spectrum(charter) new guide is here! very happy!

[EarDemon]

So I hit my first hiccup with only having four tuners. This Wednesday at 10p, I have four shows scheduled. The Ultimate Fighter, Broadchurch, Blood Drive and Forbidden History. But at 9 I have American Pickers which has a run-time of 63 minutes ending at 10:03 creating a conflict. I had to edit the recording for American Pickers to end 3 minutes early. I had a few seconds of disappointment yesterday when I initially thought the World Box didn't support 3D. Yes, I know 3D is dead, but I still like to catch a movie on HBO 3D once in a while, but by default in the Devices Menu 3D capability is disabled. Enabled it, and all is well. Hopefully the Arris built World Box 2.0 adds more tuners.

I'm really shocked that Former TWC areas are getting this before Legacy Charter, especially considering this would be an upgrade for most of L-Charter from what I gather, but it's a downgrade for L-TWC.

 

[primestar31]

So I hit my first hiccup with only having four tuners. This Wednesday at 10p, I have four shows scheduled. The Ultimate Fighter, Broadchurch, Blood Drive and Forbidden History. But at 9 I have American Pickers which has a run-time of 63 minutes ending at 10:03 creating a conflict. I had to edit the recording for American Pickers to end 3 minutes early. I had a few seconds of disappointment yesterday when I initially thought the World Box didn't support 3D. Yes, I know 3D is dead, but I still like to catch a movie on HBO 3D once in a while, but by default in the Devices Menu 3D capability is disabled. Enabled it, and all is well. Hopefully the Arris built World Box 2.0 adds more tuners.

I'm really shocked that Former TWC areas are getting this before Legacy Charter, especially considering this would be an upgrade for most of L-Charter from what I gather, but it's a downgrade for L-TWC.

So, record the later episode of American Pickers. They show the new episode at least twice that same night. We are all Legacy Charter here, so won't likely get the World Box soon. I'm not going back to their tv with their present equipment.

 

[EarDemon]

The way Navigator [used to?] work, is if there was a scheduling conflict, the highest priority recordings would be recorded live, and the lower priority shows that did not record live, it would automatically record the encore presentations later that night, or early in the morning. Same thing happened if the power went out and something didn't record. TUF is my lowest priority show of my Wednesday night recordings and the World Box didn't automatically schedule the 4a showing. TUF is nearing the end of it's Spring season, so it's not much of an issue, as I'll have a tuner freed up in a few weeks.

 

[primestar31]

The way Navigator [used to?] work, is if there was a scheduling conflict, the highest priority recordings would be recorded live, and the lower priority shows that did not record live, it would automatically record the encore presentations later that night, or early in the morning. Same thing happened if the power went out and something didn't record. TUF is my lowest priority show of my Wednesday night recordings and the World Box didn't automatically schedule the 4a showing. TUF is nearing the end of it's Spring season, so it's not much of an issue, as I'll have a tuner freed up in a few weeks.

That works perfectly with Dish dvrs, but it does NOT work with the POS Motorola dcx-3510 dvr they hand out here. You HAVE TO manually change the conflicted recording to record the later one.

 

[IcEWoLF]

It’s been a hectic past handful of weeks, and I haven’t been on this site much otherwise I would have posted this sooner. The WorldBox is most definitely not vaporware. I’ve had one for about 3 weeks now. I traded in my two tuner Cisco 8742 for it. I wanted to get a feel for the box, so even though my Cisco 9865 has six tuners and the WorldBox only has four, I moved the World Box to the main TV so I’d use it more. Since I’m former TWC, as expected, it is running ODN Navigator 8.0.0_23, not the software seen in the links above, and what legacy Charter subscribers see.

Overall it’s a nice box and runs Navigator exceptionally well. On reboot, it still does lose my Dolby Digital audio settings, like the Cisco 9865 does, which is a little annoying. Also while the video does look a little brighter to me, there is a hint of black crush. Not as bad as the Arris Enhanced DVR I had, but it's noticeable. The update to ODN 8 on the Cisco 9565 slowed down my box quite a bit when in the DVR management screens, the World Box is lightning fast, I experience no slow downs when re-prioritizing or deleting series. And I've been doing a lot of that lately. I record 60+ series, I wish there was a way to have them tied to the account, instead of the box.

I have the Spectrum 201-T, which is manufactured by Technicolor, the company Cisco sold their STB business to. Humax is the other OEM for the World Box 1.1. So far being down to 4 tuners hasn't been an issue. I'm thinking it may be once hockey season starts back up. I do also miss the clock on the front display. Not sure why the got rid of it.

Damn, thats a nice set! Honestly I would try charter if they had a 4 tuner box. I just can't bring myself to downgrade to a two tuner box.

 

[Jhon69]

Damn, thats a nice set! Honestly I would try charter if they had a 4 tuner box. I just can't bring myself to downgrade to a two tuner box.

For me I don't have an issue with the dual tuner boxes because cable channels repeat very often,most repeat in the evening hours so I just set my timers for different hours.

So it makes the dual tuner box act like it has more tuners,I use to do the same thing with my dual tuner Dishnetwork boxes.

The problem from what I have read is the new boxes do not display the time on the front display and that is a big no no because cable boxes have always had that feature.

 

[IcEWoLF]

In this day and age I don’t really need a cable box to show me what time it is, I just look at my smart phone or ask it what time it is.

 

[EarDemon]

While I prefer to have a clock on the cable box, the lack of one doesn’t really bother me. After having the World Box for upwards of 6 months now, I don’t even notice it not being there. I’d rather have two additional tuners on the world box before a clock.

And then you have the opposite side, who put tape over the clock on bedroom set top terminals because it's too bright and they can't fall asleep with the slightest amount of light. Me personally, I can fall asleep at the drop of a hat, it doesn't mater how much music I have blaring, how many LEDs are illuminated or how many cans of Surge I drank, when my bed hits the pillow, I'm in a comatose state.

 

[Jhon69]

While I prefer to have a clock on the cable box, the lack of one doesn’t really bother me. After having the World Box for upwards of 6 months now, I don’t even notice it not being there. I’d rather have two additional tuners on the world box before a clock.

And then you have the opposite side, who put tape over the clock on bedroom set top terminals because it's too bright and they can't fall asleep with the slightest amount of light. Me personally, I can fall asleep at the drop of a hat, it doesn't mater how much music I have blaring, how many LEDs are illuminated or how many cans of Surge I drank, when my bed hits the pillow, I'm in a comatose state.

The ironic thing about having a clock in the front display is when you go to the manufacturer's website they show a clock in the front display,so it would be interesting to know how much does Charter Spectrum save by not having a clock in their new cable box in the front display.

 

[EarDemon]

Going against the advice of my manger friend at Charter and the tech that installed my gig service, I picked up a Spectrum 210 DVR aka WorldBox 2.0 yesterday. I traded in my L-TWC 6 tuner Cisco 9865HDC for one of these.

Physically it looks nearly identical to the original WorldBox 1 that I got last year.

The new Spectrum guide and menus use a radically different design language then Time Warner's Navigator. It closely resembles the smartphone/tablet app GUI. There are some known problems with the new WorldBox, mostly related to the guide and DVR functionality and scheduling recordings, which is why I was told not to get it yet. But I can live with the bugs to play with something new and shiny.

Some general observations:

EPG displays 6 channels instead of 7
New On Demand Portal is very modern looking and experiences no lag when populating graphics
There is a half of a second or so complete drop out of audio and video when launching the EPG or any of the menus
The channel banner looks awkward as it does not go across the whole screen, the channel logo graphic is tiny, but the name of the currently airing is huge
The channel banner can be positioned at the top or bottom of the screen, the positioning of the Caller ID on TV prompt can be changed as well
Netflix app is slick and works great
This box changes channels faster then any other digital cable or satellite STB that I've ever used
The new remote is UHF, but older IR remotes will work as well

 

[ncted]

I cannot for the life of me understand why, with the size of TVs these days, they make EPGs so sparse. Even my Dish EPG only shows 2.5 hours and 8 channels now.

 

[Jhon69]

Thank You Earl for postings photos,I wondered what the new boxes looked like,I honestly believe the Spectrum app's features looked a little bit better than what's on the new boxes but I am sure Spectrum will do upgrades to it.

 

[iceturkee]

Damn, thats a nice set! Honestly I would try charter if they had a 4 tuner box. I just can't bring myself to downgrade to a two tuner box.

my brighthouse 6 tuner dvr is still going strong on spectrum!!

 

[whitewolf8214]

Going against the advice of my manger friend at Charter and the tech that installed my gig service, I picked up a Spectrum 210 DVR aka WorldBox 2.0 yesterday. I traded in my L-TWC 6 tuner Cisco 9865HDC for one of these.

Physically it looks nearly identical to the original WorldBox 1 that I got last year.

The new Spectrum guide and menus use a radically different design language then Time Warner's Navigator. It closely resembles the smartphone/tablet app GUI. There are some known problems with the new WorldBox, mostly related to the guide and DVR functionality and scheduling recordings, which is why I was told not to get it yet. But I can live with the bugs to play with something new and shiny.

Some general observations:

EPG displays 6 channels instead of 7
New On Demand Portal is very modern looking and experiences no lag when populating graphics
There is a half of a second or so complete drop out of audio and video when launching the EPG or any of the menus
The channel banner looks awkward as it does not go across the whole screen, the channel logo graphic is tiny, but the name of the currently airing is huge
The channel banner can be positioned at the top or bottom of the screen, the positioning of the Caller ID on TV prompt can be changed as well
Netflix app is slick and works great
This box changes channels faster then any other digital cable or satellite STB that I've ever used
The new remote is UHF, but older IR remotes will work as well

Thanks for heads up and pictures I can show my neighbor who has Charter or Spectrum

 

[cypherstream]

Hows the performance of that new guide? Does it come up quickly? Do things move around pretty smoothly, or is it jerky and sluggish, or stacking remote commands?

I like how it doesn't have a stupid blue line down the guide like DirecTV's newest addition. The bolded current time with an indicator above the grid is all I would need to see the current progress in the time line.

It does seem a little basic and sparse. Not as condensed (text wise) as ODN. Also judging from the grid guide highlited cells, its not "center focused" like ODN, where the center row is what is selected + 3 rows above + 3 rows below, where the guide moves around the center position. This seems to be a more traditional selection like all of the other guides out there (Except Passport and Sara).

Does the guide scroll quickly if you hold down the arrow keys? No banner ads in the grid (yet) ?

 

[EarDemon]

General guide performance is okay. I don’t find it sluggish, but it’s not quite as fluid as my HR44. There is no lag when changing channel selection in the EPG or when scrolling horizontally to see programming on the same channel. The guide scrolls faster when holding down the directional buttons or channel buttons to page through but not at a super rapid speed like DirecTV does. Haven’t had remote commands stack up yet. When launching the guide (or any menu) there is a complete black out video and the audio cuts out for about 2.5 seconds.

Correct, unlike Navigator the selected channel doesn’t appear in the center of the screen. There are two ways to advance time in the Guide. The standard type the number of hours you want to advance and them press the right arrow. Or if you press the Options button on the remote there’s a menu bar that appears, and you can select a specific day. Also, you cannot go 2 hours back in time like ODN. And yes, there are no ads in the guide.

 

[cypherstream]

Thanks for sharing. Interesting that it says the guide color is dark in that picture. Maybe this is subjective, or maybe its easier to see in person, but the blue really isn't that dark to me.

It does look clean and wow what a departure from ODN. Its nothing like ODN at all.

 

[EarDemon]

No problem. The software on this box has some bugs and oddities. I do not feel it should have been released to the general subscriber base at this point. It has not missed a recording for me, so as a DVR it does it's main job well, it's just that there's a lot of quarks with the UI.

In real life the guide and menus don't look that blue. I don't know if it's my phone or my Hue lights that I have on in the background causing something to go on with the lighting, but when I take pictures of my TV with my phone they come out bluer then they should.

Same thing happened last year with the new DirecTV guide

New Genie UI now in CE testing

 

[sxmfan2018]

I hate the guide it's the way the stations are named seems like gibberish to me. And for the one that's thinking of buying a TiVo. When I was installed they gave me a dual tuner for so stone age lol. So I called and complained they said they would give me a world box. The tech came out to replace a box and to do my upgrade and told me the world boxes are made by Cisco and not arris and they aren't compatible. So then I got a hair up my rear and threatened to cancel all together if I didn't get a better dvr
He went out to his truck and gave me the 6 tuner whole home dvr and I am a new subscriber and new subs are not supposed to get the 6 tuner dvrs

 

[EarDemon]

Cisco actually doesn’t make set top boxes anymore. They sold that arm of the business off to Technicolor a few years ago. The Worldbox (101, 201) is made by Technicolor and Humax. Worldbox 2 (110, 210) is made by Technicolor, Humax and Arris. I think the Arris boxes are only available in areas where the local headend uses Motorola equipment, but I could be mistaken. But yes there can be some compatibility issues between set top box manufactures and Motorola/Arris headends and Scientific Atlanta/Cisco headends.