Question on Spectrum Cable's DVR Service (rental, house, buy)

[Avalon08]

My 55+ community had Bright House cable and now has a contract with Spectrum. When we had Bright House, I was offered "Enhanced DVR" service that allowed me to tape up to six shows at a time, and had a gazillion of hours of storage. With Spectrum, I had the same service....until recently when my DVR box had to be replaced. Now, I can only record two shows at a time and can't watch any other channel while it's recording. When I complained, they gave me some technical mumbo-jumbo that seemed like it amounted to this:

The customers with the old Bright House enhanced DVR would be grandfathered.

But their new boxes don't support it.

My neighbor has a different box than I do and she has the Enhanced service. She doesn't remember when she got this box so maybe she's a grandfather.

Can anyone with Spectrum help me out here? Do you have the enhanced DVR? FWIW, the box I have is Explorer 8642HDC. My neighbor has an Arris box. Both the Explorer and the Arris are different boxes than the one I had with Bright House.

I seriously can't believe there is technology to tape six shows at once and yet Spectrum doesn't offer it.

[TimDaCodet]

Call the local office and see if you can exchange your box for one someone recently returned.

[AaronDavidSchultz]

ain't that simple, some boxes are being phased out

[dave w]

Originally Posted by Avalon08

My 55+ community had Bright House cable and now has a contract with Spectrum. When we had Bright House, I was offered "Enhanced DVR" service that allowed me to tape up to six shows at a time, and had a gazillion of hours of storage. With Spectrum, I had the same service....until recently when my DVR box had to be replaced. Now, I can only record two shows at a time and can't watch any other channel while it's recording. When I complained, they gave me some technical mumbo-jumbo that seemed like it amounted to this:

The customers with the old Bright House enhanced DVR would be grandfathered.

But their new boxes don't support it.

My neighbor has a different box than I do and she has the Enhanced service. She doesn't remember when she got this box so maybe she's a grandfather.

Can anyone with Spectrum help me out here? Do you have the enhanced DVR? FWIW, the box I have is Explorer 8642HDC. My neighbor has an Arris box. Both the Explorer and the Arris are different boxes than the one I had with Bright House.

I seriously can't believe there is technology to tape six shows at once and yet Spectrum doesn't offer it.

This won't help much but I have that 2 show box your talking about. I hate that antique POS. I researched on line and they have 6 recording box called WORLD box but it's not available in my area. Spectrum is the worst cable provider I've encountered. My advise it to ditch the recorder and just watch your favorites using the on demand feature. Or just use their internet and buy a streaming service. I had xfinity before this and the are light years ahead of Spectrum.

[BP1968]

Originally Posted by dave w

This won't help much but I have that 2 show box your talking about. I hate that antique POS. I researched on line and they have 6 recording box called WORLD box but it's not available in my area. Spectrum is the worst cable provider I've encountered. My advise it to ditch the recorder and just watch your favorites using the on demand feature. Or just use their internet and buy a streaming service. I had xfinity before this and the are light years ahead of Spectrum.

To Dave's point on the streaming service, we have YouTube TV, which has unlimited DVR storage and you can record multiple things at once. The basic service at $64.99 allows up to 6 concurrent streams at once. We ditched DirecTV for this a year and a half ago and have been very happy with the service which has about 85 channels. On top of that, you don't have to worry about any boxes and devices like you do with cable service, which you are typically charged a rental fee for each month.


If you don't have a smart TV, YouTube TV can be added with a Roku or Firestick if your TV has an HDMI connection.

[Avalon08]

Thanks, you guys, for the suggestions. I am sooo NOT technical so I hate all this stuff. I think my first move will be to go to the Spectrum office rather than try to deal with them on the phone (and the usual getting put on hold then getting disconnected). This is just ridiculous that they don't even OFFER the technology. Plus our community is supposed to get the "bronze package" which includes certain channels, and when they switched me to the new box, they took that away. GRRRRR!!