Goodbye Moxi; hello DVR
It was a sad and scary moment this morning when my Moxi box went out the door. The Moxi was the DVR that Charter launched with such fanfare in 2002. I’ve had mine since Day One; in fact, I have (had) two, my primary, living room Moxi and my secondary, bedroom Moxi. Love them; really, really love them.
Unfortunately, box No. 2 had some sort of stroke a couple of weeks ago and stopped getting listings. Without listings, you can’t record, which is bad. I had a technician out — a very good technician, sent at random, without my pulling any strings — and he did some stuff but decided the modem had died. The Moxi uses a modem to download listings, so pfft.
Although I can’t get anything official from Charter, it’s well known that they are now pushing a Motorola DVR instead of the Moxi and that they (most likely) won’t be buying any more Moxis. That means I had two choices, or three: Get the technician to scrounge around and find me a refurbished Moxi; accept a brand new non-Moxi DVR; or (I thought of this belatedly) switch to TiVo and get cable service via cable card. (I’m not in a good spot for satellite.) If this had been my main box, I think I’d have gone with TiVo, but actually, all I know about the new DVR is that it’s not the Moxi I love. It may be fine, and I decided it would to experience the options so I could tell people about them. So my technician came back today and put it in. Apparently, it’s a much simpler piece of equipment than the Moxi, doesn’t use a modem, doesn’t run hot, yada yada.
I haven’t had time to play with it yet, but I did notice that the menu and listings look exactly like those on digital cable, nothing like those on the Moxi. I’m trying not to hate it prematurely, just because it’s different.
This I do know: ANY DVR IS BETTER THAN NO DVR! If you don’t yet have one, this should be the year. You don’t know how much it will change your life for the better until you try it.
I don’t know how I would live without my DVR. My husband just suggested we switch from Dish to Charter, but I would have to start all over with a new DVR, reprogram it and everything. I told him he was crazy. There’s 70 programs in that thing!