Rogers NextBox

[mvallevand]

My cable company is introducing whole home PVR capability and I thought that NextPVR users would like the "NextBox" name. Basically it just takes their single unit and allows you to integrate up to four of them networked via MoCA @$499 per two tuner unit w 160GB. Plus cable monthly fees

Is it really the NextBox? Hardly. My wife uses a single 2 tuner unit w 1TB of storage and here are some experiences

- every few months or so the hard disk loses all recordings, twice so far in 2012
- the box will spontaneously reboot, which takes several minutes.
- tonight I tried to watch a recording of "The Brits" and two transport streams seemed to be muxed together, making it completely unwatchable.

My favourite though is watching on demand shows. A couple of weeks ago when we lost all the programming we had to watch Fringe On Demand. The first thing it tells is is "Navigation controls are not available in this program" Commercials in a PVR yuck. We watched about 1/2 an hour and then the box crashed and we decided we will watch it the next night. Of course we had to let it play for 30 minutes to get to where we were. Then we started watching and about 15 minutes later the box said your 24 hour rental had ended and it stopped playing.

Giving up on the "NextBox", I recorded the whole thing on my STB (no PVR) via NextPVR even ran comskip for fun, and watched it via my NMT Recording OnDemand takes a bit of patience, with the remote, but other than that it just worked.

Martin

[stustunz]

q1 Why does your wife use a single 2 tuner................and not next pvr?
q2 Why do you not all just use the same way of watching tv in your house?

just curious feel like im missing something in the puzzle

[mvallevand]

It's such a good question, especially because I am such a strong supporter of NextPVR, and it does seem contradictory, so I thought I'd give you the long boring answer.

First as background, for a long time here in Canada the only way to go beyond basic tier cable for SD, or to receive any HD content was to use cable or satellite, since unlike users in the US we don't have clear-QAM or CableCard options allowing PC-only solutions, everything is encrypted. Last year the digital transition occurred for OTA but there still are local SD channels and we need the STB to get HD content from these channels.

When I thought out the current system 4 years ago, the cost was $410 for the dual tuner STB/PVR and $400 for the HDPVR/STB and I used my own PC as the GBPVR server. I hoped to move to a whole house solution with GBPVR but my wife didn't like the noise, the size, or the whole HTPC experience back then. Maybe modern PC's or having an NMT would have helped.

I likely could go "whole home" NextPVR if and when my wife's PVR fails. As an alternative to the $499 NextBox, I'd need to buy 2 single tuner STB's ($320x2)and 2 Colossus card ($350) for around $1,000 to add to my HDPVR/STB, and OTA setup. I absolutely need two tuners, plus the ability for a LiveTV in my "bat cave" for watching sports to stay on par. Most definitely I would need to add a dedicated server $400+, much cheaper than a lawyer. $1500 is expensive but better than 3 NextBoxes.

I said "could" because I don't think selling NextPVR will be a cake walk. My wife has acquired habits which will take some retraining. First, I know she does not like short skip since she prefers to watch exactly from the transition from commercial to program. I must say she pretty good at manipulating the various FF/RW speeds to quickly land where she wants, even if I don't have that kind of patience or care if I miss a little. Even comskip isn't accurate enough for her. I've tried to change her mind many times showing PC clients and the NMT without success. Honestly I prefer FF/RW too, so when making a change either I will have to make sure NextPVR is bulletproof or I will need to be.

Second,I really don't know what to do about watching time-shifted in-progress show. On Mondays my wife watches two, two hour reality shows, switching back and fourth between them (thank heavens for my bat cave) and she is able to skip all commercials fine and easily watch them in under 3 hours. I unfortunately don't think that switching between two recordings, resuming and seeking without indexes in NextPVR is going to be accurate enough for her, so I anticipate significant frustration. She can't postpone watching them 'til they have finished recording either, because a lot of the "fun" is lost if you hear the results. I totally feel the same way about watching sports, once I know the final score there is no excitement.

I don't really want or need the "Next NextBox" and I want to stay independent from my cableco and Microsoft so the bottom line is I still believe that NextPVR can take me where I want and I will do everything that I can to help sub get there.

Martin