Cox Cable SA 4240HDC Optical Out

[Taddeusz]

Just curious if anyone else might be having a similar situation as I.

I have an SA 4240HDC connected to my HDPVR through component video and optical audio. Basically about once a week or so the box, on its own, stops outputting Dolby Digital and starts outputting PCM stereo. So I end up with a string of recordings in low volume stereo rather than the original DD 5.1 that should have been recorded. The only way I've been able to fix the problem is to yank the power and wait for the dang thing to reset which takes about 5min before it becomes usable again.

My experience with the whole line of SA boxes from Cox is that they all have this problem. My parents' SDTV DVR from Cox is now perpetually in stereo because I just gave up on it. Every time I would go to their house I noticed their receiver would be getting PCM instead of Dolby Digital so I would do the same to restore it. Got tired of it so I just stopped worrying about it as they didn't seem to notice the difference anyway.

Makes me hope that the firmware update they're pushing out some time this month to update the "look and feel" of the guide and such might also provide a fix but I'm not holding my breath.