Re: 500GB Motorola QIP7232 HD DVR Coming soon!
mschauber
Enthusiast - Level 3
    mschauber wrote:

     
    This is infuriating.  They give out a product with the capabilities of using external HD's turned off just so they can charge existing customers more money for something we already pay for.  This is unbelievable. 

     

Actually, they are beta testing new firmware that will enable the eSATA for external storage up to an additional 1 TB (1.5 TB total for a 7232, 1.16 TB for a 7216).  This should go to general release by the end of Q1 2011 or early in Q2 of 2011.  Keep in mind that that external drive will be locked to the specific DVR so if it dies you will lose whatever is on it.  Also, if the external drive fails it's your "nickle" to replace it, not Verizon's.

.

If there's any truth to this, why doesn't verizon commiunicate with us?  There was nothing in the literature about the new dvr, there was nothing in the spotlight mag, which did at least say they will be changing the media guide, but no comment about time frame, so I guess somehwere between 1 day and 10 years.

They ahve all our email addresses, they are a phone company and could send out automated calls, they could make a not on their website, anything...

I have 37 Samsung 2tb drives running 24/7/365 and have yet to have a single failure.  The drives can now be purchased for $59.  So If I have to replace a drive I bought, I have no problem with that. 

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Re: 500GB Motorola QIP7232 HD DVR Coming soon!
mschauber
Enthusiast - Level 3

Three important things to note:

1) If you have used the share the network service, your orders may get screwed up and put onto the wrong account.  The ony way you'll know is when the box arrives.  I have friends whom I referred and they ordered the box and it showed up at my door.  This was a week after I received mine.  They have now charged me for two upgrades plus $100 fee for not returning hardware.  Luckily I have the UPS tracking with confirmation of their receipt of my old dvr (less than 10 days from the time I ordered it) and the receipt of the dvr they mistakingly put on my account (2 days after I returned it which was 2 days after I received it.)  Verizon refused to move the box to the account under which it was actually ordered.  On top of that, my friends have been unable to order the box again and billiing. customer service, tech support all say they have no way of placing an order for the new box.  I don't believe it for one sec, but they are pros at lying.

2) The clock/disply on the new unit is white and VERY bright.  There does not seem to be a way to dim it.  You can turn it off when the box is off, but then you lose the ability to use it as a clock.  If this was a Cisco box with a users upgradable HD, as other services are changing to, the brightness would be something I could live with.  But in a dark room, the unbelievably bright clock lights up the entire room.  It's also a sharp white.  Not a soft white like the soft color of the previous boxes.

3) 500gb fills up really fast when you only record HD.  It's a baby step forward, but when I could buy a 2tb hd for $59, I consider a $40 tax on this thing to be a kick in the pants to current customers.

Luckily thier service is good and regardless of their unscroupulous methods and refusal to offer current deals to existing customers, I wouldn't switch back to Time Warner Cable, their product is like using AT&T wireless.  Everything sucks, only works half the time, is slow, and their business will collapse when iphoneies move to verizon.

If Verizon FiOS management cared about keeping clients happy, they would communicate and treat us well.  Instead they know they have a superior product and have chosen to pull every penny from the customers knowing most of us will stay instead of being a corporation that earns respect.

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Re: 500GB Motorola QIP7232 HD DVR Coming soon!
acaruso
Newbie

Alternative solution to burning your existing programs on your old DVR would have been to simply hook it up to any TV, without the coax in connected, and via component or HDMI hookup, just use the old DVR as a playback box. Since we have 30 days to return the old box, it should be plenty of time to watch all of your backlog and still get the old box back to VZ on time.

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Re: 500GB Motorola QIP7232 HD DVR Coming soon!
redup
Enthusiast - Level 2

My experience with the FIOS 500GB DVR upgrade

Received the FIOS email Wednesday, 2 March 2011. Placed an order to replace one of my two(2) DVRs which are located in different rooms each connected to a TV.  Received the new DVR Model 7232 Thursday, 3 March 2011.  I installed the new DVR Friday, 04 March 2011.  Install went great and activation went great, up and running.

However, when I attempted to access the new DVR via the Internet from my PC or Verizon DROID, the new DVR was not accessible.  Followed all of the on-line troubleshooting guides without success.  I initiated an on-line text session with  Verizon Tech Support.  After 20 minutes the Verizon FIOS tech tells me I need Home Media DVR to access my new DVR and only Verizon Billing could help.  THe TECH would not budge on his position to transfer me to billing and would not listen to to info I passed to him.  I was transferred to FIOS Billing.  Billing agent went over my the previous chat and my records.  I received a number of questions from Billing and after repeating several times that I had two(2)  DVRS with each DVR connected to a TV I the Billing agent got the message, OH You have TWO (2) DVRs each connected to a TV, well that is a Tech Problem and FIOS Tech Support must not have understood that you have Two (2) TVs, so after 27 minutes with Billing I was transferred back to FIOS Tech Support.  So once again I had a new FIOS Tech on-line who had to review my record and the chat session and I had to repeatedly explain that I had two DVRs, upgraded one and now I do not have Remote Access to the new 500GB DVR.  During our discussion the Tech said, Oh you do not have a 500GB DVR, you have a 320GB hard drive.  To that I sent him the email I received from Verizon FIOS regarding my order for the 500GB DVR......I received no more comments on the size of the DVR??  well after 1 hour and 12 minutes with the new FIOS Tech he told me a Trouble Ticket would be opened and he terminated the session.  Ticket is still open with a Fix Time of Monday, 7 March at 5PM.  So all of this only took approx 2 hours?????????

Short Verizon of above....


Had 2 DVRs, Models 6416 connected to 2 TVs

Upgraded 1 DVR to the 500GB 7232

Lost Remote DVR Access to the new 500GB 7232 DVR

Spent 2 hours in a chat session split between Verizon Billing and two FIOS Techs.

Have a ticket open and two plus days later still no Remote DVR Access to my NEW 500GB DVR Upgrade.

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Re: 500GB Motorola QIP7232 HD DVR Coming soon!
redup
Enthusiast - Level 2

Verizon got my DVR remote following the upgrade to the new 500GB DVR on Monday 7 Mar, late afternoon.  Took them some time and about 3 hours of mine, but up and running and love the new DVR.

I received the 2nd replacement for my second DVR today, installed it and within 15 minutes I had two 500GB DVRs up and running.  Thanks Verizon....Just to bad that it cost me $80 for additional storage space!!

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Re: 500GB Motorola QIP7232 HD DVR Coming soon!
kayjaylb
Newbie

I had a similar issue w/ remote DVR access.  I only had 1 DVR, replaced it with 500GB and enabled remote DVR on the new box.  When I went to verizon website, i couldn't find a setting to enter the remote DVR code for the new box.  After what seems like an hour (probably 30-40 minutes) on the phone w/ a tech guy (restarting routers, dvr, microwave, water heater, etc) , he tells me, 'oh, you don't have remote dvr enabled on the new box'... I told him that's why I called and told you 30 minutes ago.  silence..  then he put me on hold for a while and came back and said, 'you can only have 1 remote dvr installed at a time'.   I plugged my old DVR back in and disabled the remote DVR, but that still didn't work and the tech guy says, 'we have to wait till you return the old dvr and then you'll be able to enable it'.  I am not confident that the tech knows what he's doing, but I'll wait to see when they receive the box and remove from my account.

On a brighter note, the new DVR responds much faster to remote control as well as accessing data from another STB, so we're happy w/ the new box.

J

Long Beach, CA

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Re: 500GB Motorola QIP7232 HD DVR
bobcat4444
Newbie

I had a new installation completed around Nov 10. On April 20th, 2011 the Multi Room DVR crashed. Got in touch with Arthur at Verizon tech ( no agent ID # is provided  for ease reference...hate this ). After several hours of diagnostic testing ..removing wires..replugging and what not...it was determined that the DVR was indeed bad. A tech came in the next day and installed a replacement one. He did not tell me that he was installing an inferior QIP 6416-2 model. I discovered with time that he had installed a used refurbished old unit with only 160 gigabyte capacity.  It only holds 10 hrs of HD content compared to 60 hours with the previous box. I called Verizon many times thereafter to get them to give me  an equivalent box back...spent many hours on phone with billing and tech departments ( I have complete logs of all the calls  ) and yet I do not have the correct MR DVR box inspite of assurances. I would even settle to buy an eSATA hard drive to store  DVR contents on ....but for this also one needs QIP 7000 series..Apparently eSATA ( not USB ) are compatible with the DVR's...assume this is the case due to very high bit transfer rate or for encryption capability or both? The eSATA hard drive box cannot be used with any other DVR except for the original..so cannot take it to other rooms either. I called again today...they promised to send someone over on Sunday with the right box...let us see.

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Re: 500GB Motorola QIP7232 HD DVR Coming soon!
Yenco
Contributor - Level 2

Just got my upgrade to this.  Overall I'm very impressed.  In almost every area the responsiveness seems to have been improved and, maybe just luck, but the 500 GB HD is a LOT quieter (the previous DVR's 160 GB drive I could hear a tick, tick, tick across the room constantly, the new one I actually have to go over to it and put my ear right up to it to hear any sound at all).

There are a few questions/comments I have though and I'm hoping someone here can tell me if the behavior is normal or not.

First:  (and this could be a bug in the 1.8 IMG -- 1.9 has sadly not made it to where i am in MA yet).  I decided to set the TV picture to background when bringing up the guide, menus, etc. in a transparent state.  As I was selecting a series I wanted to record with options, all of the option popup menu backgrounds did not display (just the text).  Which made it rather difficult to read.  If I set the TV picture option back to the small foreground view in menus, then the record series with options menu appears correctly with the usual background.  Known bug?  Fixed in 1.9?  (I didn't have the background option set on the previous DVR so I'm not sure if this is an issue particular to just the new DVR or if it existed in the prior one as well).

Second:  Of all the places where this box seems faster than the previous one (responsiveness of skip forward/back, pause, navigating the IMG or other menus, etc.), when switching from SD to HD or HD to SD channels there seems to be around a 5 sec lag.  In most cases the screen of my HDTV turns green briefly and even complains with a dialog that there is "No video signal".  I don't recall such a big lag or ever seeing green or that dialog with the previous box. Is this normal/expected?  This also seems to affect things when playing back from the DVR.  For example, I had on a HD station, brought up the DVR recordings and selected one that was in SD.  Got the lag before it started playing.  When done and returning to the recordings menu I *briefly* saw the menu... but then it vanished, I got the lag again with the green screen and the dialog and then finally the menu reappeared with the HD content displaying in the small foreground window.  It seems like it is actually shutting off the HDMI connection when going from HD to SD and then turning it back on.

Third:  More of an observation: the light to show that a remote control command has been received is the power button light?  It isn't a problem as such, just odd seeing the power button go *off* briefly every time I press a button on the remote as it receives the signal.  I'm sure I'll get used to that eventually.

That's about it for the box itself.  The old box is still showing up online and on the iOS apps for remote DVR and remote control but I've been told that will be resolved once Verizon receives the old DVR back and removes that data from their end.

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Re: 500GB Motorola QIP7232 HD DVR Coming soon!
Justin46
Legend

Yenco,

1) I cannot reproduce your problem on my 7232. When I set it to transparent and click to record a series, the pop-up is displayed on top of the Guide itself and was completely readable, the background was there. No idea why there would be a difference.

2) My guess is that you currently have the SD Override setting set to something other than Off, and you previously did have it set to Off. This is a common effect when using HDMI because the TV and STB have to renegotiate the connection every time the resolution is changed. If you set SD Override to Off then all signals from the STB will be sent to the TV in whatever HD resolution you have chosen. The SD picture will typically be slightly worse, but you won't see the delay, and for me, I don't watch much SD anymore anyway. I personally cannot stand the delay, I have been using Off for years.

3) Yep, that is the way it works, and yep, it is odd. I am guessing that it is a cost issue, cheaper to have one led than two in the box. Does take some getting used to, but I have had mine long enough now that I pretty much no longer really notice it.

When I returned my old DVR via UPS it did take a week or so to drop off my account. When I returned some SD boxes they came off much more quickly. No idea why. But if it doesn't disappear in a couple of weeks I would contact Veizon (and I hope you kept the shipment receipt Smiley Very Happy out of paranoia I also scanned and saved all of the return paperwork including the UPS receipt, plus I checked the UPS site regularly for progress and captured the screen images as it box wound its way to Verizon) .

__________________________________
Justin
Verizon FiOS TV, Internet, and phone
QIP7232, IMG 1.8, Build 02.54
Keller, TX 76248

Re: 500GB Motorola QIP7232 HD DVR Coming soon!
Yenco
Contributor - Level 2

1. Weird.  It isn't doing it here now either.  Perhaps just a one-off glitch or something.  I was doing a LOT to set things up again... adding back favorites, changing various settings, trying to get the DVR working with the Verizon site and the iOS DVR and remote apps, turning on the caller ID display, setting up everything I could (some of the series are not currently being broadcast within the IMG date range so can't be added) back into the DVR recording schedule, etc.  So maybe it was just some obscure combination that led to it.  Probably nothing to worry about, but if I ever see it again I'll try to note everything I was doing prior to that.

2. Thanks Justin.  You are absolutely right, I just missed that setting.  It was on 480i.  I set it to off and all is well (and in fact, that seems much faster than the old DVR as well now 🙂  And like you, I try to avoid SD as much as possible...  sadly there are still some stations I like that are not available in HD on Verizon (but are available in HD)...  I've made the requests in the ideas forum and see in various responses (since they are frequently requested) that they are all in the queue to be added [eventually *sigh*].

I saved a copy of everything related to the shipping of the old DVR, including a copy of the return label with the tracking number.  I only got the new box hooked up yesterday and the old one packaged up and dropped off today so it isn't in the UPS online tracking system quite yet, but should be before the end of today and then I can follow it on its way back to Verizon.

-Mike

Oh, btw... my compliments to the iOS app developers too.  The FiOS Remote App has a "My Favorites" section that is cached locally on the iPod.  While there was no way to tell the new box to just use those favorites... I at least had a reference list right there so didn't have to start entirely from scratch when setting up the new favorite lists on the new box.

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