Motorolla PVRs Almost Production Quality
I wrote a awhile back about the need to reboot my PVR once in a while. The PVR I have is a Motorolla DCT6412 III.
There have been a few other issues with it as well:
- Recordings frequently get interrupted. I think its from user error though I am not sure. I think something happens when we are trying to turn the TV on but the remote is controlling the PVR and not the TV because we forgot to press the TV button.
- If you are watching an older episode of something you have recorded contemperaneously with the PVR recording the next episode, the espisode you are viewing stops playing and is instantly deleted, regardless of the disk space left.
- If you run out of disk space and have scheduled recordings, the PVR is as likely to delete a movie that you have started to watch and stopped (i.e. to resume viewing another day) as one you haven’t started watching yet.
- There is no way to indicate the PVR should not delete a particular show that you have recorded.
- Sometimes if you fast-forward, then resume viewing, the audio dissappear. Pressing the mute button (a * in my case) has no effect. You have to stop viewing, select your show again from the menu, and resume viewing. The audio magically reappears
- Disk Space. The shows take up an unreasonable amount of disk space. I presume they streamed and saved in mpeg-2 format, which is huge. It would be nice if the device could at least transcode to mpeg-4 when it has free time to save a bunch of space.
The upside is, these are minor inconviences that I hope will be solved with a firmware upgrade — the current version feels like a final beta before a production release. Putting up with the odd glitch or even losing the odd show you have half-watched really doesn’t matter when you compare it to the time saved skipping commercials and watching what you want when you want.
Overall, I am happier with a PVR than without, so it was still a good purchase. I feel I am more of an early adopter than I would like to have been.