For nearly a month, I’ve been experiencing problems with my DirecTV TiVo HR10-250. Last month it simply stopped recording all season passes. After a week of turning on the TV and seeing nothing new, I checked the To-Do List and found that every season pass was listed as “None scheduled,” even though the guide was up to date and there were indeed shows that should have been recorded.
I’m not the only one. A post over at DVR playground reports:
Apparently there are quite a few people having issues with DirecTV’s new HD DVR and DirecTV’s TiVo DVRs (such as the HR10-250) where people say the DVRs fail to record shows and mysteriously delete programs previously recorded.
In mid-December, I called DirecTV support, where I was advised to use the “clear” option to wipe out and reenter all season passes. (I asked the support tech if this was a recommended cure or if he was just guessing. To his credit, he said it was an educated guess, based on the experience of some of the more knowledgeable techs on the line that day.)
So, that seemed to cure the problem for a while, but last week the problem cropped up again. This time, in fact, it affected the search capabilities as well. Although the guide was fully populated, searching for anything returned only three items from the guide. Looks to me like the index was corrupted.
I called DirecTV, and was told they would be happy to replace my TiVo with their new HR20-700. Only it would be a lease (I paid $749 for the TiVo and own it), and it would require a two-year programming commitment, which could not be waived.
I’ve read the reviews of the HR20-700 and am not thrilled about the prospect of swapping a TiVo, whose interface I generally like, despite some frustrations, for a new box that inspires comments like this one, posted here three days ago:
I got my DirecTV HD-DVR in October, about 2 weeks after it came out. I live near Seattle so get local HD over satellite. Everything was pretty hunky-dory for a couple of weeks, and then I began having problems with the local HD programs. One recorded only 18 minutes. Many recorded fine. Some said they recorded but I only got the Black Screen of Death. Some didn’t record at all. Lots of them truncated either at the betinning or the end.
Doesn’t sound like a new box is going to fix the problem for me.
I’m not happy that DirecTV sold me a rather expensive product less than two years ago and today refuses to support it. It sure sounds like owners of TiVo-designed DirecTV PVRs are being caught in the crossfire of the nastiness between the two companies. It’s almost as if DirecTV wants the TiVo boxes to fail, so they can scoop them off the network and replace them with their own boxes.
I’m meeting with executives from both TiVo and DirecTV at CES, so hopefully I’ll have an opportunity to ask some questions about this. Stay tuned.
Ed,
I have had the same problems. I am a big fan of Tivo but waiting on Vista & DirecTV to come out with their boxes.
I can’t explain what you experienced earlier, but in late December (20th or so) there were problems with the guide data being downloaded. I found all my season passes were not recording and the search feature was essentially blank. This was fixed within a day or two when new data was downloaded and indexes rebuilt. Your earlier problems may have been fixed by a reboot as well. I am hopeful that 6.3b will fix the audio issues that are still happening. I am sure you have visited the tivo community site, but it is often helpful to guage these issues as to whether they are wide spread or only you. I am keeping my HR10-250 and adding two 750GB drives shortly as an uprgade from current 250 and 500.
My DirecTivo also was failing to record season passes The other day, it spontaneously restarted itself. I’m not sure yet if that fixed the problem.
Curious while you’re at CES… I’d be appreciative if you nail down whether there will be a Vista media center with native DirecTV tuning. I’m teetering on the new HD-DVR just because I want to dump my Weingard massive UHF antenna and go for MPEG4 locals. I either bite the bullet for the DirecTV DVR or wait until I can get some HD DirecTV PCI tuners in a new HTPC. I really wanted to go the DirecTV Vista media center route with Xbox 360s in every room…
There was a love-fest between DTV and MS as of last CES, but based on the announcements so far it seems like they ignored *everything* mentioned last year. Unfortunately I hadn’t seen corroboration that they continue to work on those prior-announced technologies.
Ed,
What happened? Thought you were going to get some answers at CES from DirecTV on their MS partnersip and if we would ever see satelite tuners for MCE? Come on, share the love. Did you hear anything, see anything? Does DirecTV have amnesia anbout last years CES too?
Wish I could say I found something out, Doug, but I hit a brick wall. And I didn’t even get any winks or nods from other reporters to suggest that they had been clued in and I had been left out.
Looks like whatever’s in the works is not going to appear anytime soon.
i have the directv 512 it has a whole host of issues one beingi cant record automaticly at times and what hosi can set up will stopth orepose to basicly refomat the ssytem it is one of the knnow defects in the software and in the year that i have had the service i have gone thru sevral machines that died on me