Digital Trends

Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000

September 13th, 2004 | by Jeff Fila

Features and Design

The component-width Explorer 8000 is a gray and silver box about the height of a standard DVD player. It features a center-mounted four-character display, onboard controls, and a programmable universal remote control.

Scientific Atlanta's Explorer 8000 has two major advantages over competing products — the ability to record two shows at once, and the ability to tune in digital TV stations. Other DVR products require you to have a cable company tuner as well as the DVR since they can not decode the digitally protected content.

With dual digital TV tuners, the Explorer 8000 can tune in your cable company's digital cable stations and record two shows at once. The dual tuners also allow you to record two shows at a time, record one show while watching another, or even record two programs while watching a third recording. Programming is recorded on a 5400RPM, 80GB Maxtor hard drive which is a bit whiny, but not too noticeable when your TV audio is at normal listening levels. The 80GB version is rated to record about 50 hours of programming, but that number is hard to quantify. Recording times will be reduced if you record analog channels because they take up more space. In our testing, we were able to record at least 35 hours of both analog and digital stations.

The Explorer 8000 connects to your TV with an S-Video output, analog composite video, or a coax cable. It features a digital audio out as well as analog RCA jacks. There are also some interesting non-working ports on the Explorer 8000. It features a front USB port, a smart card reader, and two rear IEEE1394/Firewire ports. Scientific Atlanta states in their documentation that these ports can be enabled by future software upgrades, but have not explained what they will or can be used for. One feature that has recently been activated for some users is the “VCR out” connections. These are RCA jacks for composite video and analog audio that allow you to connect the Explorer 8000 to a VCR and transfer your digital recordings to tape.

In typical DVR fashion, the Explorer can also pause and rewind live TV. It features up to an hour of buffer, allowing you to rewind to the beginning of an hour-long show. Also incorporated in the Explorer 8000 is picture in picture, parental controls, the ability to view and purchase video on demand, and an integrated TV guide provided by your cable operator. The Explorer 8000 also has 14 different color schemes for its TV guide and settings pages, a sleep and wake-up timer, show reminder timers, user-definable favorite channels, and the ability to block channels.