HDD of the Pioneer that I want to keep (then edit and burn) but the DVR might be usefull with time shifting primetime shows I want to watch once then delete ... also it will come in handy when shows are on at the same time or overlap ... which already has happened (even though I've had the DVR and the DVD Recorder one day now).

You can even hook the DVR outputs (has composite and S-video and even component but it says HDTV capable so maybe that is only if you have HDTV service of which I do not) to the stand alone DVD recorder but I don't like the idea of two times the compression (once by the DVR and again by the Pioneer DVD recorder) ... but sometimes you don't have a choice when two shows are on at the same time.

I got a manual for the regular cable box (big deal) but didn't get one for the DVR box. Anyone been using it? I can't seem to find any "levels" or "modes" of recording like you have on a DVD recorder. I've never had TIVO but I think they have different recording modes and hence different quality. I wonder if the Motorola DVR is the same although the "default" setting looks good.

I hope to be buying a 32" TV around the end of the year (put it off to buy the Pioneer DVD recorder now) so maybe then I will notice the quality sucks on the DVR unit LOL

Just wondering if other people have this DVR and what they think of it.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Frobozz]

I use the Comcast 6412 PVR along with my Pioneer 510 DVD recorder. The Comcast PVR records the digital channels in their native streams so it does not encode those already-encoded channels and there is not loss of quality. It does have an MPEG encoder to encode the analog channels which does compromise quality somewhat.

I presume you have the RF cable coming to the Comcast PVR and then have the Pioneer connected via S-video from the PVR.

If you split your RF cable ahead of the Comcast PVR you can connect one RF cable to the PVR and another RF cable to the Pioneer. In this way you can record the analog channels directly to the Pioneer without having them first MPEG encoded/decoded by the PVR. There's another advantage to this: the analog channel recordings take up much more space on the PVR's hard drive than do the digital channels. Naturally you still need to retain your s-video connection for transferring video from the PVR to your recorder.

You can download the PVR's manual either from the Comcast support site or by searching for the 6412 on Motorola's site.

[TBoneit]

What I'd do is split the cable and let one feed the Pioneer and record any analog channels on the Pioneer and let the Comcast box record the digital channels to record later on the Pioneer.

My best guess is that All the Cable companies PVRs have a so-so encoder that only has on quality setting for analog and for the digital channels the cable co. and Dishnetwork or DirecTv PVRs all just record the digital stream to the hdd and decode it for playback. You can only hope that the encoders that Comcast are not set to save to much bandwidth etc. I know that the Dishnetwork streams are 544 by 480 for many channels and 640 by 480 for premiums and PPV.... SD channels, HDTV I haven't looked at. They look pretty good despite being around 1 gigabyte per hour VBR also oversize GOPS etc. , maybe because the signal is noise free unlike my Cablevision analog channels. Another trick I've seen is that they crop part of the sides that are in the TVs overscan area. DirecTv too as I've heard it told. Cable companies may do any or all of these too if they need the bandwidth.

Anyway Good Luck
Roger