Need some direction

nwnerd · 07-22-2009, 10:00 AM

Hello everyone,

I need some advice. We're getting ready to move, & I'm looking at this as an opportunity to possibly change services.

Some background.
We've been with cable for what seems like forever. Our company has 2 types of boxes: Moxi & their standard Motorola with I-Guide. We had the old Moxi (I believe that it was a Motorola) for several years, but even though we loved it we went away from it because we would kept going through them - literally, we'd have them die every 6 months. So we went to the standard box with I-Guide & we hate it. The menu system is terrible, & the box is slow to react (sometimes locking up completely for about 20-30 seconds). Hate hate hate it.

So as I can see it, I have a few options:

1. Go with either Dish or Direct TV. Uncharted territory, the last time we had satellite was with a company called Primestar (yikes, I just dated myself

).

2. Stay with cable, & go with their new Moxi box. I'm hesitant on this because the techs told me over the phone that the tradeoff that was made on the new Moxi to make them more reliable was to go to a single processor. He said that as a result, it's a slower machine that is prone to stalling (sounds like their standard box to me). Anyway, if the tech is telling me this.....not sure I want to go there even as much as I like Moxi.

3. Buy a Series 3 Tivo. My cable company has cablecards that they'll rent me that will work with Tivo. I just don't know what the issues with this will be, so I'd appreciate any input on that point.

FWIW, I'm generally happy with my cable company. They're small & haven't been consumed yet by the big players like Comcast, & as such they still have decent CS. I'd like to support that if I can.

Also, not sure if this makes a difference, but I have a network with a NAS device on it & it would sure be nice to be able to stream my own music & videos from that. Not sure if any of these boxes will do that.

Oh & for the record, I have no real experience with Tivo. I've never owned one.

dlfl · 07-22-2009, 10:58 AM

Is there some reason you didn't want to reveal the cable co ? TiVo experience varies with the provider and you will get much better advice if you let that be known -- and your location.

The TiVo models of choice now (unless your cable doesn't have digital channels) are the HD and the HD XL. (These are Series 3 category.)

If you look at the Help and Series 3 HD forums here you will see many owners have had some persistent problems. However it is argued that these posts represent a very tiny percentage of the total user pool -- who knows?

When the HD is working correctly it's really great! When it's not -- its a pain. Cable cos are required by law to support TiVos with Cable Cards and Tuning Adapters which they must provide and are responsible for. Unfortunately they don't have a strong economic incentive to do so. Thus you can have installers that don't know what they are doing and if you end up with the TiVo, Cable Cards, and/or Tuning Adapter not playing nice together you can really be caught in the middle.

FYI, the Tuning Adapter is a separate set top box required if your Cable co is using switched digital channels, which many of them are doing.

Since no one (except possibly TiVo) knows what percentage of TiVo HD owners have trouble-free performance, it's hard to say what the odds are that you will be one of them.

nwnerd · 07-22-2009, 11:06 AM

Sorry, forgot about that part. The cable company is Bend Broadband, I'm in Central Oregon. The techs claim that the Series 3 works fine with their system. We get decent HD quality from them & in general have been pretty happy with their service.

How does the Series 3 work in terms of daily life? Is it quick to respond or does it lag at all? I only get to use Tivo when I visit my sister, & even then not much. So even with as long as it's been around, I really don't know much about it. (FWIW, she has an older Tivo & a newer Direct TV box, & she likes the Tivo much, much better.)

dlfl · 07-22-2009, 11:15 AM

If you are really talking to "techs" and they are making such positive statements about TiVo, those are two very positive signs!

My cable co is Time Warner, Southwest Ohio, and I can't imagine what I would have to do to actually talk to a "tech". The customer service people that I can talk to barely know what a TiVo is. If you classify installers as techs, the two that I have encountered also barely knew anything about TiVo.

Speed of response is a subjective thing of course. I've never used a set top box so don't know how fast/slow they are. TiVo response is reasonable although not always instantaneous.

nwnerd · 07-22-2009, 11:22 AM

Ah, well tech may not be the correct term, not sure. But our cable co has distinctly different departments when you call, they don't lump it all together. The guys that I get when I transfer to the technical support department are decidedly more "together" in the geeky sense than those people in other departments. They seem or at least talk like they are familiar with the issues & problems that the different boxes that they support have, although they don't seem as up on intricacies of Tivo as the other boxes. I guess that's to be expected.

Do you have any experience with Moxi?

dlfl · 07-22-2009, 11:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tracie

.........
Do you have any experience with Moxi?

No but it is mentioned a lot here. Try Search This Forum (Not Search This Thread) on "moxi".

nwnerd · 07-22-2009, 12:50 PM

Well, I think that I'm down to the choice between Tivo & Moxi. Our cable co treats us pretty good & I don't really want to go away from that in favor of D*. So I just need to do a little reading on which will be better. They've got a 50% off of the rental of the Moxi box for 6 months, so I may just use that time to try it out & see how it does. Getting edumacated on Tivo in the meantime may point out what the differences are going to be.

A J Ricaud · 07-22-2009, 05:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tracie

Well, I think that I'm down to the choice between Tivo & Moxi. Our cable co treats us pretty good & I don't really want to go away from that in favor of D*.

I see you are in Oregon. Is Verizon FiOS available in your area? If so, I believe it is an excellent alternative. FiOS in conjunction with Series 3 Tivos is about the best you can get, at least in my humble opinion. Search for FIOS in this forum and you will get a lot of good info. Good luck with whatever you choose.

nwnerd · 07-22-2009, 08:08 PM

FIOS was one of the first things that I searched out & even though Verizon service is in our area, FIOS is not available. Is there any way to find out if there's a timeline for bringing it in? It looks like all FIOS availability is west of the Cascades.

rocko · 07-23-2009, 02:26 AM

You can keep the FIOS option in your back pocket regardless which way you go. A TiVo HD model will definitely work with FIOS as should a Moxi boxie.

Both devices utilize CableCARDS so they'll work with cable or FIOS.

RonDawg · 07-23-2009, 03:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tracie

The cable company is Bend Broadband, I'm in Central Oregon. The techs claim that the Series 3 works fine with their system.

If your cable provider says the CableCard-equipped TiVo units will work well with their system, chances are they have had some experience installling them and will actually work correctly.

There are stories in this forum of people being incorrectly told by their cable providers that CableCard TiVo units won't work with their systems, or that they are not required to provide CableCards, or worse the rep doesn't know what a CableCard is

Yours is the first that I've heard of that has actually welcomed the use of a TiVo.

nwnerd · 07-23-2009, 08:55 AM

Yeah, it's a pretty good company. I really hope that they don't get bought by one of the bigger players.

I think that I'm going to go with the Moxi rental from them for a few months & give that a go. They've got a 50% off on the rental rate for 6 months, so it will be a good experiment. A good friend at work has a Series 3 Tivo & didn't know about the cable card option, so they've been pulling OTA stuff. They're big cyclists & have really missed the Tour de France this year because of it, so they may jump in on the CC. If so, I'll have someone that I can compare & contrast with. And no contracts means that if/when FIOS gets here, we can give that a go (probably will be a while though, I'm not seeing any mention of it east of the Cascades).

rocko · 07-23-2009, 09:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tracie

Yeah, it's a pretty good company. I really hope that they don't get bought by one of the bigger players.

I think that I'm going to go with the Moxi rental from them for a few months & give that a go. They've got a 50% off on the rental rate for 6 months, so it will be a good experiment. A good friend at work has a Series 3 Tivo & didn't know about the cable card option, so they've been pulling OTA stuff. They're big cyclists & have really missed the Tour de France this year because of it, so they may jump in on the CC. If so, I'll have someone that I can compare & contrast with. And no contracts means that if/when FIOS gets here, we can give that a go (probably will be a while though, I'm not seeing any mention of it east of the Cascades).

I believe you are making installment payments - not renting. I may be mistaken, but that's the impression I get from their website and other sources. If that's the case you'll be paying the whole $800 in little pieces.

NotVeryWitty · 07-23-2009, 10:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rocko

I believe you are making installment payments - not renting. I may be mistaken, but that's the impression I get from their website and other sources. If that's the case you'll be paying the whole $800 in little pieces.

Not sure, but I think she (assuming Tracie is a "she") is talking about renting a (older) Moxi from the cable company, not "buying" a new one from the Moxi company.

rocko · 07-23-2009, 10:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NotVeryWitty

Not sure, but I think she (assuming Tracie is a "she") is talking about renting a (older) Moxi from the cable company, not "buying" a new one from the Moxi company.

I don't know either. That's why I'm raising the question. In the event she's looking at the new ones from Moxi I don't think there's any getting out after a few months if it's not a rental.

FrodoB · 07-23-2009, 10:49 AM

Not meaning to insult or anything (I'm genuinely curious), but why did you join TivoCommunity 6 years ago if you haven't ever owned a Tivo?

nwnerd · 07-23-2009, 11:30 PM

NotVery - Yes, I'm a "she".

I'll be renting the box from the company, no commitments on that. The thing is, I know what the old Moxi looks like. I used to have them die on me every 4-5 months. lol That was why we ended up with the stock Motorola box, which sucks in nearly every possible way that suckage can occur. The "new" Moxi that they are advertising, I can't seem to find any info on it & looks nothing like either the old Moxi or the retail version. Here's the page for it:

LINK

So I'm not sure how it compares with the retail version, but this one was debuted around the same time period early this year.

Frodo,
At one point I was nearly ready to pull the trigger on a Tivo which was why I signed up back then, but I honestly don't remember what happened to change my mind. It seems like every time I've been ready to move away from my cable company, they've done something to convince me to stay. lol I poke around here from time to time, just in an attempt to keep up with the times & because I'm just that geeky (although I haven't been around in a while). I probably should just throw down on a Tivo & be done with it.

rocko · 07-24-2009, 10:50 AM

I see now - a cable company DVR running Moxi. It looks promising. It looks like you'll be adding external storage since the capacity appears to be the same as the TiVo HD. According to the User Guide you can add and remove external storage at will - something that you can't do with TiVo. Hear that TiVo guys ?

Drop back and let us know how you make out, Tracie. I'm not dumping TiVo any time soon but I'd be interested in your experience.

nwnerd · 07-24-2009, 11:25 AM

Yes, that was something that we could do with the old Moxi was to use a USB hard drive. Just plug it in & off you go. It will be almost 2 weeks before we get it set up (we're moving in a couple of weekends), but I'll keep you guys posted when we do.

dlfl · 07-24-2009, 11:41 AM

That Moxie box is very interesting -- please keep us posted Tracie !

How refreshing to have a cable co actually promoting something that sounds a lot like TiVo! (And this co also has good things to say about TiVo!)

Apparently this co has the prime objective of serving its cable customers rather than maximizing profits for the huge conglomerate of which it is a part .(Did someone mention Time Warner?) Mind you, I don't fault Time Warner for wanting to maximize profits --- just wish it had some competition in my area. Competition compatible with a good TiVo-like PVR that is.

Am I correct in assuming:

1. The Moxie box uses cable card(s)?

2. It is not true 2-way --- that is you can't order pay-per-view through it?

nwnerd · 07-24-2009, 06:46 PM

I'm not sure about how they configure it to use their system. If we were to buy a Tivo, then yes, it would use Cable Card(s) & not have access to PPV & VOD. But I'm not sure about their rental boxes. Our old Moxi was true 2-way, we had access to both VOD & PPV. It's pretty expensive through them though. HD movies on PPV are like $6, so we don't really use it. It's not a deal breaker for me.

We've been with this company for over 10 years & their service is such that I really don't want to leave them. It's a smaller company & in many ways I want to support that to keep the likes of Comcast & TW out of our region. Of course the flip side to this is that without bigger companies coming in, we may never see FIOS (or at least for a long time).

mattack · 07-24-2009, 08:25 PM

The Moxi boxes don't do OTA, nor analog channels (without an extra doohickey), by the way. I honestly am not currently getting OTA (well, I have a tiny indoor antenna hooked up that doesn't really get much).. so it's not really a big deal.. but at least would limit future choices.

bkdtv · 07-24-2009, 09:03 PM

Be sure not to confuse the Moxi provided by the cable company with the Moxi you can buy.

The Moxi provided by the cable company is similar to the Moxi you can buy, but storage capacity is not the only difference. The cable company version uses a different version of the software and has added hardware to support two-way communication for Video On Demand, etc.

nwnerd · 08-17-2009, 09:47 PM

Update.

We had some signal issues a couple of weeks into this that resulted in the cable company coming out Saturday & spending a couple of hours here on their dime. lol Nothing to do with the Moxi box, but the overall experience up to that point wasn't stellar (big props to the cable co though, they were really responsive to the difficulties that we were having). Anyhow, realize that I'm not comparing this with a Tivo since I have no day-to-day Tivo experience to draw from. Also keep in mind, as bk said it's a cable company version so there are most likely a few differences compared with the retail version.

Just to recap, up until about 6 months ago we had the old Moxi box that was built by Motorola. Great box - very fast, very responsive with hardly any delay. But my understanding on that box is that they had reliability issues due to heat problems (we usually killed them by the 6 month mark, I think that we went through 4 or 5 of them over the years). Anyway, that was a dual cpu box & this new Digeo box is apparently a single cpu. It is slower, although it is consistent & somewhat predictable. The auto-correct when using FF or RW is pretty decent, but because of the responsiveness issue you have to anticipate a bit more than with the old Moxi. Not sure how it compares with Tivo, but it’s still a major step up from the stock cable co dvr.

Being that we're familiar with Moxi, we like the menus & the ability to customize the channel lineup to what channels we actually receive (not sure if Tivo will let you do that). We do have VOD & PPV available to us in addition to remote scheduling. No wishlist like Tivo, that would be really nice. Grid style would also be nice, but as I understand it that's coming? Can someone confirm that?

Analog channels....yup, we get 'em & they look decent. Although truthfully, I have most of them hidden because we get most of them in HD & I don't like having doubles on the menu. It drives me nuts to come into the living room & see that my husband is watching something in SD when it's available to him in HD. Why would you do that? <crazy>

Sound is great. True raw digital out going to my receiver for decoding sounds so much better than the POS cable box. That was something that I've really missed over the past 6 months.

PQ....I would say that it's quite good, even on the SD channels. I haven't had that much time to play with it, but so far I'd say that it's pretty good. I think that it's better than the POS cable box that we just ditched, but it may be a placebo. Keep in mind that our tv is only 1080i compatible & hooked up via component. I do know something about calibration though, & I would brag that I have squeezed almost every drop of PQ that I can out of the old 55" Mits.

My biggest complaint so far about Moxi was in trying to get it to play nice with my universal remote. I ran into this with the old Moxi - there's something in the way that the Moxi remote bursts its codes that doesn't allow for easy learning into a different remote. Which means that you need to have that code set built into your IR database. This wasn't an issue with the old Moxi because I just updated my database once those became available. I was able to find a code set for this new box, but it’s not quite as responsive as it is when using the Moxi remote. So….not sure what to do on that one, as I’ve been unable to program that remote to my receiver that I have all of my sound going through.

Altogether it’s a good experience. There are definitely things that can be improved upon, but for now I’d say that for the money up front (0) the experience has been good. If anyone has them, I’d be happy to answer any specific questions.

nwnerd · 07-14-2010, 04:10 PM

Bringing up an old topic for an update....

After living with the "new" Moxi for almost a year, I've given up on it. I like the interface, but the box is slow & at times unresponsive. During American Idol season, we had it set up to record both AI & Biggest Loser, & about halfway through the season it started screwing up the AI recording. Sometimes it would only get 10 minutes of it, & it happened a lot regardless of how well I cleaned out was stored on it. It would sometimes take its time in responding - it wasn't a fast box by any stretch of the imagination, & there were times when I just had to reboot the box because it became unresponsive altogether. Over time, it became an increasingly frustrating experience & by the end I was ready to go all Office Space on it.

So, FF to today. I found myself a good deal on a Series 3 HD Tivo on Ebay a couple of weeks ago & I jumped on it. Right now I just have it hooked up with an antennae to a little SD tv, but so far the experience has been pretty good. The box is relatively snappy & the interface is intuitive (as you all know). The local cable company is scheduled to come out on Sunday with cable cards & my 61" Samsung will be here next Friday. Can't wait.

To sum it up, don't bother with the Moxi. Just go straight to the Tivo.

hmm52 · 07-14-2010, 04:50 PM

Good choice. I think used Series 3s are a great deal. Mature software. Easy to upgrade. Inexpensive. Spoken as a buyer, not a seller. Your card install is on Sunday? You do have a user friendly cable company!

CraigHB · 07-14-2010, 04:53 PM

My Series 3 (original OLED style) has worked flawlessly with cable cards for over 3 years now. It's fast and reliable and I've been perfectly happy with it. However, Charter in my area is moving to SDV soon so I may run into trouble there. I really don't want to screw up my TiVo with a tuning adapter. They don't always work well and cable companies have zero interest in supporting them. I'm really unhappy about how the future looks for my TiVo. I would seriously consider going with only OTA and online content at this point, but I don't have OTA access where I'm at now. Hopefully a tuning adapter will work for me without issue, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

nwnerd · 07-14-2010, 05:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hmm52

Good choice. I think used Series 3s are a great deal. Mature software. Easy to upgrade. Inexpensive. Spoken as a buyer, not a seller. Your card install is on Sunday? You do have a user friendly cable company!

I do. They're a small company & they try very hard to 1) keep the big guys out, & 2) keep their market share vs. the satellites. We'll see how this goes, but when I told them that I have a Tivo, their response was "no problem, we can do that".

tiassa · 07-15-2010, 07:56 AM

Thanks for the field report on the Moxi, it's good to know. You seem to have a gem of a Cable co. I hope the Tivo works out for you.

By the way

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tracie

(yikes, I just dated myself

).

Come on! even you should be able to get a better date than, well, YOU!

nwnerd · 07-20-2010, 11:43 AM

Well I'm up & running. It took a second try of running through the guided setup to get everything to mesh correctly. At first, it found all of my channels but wasn't actually tuning them in - so I'd just see a gray screen even though the guide would display all of the correct program & channel info. Even a hard reset wouldn't fix it, so I ran the guided setup again & that solved the issue. So far the experience has been great. The Tivo is so much more responsive than the Moxi was. I haven't even gone in & set any recordings yet, lol.

Funny thing is, the cable installer said (even though he doesn't have one) that he loves the Tivos & absolutely hates the Moxis. He said that with the Moxi the signal had to be almost perfectly tuned, otherwise it would pixelate & frequently drop the signal completely. According to him, the Tivo is a much more forgiving unit in that regard, & based on the entire conversation I came away pretty confident that he knew what he was about. Most of the issues that he talked about with the Moxi were issues that we had at one time or another. It was interesting to hear about it from his perspective.