Well, we knew Digeo would be showing off their Moxi box for cable MSOs at The Cable Show. Back in January when I spoke with Digeo’s then-COO Greg Gudorf, he said that their Moxi HD DVR for cable would ship in 1Q08, clearly that didn’t happen. Now, according to a press release issued today, Charter will be the first cable MSO to deploy the Moxi Cable HD DVR 3012 – in 3Q08. It isn’t surprising that Charter is the first customer as they were one of the MSOs to deploy the first generation Moxi units, and Digeo is backed by Paul Allen, who also controls Charter. A little corporate nepotism. I just hope Digeo does better than FlipStart, which seems to be comatose.

Ben Drawbaugh from EngadgetHD was at The Cable Show and he got a picture of the unit on display. Is it just me, or does it look like a slightly shorter (no optical drive so I guess they didn’t need the room) version of the now defunct Moxi Multi-Room HD DMR? Only in black instead of white. I have to admit, while I thought the Mutli-Room HD DMR was hideous, this one is only bland. The change in color helps.

According to the press release:

The announcement marks the first order and deployment of Digeo’s second generation offering which incorporates a dual HD-tuner digital video recorder (DVR). The Moxi 3012 also includes the Emmy(R) award-winning Moxi Menu user interface, along with the following advanced features:

* Full DVR functionality
* CableCARD(R) multi-stream 2-way support
* Remote web scheduling capable
* External storage options up to 1TB
* Extensive data mining through the Moxi portal for real-time customer usage insights

So it is a dual-tuner CableCARD DVR. Sounds like it relies on M-Card, which fits with what was known about their canceled consumer products. They don’t disclose the internal storage capacity, but given the ’3012′ naming scheme, I’d guess at 120GB. ‘Remote web scheduling capable’ is interesting, but the question is will Charter enable it? They don’t say if the external storage is USB or eSATA, and I can’t tell from Ben’s photo. The data mining is both intriguing and worrying. Is it anonymized? Just how much data do they track? How personal is it? Some people dislike even TiVo’s anonymized, aggregated data collection. And this is ‘extensive’ and ‘real-time’.

While they mention 2-way CableCARD support, they don’t specifically mention what is supported – SDV? VOD? PPV? I’d venture a guess that SDV is supported, since the Tuning Resolver Adapter is close to finalized. They could build that capability into the box. Since this isn’t a consumer device and the software can, and probably will, be customized for each MSO, I think it is reasonable to expect they’ll be supporting VOD & PPV. But without an OCAP platform I don’t know about advanced cable services in general.

And, according to the press release, Digeo is continuing to work on an OCAP/tru2way version of their Moxi platform.

I have Charter, though they never offered Moxi in my neck of the woods. If they do start offering this Moxi 3012 in my area I’ll get one, at least for a while, to see how it fares.

EDIT: I received the following via the contact form after originally posting this:

On your press release of the 3012 I have a few answers to your speculation

1) Remote scheduling will be enabled, current Digeo Moxi 9012 users already enjoy this feature. Scheduling is done by logging into the charter.net portal with your charter.net email address and going to the TV section. First time users will have to associate the box with their email there.

Unfortunately at this time it requires that the customer have our High Speed Data product in addition to the DVR and that both services be on the same account.

2) Expansion
This is already an option on the older 9012 and 9022 boxes as well. Currently the older boxes only supported USB expansion. I would assume that the 3012 is the same (unless it has eSATA ports)

3) 3012 model name.
Unless Digeo’s changed their naming scheme the 12 in 3012 should stand for 1 TV, 2 Tuners.

In the 9000 series there were two models, 9012 and 9022. The 9022 supported two TVs through the usage of a “moxi mate” box

I’m guessing givng the 9022 configuration that the 3012 should have no less than a 160 gig base hard drive (to compete with the Motorola 6416 which offers 160 gigs)

Hope this information is helpfull!

James Doster
Digital Coordinator
Charter Communications

The press release:
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