PVR Wire

1. Take what he says with a grain of salt.

Refuses tosay the sofware version,

Forgets tell you no dual live bffers so directv can push vod stuff any time of day

also does not mention is a beta tester, beholding to directv.

so be careful what belive on what is said.

not a personal attack, just observation from what is said about recivers by him.

Posted at 2:08AM on Aug 17th 2006 by dtv guy

2. I recently tried to cancel DirectTV after having replaced 6 HR10-250 unit malfunction with sound drop out and scrambled screen. When I tried to cancel DirectTV informed me that I would have to pay over 700.00 dollars in charges. I ask for what and was told that some was for early cancellation and the rest was for the HR10-250 unit. I have been a customer of DirectTV since 1997, early cancellation???. I bought my HR10-250 from Best Buy in November of 2005, long before their policy of any unit you BUY is owned by them and must be returned upon concellation of their service. Be careful. There is much more to this story, if you want to know all of the facts I can be reached at Nice_Mouse_1@hotmail.com

Posted at 1:55PM on Sep 2nd 2006 by Richard Bavouset

3. Concerning early cancellation, it doesn't matter how long you have been a customer. When you bought your receiver in November 2005, you probably committed to another year or two with DirecTv.

Posted at 9:02AM on Sep 6th 2006 by Mikey

4. The writeup looks promising. I use a Russound CAV6.6 to distribute audio and video around my house. The ability to have composite video whilst HDMI is being pumped something I'm looking forward to. Since his review doesn't cover the audio over HDMI, I would like to know this prior to getting one over the TiVo I already have. I am eager to see this DVR in person...

Posted at 6:13PM on Sep 8th 2006 by smiddy

5. Forget TiVo, they've dropped support for SAT. The Series 3 has two cable cards.

Posted at 10:24PM on Sep 20th 2006 by Roger Cunningham

6. d tv sucks.. i have an hr 20 .. took 3 weeks to get replacement after my 1st one didnt work when delivered(bad tuner). overall its good but setup wa hell

Posted at 12:44PM on Oct 8th 2006 by mike dean

7. I've had my HR20-700 for about 1 week, and I hate it. I want to like it because it is required for me to get locals in HD. It just keeps annoying me with the lack of basic functionality that the HR10-250 had. Basicaly, DirecTV is making me choose between getting the local channels in HD or having a nice, user-frindly, well progammed receiver.
1) Loss of the dual live buffers was a serious down-grade for me; it was a function I used a lot! This loss alone will probably make the HR20 a paper-weight in my house. 90 minutes vs 30 is nice, but not even close to a good trade for dual buffers.
2) FF/Rew is slower than my HR10. Also, when you are recording 1 show and watching a previsouly recorded show, knwoing when to hit PLAY from FF/Rew is a total guess. The HR20 will get you to withn 2 minutes of what you saw on teh screen when you hit PLAY, but not where you were. (If you're not recording another program at the same time, it's fairly consistent.) The TiVO unit was smart enought to get you extremely close and probably a smidge before where you want to be, adjusting for reaction time and the fact that you're skipping over small portions. The old system was smart. New system isn't.
3) During FF/Rew, no way to skip blocks at a time. No way to skip to end or skip to beginning. 3X speed (much slower than old systems 3x) is a fast as you go.
4) Why did they program the system to require you to hit GUIDE twice to get to the guide? The filters should be a option from the guide, not th other way around.
5) The bright LED's on the pannel supposedly can be dimmed, but my can't.
6) The remote can not be programmed to turn on my TV and my AV system with 1 touch like the old systems. It requries turing on TV (with seperate ON button), changing remote modes, turngin on the AV system then changing back to DTV mode. Seems like a small deal, but why go backwards? The little annoyances keep adding up.
7) In the guide, no way to move forward or back 1 whole screen. The choices are 1 program or 12 hours.
8) Buggy. It soen't react the same way every time. Someties the FF/Rew direction and speed indicator is highlighted in PINK, other times not highlighted at all. Sometimes the 1x FF/Rew is just bearly faster than live speed, sometimes it's "normal".

Yes, they added few bell & whistles, like bookmarks. Maybe I'll use that function someday, but I don't see why. The Play List is nicer, but the old one works fine. Reaction times to set a program to record are much faster. This is a nice improvement.

The HR10-250 was simply a better system. Why did they go backwards on the basics?

Posted at 10:51PM on Oct 17th 2006 by Steven Desrochers

8. I now have two defective HR20-700's with no estimate of when another replacement will be available. The first unit locked up 1-2x each day requiring a full reset of the system (Almost There...). I am now back to using my HR10-250. I like the features of the new HR20 but the software glitches are beyond tolerable. The remote didn't work on the first system until I switched it to RF mode. So now my Harmony remote can't control the device. The second HR20 was DOA and the technician couldn't get it to even power up. The HR20 is not ready for prime time. Hopefully D* reads these sites and will make some adjustments.

Posted at 4:54PM on Oct 30th 2006 by Jack Dallas