I was FF through the 8 hour HD Olympic segment and timed a section. I got about 10X for FF4. Maybe I made a mistake in my calulation or in my timing. I do know that it took a very long time to go through the 8 hour segment even when not stopping and viewing that often.

Interesting programming though. Three sports only and very long segments of gymnasitcs and swimming. Only one segment of the men's syncro diving.

My Panasonic DVD/HDD recorder has 100X FF and it takes less than a minute per hour. I wish the 6208 had as fast a FF.

As far as the trim, divide go. I use those mostly to prepare a segment for burning to DVD. As the 6208 only has about 10 hours of storage time for HD content, how useful will it be to spend time on condensing material only to have to erase it?

There is an option to resume play when starting the playback through MY RECORDINGS. I seem to recall that started the recording after going and viewing live. I don't think I changed the programs between palyback so I don't know whether that makes a difference.

Originally our FF4 was much slower. Perhaps Shaw is user the "slower" software of one of us doesn't know how to use a watch :lol:

Does anyone know how to get your messages from the 6208? I have a message icon and light but for the life of me I can't find anywhere to access my messages in the menu?

Wierd.....

Alan (and others)

thanks for your input

I was thinking trim/divide would be useful for HD content because

a) trim could be used to save on the oh-so-valuable HDD real estate since there's only 10 hours max (and if you're recording a sporting feature of unknown length and want to make sure you'll get it all, you'll probably end up with redundant material more often than not)

b) divide would be useful simply because FFWD is sooooooo slow!

100x like on my Panny would be a good fix, I fully agree.

Err - digital messages are in the Menu under "Digital Messages", no???
(press Menu twice to get to the full Menu)

so as far as the possibility of archiving any recorded content goes, not too bothered right now since the HD still seems to have the occasional audio drop-out and the occasional picture breakup (maybe twice/hour) - at least it's much better than when the service first started though (and still free!)... some blockiness is also evident on fast-moving finer detail (look at the water around the competitors in swimming events)

NoShow, when you hit menu its called Digital Messages. Its on the lower left.

NoShow, when you hit menu its called Digital Messages. Its on the lower left.

Err - digital messages are in the Menu under "Digital Messages", no???
(press Menu twice to get to the full Menu)

Thanks for the effort but no can do. I only have four options when I enter my menu; the main menu not the quick. I can choose from "Premium Services", "Local Weather", "Exit", and "Setup". There is no "Digital Messages" there or anything else.

Do both you Icemann and magic_1994 have the Shaw 6208 and what city are you running in it? I am in West Vancouver, BC.

Once 620X or 64XX becomes more prevalent i would think as many 'mods' that were hacked for Tivo could become available...i'm not convinced putting a larger hdd into 6208 will be that difficult and may just follow a Tivo-ish mod of cloning hdd onto new larger drive.

and i think they'd be idiots not to sell external hdd's if not, well it's my 6208 and all i need is a screwdriver and google to find out what the real undocumented capabilities are.

I looked for a number of hours the other night but there's precious little info about changing the drive in the 6208. I think this is because in the US almost everybody has their 6208 rented from the cable company and for that reason there's an apprehension to start messing around with a box that's not their own.

FWIW, I did find 1 instance of a claim that a larger drive could be "ghosted" from the original out of the moto 6208 and dropped back in, and the moto would detect and use the larger drive. See this thread at AVS for the discussion: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=431805

i tried plugging in an external HD and although it shows the firewire port as active, I'm pretty sure there needs to be some new firmware to enable it..the configuration menu says hard drive error or hard drive not initialized. I tried "recording" something and it didn't show up or I don't know how to access it via the hard drive, so right now the only way is to go thru the PC/Mac to record via firewire.

Hmm... Drive not initialized. It's interesting that it looks like it actually tries to communicate with the drive - I mean, it knows it's an external drive and not a PC or anything.

To initialize it I wonder if you could ghost it from the original. Maybe you could plug power and IDE from your PC to the 6208 drive without actually removing it from the 6208 to try ghosting. Any chance you'd be comfortable doing that? Given that it seems to try communicating with the drive I have a hunch that might do it, esspecially if ghosting a larger drive and dropping it in the box works.

I only have four options when I enter my menu; the main menu not the quick. I can choose from "Premium Services", "Local Weather", "Exit", and "Setup". There is no "Digital Messages" there or anything else.

Do you not have an up or down arrow showing at the top or bottom of the menu screen? Try using the "cursors" to move up or down. I suspect you will need to move up to see the other selections.

meshmellow

I suspect you will need to move up to see the other selections.meshmellow

Man.... do I feel dumb. I once thought I was technically sound and apt in figuring things out. Not anymore. Sorry for wasting people's time and thanks meshmellow for a simple solution to a simple problem.

(I can't believe I just had to go up in the menu... I did try down a few hundred times)

thanks meshmellow

Happy to have helped :D

I only know these things, because I'm one of those people who push all buttons :wink:

meshmellow

a) trim could be used to save on the oh-so-valuable HDD real estate since there's only 10 hours max (and if you're recording a sporting feature of unknown length and want to make sure you'll get it all, you'll probably end up with redundant material more often than not)

)

I see your point but I don't think that with a maximum of 10 hours of storage I will be able to leave a program of more than an hour on disk for very long. I figure it will be enough to watch it once and then delete. Certainly, I think it would take too much time to try and use the trim function if the FF speeds are as slow as they currently are.

However, individual preferences will obviously be different.

I see your point but I don't think that with a maximum of 10 hours of storage I will be able to leave a program of more than an hour on disk for very long...

clearly, you don't watch enough Televisual Entertainment! Maybe I'll just use my Panny DVD-rec to archive from this meagre 10 hours... of course then it won't be in HDef... then there's all those DVDs to watch... oh my
:-)

I timed the four speeds of the 6208 FF annd got these results

FF Speed Recorder Timing Watch Timing Speedup factor
(Seconds) (Seconds)

FF1 60 60 1X
FF2 60 36 1.7X
FF3 60 17.5 3.4X
FF4 60 8.66 6.9X

To get these results I just put the reocrd in one of the fast forward speeds and then time how long it took from the recorder time to change minute to the next change in record minutes.

I don't understand FF1 taking as long to play back as real time. Weird.

Alan

can you confirm if you were ffwding HDef or SDef

I am wondering if there's a difference because I am of the suspicion that ffwding HD is slower... maybe it's done by HDD bytes and not real-time deltas... which would just be silly, but hey...

magic_1994

Good question. I had the same idea after I posted and so I did the timings again for a SD digital channel recording. Results as follows:

FF Speed/Recorder Timing/Watch Timing/Speedup factor
(Seconds) (Seconds)

FF1/60/60/1X
FF2/60/24.2/2.5X
FF3/60/13.3/4.5X
FF4/60/5.25/11.4X

SD digital channels record will FF a little faster than HD but still not anywhere near as fast as my Panasonic.

Gotta wonder what the heck is up with the 1X FF!!!

There might be some sort of firmware glitch. Just as an FYI, Our SA8000HDs have 3 FF speeds - 4X, 10X, 30X. This dispite the fact that it doesn't agree with the numbers in the operating manual, which were much lower. The speeds are the same for HD & SD.

When I phone in a complaint about the "To Be Announced" list for all times on CH 302, I also complained to the Shaw CSR about the slow FF speeds on the 6208. However, I forgot to ask why one speed was real time without the sound.

57

4X, 10X and 30X wouldn't be too bad. I probably wouldn't complain about that too much. My Panasonic claims FF speeds of 2X, 10X, 30X, 50X or 70X, and 100X. I find the 2X speed useful for short jumps as it also provides a somewaht garbled sound track. The 100X is very useful to skip long segments at the cost of having to backup to get close to the desired location. The higher and lower speeds are essential for the trim function of the Panasonic.

For those who have seen the HD pictures on 6200, do you see the difference in HD picture quality between 6200 and 6208? I know the 6208 is recording all the time and the "LIVE" picture is about 1/3 second behind the actual live broadcast. Btw, anyone knows how to turn the "always-on" recording off?

Once 620X or 64XX becomes more prevalent i would think as many 'mods' that were hacked for Tivo could become available...i'm not convinced putting a larger hdd into 6208 will be that difficult and may just follow a Tivo-ish mod of cloning hdd onto new larger drive.

and i think they'd be idiots not to sell external hdd's if not, well it's my 6208 and all i need is a screwdriver and google to find out what the real undocumented capabilities are.

I looked for a number of hours the other night but there's precious little info about changing the drive in the 6208. I think this is because in the US almost everybody has their 6208 rented from the cable company and for that reason there's an apprehension to start messing around with a box that's not their own.

FWIW, I did find 1 instance of a claim that a larger drive could be "ghosted" from the original out of the moto 6208 and dropped back in, and the moto would detect and use the larger drive. See this thread at AVS for the discussion: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=431805

i tried plugging in an external HD and although it shows the firewire port as active, I'm pretty sure there needs to be some new firmware to enable it..the configuration menu says hard drive error or hard drive not initialized. I tried "recording" something and it didn't show up or I don't know how to access it via the hard drive, so right now the only way is to go thru the PC/Mac to record via firewire.

Hmm... Drive not initialized. It's interesting that it looks like it actually tries to communicate with the drive - I mean, it knows it's an external drive and not a PC or anything.

To initialize it I wonder if you could ghost it from the original. Maybe you could plug power and IDE from your PC to the 6208 drive without actually removing it from the 6208 to try ghosting. Any chance you'd be comfortable doing that? Given that it seems to try communicating with the drive I have a hunch that might do it, esspecially if ghosting a larger drive and dropping it in the box works.

...i would guess that it's expecting an external drive to be formatted with a linux based
filesystem...iirc the tivos, and i think most if not all standalone pvr/dvr type devices are all
linux based. So maybe an option, other than ghosting the existing drive to a larger drive, would be to format a drive with a specific linux filesystem and attach it via firewire. Just haven't had any time right now to try.