Comcast customer with a 652 or 658 box in Georgia, Illinois, or California?

Any hope that you're going to see if the later S3s can do MPEG4?



Not that it matters to me personally, since I'm stuck with TWC.

Any chance you'd like to join me in an experiment to see if a Series2 Dual Tuner can use 2 cable boxes at once (well, actually a cable box and a DTA), one on the line inputs and the other on the RF input, if they use different remote codes?

After all, it is supposed to be able to record 2 cable channels at once.

 

Seriously, if y'all are doing what I think you might be doing with the somewhat long in the tooth 652/658s in those Comcast markets--

 

I wish I was in one of those areas as I would definitely help you.

If this is what it seems to be, then that would make a lot of people happy (although it might make some people unhappy that went ahead and bought Roamio or Bolt replacements due to the Comcast MPEG4 conversion or upcoming conversion).

And are you sure you can't test with 648's too?

Scott

 

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No, man, I need the price of 648s to keep dropping.

 

I have a 652 (and 648) Tivo3's in Tucson, AZ. I just got them killed by upgrading to Comcast's X1 since I got a letter from Comcast saying they would be obsoleted by Dec. 1.

Any chance of reviving them? I had to get a couple of their boxes since the TIVO went blank on every channel.

 

If this experiment they're doing is what I think it is, the 652 might be usable again but probably not the 648.

But we have no way of knowing how long it will be before they reach a point where they can say anything one way or the other.

 

Has anyone in the target areas on Comcast with an HD sent Margret your TSN?

Scott

 

Maybe she just forgot about the 648. They could also update the 648 to use one cable card.

 

The 648 went into production before the M card specs were finalized, and cable labs did something that means the 648 can only use an M as an S. Apparently it's a hardware thing and software won't solve it. Otherwise I'm sure they'd have dealt with it long ago.

I think I read somewhere that the 648 not being able to do MPEG4 is a hardware thing as well, maybe a 32 bit CPU instead of a 64.

 

The 648 does have an MPEG-4 hardware decoder although it's a separate chip instead of being integrated as it is on the HD. The difference might be they actually have code from the Austrialian HD for MPEG-4 that they can adapt to support MPEG-4 for the US HD model.

S3 OLED
CPU: Broadcom BCM7038 system-on-a-chip, including the MPEG-2 decoder.
Decoder: Broadcom BCM7411 MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 and VC-1/WMV9 decoder.
MPEG2 encoder: 2 Broadcom BCM7042

HD
CPU: Broadcom BCM7401 system-on-a-chip, including the MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, and VC-1/WMV9 decoder.
MPEG2 encoder: 2 Philips/NXT SAA7138CHL

Scott

 

Cool. I'm in Seattle or I would offer to help.

 

I just emailed Margret, I have an HD XL (658) in Chicago.

 

I have a 648 in the Chicago suburbs and a 652 that has a bad hard drive. If I can resurrect the hard drive, perhaps using SpinRite, I might be able to help. I just got the letter from Comcast yesterday.

 

Do you have another SATA hard drive of at least 160GB?

We can hook you up with a 652 image.

 

Did you hear anything? I emailed her a couple days ago.

 

I probably have one lying around somewhere. Getting this going might be a "fun" thing to do while I'm on break next week.

 

I did not.

 

She didn't actually say what it was for but given the units and locations they are looking for, it seems like they might want to test it.

Note that it's just HD models and not the original S3 OLED.

Scott