Mike Cullison has been playing with DIRECTV’s New HD DVR. His report is not encouraging:
The box works, but I’m not sure it’s really ready for prime time. Last night, for instance, I had to do a hard reboot two times because it locked up and would not respond to the remote. It did a terrible job recording Ugly Betty (on ABC) last night. The video was really mangled, almost to the point that it was not watchable.
The recordings also seem to stall during playback, almost like a bad DVD. When it stalls, no amount of button pushing — fast forward, reverse, play — seems to make it go. It just sits there for a while and then starts over again from the beginning of the recording.
Earlier in the week, the box lost its mind somehow, and would no longer receive my local HD channels. Just all of a sudden they weren’t there when it was time to start recording prime time shows. I called on that one and they sent some data to my receiver and then had be reboot and they came back.
Ugh. I’ve been hoping that this new DVR (with an updated antenna dish) would finally replace my slowpoke DirecTiVo and allow me to get local channels in HD. Looks like this one isn’t ready for primetime.
Meanwhile, DirecTV pushed a setup message to me over the weekend informing me that the long-awaited 6.3 software update will arrive “soon.”
And no, I won’t fork over a grand (including the cost of a lifetime subscription) to TiVo for its new Series 3 box. For one thing, that price tag is ridiculous. For another, it would mean switching to Comcast. Shudder.
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The 6.3 upgrade will be welcomed; maybe it’ll make the HD DirecTivo as pleasant to use as the standard DirecTivo, which has had those features for years. But one part of the upgrade bites. From the DirecTV 6.3 page:
Setting channels received and favorite channels–essential settings in my book–are a pain to re-create.
Still no sign of the 6.3 upgrade. Rumor has it that October 4 is the deadline for pushing this out to everyone. We’ll see.
Still no sign as of 7-Oct.
Grrr.
I got the Oct. 15 (I think that was the date) download. Things are worse now.
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. If you set a program to start or end 1 min. earlier/later, it won’t record if you have 2 set to record that overlap that one minute (it should wait for the overlap to be over and then record the 3rd program). Last night, after THREE local HD programs didn’t record, I called them. I’ve gotten a lot of conflicting BS from them, but one thing made sense: a lot of local HD stations broadcast using MPEG-4 and THE SET CAN ONLY DECODE MPEG-2. I was told that to solve this problem I should REFORMAT the damned box. I was also told the problem was bad sectors. I used to be a system admin & still remember enough jargon to throw a BS-er off but got nowhere. I’m going to have to switch my recording to my pre-HD-DVR downstairs and spend HOURS watching what I’ve already recorded, or delete it, then hard reformat the drive, then record a local HD program. If it records, I’m told, then I’ve fixed the problem. Oh yeah? As it stands now, I do sometimes get an HD program. So maybe the one I’ll record after reformatting will be one of those. And maybe that night I won’t get my HD programs. They say if I do the reformatting and test and it doesn’t work, they’ll send me another box — but it’ll be a refurbished one. Even though I have their Protection Plan. I’ve even considered switching to Comcast but the thought kind of makes me sick. I’m thinking about telling them that I reformatted it and it didn’t work and then, after receiving the new one, waving a big magnet over the old one.
Another problem I’ve had is that it sometimes just doesn’t record what I’ve told it to, like the last episode of The Lost Room (which was not from a local HD station, BTW), which isn’t downloadable from iTunes or anywhere else that I can find. I’m heartsick that I missed the last 3rd.
I think DirecTV’s programmers (a) don’t watch TV themselves, and (b) are offshore, and the managers own real TiVo machines. I think we should gather together and let the rest of the world know what a nag the DirecTV HD20 is.
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