Cable question

[Micky]

Also a good idea.

[Arnie Goetchius]

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I have been using Powermid for about 10 years. I have the set top box (Verizon FiOS) in my basement office. Using a splitter, I feed the TV set in the basement and the TV set in the bedroom with whatever channel I have selected with the remote. The remote control in the bedroom sends the IR commands through the Powermid transmitter in the bedroomto the Powermid receiver in the basement. This way I can control the set top box from either the basement or the bedroom. Of course, whatever is playing in the basement is also playing in the bedroom and vice versa but that is fine since no one is in the same place at the same time.

[DerbyDad03]

re: "...since no one is in the same place at the same time."

Really? You mean that all my life people having been lying to me about that "can't be in two places at one time" thing? Damn!

[Micky]

What I meant by this is that it's probably a good idea to buy a second box, if you find a good place to buy one.

WRT the place 5 lines up, I haven't looked much at cable boxes, andsince I don't have cable or satellite, and I wouldn't know a good price if I saw one, but I looked at their OTA box,

It's very overpriced, about twice what it's worth. I guess 100 of that is the installation (do they really send someone to your home?) , but you can do that yourself. Yesterday I found the receiver/ with remote but no HDD for $34. This is a kit and adds a small antenna, an HDMI cable and probably a triple RCA cable, plus installation and setup (which you can surely do yourself) and a 160gig HDD (worth $45???), and charges $200!!!!

The picture shows 3 boxes, but 2 of them are front and back views of the same box. The list of things includes the OTA receiver and the

160G PVR

They call it a ""BLACK BOX" PACKAGE " and don't even give the make, but by the picture it's a Mediasonic HomeWorx. This is their 2nd model, although that came in two versions and I don't know which this is. The third model included Karioke and just came out in January. They were still giving discounts until Feb 17 if you wrote a review, but it's only $60 w/o the HDD so I wonder what the discount price is. If anyone's interested I'll get all three model numbers. ( hw150PVR, hw180STB, and HW220STB)

I wasn't able to get the instruction manual for the new one, but it looks just like the first two and the big disadvantage is that one can't play a recording while recording. If you come home from work and it's recording something, you have to have another tuner somewhere, or start watching in the middle, or not watch tv at all until it finishes.

It says "We need a name for our custom built HD-PVR. For now we have named it the 'BLACK BOX"" Baloney, it's HW150PVR. Just look at the back panel.

[gfretwell]

My 722 Dish box splits the same LNB output to both tuners

[Micky]

There are also active (amplified) HDMI cables at monoprice.com.

And I don't know what the back of the box looks like, or if the OP is using his HDMI port already, but I think if he wants two HDMI outputs and the jacks are not already there, he'll have to buy an HDMI splitter, and the one at monoprice costs $68

If one tv is not a very large screen, and there is a co-axial output, I think he can use the hdmi for one and the co-ax for another and the fidelity will look good.

I could be wrong but I see these devices that convert to co-ax from hdmi, or from AV as intended for longer distances than one floor. Of course I'm assuming the downstairs is directly under the upstairs and maybe it's at the other end of the house. The active hdmi go up to

60 feet at almost a dollar foot. I have an active USB cable from monoprice and it works well.

[Micky]

I was mixed up. It's the HW180STB that comes in a first version and later version. It has one row fewer jacks on the back.

This is the HW150PVR. 33 to 35 dollars.

[Micky]

As it says, up to 200 feet.

You can perhpas put one after another. You can do that with active USB cables, but data transfer even from a USB HDD to the computer might have some method of verification and retransimission, but maybe with video any error transmitted shows up on the picture. OTOH, how many errors are there? Maybe almost none.

[Andrew G]

BEWARE!! I purchased a cable/dvr box from CableBoxandModem.com for $175. Th ey require that you pay with a bank check rather than credit card (so that you cannot dispute through the credit card company). Could not get full fun ctionality with it from Comcast. Talked to owner or manger, Jay Bianchi, wh o offers a money back guarantee, and I was issued a Return Materials Author ization Form (RMA). I returned the box by FedEx and I did not receive respo nses to my emails asking for status of the refund. Spoke to Jay once in mid

-October and he said my unit was sent to factory for ?refurbishing ? and it should be back in one week. My subsequent calls and emails have gone unanswered and I have not received my refund.

[Tekkie®]

Andrew G posted for all of us...

They require that you pay with a bank check rather than credit card (so tha t you cannot dispute through the credit card company). Could not get full f unctionality with it from Comcast. Talked to owner or manger, Jay Bianchi, who offers a money back guarantee, and I was issued a Return Materials Auth orization Form (RMA). I returned the box by FedEx and I did not receive responses to my emails asking for status of the refund. Spoke to Jay once i n mid-October and he said my unit was sent to factory for ?refurbishing? an d it should be back in one week. My subsequent calls and emails have gone u nanswered and I have not received my refund.

What are we supposed to do about it? Complain to amazon, others have stated they will back you. It sucks to be you.