Motorola Cable box DD?? (1 Viewer)

[John S]

I think I have found my purpose in life...

It is going over to people's houses and really giving them what they think they already have....

Explanation...

Last night this guy had a cable box with Dolby Digital Logo boldly displayed on the front. Only problem, it had no digital out what so ever. He had the device hooked to his TV through channel 3 coax only, then L/R RCA's from his TV to his AVR and just was always disapointed in his surround performance.

The box didn't even have svideo out... It did at least seem to support stereo, but no indicator what so ever that any particular channel source was stereo or not.

But I hooked L/R RCA directly from it to the AVR and it did at least give some surround performance.

He had been hooking his DVD player up via Composite only to his TV only also with the L/R RCA's. Man did he get a shocker when I hooked it up 480p via component cables, and ran a digital connection to his AVR....

I do think home theater just might be to much for most people to deal with. He told me for years he had hooked it up every way possible and couldn't get it going. I made two quick changes and bammo much much better performance.

His Display while NOT HD, was able to be fed 480p via component cables, the set was 6 to 7 years old.

PS: I think I convinced him to buy an HD OTA STB, as he told me his odd cable company "Wild Open West" doesn't offer HD yet.

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

I agree 100%. It’s ridiculously complicated. One of my favorite musings is, “They can send a man to the moon, but they can’t make a plug-and-play home theater system.” It’s very sad that this guy has had this stuff for years and hasn’t been getting much out of it.

By the way, it really surprises me that Motorola can put "Dolby Digital" on a cable box that isn't, and get away with it. You'd think that would be in violation of a licensing agreement.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[Mort Corey]

Well, they still aren't too close to making a "plug and play" computer yet either. Perhaps the coming of more "media center" blending of the computer and AV world will advance the state of affairs......but I ain't countin' on it....especially if it uses Microsoft interfaces.

Mort (who dreads the day when you have to download a patch to change channels)

 

[John Garcia]

That's exactly why I started my small business doing this very sort of thing. This stemmed from going to people's homes and when the subject of HT came up, in each and every case I have found the person has a complaint about the hook-up of their system. In almost every case, something is hooked up wrong and just needs a little tweaking to fix.

AFAIK, if the display is not HD capable, then a 480p signal should not display correctly.

 

[PaulT]

The box probably 'is' DD capable, but the Cable Company ordered them with no plugs on the back panel because they probably aren't supporting DD in their (re)broadcasts. He should check with the CC and see if they will upgrade/swap the box.

The older Motorola 2000/2500 units have modular backplanes and each cable company would use all or some of the options of the box depending on what they are sending down the line.

 

[John S]

John Garcia, the statement about HD / DTV(480p) is not accurate. There was a short lived generation of displays, that were only 480p capable. They tended to lable them DTV's. As I said this one is 6 to 7 years old, maybe older, the owner seemed very unsure.

 

[John Garcia]

That would make it a 1st generation HD ready set, not an analog only set.

 

[John S]

No not HD, becasue it does not work with anything over 480p. As I said they liked to lable them DTV's, I have now encountered 3 such sets. I never said it was an analog only set. As I said it is labled a DTV.

I got HD source running on two of these, I think this third guy is about to come around on it as well. lol