Direct TV Whole House HD DVR-anybody have it?

[Tony Sade]

I'm thinking of switching from Dish, primarily because only one of the two TV's hooked up to one of their dual DVR's can be HD/get an HD signal. (Using two single DVR's instead just doesn't work for our viewing habits.) That leaves me with one ancient SD TV in a room where I'd really like to have an HD set. (I've tried an HD set with an SD signal and that was a disaster.) I can get comparable pricing for comparable programming and have HD in as many rooms as I want. I'm curious about others' experience with Direct TV in general, and, specifically, with the Whole House HD DVR setup. (A Dish tech recently told me that Dish will be coming out with a similar configuration "real soon", but I've heard that kinda promise before.)

Thanks, and Merry X-Mas (or whatever else is celebrated in your home).

[Jim Tobias]

We've had DirecTV for 14 years. I have been a satisfied customer. I recently added the whole house HD- DVR set up. I replaced or last non HD tv recently so it now made sense as all of the receivers have to be HD for this to work(or so I was told). All of them do not have to be DVRs, but they do have to be HD. The more DVRs you ahve , the more total record time you have. The set up has worked fine for us. The only difference is when you replay a show on a TV that was recorded on a DVD player from another part of the house, there is a short (2 -3 second delay) when you are fast forwarding past commercials, etc). In other words, the response time on the "local DVR"(paired with the TV you are watching), is quicker than if you are receiving the signal from another DVR in your house.
Let me be clear, this is not a problem of any magnitude as you only do this 5 or 6 times during an hour long show.
Hope this is clear.
Jim

[Matt Meiser]

We have it with an HD DVR and a non-DVR HD box and it works well. The second box can act a little sluggish at times but it's plenty usable. Pretty much hat Jim describes.

We've been customers for just about 8 years now and have had good luck getting new hardware when we want once our contract terms are up.

[Paul Brinkmeyer]

I WAS a happy customer for 6 years. But nothing had to be changed in 6 years. Then I moved.
It has NOT gone good.
First, customer service on the phone was not good. We had trouble getting an agent that seemed to understand.
After about 4-5 calls we did get a good agent, we hoped. All kinds of "deals" to sweeten the move.

After the whole house HDTV install, only 2 tv's "talked" to each other. Whole house for us us half house.
The installer refused to take the old equipment or to get the other 2 tvs on the system to work. Not on the work order he said.
And we got high pressure for a bank account number so they could just get money every month. Luckly we did not do this.
And now the TV's are "sluggish", actually they are so very slow changing channels, channel surfing is not even close to happening on this system.

A couple of weeks later we got the first bill, we were charged for the free move, we were charged for the the 3 months free movies, and the promised discount was not there.
I called in, but as when we started the move, got no where fast. I finally asked to talk to a supervisor, and was transfered to a dial tone.
I called back and got the same operator...how did that happen?
So I hung up and called a third time, got someone who seemed to speak good english and understand the issues, but refused to change anything and told us good luck, that by upgrading we started a new contract and I was informed it will cost to cancel. Again I asked for a supervisor, but was refused??
So it looks like I am paying more money, for a lousy install and half whole house HDTV system.


I will be looking at cox.

[Zach England]

I use one directv box to three TVs. it works for me because I live alone, so there is no need to watch more than one thing at a time. The new HD DVR I got came with a FM remote that works in every room of my house. I got a HDMI splitter box to send the signal to one of my computer monitors, A pc monitor in my "shop" and my main TV in the living room. For me it is great because I can turn on any set and be watching exactly the same thing I was watching in the other room without having to press any buttons. It's probably a solution that only works in a single-person household, though.

[Paul McGaha]

We've had direct tv for 10 years now. We get it so we can get the nfl football package.

We have a 3 level house with a sd receiver in the basement and hd receivers on the middle and top levels.

We get our phone and hs internet service from Verizon Fios. We would probably use them for the tv service also if they could provide the nfl package.

We're fairly happy with direct tv. Good picture, good service. One of the boxes breaks on occasion and they send a new one.

PHM

[Bruce Page]

We switched to Direct TV in October after being with Comcast for 20+ years. The whole house works well on our 2 HD TV’s and in many ways the HD DVR is tons better than the Comcast version that we had. My only complaint with the new system is it is painfully slow changing channels and accessing many of the DVR’s features. It takes 4.2 seconds (timed it) from the time you press the button until anything happens on the TV. I find this unacceptable and probably will not re-up when our 2 year contract expires. This appears to be an issue with the HD boxes only, we have a standard def TV & box in a spare bedroom that changes normally.

[Paul McGaha]

We switched to Direct TV in October after being with Comcast for 20+ years. The whole house works well on our 2 HD TV’s and in many ways the HD DVR is tons better than the Comcast version that we had. My only complaint with the new system is it is painfully slow changing channels and accessing many of the DVR’s features. It takes 4.2 seconds (timed it) from the time you press the button until anything happens on the TV. I find this unacceptable and probably will not re-up when our 2 year contract expires. This appears to be an issue with the HD boxes only, we have a standard def TV & box in a spare bedroom that changes normally.

I wonder why the system is so slow Bruce. The only thing about my system that is slow would be controlling some of the tv functions (like volume level) with the direct tv remote. So we use the tv remotes for that.

To pull the guide up, or make a selection from the guide, or go directly to a new channel are fast enough on our equipment. I think all of our direct tv boxes are DVR's.

???

PHM

[Bruce Page]

Paul, I did go to the online Direct TV technical forum and questioned the slow response. I was told “Yeah, that's pretty normal. Of course, once you have lots of stuff recorded on your DVR you won't be watching many live channels.” - that's a direct quote..

I was also told that I may need to clear the system NVRAM. The procedure shaved off about a half second.

[Paul McGaha]

Paul, I did go to the online Direct TV technical forum and questioned the slow response. I was told “Yeah, that's pretty normal. Of course, once you have lots of stuff recorded on your DVR you won't be watching many live channels.” - that's a direct quote..

I was also told that I may need to clear the system NVRAM. The procedure shaved off about a half second.

Really sorry to hear of your troubles with it Bruce.

This is just a guess, but I'm thinking you havent got the right person on the phone, and there is something wrong with their system.

Their system is supposed to work better than than. It has in my case and I've used their service for 10 years. My HD boxes are just as fast as my SD boxes.

PHM

[Bruce Page]

Thanks Paul, maybe I should look into it further. My daughters says her system is just as slow so I assumed it was the nature of the beast.

[Mark Engel]

I'll chime in on this.

First off I will say that we have had DTV for about 14 years. I have not seen another TV service out there that we would want to switch to.
Second, I will say that the people that run DTV should all be sent to prison. The way they do business is criminal. There are several STATES in the US that are in the process of suing DTV for bad business practices.

That being said, DTV has great products that (usually... mostly) work well and are very reliable. We have three HD DVRs and one HD receiver. With this setup we can record up to 6 different programs at the same time. We also have the whle home DVR service.

If you record a program on DVR A and watch it on DVR A, everything works great. If you record a program on DVR A and watch it anywhere else, there is a noticeable lag in response to the remote control. It is not too bad, but it it something that you will have to get used to.

DTV now has a new Media Center product available (for new customers) that has a 1tb hard drive (vs 500gb in the HD DVR) and 5 tuners (vs 2 in the HD DVR). Ask them about that.

FYI, my BIL sells and installs DTV systems in SC. If you would like to get some information from him about DTV, send me a PM and I will pass it along to him. He is an independent contractor and is not employed by DTV.

[Kevin W Johnson]

We switched to Direct TV in October after being with Comcast for 20+ years. The whole house works well on our 2 HD TV’s and in many ways the HD DVR is tons better than the Comcast version that we had. My only complaint with the new system is it is painfully slow changing channels and accessing many of the DVR’s features. It takes 4.2 seconds (timed it) from the time you press the button until anything happens on the TV. I find this unacceptable and probably will not re-up when our 2 year contract expires. This appears to be an issue with the HD boxes only, we have a standard def TV & box in a spare bedroom that changes normally.

Do you have the blue SD GUI or the new black HD GUI? Also whats the model of DVR you have? The new HD GUI set to roll out nationally very soon improves the speed of the HD DVR's quite a bit. I did a force download of the HD GUI on my HR22-100, and its alot better.

[Kevin W Johnson]

I'm thinking of switching from Dish, primarily because only one of the two TV's hooked up to one of their dual DVR's can be HD/get an HD signal. (Using two single DVR's instead just doesn't work for our viewing habits.) That leaves me with one ancient SD TV in a room where I'd really like to have an HD set. (I've tried an HD set with an SD signal and that was a disaster.) I can get comparable pricing for comparable programming and have HD in as many rooms as I want. I'm curious about others' experience with Direct TV in general, and, specifically, with the Whole House HD DVR setup. (A Dish tech recently told me that Dish will be coming out with a similar configuration "real soon", but I've heard that kinda promise before.)

Thanks, and Merry X-Mas (or whatever else is celebrated in your home).

We just got DTV a month ago after the Comcast switch-over fiasco. So far we like it very well. We have 1 HD DVR and 3 HD recievers. If you need a referral for the $100 in bill credits, let me know.

[Matt Meiser]

The new HD GUI set to roll out nationally very soon improves the speed of the HD DVR's quite a bit.

+1. We got the download on both automatically sometime last week and its noticeably "snappier."