Day 1: Comcast's Dual-Tuner DVR

It came, and it's pretty cool. My first impressions are:

1. The new on screen guide is much MUCH better than what Comcast had on their 1-tuner DVRs and regular STBs. I've never used a real TiVo - but I can't imagine it's that much better than this... or at least $300 + another $3/month better (TiVo is $12.95/month vs. Comcast's 9.95, plus TiVo has an up front hardware fee).

2. It gets warm... and kind of smells like something is burning. Hopefully, nothing is.

3. They gave me the wrong remote (the real remote for the 2-tuner box should have some buttons that mine does, for PiP and swapping between the 2 different tuners). Luckily, you can program some of the unused buttons to make up the difference. "Yellow A/Parental Lock" is now 30 second commercial skip. "HD Zoom" is now mute and "TV/VCR" swaps between the two tuners. Instructions do configure your remote can be found here.

4. FireWire works. You might now know it, but the FCC requires cable companies to provide FireWire/IEEE1394 enabled STBs. This is one of them. So far I have been able to connect the box to my Mac and watch what's on TV on my Mac at the same time, using VLC (a video player that plays pretty much EVERYTHING) and a firewire plugin module for it. My next step will be trying to record the video on my Mac, and eventually compress it to be played on a Palm Tungsten E... or Treo 650.