Motorola 6412 HDTV + PVR

[calgarianperson]

My cable company is trying to push a HDTV decoder and recorder from Motorola this spring and I was wondering if anyone has used the unit before. its a motorola 6412 and looking elsewhere on the internet i seem to get mixed reactions but this is with people who dont care about quality like they do on this site. i don't want to consider TI VO and this is really my only other option other than runnning a different HDTV decoder and using that new HP pc for the recorder, so i'm wondering if anyone has had good or bad luck with th\is particular unit?

 

[BMXTRIX]

A few things that matter:

1. The cable company may really screw up the quality of what is delivered to your home. This is completely outside of how well the cable box performs and may leave you really upset. Then you could have the same box in another cable district and it may look awesome. Or vice-versa. A lot is in the hands of the cable company.

2. If you are renting, then it is definitely worth taking a look at. Tivo can't deal with HDTV unless you have it integrated into a DirecTV receiver. So, that doesn't work. Also, all outboard PVRs really don't hold a candle to integrated PVR units.

3. I have the Scientific Atlanta HD/PVR box and it absolutely sucks compared to the Motorola boxes that I have seen and used. If given the opportunity to use a Motorola box I would switch to it in a heartbeat.

Audio and video is usually very good on cable from digital and HD channels (analog is still analog and isn't nearly as good). Motorola is definitely a step ahead of Scientific Atlanta in product design. I have not seen a PVR user interface that is nearly as good as Tivo... But, I have also never been really unhappy with the user interface that does exist. It is all much easier, and much better looking than my old VCR.

As long as you are renting the equipment, I would definitely recommend using it for several months over any other technology.

 

[BBandMAN]

Installing these for a living,The only problems I see is quality of your Analog channels will suffer on some units. To combat this some Cable compenies will hook up S Video and an show customer how to change the inputs. this problem is Motorola not Cable companies.

 

[calgarianperson]

thanks... my cable company is pretty good (shaw cable systems) and i have been a loyal customer for a decade or more. my internet and digital cable have all been setup with them without a hitch so i'm not worried there. ive heard analog channels suffer slightly but i could easily route coax straight into the tv and put a splitter before the HD box for analog channel viewing. then i could run the audio from the tv out to the reciever if i wanted it to come out my mains while watching analog.