Any further Time-Warner "Navigator" software news?

[Jack 1000]

What does this mean?  Will Navigator stretch 004 but put black bars on non-HD content on 504?

Oz,

Not sure on this one, as I don't have Navigator yet.  I do know that Navigator gives you more audio/video settings to customize your TV preferences and that the gray bars that a lot of people didn't like on HD channels with Passport are now black.

Jack

[mhz40]

I know this is a Navigator thread, but my D* remote has a button that advances 30 seconds. For the past few seasons, I record the Packer games on Sundays, do stuff around the house until an hour into the game, then sit down with my MGD and Nachos. I hit the button three times whenever they go to commercial (hit it 4 times at the end of a quarter)... only manually fast forward through halftime.  Recorded game gets over about the same time as the live game, replace watching commercials with getting a few chores done.

Wife loves it... NFL sponsors hate it.

I have the same feature.  It's great during the game too... a 30 second skip right after the play takes you to the next snap.  Its a great tool when the only other option is to listen to Bryant Gumbel's play analysis...

[Jack 1000]

All of you should sign up (or at least check out) the discussion about the new Navigator and the recent developments about the problems with the FCC mandate concerning cable cards on the new C-boxes.  I pose some questions and issues over there, (registered as Satch Man) and the information is VERY INTERESTING.  You Navigator users should join!  We need more comments/users from Wisconsin who are interested in discussing Navigator's performance on OCAP (C-boxes) against Navigator performing on NON-OCAP (non-C boxes), through a software download.

The research indicated, suggests that the problems could be more related to the C-boxes themselves, rather than Navigator.

Some of you, with non-C boxes, may have Navigator on Pioneer models and maybe SA as well.  The DVR units (non-C) as I posted above are scheduled to be completed before the end of March.  Here is the link to the discussion:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=723830&pp=30&highlight=journal&page=105

Jack

[Jack 1000]

Well,

According to the gathered information, we are about a month away give or take a few weeks from the Passport to Navigator change over.  We have seen OK performance on the NON-C SA boxes (non-DVR's)  Reports are that TWC staffers have Navigator on non-C DVR's but have not reported anything.  Has anyone been able to contact any head techs through "who they know" to give us info on how the non-C DVR change over is going?  Am I correct that ALL of the non-DVR boxes have been converted?  This would be the SA's, Pioneer's, and Pace's.

While there are still issues with Navigator, there have certainly been improvements over the disasters of a year ago.  How well (or not well) do you think the rollout will go?  If the problems are minimal, do you believe that we can start attributing many of the issues to the C-boxes?

My view is that there will be some issues, but not as bad as some may be anticipating.  I am NOT ready to take the Crap out of Navigator yet by any means!  But the performance on the non-C boxes will indicate to us, exactly how much the cable cards may be a problem.

For those with any non-C boxes who have been converted, how are things going?

Jack

[kevbeck122]

For the most part everything is still pretty good.  I occasionally get "Please Wait" when going into the guide and sometimes the box is unresponsive/slow when trying to use the remote.  It's still not as bad as the C box.

[gyoung]

I recently moved to Indianapolis with cable service being provided by Brighthouse Networks (close cousin to TW).  The new installation included the Scientific Atlanta 8300HDC with the Mystro software.

Coming from Milwaukee I have had experience with the 8300HD with the Passport software.  For a temporary time I had the 8300HD in Indy with the SARA software and now have the 8300HDC with the Mystro software.  

Comparing the 3, I would rank them in this order.

• Passport 8300HD
• Mystro 8300HDC
• SARA 8300HD

The SARA software was by far the worst.  

SARA didn't have any of the following features

• Recording by NEW episodes only
• When fast forwarding through a commercial it wouldn't automatically fall 10 seconds or so back when you hit play, so you would always overshoot into the show
• Terrible series management

Comparing the Mystro to the Passport here are the differences/similarities I have noted so far.

• Passport allows the ability to change the priority of recordings, so far in Mystro I haven't figured out how to do that.
• Passport seems "little" quicker in it's response time.  The Mystro is not bad, but I think the Passport seemed quicker.

My overall impression of the Mystro software is that it is trying to duplicate the Passport software and is pretty close to doing that.  I haven't had any problems with the 8300HDC not recording series or programs

[kevbeck122]

They must have upped the resolution of the graphics on the legacy boxes... the guide and banners look great now on my 3250.

[Jack 1000]

Are you seeing or hearing anything as we get closer to the end of March plan for the conversion?  I wonder if we will get a mailer, an automated call, both or neither?  The Answers on Demand channel is gone.  For me, I haven't seen more DVR rebooting or anything that much different.  I have been watching my saved DVR recordings and getting DVD transfers of what I want to keep.

I know that TWC is going by box model number for the change over, but what about location?  I wonder how many boxes or DVR's they are doing at one time?

All of us are waiting for the first report of a non-C DVR with Navigator in this area.  Speaking of DVR's, what are the model numbers that they have to do?  I only know of the SA 8000 and the SA 8300?

Jack

[TurboAWD]

Been a while since I posted here, but with some recent experiences with Navigator, I just had to come and see what people were saying about it in this little community.

First, I should explain my set-ups:
1) Old Pioneer HD (non-DVR) box in bedroom
2) 18 month old SA8300HD DVR in living room
3) Brand new SA8300HDC DVR in basement

The Pioneer box was downgraded to Navigator way back in October or November 2007, and we immediately hated it.  Just knowing how ugly and slow it is on that box has made us live in fear of the day the SA8300HD in our living room is downgraded.

On Thursday Feb 21, we stopped at the Southridge TWC store and picked up a second SA8300HD box, the new "C" box.  Upon installing it in the basement and starting to use it, my fears were immediately realized.  It's horrible.  Luckily in reading this thread yesterday, I learned the TWC had set-up a user survey on their SE WI site, and I stated my opinions in detail.  The following is what I posted, and it will stand as my personal observations on Navigator's shortcomings, specifcally versus the Aptiv software, which I found to be nearly flawless.  This is long, but I think it's more comprehensive than anything I've read in this thread and I'd like to see what other people think/have observed, too, and would urge everyone to complete the survey.

Here's what I told TWC:

My wife and I basically hate Navigator and we thought the Aptiv interface was wonderful.  Navigator should have used Aptiv as the baseline for interface and functions and built up from there.  Here's some specific things we do not like about Navigator.

> Navigator first showed up on our bedroom cable box (older Pioneer HD box, non-DVR) and the first thing we noticed was the bland appearence versus the Aptiv software.

> Navigator performs much slower.  Everything from channel changes, accessing the program guide and accessing menus is sluggish and slow to respond to remote control inputs.

> When viewing the program guide, we almost always lose the video in the upper right preview window.

> The ability to find shows is TERRIBLE.  One of the great things the Aptiv software allowed was the ability to find shows right out of the program guide.  When you were on a particular show in the guide, all you had to do was click "C" for Search, and all the other airings of that show would come up.  Next to the listing, you had the keypad to allow title & keyword searching.  The Navigator software automatically displays a useless alphabetical list and your only option is to begin a title search by typing in the letters.  This is one of the worst issues with Navigator, especially with a DVR and setting up recordings.

> We just picked up a third box a few days ago (SA 8300HDC - this is in addition to the Pioneer box in our bedroom and an SA 8300HD running Aptiv in the living room.)  It took about 5 minutes to start seeing problems with the Navigator software in relation to the DVR functionality, too.

> When fast-forwarding or re-winding through a recorded show, you don't get a progress bar on the bottom of the screen.  You can't even just click the Play button to show where you're at in the program.  In fact, instead of this time display, Navigator displays an enormous banner at the bottom of the screen showing the channel and a show title.  Although even THAT's a problem, because when I was watching an episode of King of Queens I had recorded earlier in the day, this banner correctly showed WTBS as the channel, but the program title it displayed was some Spanish show title, possible a title of a show that had aired on one of the Spanish-language channels - who knows.

> Navigator's recording options are not as flexible as Aptiv's, either, specifically in regards to setting up series recording.  More specifically, it does not allow you to set series recordings for only a single channel, nor does it allow you to set series recordings only for a single time/airing.  For example, I normally record the Daily Show and Colbert Report airings at 12:00 midnight and 12:30 AM, respectively on Comedy Central.  However, Comedy Central airs these shows several times during the day.  Even my Aptiv box could not tell which airings were new or reruns, so I simply set my Aptiv DVR to record only these airings, whether they were new or reruns.  On the new Navigator DVR, since I can't tell it to record only the one airing of each show, the DVR recorded ALL airings of both shows during the course of a day.  This creates numerous duplicate recordings of the same show.

> On top of the previous problem, because Navigator is so slow, just going through and deleting all these duplicate recordings is a huge chore.

> Finally, another situation where Navigator's slowness rears it's head is when setting up recordings (mainly series), when Navigator takes an enormous amount of time just setting the recordings you input.

At first, I thought the slow operation of Navigator (on our old Pioneer box) was related to the age of the box.  But it's only marginally quicker on my brand new SA 8300HDC box.  For the time being, Aptiv is still running on my living room box, and having the ability to experience both applications almost side-by-side truly shows off the shortcomings of Navigator.  It seems that a lot of effort was put into giving Navigator some interesting functions (through the A-B-C-D buttons in particular) but I find most of these functions of no use on a daily basis, whereas the problems I detailed above are things I'm going to be running into constantly.

I'm very, very unhappy with Navigator.  I see no reason why Navigator could not be improved, and although I'm not a software developer, I would think that fixing all the problems I've detailed could be done fairly easily.  If that's the case, and these fixes are in the works, then I will try to be patient and wait for these fixes.  But if this doesn't happen, I may be forced to look at my other options for television services.


Thanks for reading - let's see some more posts regarding specific likes (if there are any) and dislikes of Navigator.

[gparris]

My next-door neighbours are about to discover Navigator as they switch from an 8000 SD DVR box to the 8300HDC, now that they have a new Sony 60A3000.

-Thanks, Jimboy for the recommendation!:wave:

I have warned them about Navigator and made of list of the few TWC-available HD channels from TWC Wisconsin.

If they cannot "stomach" the lousy operation of it, I have the Directv phone number and website handy for their installation at $99 for their first HD DVR box and a much reduced payTV billing with triple the HD channels!;)

[Jack 1000]

Been a while since I posted here, but with some recent experiences with Navigator, I just had to come and see what people were saying about it in this little community.

First, I should explain my set-ups:
1) Old Pioneer HD (non-DVR) box in bedroom
2) 18 month old SA8300HD DVR in living room
3) Brand new SA8300HDC DVR in basement

The Pioneer box was downgraded to Navigator way back in October or November 2007, and we immediately hated it.  Just knowing how ugly and slow it is on that box has made us live in fear of the day the SA8300HD in our living room is downgraded.

On Thursday Feb 21, we stopped at the Southridge TWC store and picked up a second SA8300HD box, the new "C" box.  Upon installing it in the basement and starting to use it, my fears were immediately realized.  It's horrible.  Luckily in reading this thread yesterday, I learned the TWC had set-up a user survey on their SE WI site, and I stated my opinions in detail.  The following is what I posted, and it will stand as my personal observations on Navigator's shortcomings, specifcally versus the Aptiv software, which I found to be nearly flawless.  This is long, but I think it's more comprehensive than anything I've read in this thread and I'd like to see what other people think/have observed, too, and would urge everyone to complete the survey.

Here's what I told TWC:

My wife and I basically hate Navigator and we thought the Aptiv interface was wonderful.  Navigator should have used Aptiv as the baseline for interface and functions and built up from there.  Here's some specific things we do not like about Navigator.

> Navigator first showed up on our bedroom cable box (older Pioneer HD box, non-DVR) and the first thing we noticed was the bland appearence versus the Aptiv software.

> Navigator performs much slower.  Everything from channel changes, accessing the program guide and accessing menus is sluggish and slow to respond to remote control inputs.

> When viewing the program guide, we almost always lose the video in the upper right preview window.

> The ability to find shows is TERRIBLE.  One of the great things the Aptiv software allowed was the ability to find shows right out of the program guide.  When you were on a particular show in the guide, all you had to do was click "C" for Search, and all the other airings of that show would come up.  Next to the listing, you had the keypad to allow title & keyword searching.  The Navigator software automatically displays a useless alphabetical list and your only option is to begin a title search by typing in the letters.  This is one of the worst issues with Navigator, especially with a DVR and setting up recordings.

> We just picked up a third box a few days ago (SA 8300HDC - this is in addition to the Pioneer box in our bedroom and an SA 8300HD running Aptiv in the living room.)  It took about 5 minutes to start seeing problems with the Navigator software in relation to the DVR functionality, too.

> When fast-forwarding or re-winding through a recorded show, you don't get a progress bar on the bottom of the screen.  You can't even just click the Play button to show where you're at in the program.  In fact, instead of this time display, Navigator displays an enormous banner at the bottom of the screen showing the channel and a show title.  Although even THAT's a problem, because when I was watching an episode of King of Queens I had recorded earlier in the day, this banner correctly showed WTBS as the channel, but the program title it displayed was some Spanish show title, possible a title of a show that had aired on one of the Spanish-language channels - who knows.

> Navigator's recording options are not as flexible as Aptiv's, either, specifically in regards to setting up series recording.  More specifically, it does not allow you to set series recordings for only a single channel, nor does it allow you to set series recordings only for a single time/airing.  For example, I normally record the Daily Show and Colbert Report airings at 12:00 midnight and 12:30 AM, respectively on Comedy Central.  However, Comedy Central airs these shows several times during the day.  Even my Aptiv box could not tell which airings were new or reruns, so I simply set my Aptiv DVR to record only these airings, whether they were new or reruns.  On the new Navigator DVR, since I can't tell it to record only the one airing of each show, the DVR recorded ALL airings of both shows during the course of a day.  This creates numerous duplicate recordings of the same show.

> On top of the previous problem, because Navigator is so slow, just going through and deleting all these duplicate recordings is a huge chore.

> Finally, another situation where Navigator's slowness rears it's head is when setting up recordings (mainly series), when Navigator takes an enormous amount of time just setting the recordings you input.

At first, I thought the slow operation of Navigator (on our old Pioneer box) was related to the age of the box.  But it's only marginally quicker on my brand new SA 8300HDC box.  For the time being, Aptiv is still running on my living room box, and having the ability to experience both applications almost side-by-side truly shows off the shortcomings of Navigator.  It seems that a lot of effort was put into giving Navigator some interesting functions (through the A-B-C-D buttons in particular) but I find most of these functions of no use on a daily basis, whereas the problems I detailed above are things I'm going to be running into constantly.

I'm very, very unhappy with Navigator.  I see no reason why Navigator could not be improved, and although I'm not a software developer, I would think that fixing all the problems I've detailed could be done fairly easily.  If that's the case, and these fixes are in the works, then I will try to be patient and wait for these fixes.  But if this doesn't happen, I may be forced to look at my other options for television services.


Thanks for reading - let's see some more posts regarding specific likes (if there are any) and dislikes of Navigator.

Great letter Turbo!

Keep us posted on future updates.

Jack

[Jack 1000]

Just a heads up that San Diego and vicinity is getting Navigator (or will be getting it) sometime this week on legacy NON-C boxes and DVR's.  Not that this relates to our area, but it is the first (or one of the first areas) with Navigator and the non-C boxes going through the transition.  So far, (although it's early) the rollout is going MUCH better than expected, and several recordings on people's DVR's have even SURVIVED the transfer!!!!  (A few got lost, but nowhere near what we have been thinking.)

Follow the rollout and see how things go on the first couple threads in this forum:

Not exactly calls for the celebration of Navigator, but IF our transition runs like this in March, or whenever our DVR rollout begins, I think it will be better than we expected:

http://hdtv.forsandiego.com/messages/2/2.html

Jack

[Jack 1000]

My brother from Milwaukee said he got Navigator on his box. (I know he has a DVR, and assume that it is a non-C box.)  Said the things we have been talking about for year:  It's slow and clunky, he can't find anything, and he thinks the search 2 weeks in advance is dumb because he doesn't plan that far ahead for TV watching.  I e-mailed him asking if he got it through a download, if TWC gave him any warning notice, and if his recordings survived.

We are closing in on the date I think.  Whether we like it or not.

Jack

[Jack 1000]

My brother from Milwaukee said he got Navigator on his box. (I know he has a DVR, and assume that it is a non-C box.)  Said the things we have been talking about for year:  It's slow and clunky, he can't find anything, and he thinks the search 2 weeks in advance is dumb because he doesn't plan that far ahead for TV watching.  I e-mailed him asking if he got it through a download, if TWC gave him any warning notice, and if his recordings survived.

We are closing in on the date I think.  Whether we like it or not.

Jack

He said he got no notice at all.  He has an SD DVR.  Didn't say about the recordings.  He did e-mail TWC to complain but knows that this means nothing.  He didn't mention anything about bugs, just that it was very awkward and slow.

Jack

[gparris]

Well, it IS March, right?
Thankfully, the writer's strike has made fewer new programmes available for viewing and recording-so if Crapagator messes up the recordings, there will be fewer of them to mess up...until later.
Nice of TWC to go in stealth mode and drop this on us!:mad:

BTW, the 8300HDC my neighbours have is slow, clunky and they hate it.
For some reason, they keep watching Directv commercials with a new-found love and happiness...can't figure that out.:rof: