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DirecTV's New HD-DVR
Earl Bonovich writes to tell us that he recently had a chance to take a look at DirecTV's new HD-DVR, the HR20-700. His results are posted over at DBSTalk including several pictures and videos. Some of the features include high definition output, dual SAT tuners, dual ATSC tuners, wired RJ-45 ethernet port, external SATA connection, and a 300GB SATA internal hard drive that can hold 30 hours of MPEG-2 HD, 50 hours of MPEG-4 HD, or 200 hours of standard definition video.
Or Tivo will Smack you down! look at what happened to Dish Network yesterday...
how responsive is the interface?
A little slow.
how ergonomic? (TiVo's a hard act to follow on this one)
Fine by my standards.
how often does the machine crash and burn, or just plain lock up? (any comcast DVR users out there?)
Never locked up yet (almost a year now).
how well does it handle season passes with options of first showing, multiple channel, etc. (once again, TiVo is a hard act to follow on this one)
Don't know.
how well does it do video? any mosaics?, dropped frames?
Almost as clean as the original broadcast.
Are there things like "wish lists"? (TiVo does this wonderfully)
Whatever those are?
God: When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
DirectTV and TiVo came to an agreement earlier this year where DirectTV agreed to support the DirectTV TiVos until 2009. In return TiVo and DirectTV agreed not to sue each other for any DVR patent infringements.
So DirectTV won't suffer the same fate as Dish.
As an owner of both a DirecTV Tivo unit and a DirecTV Plus DVR, I can attest to the fact that the Tivo's interface is miles ahead of DirecTV's homegrown option in terms of usability and features. My hope is this will improve over time.
All of the VIDEO/AUDIO outputs are enabled at all times. The eSATA is not enabled at this time The Ethernet is "powered" and initilized, but there is no communication on the network from the device. The USB ports are also not enabled. There are disucssions going on how to use the eSATA port to it's fullest. The Ethernet is going to be in part for the future use with BroadBand VOD The USB Ports are at least slated to be used with the future DirecTV2Go product (no eta on that though)
So far the interface is just as responsive, if not better in some areas, then any of my DTivo units
If you are comming from a long time experience with the TiVo interface, it is going to take some time to get used to. It took me about a month to get used to the new GUI (on the R15 which is the same core GUI)... now that I am used to it.... If find both's systems interface very easy to use.
Several weeks into it now... have not had a sigle crash, burn, or lockup... I have yet to have to reset the unit for any "negative" reasons.
So far... so good.... I have only had one repeat record and that was an episode of Stargate yesterday... which just happened to be the 100th episode, which was the foundation for the 200th episode... so I am not sure if Sci-Fi tweaked with the data a bit, and the HR20 simply identified it as a first run. I have several of the popular shows that are on all over teh place... Stargate, CSI, Law&Order... so everything has been exactly as I have expected it to be.
I am not seeing any mosaics, drop frames, or anything wrong with the HD video... granted I haven't been counting the frames or anything like that.
Yes and No... there are keyword searchs available.. but they are definently not as powerfull or the same as wishlists.
As a few others have noted, they re-upped the contract for a few more years, that specifically included patent discussion.
For some more discussion and answers to your questions... come on down to www.dbstalk.com that is where I have been living for the last few days....
For this reason alone, I think Sony's DVR is preferable.
It's a Sony, so whatever you do don't plug it into your computer.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
From your description the HR15 has "season passes" down.
For instance, I am able to record any show I choose either first-run or even repeats. I can have it "Keep till I delete" or set it so it overwrites the oldest item in the list. I don't typically use it for repeat shows, but I have used it for series like "24" and "House" where I just want the first run showings. Though one time I did something stupid and chose to record "Seinfeld" (any showings) as a test and my recorder was filled up in about 2 weeks with 80 Seinfeld episodes.
I do wish I could tell it to grab only Frankenheimer movies -or- Orson Wells movies etc... If it does do that that would definitely be a plus
God: When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
- Having to reboot at least once a week because of system freezes
- Losing the ability to select between first run, re-run, or all episodes of a series
- A lagging and unresponsive playback interface
- No ability to see the title of a series episode unless you have more than one recorded
- Frequently being told that you can't ask for something to be recorded because the 'list is full' of things automatically set to record in two weeks
- Tech support whose only answer is 'press reset'.
Maybe they will update the software on our boxes to fix these (finally) if they have done it in their HD box. My advice is - get the Tivo HD DirecTV box if it's still available before DirecTV sticky you with only their own proprietary choice.One thing that's mentioned in the review that I found annoying was the lack of dual buffers for the live tuners. This feature on the DirecTivo's allows you to have a 30 minute buffer of what's currently on each of the tuners (assuming you haven't changed the channel recently). Comes in quite handy, especially during football season, or other times when 2 sports events are on at the same time.
Don't sweat it ... I have a brand new DirecTiVo now because my old one died last week. When I went through customer service they noticed I'm a TiVo customer and offered me another one. It only works if you already have TiVo though.
Isn't the fantastic interface a TiVo thing and not DirecTV?
This login name for sale.
That is 5C-enabled firewire ports to allow archiving contents off the DVR.
What good is a 500? or whatever GB box when the only way to add new content to it is delete old recordings.
What if you want to save a show, the only choice is analog (SD) output, what a waste.