Jason Co

Comcast HD and Tivo

I recently purchased a HD LCD television and I would like to get Comcast HD. I also have a Series 2 Tivo that I have hooked up via a splitter so I can watch live tv through the television while my Tivo records another channel. My question(s)

1. How can I hook up the HD cable box so I can watch HD channels and have my Tivo record another channel at the same time.

2. My assumption is if I split my cable and run one to the Tivo directly and one to the cable box I will be able to record channels 1-99 but nothing else.

I have looked this up online and have yet to find a solution I can wrap my brain around. I would like to get a plan before I pull the trigger on the Comcast HD package. I feel like it would be a crime not to be able to watch HD on my nice new 50" Panny. Anyone have any ideas?

Jason

Adam.Heckman

If you live in a lucky place, such as myself in Boston, you could just get yourself one of Comcasts lovely dual tuner DVRs that capture HD in all it's glory. I believe it's the Motorola 6412. It's got a 120 Gig hard drive.
I've never owned a tivo brand box so I'm not sure how they compare in features, but the 6412 does have a 'season pass' type option.
The two tuners are nice. You can actually record two programs and watch a recorded program all at once! It's only a couple bucks more a month, and I think that the HD tivo boxes are hundreds of dollars.

Anyways, it's worth looking into. Good luck.

Adam and Jen\'s DVD collection

ronmon

I too have just gotten Comcast's new 6412 PVR and have it hooked up to my JVC D-VHS vcr via the firewire (IEEE 1394) port. This is real nice, because the pvr will only hold about 7 or 8 HD movies but this allows me to archive movies for later viewing.

Jason Co

Unfortunately the PVR is not available in my area (MI). So that takes it out of the equation. Who said HT would be easy???

Anyone else come across this issue?

Jason

Mike Wilk

If you get a -3.5dB, 5-1000MHz, 2-way splitter ($10-$12 max), you can send one leg to the cableco box with the other leg going to analog devices like a VCR, the TV (PiP/PoP), or a Tivo. I send the second leg to a distro box supporting all those and a second room TV. The specs for the splitter are important since the HD cableco boxes are quite particular about getting the correct signal levels, not too high or too low. My Moto 5100 HD box also has a coax out that can send signal to the distro box so those analog devices can also see the digital channels.

YMMV

PS - My cableco advertises the box but as recently as Saturday night told me they are not yet available; still being tested.