I ran out today and put in some serious waiting time at the local Time Warner office to trade in my Explorer 8000HD DVR for the 8300. I’d heard some great things about the new box – mainly fixes, but also quite a few digital enhancements and expansion capabilities. For starters there’s HDMI and a SATA port for the eventual rollout of extra storage for DVR customers. No DVI and no Firewire. You still get the Optical Audio connection, Component Video as well as Composite and S-Video. There is a USB connector on the front for something that will probably rollout like a keyboard.
I had been seriously excited about the potential for Firewire on this device, but Time Warner very rudely removed that as a port on the rear. Scientific Atlanta notes that Firewire might not be available on all devices and I suppose Time Warner just felt that by removing access to the ports they would not have to comply with activating them per the April 2004 FCC mandate. It’s a serious disappointment and means that the only archiving you can do from the box is through a bridge converting from analog back to digital. Your highest quality option is limited to S-Video. It’s not the end of the world and actually I’ve found an interesting option for recording directly from the box via a bridge.
On my previous box the only way to “export” was through the PIP interface. You had to tune in to what you wanted, activate PIP and swap the images so the window could pass through the output. Then you had to switch inputs on your TV to see what you had (most likely paused) in EyeTV (which I’ve been testing for the past week). Then, using the cable remote you un-pause the signal while activating record in EyeTV and you could capture as MPEG2 or 4 at various qualities. In my testing I was able to record any SDTV signal, but nothing from HDTV and no On-Demand programing. The On-Demand limits are the same as what the DVR itself could actually record.
The Explorer 8300 does full pass through via the S-video port so I can actually view live TV and anything that would normally happen on the cable box directly on my Mac! In addition to this amazing convenience, because it’s fully passing the signal I can record anything I can see! Anything… There’s a loss of signal quality from both the S-Video connection and the analog to digital loop, but the convenience factor is incredibly high! I can select and record things just as I can normally from my cable box, but with the added convenience of either simultaneously archiving to disc or just choosing to do so at a later time. The EyeTV software can be configured to record on a schedule so if you knew something of interest was set to record you could veery easily match it to the computer at the same time, using the cable box simply as a VCR timer to tune to the correct station.
I have a feeling this is not limited to the EyeTV and could just as easily work with a Miglia Director’s Cut Bridge or any other bridge you might want to try. I am actually working on a full review of the EyeTV 200 for Mac HTPC and will add this finding to my report.