cygweb

We made the decision to go ahead with Comcast's DVR service last weekend, so I called today and got some good news. The $5/month we pay for our HD box rental counts towards the $9.95/month DVR charge, since it's an HD-capable box. Even better was the fact that I could take my current box (the Motorola DCT5100) in and trade up at the local Comcast office today. I did that and now have the new box online. The only change I had to make was to go back to using component video for the HD video stream; the new box (a Moto DCT3412) doesn't have DVI out. HDMI is its only digital video out.

I haven't watched it much yet, but I set up a few shows (The Amazing Race and Boston Legal) to record tonight to see how the DVR feature works. I already did a little pause-rewind-replay action to test it out. It worked OK. I think I might have seen a little bit of stuttering on HD content; presumably the effect of watching a high-bitrate stream through the recording buffer. I'll have to make sure that's not going to be a regular phenomenon. I have a feeling most of our HD watching will end up being time-shifted, so as long as playback doesn't stutter, it shouldn't be too annoying. I hope it's something that Moto/Comcast are aware of and will fix.

Now I'll have to go troll some AV forums to get the latest poop on the 3412...