I got a promo letter saying they would waive the upgrade fee if I got it before the 14th. Beyond that I'm not sure; I think it may add $7/mo but I didn't really care; from what I see it's worth it. With the older box we were limited to 2 recording at the same time and that's driven me nuts on Sundays (mainly) when I wanted to watch PBS, CBS, Red Wings, etc. all at the same time. Now the limit is 6 and I can fast-forward thru ads.

 

Thanks for the feedback. I have been out of the industry for a while and my interest revolves around the tech side which is usually is visible in picture quality. Most of the bells and whistle stuff exists in the cloud.

 

Yeah, that was a MAJOR improvement! Did not know the max - 6 is good. So far I've done 3 at once as a test and it worked. It's because you are no longer recording to the box itself - very limiting. You could only watch on the box you recorded to. Now it's any TV on the system. Yay...

 

For us, we had an older DVR. The X1 DVR is any room compatible, so I can watch something on the DVR regardless of where I am or Cindy is. We couldn't do that with the previous model we had. Can also start a recording from any of the boxes, or even online when not in the house.

 

For some reason the picture quality has improved as well - I've no idea why as it's the same set, a Panasonic plasma. My inexpensive remote speakers crapped out a couple months back, and this induced me to replace them. I order an LG sound bar for $200 (org list was $300) that was rated at 4.5 out 5 by over 700 reviews. So I'm looking forward to that.

Here's a sample of the voice commands you can do with the X1 . . . and they actually work really well.

COMMANDS
WATCH .........
SHOW ..........
RECORD ........
LAUNCH ........
GUIDE
WHAT SHOULD I WATCH
WHAT’S ON NOW?

 

Dave, I liked the X1 so much i got two.
The voice part is nice but surprisingly I've found we rarely use it.
Another element is the ability to record on either unit and play back on either box.
All of my recording show up on both boxes.
One thing I do not like is when cable goes out you can't play back any recorded programs. Grrrr.
another little nice thing.
pause a program to go do something else, get distracted for a while and the unit flips into screen saver mode to keep from burning your screen.

 

Thanks Dave, I was curios. It was SOP for many of the providers, in the past, to roll out changes in quality (compression techniques/software improvements/bandwidth increases) with a "new" product offering. Verizon has done this through their Quantuum offering. It's is similar to X1, but Verzion has always sold their picture quality, so they have been doing a better job with these techniques for a while. You would probably be more apt to notice a change as the Panny plasms have a great resolution and pic quality.

 

Does your cable go out often? I don't recall ours ever going out except when we have a complete loss of electricity to the entire house. (knock on wood)

 

I haven't used the voice commands.

 

Generally no. we had an issue last summer where it was out for a few hours.
of course it also meant no internet access as well.
with nothing to do had to actually talk to wife.