Re: Verizon will begin trialing Motorola QIP7232 and QIP7100
offline1
Newbie

All they really need to do is to enable the usb expansion ports that will allow us to add external hard drives.  Not a hard thing to do.

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Re: Verizon will begin trialing Motorola QIP7232 and QIP7100
lasagna
Community Leader
Community Leader

@offline:  I suspect it's a transfer rate thing since I suspect they might 1.1 USB interfaces  (or maybe a content protection thing if the content is not encrypted on the drive). 

But yeah ... I would jump at that in an instant -- I've got a 1TB external drive just sitting here with a firewire and USB 2.0 port on it.

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Re: Verizon will begin trialing Motorola QIP7232 and QIP7100
10nisman94
Contributor - Level 1

eSATA expansion is due by the end of this year. USB support is unlikely, as the speed  limitations would create a multitude of reliability issues. (even if they are USB 2.0)

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Re: Verizon will begin trialing Motorola QIP7232 and QIP7100
Carl
Specialist - Level 1

I think I may just wait it out, and go into full geek mode.

Since our son has been gone for 3 years, and will be gone for at least one more, I have a spare PC in his room. It is a dual core Athlon 64X2 4800+ with 8 GB of RAM. I may just get a Ceton InfiniTV4 card (if they ever ship), 2 1.5 or 2TB drives, and create my own HTPC. If I could just find a way to share the DVR recordings between the 3 TV's.

Maybe Windows 7's Home Group feature will work in conjunction with the Ceton card... I could build 2 more small HTPC's with Win 7, and assign each one tuner of the Ceton card. That would leave 2 more tuners for the back PC that could be used for TV and DVR in the back room.

(see what I mean by full geek mode)

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Re: Verizon will begin trialing Motorola QIP7232 and QIP7100
10nisman94
Contributor - Level 1

You can't use PC's to share the tuners, but you can use XBOX 360's or the now discontinued media center extenders like the Linksys DMA2100. A new media center extender platform should be announced this fall at CEDIA.  Exciting things coming in the next 6 months!

Re: Verizon will begin trialing Motorola QIP7232 and QIP7100
Carl
Specialist - Level 1

@10nisman94 wrote:

You can't use PC's to share the tuners, but you can use XBOX 360's or the now discontinued media center extenders like the Linksys DMA2100. A new media center extender platform should be announced this fall at CEDIA.  Exciting things coming in the next 6 months!


Forgot that little detail.

Yeah, wouldn't it be nice if MS offered Windows 7 MCE edition. Maybe offer it for $129??? Of course, 2 XBOX 360's would be nice. 🙂  But in the kids room, I plan on a PS3 and maybe a Wii.

I could build a cheap little Atom/Sempron based box with 2 GB RAM, HD4770 card, and a small HD (maybe SSD). That would be sweet.

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Re: Verizon will begin trialing Motorola QIP7232 and QIP7100
jkiv
Contributor - Level 1

@Carl wrote:

I think I may just wait it out, and go into full geek mode.

Since our son has been gone for 3 years, and will be gone for at least one more, I have a spare PC in his room. It is a dual core Athlon 64X2 4800+ with 8 GB of RAM. I may just get a Ceton InfiniTV4 card (if they ever ship), 2 1.5 or 2TB drives, and create my own HTPC. If I could just find a way to share the DVR recordings between the 3 TV's.

Maybe Windows 7's Home Group feature will work in conjunction with the Ceton card... I could build 2 more small HTPC's with Win 7, and assign each one tuner of the Ceton card. That would leave 2 more tuners for the back PC that could be used for TV and DVR in the back room.

(see what I mean by full geek mode)


Re the Ceton Card: You may be interested in this recent article in Win 7 News. http://www.win7news.net/

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Re: Verizon will begin trialing Motorola QIP7232 and QIP7100
spacedebris
Master - Level 2

@offline wrote:

All they really need to do is to enable the usb expansion ports that will allow us to add external hard drives.  Not a hard thing to do.


actually, its harder than you would think. The current Motorola boxes are not just softwarely disabled, they are physically disabled. Each and every box currently used by Verizon would have to be sent back to the manufacturer to have the usb ports enabled. Otherwise there would be no need to bigger drives, they would just enable those and tell the customer add all the space they want. Nope, we just have to wait for the new versions and hope they come enabled this time.

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Re: Verizon will begin trialing Motorola QIP7232 and QIP7100
Hellstorm1
Contributor - Level 1

Why the QIP7232 instead of the VIP2060?

From: http://connectedhome2go.com/2010/05/26/motorola-set-top-launching-with-4-tuners-500gb-storage/

"Here’s a set-top for the Japanese market that’s sure to make US consumers a little jealous. Long-time Motorola customer KDDI will launch the VIP2060 on June 2nd as part of the provider’s “au Hikari” service. The HD DVR set-top sports 500GB of storage, four tuners, and the ability to deliver IPTV signals as well as terrestrial and satellite broadcasts. The Motorola VIP2060 supports 1Gpbs fiber connections, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 encoding, and KDDI’s service allowing subscribers to transfer content between set-tops and mobile devices."

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Re: Verizon will begin trialing Motorola QIP7232 and QIP7100
spacedebris
Master - Level 2

@Hellstorm wrote:

Why the QIP7232 instead of the VIP2060?

From: http://connectedhome2go.com/2010/05/26/motorola-set-top-launching-with-4-tuners-500gb-storage/

"Here’s a set-top for the Japanese market that’s sure to make US consumers a little jealous. Long-time Motorola customer KDDI will launch the VIP2060 on June 2nd as part of the provider’s “au Hikari” service. The HD DVR set-top sports 500GB of storage, four tuners, and the ability to deliver IPTV signals as well as terrestrial and satellite broadcasts. The Motorola VIP2060 supports 1Gpbs fiber connections, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 encoding, and KDDI’s service allowing subscribers to transfer content between set-tops and mobile devices."


Why?  Well mostly because that one is to new. Verizon is learning from past failures to test extensively before they roll it out. It may not seem like it sometimes, but Verizon is getting much better at testing before their equipement goes out to the public. They've been testing the new stb's for more than 6 months now and still testing. And that DVR just came out.

Also they have to deal with the manufacturer and make sure that they can deliver the quantity that Verizon will require. Thats one of the problem Verizon had a couple years ago. Motorola was over extended with the boxes that they suppled to the different cable companies, and HD DVR's were unavailable for nearly 4 months while waiting for the manufacture to build enough for the demand. So the delay is not only likely to be because of testing but also waiting to build up an inventory to support the demand.

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