Anyone have cable service with an Arris Media Gateway whole-home DVR?

[Matt Meiser]

Our cable build is getting really close to completion. Pretty sure they hung the last of the fiber Friday and there are at least 2 different splicing trucks working in the area. Based on previous conversations they had implied that once we saw them splicing it would only be a few weeks. We are seriously considering paying the ETF and dropping DirecTV and going to the cable company for both TV and Internet as the payback is only about 6 months. The comparable service to our DirecTV Genie system is their "Buckeye Media Gateway" which I found is an Arris Media Gateway. I've found reference to WOW, Shaw, and a couple others using this system. Looking for reviews of this particular whole-home system (others while similar probably wouldn't be any more relevant than our DirecTV Genie experience,) especially if you have switched from DirecTV.

Also if you have it and speak geek, I'm wondering about the ability to put the gateway in bridge mode or similar and use my own router (not finding promising information on that) or whether I could use a purchased cable modem in parallel. Sales wasn't helpful on that stuff.

[Brian Elfert]

Do they pipe your Internet service through the DVR? Seems strange to me, but anything is possible.

[Matt Meiser]

Yes. It's the DVR, modem, router, and wireless access point.

[Curt Harms]

Matt, have you looked around dslreports.com? They cover a lot more than DSL. Is this link pertinent?

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r27291150-Bridging-Arris-Gateway-to-Linksys-E4200-and-DLNA-connect

[Matt Meiser]

Yes, that pretty well describes what it sounds like I'd have to do--use the internal router in the gateway. I currently have a pfSense router which has some nice features but it sounds like I'll have to give that up if we go this route. I'm heavily leaning toward doing it though as it saves me and work a combined $40/mo over just getting the internet service from the cable company (which work pays for) and keeping DirecTV.

Apparently the gateway can't be a client on another network. The media players for the remote TVs also must be on that network so you can't turn off the internal router as you can with many combined modem/router devices. At least it does sound like it has an excellent cable modem. Hopefully the router is good. Price of progress I guess.

One good thing I just learned...Arris is Motorola who's cable modems are very well regarded from what I've found.

[Curt Harms]

One good thing I just learned...Arris is Motorola who's cable modems are very well regarded from what I've found.

Is that the post-Google spinoff name? If so it's been kept pretty low key.

[Matt Meiser]

So when we went to the cable company office tonight to check this out I found out the that main media gateway will actually go in the basement in my "network closet" (AKA the little room under the basement stairs.) Each TV gets one of the client boxes, not just the "remote" TVs like DirecTV Genie.

[Matt Meiser]

DON'T DO IT!!!!

At least not if you have anything beyond very simple needs to connect to the internet. The router in this thing is horrible. I ended up giving them the option of taking it all out, keeping DirecTV, and giving me a cable modem, or turn the cable modem in this thing off and give me a stand alone cable modem. After a quick conference with a higher up they decide on the latter.

So far as a whole-home DVR it seems pretty good.