Well … that’s my story and I am sticking to it! >:D
OK, I noticed Tuesday night (Dec 30, 08) that some shows that were being recorded or should have been recorded, just weren’t in the list of recorded shows. What I eventually found was that the STB were no longer showing up in the Device Manager.
FWIW – I use SageTV, I have 2 Motorola DCH3200 STB, Although both have been setup for firewire I only record/tune using the firewire connection with one of them. The other one is connected to an HD-PVR (yes, it locks about once a week if I don’t power cycle it). OK. back to the rant
What I suspect is Comcast download an update to the STBs (policy or firmware or whatever) and in the process deactivated the firewire ports. I suspect this because the setup menu that I can access by pressing the power button then the select button has changed. I see a whole lot more choices then what were available before. The Menu I used to see is but one of about 15 maybe 16 choices.
I did call Comcast customer Service and complained, not that it did much good since the person I spoke to didn’t know what or firewire or IEEE1394 or 1394 port was. I am not surprised about this from what I have read that others have posted in various forums.
Now, just in case and to be fair, I will admit that I have just installed a dual boot setup on this system. The original system is XP (32 bit) currently running SP3. The new system setup on the second partition is Vista Ultimate x64 with SP1.
I did this over the previous weekend and everything was still working. And both sides showed the STBs in their respective Device Manager’s. (now neither show the STBs)
I don’t believe that setting up a dual boot system would be the cause of the STB hardware disappearring but on the outside chance it is, it is only fair that I mention it.
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