# The minimum for satisfaction ???



## Bobman (Jan 3, 2006)

In another thread we discussed what we would like to see fixed or added in the R-15 but what would be the *barest minimum *that should be done soon.

For me the barest minimum should be:

SL first run / repeat logic

increase the SL and TDL limits

fix the black screen, 6 second rewind, channel logo colors and other things the past updates broke.

speed increases overall


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## Upstream (Jul 4, 2006)

For me, the minimum for satisfaction is for the unit to work as described in the User Guide and promotional material (as sketchy as they are). That mean functions work with no freeze ups, FR/RR logic works, channels I get works, no SL/TDL limits, etc.

As a compromise, I would probably accept slightly less functionality, for instance I would be willing to be able to manually set channels I get rather than have them set automatically, and I would be willing to accept SL/TDL limits so high that you could not reasonably reach them (e.g. >1344).


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## sheridan1952 (Mar 16, 2006)

For me, the barest minimum is RELIABILITY!!

None of this having to REFORMAT the damned box and losing all you've recorded whenever they send down an update. If they can't do this, then they should replace the boxes with something that IS reliable. FREE!!!


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## mrb (Sep 14, 2006)

sheridan1952 said:


> For me, the barest minimum is RELIABILITY!!
> 
> None of this having to REFORMAT the damned box and losing all you've recorded whenever they send down an update. If they can't do this, then they should replace the boxes with something that IS reliable. FREE!!!


The minimum...how about a product that works? Last night, again, the R-15 failed to record a show I was looking forward to watching for at least some solace after watching my team lose to the Cowboys on national television. Could not watch live tv, anything recoded, resets did nothing. 
My second replacement - SECOND - R-15 is to be delivered today. 
I'm about to return to Comcast...this is simply outrageous.


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## cybok0 (Jan 5, 2006)

there is no minimum for my satisfaction theres alot that has to be changed



Bobman said:


> In another thread we discussed what we would like to see fixed or added in the R-15 but what would be the *barest minimum *that should be done soon.
> 
> For me the barest minimum should be:
> 
> ...


everything bobman says here



sheridan1952 said:


> For me, the barest minimum is RELIABILITY!!
> 
> None of this having to REFORMAT the damned box and losing all you've recorded whenever they send down an update. If they can't do this, then they should replace the boxes with something that IS reliable. FREE!!!


and i also agree with sheridan plus dual live buffers and skip to tick.

thats my minimum for satisfaction.


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## paulman182 (Aug 4, 2006)

My two units meet my minimum requirements for satisfaction. 

I have had no problems that two red button resets did not solve in two months.

I do not use SLs and have done only about five searches in that time. Everything I have told it to record (by finding it in the guide and pressing "R") has recorded and stayed there, and played back fine, except the two times the units have required resets. Caller ID quit on one unit for about an hour but it came back.

I have had no black screens and my six-second button works.


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## cabanaboy1977 (Nov 16, 2005)

- reliability and stablility
- todo and SL limits removed
- constistant menus (ie. mark and delete in todo list and being able to R) on anyscreen)
- ability to record same show on a different station
- fix anything they broken before ( give us back skip to beginning, jumpback in MYVOD after a live recording finishes, black screens/pausing while watching MYVOD)
- better trickplay during live buffer


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## sheridan1952 (Mar 16, 2006)

paulman182 said:


> My two units meet my minimum requirements for satisfaction.
> 
> I have had no problems that two red button resets did not solve in two months.
> 
> ...


A week ago, I would have been in your camp. Now, my DVR has failed to live up to what was promised..


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## cabanaboy1977 (Nov 16, 2005)

Oh, and
- resets/power failure should save the first half of the show not delete it.


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## mrb (Sep 14, 2006)

cabanaboy1977 said:


> Oh, and
> - resets/power failure should save the first half of the show not delete it.


Can anyone here tell me what I can do, other than calling DTV and complaining all the time, to REALLY get some positive changes in this product/service? The last time I had to return my R15 I saw literally four other DTV boxes at FedEx waiting to be shipped back...this is obviously a systemwide problem. I don't want to go back to cable and my single tuner TiVo (which by the way NEVER crapped out in four years, not once) and pay more for it, but this is just not acceptable.

What can I do???


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## walters (Nov 18, 2005)

mrb said:


> Can anyone here tell me what I can do, other than calling DTV and complaining all the time, to REALLY get some positive changes in this product/service? The last time I had to return my R15 I saw literally four other DTV boxes at FedEx waiting to be shipped back...this is obviously a systemwide problem. I don't want to go back to cable and my single tuner TiVo (which by the way NEVER crapped out in four years, not once) and pay more for it, but this is just not acceptable.
> 
> What can I do???


I really don't understand why they're replacing so many boxes. These problems are in software. They need to be fixed in software. The only reason a new box performs better than the one it replaced is because it's new, and that can be accomplished by doing a full (destructive) reset.


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## Bobman (Jan 3, 2006)

walters said:


> I really don't understand why they're replacing so many boxes. These problems are in software.


I agree. Unless the unit will not powerup or something major like that swapping out boxes will solve nothing.

It will seem faster because its empty/new and after a few days to weeks will start having the same problems again.


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## Bobman (Jan 3, 2006)

cabanaboy1977 said:


> - resets/power failure should save the first half of the show not delete it.


Thats a good one I forgot about.  A MAJOR must fix.


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## Bobman (Jan 3, 2006)

mrb said:


> The minimum...


I started with the minimum as we all know that DirecTV is never going to add all the things we mentioned in the other thread. So I wanted to see what would make us "content".

Dual buffers, unlimited SL/TDL I doubt we will ever see.

Some of the more minor changes like fixing the black screens/pauses, 6 second rewind problem, icon colors, SL first run logic and some speed increases I can see as very do able and they should be in the next update IMO.


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## cabanaboy1977 (Nov 16, 2005)

mrb said:


> What can I do???


You have come to the right place. D* reads these forums so you will be heard, it might take time but they do listen.



Bobman said:


> Thats a good one I forgot about.  A MAJOR must fix.


I'm not sure why this wasn't corrected. I hope this doesn't come down to the limits of the box.


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## Upstream (Jul 4, 2006)

Bobman said:


> I started with the minimum as we all know that DirecTV is never going to add all the things we mentioned in the other thread.


We may or may not see new features. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't expect, or shouldn't demand, that DTV fix the bugs in the system. Things that don't work as they are supposed to must be fixed.


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## jwd45244 (Aug 18, 2006)

My R15 works just fine for my family. The price was right (free). The interface is just like the one we have in our 2 D10s, so that is good. I have not seen any problems with the latest software.

It is different that our RCA-39 DirecTivo unit but not worse. The differences are largely at the margin for our family. Kind of like when I have to drive my wife's car after not having driven it in a while. The marginal controls are in different places but I can still drive it.


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## MercurialIN (Jul 17, 2006)

I've been sitting here nodding my head going uh huh, uh huh I agree with what's been said by other posters. I too would like to see no more lock ups/freeze ups or at least considerably fewer. No black screen of death. I'd like to see what has already been recorded saved in event of lock up. I'd like to NOT have to put the dog goned thing in standby every time I need to leave the room to prevent it from locking up. I'd like to be able to pause a recording any time I want and not come back to a locked up R 15. 

I'd like to see the Caller ID feature work again, it hasn't since July. It's one of the main features that first interested me in the R 15. I'd like a reset or power spike not to cause me to have to re-enter my zip code, cities etc. in the active section. I'd also like to no longer have to baby sit the TDL all the time. I check it numerous times in a twenty four hour period to make sure all my SL's are still on the scheduler. And as do most posters, I'd really love to have live dual buffers that continue even when the unit is in standby since mine has to be in standby so often. I am on box number four, it took that long I am embarrassed to admit for me to realize that they all had the exact same problems and that switching units was NOT the answer, tech support was all ready to send me box number five when I finally said enough is enough, either find a way to make box number four work or I'll send the thing back and be done with it. Only reason I still have the R 15 is I am either very naive or I am still hopeful that they will eventually (hopefully sooner rather then later) get all the bugs out. Perhaps I am a little of both the former and later. I'm still weighing whether to continue with my trusty HR 10-250 or take a chance on the HR 20 I cannot make up my mind. The fact that I did say "trusty" HR 10-250 may have answered my own question. But I wouldn't mind some feedback.


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## wolfonthehill (Jul 7, 2006)

Minimum? No more freeze-ups. Period. The rest is convenience and basic functionality of this box/software package. I've gotten used to navigation, quirks, lack of dual live buffers, etc. I may not like them, but I'll accept them. I will never accept the lack of reliability, the freeze-ups, and the fact that reformatting the hard drive is part of the normal maintenance routine on the box. I'll demand credit for that every time.


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## eperrone (Sep 3, 2006)

Seems like an easy question for us to answer.

SeriesLink/ First Run Logic should be fixed first, and part of that should be the ability to record a specific instance of a show (by Time slot) and not all showings. When we switched to Direct TV we were surprised at how unreliable the series recording is. This to us was a very basic function of DVR. The last update seems to have helped with this but I have very little confidence in it. We end up just recording everything and sorting out which things are new later. A very large step backwards for us. Do you know how many times the food network shows Paula's Home Cooking per week?

Second on my list is to make the unit more responsive it is quite slow to respnd to the remote when fast forwarding in a recording and the guide is very slow. Hand in hand with that is better logic on stopping FF or rewind (when you hit play jump back a number of seconds that is dependent on the speed you were moving).

I see everyone complaining about hangs etc but we have had only 1 of those since the last upgrade so I would put that later.

I have one more annoyance but maybe there is a way to do this. How do you rewind to the beginning of a recorded show from the end? Best I could see is rewind at speed 4 but that still takes a while. In my old Time Warner DVR I could start a rewind and hit one of the arrows keys and that would jump back in 15 or 30 min increments until the beginning of the show. Maybe there is already a way to do this in the R15?

I guess the good thing is that this all seems to be software issues (on the surface). 

We'll see how they do.


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## BethMD (Aug 2, 2006)

I need reliability. My old R15 500 unit was annoying, but seemed to be getting better with every software upgrade. When the remote sensor went out, though, it was unusable. I have no confidence in my month-old R15 300. Of the shows I had planned to watch off my list tonight, one was only partially recorded, one failed to record, and one got deleted from the list. (I saw it on the list before tonight's reset, but it wasn't there when the system came up.) What's the use of a DVR if you can't count on your shows being there?


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## ApK (Mar 6, 2006)

eperrone said:


> Seems like an easy question for us to answer.
> SeriesLink/ First Run Logic should be fixed first,
> [. . .]
> I see everyone complaining about hangs etc but we have had only 1 of those since the last upgrade so I would put that later.


That makes no sense. How many first run epsiodes can it record while the machine is hung?

It's non-functional when it's hung. No features work. So if you want any feature fixed, stopping the hanging is prerequisite.

Personally, I don't see how the first run logic is anything more than a convienience feature, but it seems very important to a lot of people.

ApK

p.s. Your machine hung once in the last month? My Tivo hasn't hung once in the last three years.


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## Bobman (Jan 3, 2006)

eperrone said:


> How do you rewind to the beginning of a recorded show from the end?


This feature was lost when they added the 30 second advance. You can always hold down the 30 second advance key and it will jump to about 20 seconds from the end. Then it will ask you to delete it or not. When you say not, it will start from the beginning the next time you play it.


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## Bobman (Jan 3, 2006)

wolfonthehill said:


> I'll demand credit for that every time.


If you complain enough, :hurah: they sometimes will give you a $5 a month credit for 6 months. I got this a few months back. Not sure if they still do it as I have not heard many mention it.

I got my cake and ate it too if you ask me.   

My R-15 was free and I can use it free for 6 months.


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## eperrone (Sep 3, 2006)

ApK said:


> That makes no sense. How many first run epsiodes can it record while the machine is hung?
> 
> It's non-functional when it's hung. No features work. So if you want any feature fixed, stopping the hanging is prerequisite.
> 
> ...


Your comment is Fair enough if it hangs on me 2 or 3 more times I'll bet I put that first. I am only saying it has happened once and so I am more concerned with the other things. Having had a reliable series feature (in Time Warner cable) to switch and not have it work is quite a change. And very unacceptable.


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## Bobman (Jan 3, 2006)

Mine hardly ever lockups at all since the last update. Its been very stable and reliable that way.

I did have one time where it would not come out of standby overnight and a search lockup on me but thats it for the lockups and thats over many months.

My main problem seems to be the black screen when watching a recording and 6 second rewind not working consistently.


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## eperrone (Sep 3, 2006)

eperrone said:


> Your comment is Fair enough if it hangs on me 2 or 3 more times I'll bet I put that first. I am only saying it has happened once and so I am more concerned with the other things. Having had a reliable series feature (in Time Warner cable) to switch and not have it work is quite a change. And very unacceptable.


OK so I spoke too soon. Today it blew up on us and we lost a recording. My wife reset it, but anything recorded today will not work. When you play the recording you get a black screen.

BTW My caller ID has never worked, not even once. All it says is you have an incoming call. I just turned it off. I do not really care too much about that though.


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## cabanaboy1977 (Nov 16, 2005)

eperrone said:


> OK so I spoke too soon. Today it blew up on us and we lost a recording. My wife reset it, but anything recorded today will not work. When you play the recording you get a black screen.


Does jump to end and then rewind back work? Also you this wouldn't be due to a sat. signal loss (ie. storm). Probably not but just asking.


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## eperrone (Sep 3, 2006)

cabanaboy1977 said:


> Does jump to end and then rewind back work? Also you this wouldn't be due to a sat. signal loss (ie. storm). Probably not but just asking.


I have not tried the jump back thing yet. I will and let you know once I get somethign recorded.

But to continue my story, now this unit is just screwed. Starting yesterday morning it just started locking up where you would actually be seeing live TV but the unit will not respond to anyhting. It stops recording anything (we lost My Name is Earl, GRRR) and you cannot even turn it off. We reset it three times.

Today I called DTV and asked about what I can do. Tonight they had me come back and call them. I did a full reset (wiping out all recorded shows) on the unit and 1 hour later it hung up again, same thing except this time I was trying to do a search and the blue software screen came up with the live TV picture playing in the upper right corner. Nothing on the screen and the unit is totally hung up cannot shut down cannot do anything. I reset again.

I called them back and they setup a service call for next week. The guy tells me that I should have the dish moved, the cables checked and the unit replaced. Does that sound resonable? If it were not getting signal would I see some symptoms of that? Seems to me that these problems are software related not signal. Anyway at this point I figure it cannot hurt.

Man the new seasons are starting and if we start dropping shows I will need to drop the service. If this unit never works can I cancel the service? I am so disappointed.


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## sheridan1952 (Mar 16, 2006)

No, that's NOT reasonable. The problem is the box, not your dish. They are full of it. They just need to send you a replacement. Read the other comments here. You are not alone.


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## cabanaboy1977 (Nov 16, 2005)

eperrone said:


> I called them back and they setup a service call for next week. The guy tells me that I should have the dish moved, the cables checked and the unit replaced. Does that sound resonable? If it were not getting signal would I see some symptoms of that? Seems to me that these problems are software related not signal. Anyway at this point I figure it cannot hurt.


Moving the dish is not going to help. It won't hurt for them to check the lines and an your signal coming from the dish. But the problem your having now is with your R15 not the cables (but like I said it won't hurt to let the install check them).


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## eperrone (Sep 3, 2006)

cabanaboy1977 said:


> Does jump to end and then rewind back work? Also you this wouldn't be due to a sat. signal loss (ie. storm). Probably not but just asking.


I was able to use the FF to the end and then select do not delete. IS there another way to jump to the end?


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## cabanaboy1977 (Nov 16, 2005)

eperrone said:


> I was able to use the FF to the end and then select do not delete. IS there another way to jump to the end?


Hold down the 30 sec slip button for a could seconds and it will skip to the end. The you can rewind from there.


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## eperrone (Sep 3, 2006)

eperrone said:


> ..... I called them back and they setup a service call for next week. The guy tells me that I should have the dish moved, the cables checked and the unit replaced. Does that sound resonable? If it were not getting signal would I see some symptoms of that? Seems to me that these problems are software related not signal. Anyway at this point I figure it cannot hurt. ......


So the repair guys came out last week and did tests on the equipment.
1. The original installer put the dish on the back of my house near a downspout and aimed it through some trees to the southern sky. At the time I said to him don;'t you think you need to install this on the roof? Or is it forgiving enough to be installed there? He of course said it was fine and the signal would be ok where it was. He obviously did not want to climb up on the roof.
2. The new guy came out and said my signal strength was in the 80's and that was bad. He also said I was not recieving signal on 2 of the three LNB's (IIRC).
3. He said that can cause all kinds of trouble.
4. He moved the dish up onto the roof now all three LNB's have signel between 95-100 there are no trees in the way (according to him I have not been up there)
5. So two main things have happened 1 we switched the two coax cables coming in to the unit and 2 the dish was moved to a better location.
6. The unit has not locked up again since.
7. They did NOT replace the unit.

So far so good I have not had any lock ups (same issues apply on better response to remote, and SL/First run though)

I'll post updates if anything else happens.

Thanks
Eric


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## sheridan1952 (Mar 16, 2006)

My apologies, I assumed you had a good installation to begin with. Obviously, the first guy was an idiot.


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## eperrone (Sep 3, 2006)

sheridan1952 said:


> My apologies, I assumed you had a good installation to begin with. Obviously, the first guy was an idiot.


Keeping my fingers crossed that the unit will continue to work. I feel like I need to call DTV evry month and complain just to keep a continuous thread in case the unit starts to go bad.

Thanks all


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