The HD DVR Pick-up

Sweet. This is a brand new DVR model which has gotten reasonably good reviews from the on-line “gotta have it” community.

My “Secret Location in the Valley” friend from California thinks I’m crazy.

“You’re going to Comcast?” he asked. “Why?”

He’s correct. Comcast will come to me DVR in hand and make the swap moving me to HDTV. It’s what they do. It’s how my friend works. It’s how most people work–waiting for the cable guy.

I’m a hands on geek. I want to screw the N-connector hooked to the coax cable and string the HDMI cable between the DVR and my set. This is my fun. No one’s taking that from me.

I headed to Comcast on the way to work. They have a New Haven office a few minutes from the TV station.

The line was long. Only two of the four windows were open.

Standing in line at the cable company isn’t always pleasant. People are there to pay past due bills and get their service restored. Some are angry. Many are perplexed. Few people are there for routine customer service. The place is not built for privacy. You hear everything.

The long line moved surprisingly quickly. I put my old DVR in a large drawer which delivered it to the agent across the glass from me. She went to a cabinet, looked, stopped, moved farther down the cabinet and came back with a Cisco RNG200 HDTV DVR.

Sweet. This is a brand new DVR model which has gotten reasonably good reviews from the on-line “gotta have it” community.

The back is loaded with plugs and sockets. There’s a USB 2.0 connector. Why? I want to know. Same for the Firewire (aka IEEE 1394) port. What can I do with it? There’s HDMI to provide highest quality video to the HDTV. It looks like there’s a port for an external SATA hard drive.

As far as I can tell, there’s no instruction manual online. None came with the box.

Tonight I start the final phase of the switch-over. The new TV table gets moved into position and the DVR, DVD and possible VCR go underneath. Then the TV gets lifted into position.

Helaine can reclaim the family room.

5 thoughts on “The HD DVR Pick-up”

  1. Geoff I am the same way, at least Comcast let you pick up the HD DVR. Charter made me wait for a tech to come out, because the local offices stopped carrying the DVR’s. They were nice enough to let me have the HD receiver while in the office and not charge me for the tech visit…

  2. Hello, just started reading your blog and just got a RNG200, I was wondering if there is a purpose of plugging in an internet cat5 cable and a USB into the box? What can I do when these are plugged in and how do I do it?

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