# New R15 User



## rhoatson (Mar 31, 2007)

Directv shipped me a free R15-500 to replace a dead HDVR2 that I've had for about 5 years. I've been using Tivo's since the 1.2 software back when I had cable and in various incarnations since then.

In all, it's not been so bad...at least as not as bad as I anticipated from lurking here the past weeks. I still have an HR10 and two other Directivos. I'm kind of enjoying the newness and differences in the R15. The promise of semi-regular software updates is also something new to look forward to.

Things I miss so far:
Dual tuners. Huge.
Tivo remote. The remote supplied with the R15, while logistically laid out, fells VERY cheap. But I won't complain much about free.
One button guide. Really? Two buttons to get to the guide?
Guide data: This thing has been on since Thursday morning. Tomorrow's HBO shows still say "Upcoming: ..."

Off to the CE forum to subscribe to the R15 thread.


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## Clemsole (Sep 8, 2005)

You do have Dual tuners, you just can't switch between them like the Tivo. You can record one program while watching another, thus Dual tuners. If you set it up right.


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## jpl (Jul 9, 2006)

rhoatson said:


> Directv shipped me a free R15-500 to replace a dead HDVR2 that I've had for about 5 years. I've been using Tivo's since the 1.2 software back when I had cable and in various incarnations since then.
> 
> In all, it's not been so bad...at least as not as bad as I anticipated from lurking here the past weeks. I still have an HR10 and two other Directivos. I'm kind of enjoying the newness and differences in the R15. The promise of semi-regular software updates is also something new to look forward to.
> 
> ...


Glad to see that you're open to the R15 interface. You hit many of my main beefs when I switched from Tivo. The one that really seems odd is the last one. Your guide should be fully updated by now. One question - did you put your DVR in standby? I know with the Tivo they recommend just leaving it on all the time, but with the R15 they actually recommend putting it in standby when you're not using it. That's when it does alot of its housecleaning - although it'll do it too after so much time of inactivity, but it'll do it after only about 15 minutes (I think that's the lag) after you put it in standby. That could explain why your guide data isn't up to snuff yet.

Also, as you dig through these threads, you'll see that there are some work-arounds for some of the short-comings of the box:

1) When coming out of ffwd mode, if you hit play, you don't get the nice little jog-back like you do with Tivo. Which means, if you're like me, you do this nice little dance - ffwd, play, rwd... ffwd, play, rwd. To get around this, instead of hitting play to come out of ffwd, hit the jump-back bottun (upper left in the trick-play section). It operates like the Tivo play coming out of ffwd, but I think it's actually a little more responsive.

2) The missing dual buffers... yeah, I hear you. I miss that too. But one possible work-around - record both shows that you're flipping between. No it's not exactly the same thing, but it'll allow you to flip between shows like that and get a simulted dual buffer. Also, and this is a very nice feature, because of the integration between the dvr and live tv, you can do things like:

- play a recorded show
- while playing, bring up the guide and switch to a live show
- when the live show hits commercial, hit 'prev' to flip directly back to playback of the recorded show

totally seemless and very nice.

3) If you liked the traditional Tivo guide (I was always partial to the grid-style guide, personally), there is a way to simulate it on the R15. Bring up the guide, and move the cursor all the way to the left on the current channel - so the channel number/name is highlighted. Hit 'info' - voila! A list of shows on that channel in tivo-like format.

There's lots of other stuff too. My one big beef about the box though is the inconsistency in functionality. The tivo was totally consistent - a button operated the same on every screen no matter where I was. Not so with the R15. For example, go to your Playlist and you can delete shows in a couple different ways. Select the show and hit delete... Highlight the show and just hit '--' (warning there is no delete confirmation when you do this)... or do a multi-show delete (mark and delete) - a very nice feature when you want to do clean-up. So... why isn't this functionality repeated on say the To do list? Don't know... but its not.


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## rhoatson (Mar 31, 2007)

Clemsole said:


> You do have Dual tuners, you just can't switch between them like the Tivo. You can record one program while watching another, thus Dual tuners. If you set it up right.


Yeah, it's apparently not as bad as I originally though. My impression was recording anything caused you to lose tuner functionality (ie: if you were recording something you could only watch that recording or another pre-recorded show). I see now that I can press record on one channel and then simply press 'channel down' or the actual channel number and it will switch to the other tuner.


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## Mark20 (Dec 25, 2006)

rhoatson said:


> Yeah, it's apparently not as bad as I originally though. My impression was recording anything caused you to lose tuner functionality (ie: if you were recording something you could only watch that recording or another pre-recorded show). I see now that I can press record on one channel and then simply press 'channel down' or the actual channel number and it will switch to the other tuner.


This is what my kids thought, but they were recording what they were watching in real time as well as another program, thus both tuners tied up.

The R15 will easily record one thing while you zip around with the other tuner. I've done this when my wife and I wanted to watch a particular program together (get yoiur minds out of the gutter, it wasn't one of those channels  ) but she could not join me at air time.


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## rhoatson (Mar 31, 2007)

Last night I recorded the Malaysian Grand Prix qualifying or so I thought.

About 55 minutes into it the recording on my R15 goes blank screen. Fast forward all the way to to 90 minute mark shows blank screen. 

I didn't record this on any other DVR so I can't be sure it's an R15 problem.

I tried to skip to end and then rewind, but whenever I skip to end it asks me to keep or delete.

I'll be recording the actual Grand Prix on one of my Tivos to be sure.

Is this common with the R15?


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## qwerty (Feb 19, 2006)

rhoatson said:


> Last night I recorded the Malaysian Grand Prix qualifying or so I thought.
> 
> About 55 minutes into it the recording on my R15 goes blank screen. Fast forward all the way to to 90 minute mark shows blank screen.
> 
> ...


The R15 does have blank screen problems. Usually, though, it's _stuck_ and doesn't actually _play_ a black/blank video. Some have reported losing video while the sound still plays.


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## rochrunner (Dec 2, 2006)

rhoatson said:


> Last night I recorded the Malaysian Grand Prix qualifying or so I thought.
> 
> About 55 minutes into it the recording on my R15 goes blank screen. Fast forward all the way to to 90 minute mark shows blank screen.


I recorded both qualifying and the race on my R15-100 with no problems, so whatever problem you had was probably not with the broadcast itself. One thing that I have seen: if you get a weather situation that causes the unit to lose the signal, it will stop recording (where I'd like to see it continue if the signal comes back).


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## davidj33 (Mar 9, 2007)

rhoatson said:


> Directv shipped me a free R15-500 to replace a dead HDVR2 that I've had for about 5 years. I've been using Tivo's since the 1.2 software back when I had cable and in various incarnations since then.
> 
> In all, it's not been so bad...at least as not as bad as I anticipated from lurking here the past weeks. I still have an HR10 and two other Directivos. I'm kind of enjoying the newness and differences in the R15. The promise of semi-regular software updates is also something new to look forward to.
> 
> ...


This product is so heneiously inferior to the TIVO it replaced, it makes me wonder why they replaced the TIVO. Shouldn't new products be superior rather than pieces of cheap garbage. I used to love Directv now it seems it's just turned to crap.


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## Jhon69 (Mar 28, 2006)

davidj33 said:


> This product is so heneiously inferior to the TIVO it replaced, it makes me wonder why they replaced the TIVO. Shouldn't new products be superior rather than pieces of cheap garbage. I used to love Directv now it seems it's just turned to crap.


If you want a D*Tivo you can still buy one on Ebay. :welcome_s


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## Mrpalmer420 (Jan 9, 2007)

davidj33 said:


> This product is so heneiously inferior to the TIVO it replaced, it makes me wonder why they replaced the TIVO. Shouldn't new products be superior rather than pieces of cheap garbage. I used to love Directv now it seems it's just turned to crap.


Products can also replace things that are from companies no longer under contract.:lol:


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## ApK (Mar 6, 2006)

jpl said:


> 3) If you liked the traditional Tivo guide (I was always partial to the grid-style guide, personally), there is a way to simulate it on the R15. Bring up the guide, and move the cursor all the way to the left on the current channel - so the channel number/name is highlighted. Hit 'info' - voila! A list of shows on that channel in tivo-like format..


I never understand why people say this. Showing a couple shows on one channel stacked vertically is NOT a Tivo style guide. None of the information or functionality that makes a Tivo-style guide a Tivo-style guide is there in the least.


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## Jhon69 (Mar 28, 2006)

davidj33 said:


> This product is so heneiously inferior to the TIVO it replaced, it makes me wonder why they replaced the TIVO. Shouldn't new products be superior rather than pieces of cheap garbage. I used to love Directv now it seems it's just turned to crap.


Why did they replace TIVO?.Five letters M*O*N*E*Y*. .Since I have never used a TIVO and I am a new R15 user.After one week I really like this DVR of course being Free also helped.


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## jpl (Jul 9, 2006)

ApK said:


> I never understand why people say this. Showing a couple shows on one channel stacked vertically is NOT a Tivo style guide. None of the information or functionality that makes a Tivo-style guide a Tivo-style guide is there in the least.


I never said it was the Tivo style guide. I said it simulated it ('approximated' would probably have been more correct). I know it's not exactly the same thing - my point was that there is a way to vertically list the shows on a particular channel the way that Tivo does. That's all. I never said it was as good as the tivo guide, or as functional. I just pointed it out because many folks don't know that capability is there.


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## ApK (Mar 6, 2006)

I understand what you said perfectly. Many others have said it before. We've posted screen shots. And I cannot understand how that feature on the R15 would be of any interest to someone who likes the Tivo guide, any more than a Yugo painted would be of interest to someone who like Ferraris.

It seems to me as usefull as pointing out that if someone likes the Tivo guide, they can see an approximation of it by looking at a picture of a new york skyscraper, as most of the floors are stacked vertically.

Don't take it personally. I just don't want people who are considering dumping their Tivos for a R15 to think that they will have anything like the Tivo guide available to them.


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## jpl (Jul 9, 2006)

ApK said:


> I understand what you said perfectly. Many others have said it before. We've posted screen shots. And I cannot understand how that feature on the R15 would be of any interest to someone who likes the Tivo guide, any more than a Yugo painted would be of interest to someone who like Ferraris.
> 
> It seems to me as usefull as pointing out that if someone likes the Tivo guide, they can see an approximation of it by looking at a picture of a new york skyscraper, as most of the floors are stacked vertically.
> 
> Don't take it personally. I just don't want people who are considering dumping their Tivos for a R15 to think that they will have anything like the Tivo guide available to them.


I didn't take it personally at all. I was simply trying to give a tivo user some info that I thought would be useful - yeah there are other threads to that effect, and I probably should have just pointed him there, but thought it was just faster to include the information there. Yeah, its true that it's not nearly as functional, but I still found that listing useful (just from the way that I surf - alot of time I like to just see what's coming up on a particular channel).


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