Recently ZDNet’s Ed Burnette lost a TiVo in a lightning storm. When that happened he decided to give Time Warner’s Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8340HDC DVR a try rather than having his old TiVo, which had lifetime but was not HD, repaired. Ed thought he’d try this because, as he puts it:

The Time Warner DVR box model was free, and the service cost $7.95/month. Also I was excited at the possibility of finally getting high definition content on my Sony HDTV. I asked some friends who used it and they seemed happy with it.

But the reality of the situation was not so rosy:

I can sum up my experiences with the Time Warner DVR in one word: Argh!

Ed enumerates the myriad of issues he experienced with the cable DVR in his article at ZDNet. From the terrible button-farm remote with unintuitive controls, to the lack of a priority list for the DVR’s version of Season Passes, to odd quirks during normal use (like the screen blacking when you pause playback and having trouble resuming playback), and more. And it sounds like his family agreed:

After two weeks of this I decided enough was enough. The family all agreed. We wanted TiVo!

Ed considered paying the $150 repair fee, which would really see him upgraded to a Series2DT with his lifetime transferred. But he’d had a taste of HD and native digital cable support, so he instead opted for the TiVo HD. After ordering his new TiVo HD, but before it shipped, TiVo announced the TiVo HD XL.

Knowing a good thing when he sees it, Ed canceled the TiVo HD and ordered a TiVo HD XL.

I think TiVo should send a nice thank you gift to Time Warner and Cisco/Scientific Atlanta for providing such a crappy DVR. The bad experience helped turn a potential lost customer with a dead TiVo into a high-end customer with the latest and greatest TiVo. Cisco’s bad DVR was good for TiVo.

It isn’t quite as good as the recent $131.99 deal at Buy.com, but it is still a good one. Amazon is selling the Western Digital 500GB My DVR Expander eSATA drive, compatible with the TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD (and Scientific Atlanta cable DVRs) for just $134.99. That’s 29%, $55, off the usual Amazon list price of $189.99.

The Motorola MTR700 and the Cisco STA1520, which we knew were slated for Wave 60 certification testing at the end of June, have both passed, as reported by Multichannel News. With both major vendors’ Tuning Adapters certified, cable MSOs should be able to soon begin offering them to customers soon to support Switched Digital Video (SDV). This is a little bit behind schedule, the Tuning Resolver (as the Tuning Adapter was then known) was expected in 2Q08. But even coming in a few months late it has been an impressively quick development cycle for the cable industry. It is known that Motorola started working on their unit last July, and they were revealed to the public last August. So it has been just about a year from the start of work to certification, which is really not a lot of time to develop, test, and certify a new product.

As recently revealed, the new 9.4 TiVo update includes Tuning Adapter support, so TiVo users will be ready for the TAs as soon as the cable MSOs make them available. As Bright House, Cox, Time Warner, and others all implementing SDV, the TAs will be increasingly important. Pricing for customers is not yet known, except for Cox which announced plans to provide the TAs to their customers free of charge.

From June 23rd through June 29th Buy.com is selling the Western Digital 500GB MyDVR Expander eSATA drive for just $149.99. They normally have it for $172.99, and the full MSRP is $199.99 - which is what TiVo.com sells it for. This is the only external eSATA drive officially approved for use with the TiVo Series3 or TiVo HD. It also works with the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300 Series DVRs.

They’re actually have a sale on a number of Western Digital external drives, if you’re also looking for more capacity on your PC:
Western Digital 750GB My Book Essential Edition USB 2.0 External Hard Drive $139.99
Western Digital Elements 500GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive $89.99
Western Digital 500GB My Book Essential USB 2.0 External Hard Drive $96.99
Western Digital 320GB My Passport Elite USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive - Bronze $148.99
Western Digital 1TB My Book Essential USB 2.0 External Hard Drive $197.99
Western Digital 500GB My DVR Expander eSATA External Hard Drive $149.99
Western Digital 320GB My Book Essential II USB 2.0 External Hard Drive $79.99
Western Digital My Book Home Edition 1TB - Triple Interface (USB 2.0, eSATA & FireWire 400) External Hard Drive $237.99

Following up on his report on the Motorola MTR700, Ben Drawbaugh of EngadgetHD has posted photos of the corresponding Cisco/Scientific Atlanta STA1520 Tuning Adapter. While Motorola’s TA was part of a working demo, the Cisco box is just a static display, not connected to anything. While it has the same connections, the Cisco box is physically much larger than the Motorola TA. And while Motorola indicated that their TA could be available to cable MSOs in July, Cisco is only saying 3Q2008.

Still, progress is being made. Be patient a little while longer all you folks with SDV issues.

Wow, in the past couple of days there has been an interesting flurry of online activity about CableCARD, Switched Digital Video (SDV), and the Tuning Resolver. HD GURU posted an ‘investigative report’ entitled “How The Cable Industry Plans to Cheat 10+ Million HDTV Owners”, so you might guess at the tone. Unfortunately, there are a few factual errors in the post - for example, all CableCARDs are two-way capable and always have been. Mike Schwartz from CableLabs responded with an extensive comment that I recommend reading if you read the post. (I’d link to it but the blog doesn’t appear to support comment links, just scroll down a bit.)

The HDTiVo Blog picked it up from there (which is where I found the link to the HD GURU post). Gizmodo also picked up the story, though I have a nit to pick: “Our friend Gary Merson, the HD Guru, has uncovered an issue that may soon piss you off.” Uncovered? Gizmodo hasn’t been paying attention, blogs such as this one, Zatz Not Funny, and others have mentioned the SDV issue and Tuning Resolver repeatedly for quite a while now. Just one example, the issue with Bright House cable pulling channels, and then returning them. This is hardly a surprise issue if you’ve been paying attention. And, unfortunately, Gizmodo repeated the errors from the original post.

Anyway, CableLabs responded to Gizmodo’s original post, and Gizmodo shared the information in a follow-up post. I’m glad a statement came out of it to help clarify things a bit, and correct the misconceptions.

Over at Zatz Not Funny, Dave Zatz chimed in on the SDV Tuning resolver issue as well. Including a link to the most solid, and best, news to come out of the whole thing, at Media Experiences 2 Go. Mari Silbey of Motorola reports that Motorola’s Tuning Resolver implementation, now officially the MTR700, has sailed through CableLabs interoperability testing ‘with flying colors’. The next step is CableLabs certification testing with product submission in April in preparation for the certification board meeting in June. So, presuming the device gets certified, it will be ready at the end of June. Which means it would be very unlikely to make the 2Q2008 release schedule, but will probably be available in early 3Q08. Motorola will be exhibiting the MTR700 at The Cable Show in New Orleans in May. While it may not seem that way to those awaiting a solution, the development of the Tuning Resolver has been extremely fast for a new piece of hardware. The cable industry is really fast-tracking development to get the Tuning Resolver out there as fast as possible. Now it is up to the consumer electronics industry to provide compatible firmware for CableCARD devices with USB ports. (TiVo is, of course, already on board.)

Back in November when the Motorola Tuning Resolver was first revealed, it was noted that it strongly resembled their DCT700 cable box. The MTR700 model number seems to indicate the commonality is more than cosmetic.

According to Multichannel News, Cisco is retiring the Scientific Atlanta brand in favor of their own. At CES next week they will be unveiling their new line of STBs, which will carry the Cisco brand in place SciAtl. Cisco acquired SciAtl in 2006 for $6.9 billion, but, until now, hasn’t changed the consumer branded on their products. Existing SciAtl product lines will retain the SciAtl branding, but all new products will be branded as Cisco gear. So the SciAtl brand will fade with time as the older product lines are refreshed. Cisco has dropped a press release about what they’ll be exhibiting at CES.

Picked up via Network World.

Don Reisinger at NewTeeVee has a quick tutorial on getting more HD resolutions out of your Scientific Atlanta cable STB. No hacking required, just a little back door into the configuration options. Pretty nifty. Via EngadgetHD.

SearchNetworking.com has an article about Cisco’s movies into the IP video market which contains a couple of TiVo mentions:

Second, the Scientific Atlanta deal helped Cisco find an ally in TiVo, the digital video recording company. “The combination of Scientific Atlanta technology and market girth and the user-friendly TiVo graphical user interface provides software and usability expertise,” Sizemore said.

And:

According to Sizemore, the Scientific Atlanta buy can vault Cisco into the interactive advertising market by enabling IP on set-top boxes. That method can give Cisco the ability to leverage its enterprise expertise to create a two-way marketing and sales engine directly into the living room, using a familiar and friendly interface from TiVo.

This is interesting because my impression is that TiVo and Cisco/Scientific Atlanta aren’t really partnered, but rather Comcast is funding development of the TiVo OCAP software to run on the SciAtl cable boxes. I’m sure that, as part of that effort, TiVo is working with SciAtl engineers on platform specifics, but this article makes it sound like a much closer relationship. It makes me wonder if the author, or at least the person he’s quoting, is reading too much into things, or if he knows more than has been public.

While the eSATA ports on the Series3 and TiVo HD are not scheduled to be officially enabled until ‘later this year’, Series3 owners have been able to attach eSATA drives for a while now using the Kickstart 62 back door. However, this method does not work on the TiVo HD.

However, the just delivered 8.1.7c2 update for the TiVo HD seems to have opened a door for adding eSATA drives. Our old friend Spike2k5 has discovered that if you image a drive using MFSTools or WinMFS, you can then attach it to the eSATA port of the TiVo HD and it will be recognized. He has detailed his findings in a post at TiVoCommunity.com.

This is more complex than the method for the Series3, where you just plug-in the drive and the TiVo does the rest, but it is a nice find. If you read into it, it may reveal some of TiVo’s plans for eSATA. The Series3 seems to work with any eSATA drive you connect - with the caveat of the drive and enclosure needing to support the performance and reliability required. While the TiVo HD doesn’t recognize non-prepared drives. It could be that the TiVo HD will only work with some ‘TiVo-branded’ drives that have yet to be announced, similar to how it only works with the TiVo-branded WiFi adapter. or that could be reading too much into this, and it may just be that the TiVo HD doesn’t have the full eSATA software to work like the S3 does, and 8.1.7c2 just has unfinished software with only partial, basic eSATA support. So it recognizes an attached drive, and will use it if it has been previously ‘married’ to the internal drive, but that’s all.

I was tipped off to this by ZatzNotFunny.

In other eSATA news, WeaKnees Blog is reporting that more Scientific Atlanta DVRs are now supporting eSATA drives. They’re reporting that these models all support eSATA as long as they’re running the SARA software: 8300HD, 8300MR, 8300 HD-MR, SA8300, 8300C, SA8300C, 8240, 8240HD, and SA8240. SARA is the Scientific Atlanta Resident Application, the ‘default’ software. Some cable MSOs use other software, such as Pioneer’s PASSPORT, and if you have one of these your eSATA port is probably inactive.