Stopped by a Time Warner customer counter at lunch today to pick up a high definition DVR. The lady behind the counter asked me if I had a work order for it. When I told her no, she said, “We’re really not supposed to give those out without a work order. Oh well.” So now I have a shiny new 8300HD, and I can honestly say that I love it. It is substantially more responsive than my standard definition DVR, and it is absolutely wonderful to have a better signal path into the projector. Even analog SD content looks better.

And, of course, I’ve already had the case open. The two things I noticed almost right away were the change to an 80-pin IDE cable (my old DVR was 40-pin) and the addition of a security sticker between the hard drive and the mounting frame. I’m assuming this is to prevent people from swapping the drive out with a cheaper one, keeping the 160GB drive for themselves, then returning the box to the cable company. Hell, sounds like something I’d do.