# DirecTivo Series Two impressions



## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

Now, why did I drop Dish in favor of DirecTV? Now, I was perfectly happy with my 501. It had it's limitations, but what were you expecting from a fee-free DVR. When the 510 was announced, it was decision time whether to upgrade to that receiver or wait for the 522. But then, the infamous July 29th announcement about a monthly DVR fee caused me to something that I was just "thinking about" to something that I was willing to jump at.

Lets rewind for a second. When I ordered the Dish system in August, 2001, the DBS world was a different place. While DirecTV did have have the DirecTV with DVR receivers (herein called DirecTivos) available, the monthly charge was $9.95 per month or a lifetime fee. In comparison, the Dish DVR was fee-free. Also, because SHIVA hasn't taken effect, I had to get the superstations in order to get _Buffy, The Vampire Slayer_, _Angel_, and _Enterprise_. Since that time, DirecTV has restructured their rate plan, make the DVR fee cheaper, and SHIVA rules let me get all of the local stations that are worth watching in the Sacramento area.

So, for the price of a replacement receiver from Dish Network, I got a HDVR2 DVR receiver, two HBH-SA standalone receivers, and a triple LNB dish for the price of a single tuner replacement PVR. It appears that I got the HDVR2 receiver right at the end of the product cycle, as new DirecTivo receivers with larger hard drives have been announced, along with a name change for the Hughes DVR-apparently too many people through it could record HD. Sorry, not yet, although such a unit is apparently in the works. And, if you are trying to decide between the RCA, Hughes, and Phillips DVRs, the answer is that there are no differences beyond cosmetics and the remote. (I should note here that both the DirecTivo and Dish's DVR both lack a MPEG encoder, thus they cannot record "over the air" signals. The units simply record the signal as it is sent down by the DBS provider using equipment more powerful than a standalone DVR. You will have to get a locals package in order to record your local station. It is expected that both the Dish 921 and the TiVo HD unit will be able to record HD signals from OTA sources. Because the signal is already digital, no conversion is necessary for recording.)

Installation day was August 26th, and I think the installer was a little bit surprised as to where the HDVR2 was going to be installed. This receiver wasn't going into the living room, but to my room, and required a second line to be run. Since the recorder is at the same location as my computer system, maintaining a continuous phone connection won't be a problem. I just had to move everything in my room out of the way to make the install easier.

Fast forward... installer leaves, and I have to finish up the setup. I had to choose a number and place a call or two in order to complete the setup of the DirecTivo. Then, the new user gotcha hit. On the 50x line of receivers, when a receiver is first installed, it has to download the firmware off the satellite before it can be used. The DirecTivo already has the software installed, but the guide database takes a while to compile. It was late Tuesday afternoon, and I wanted to set up the initial season passes for _MI-5_, _InuYasha_, _Blue Gender_, _Junkyard MegaWars_, and _World Poker Tour_. No such luck at this time, but I knew beforehand that it would take 24-48 hours for the guide to completely load, and up to a week for the database to fully compile. I had to go into the guide and manually set up the recordings for those four shows for Tuesday evening only. Then, I had problems going through the channels. As it comes from the factory, the "Channels You Receive" is set to every danged channel. And, unlike the HBH-SA, there is no scan function to go through and catch the channels that were actually active. So, go through the list, make notations, then deselect the channels that I don't get at all.

7 PM.... it's time for _MI-5_. I use this opportunity to reassemble my room while the show was recording. Midway through, I pick up the remote and started watching the show when I remember the first essential key sequence: Select-Play-Select-30-Select. Three dings! I have one of my favorite features again... the 30 second skip. But, horrors, the TV control hasn't been programmed. That's OK, just go to the appropriate section, select TV make, and after about 5 code attempts, I can turn on and off my TV, mute, and change volume.

At around midnight, I can finally set up season passes. The most annoying part is that you can't change the defaults, so I have to set it up so that "until space is needed" and "1 minute early" on most of my season passes. Not all of the shows were listed, but enough so that I can go in and set up many of my favorite show timers. I got the rest the following morning. One thing about setting timers: You can't set it to end "early". Now, while most of the network shows run back-to-back-to-back, some channels actually insert about 5 minutes of commercials between the shows. Since the 501 was timer based, I could say "record from 8:59 to 9:27". Since Tivo is name-based, I can only say "start 1 minute early" and "end 2 minutes late. Manual timers are available, but you can only set it at five minute increments. You can, however, then go in and have that recording start one minute early and end two minutes later.

When I got home from work, I checked out the "Now Playing" list. Apparently, the PVR thought I loved kids shows and had recorded server for me. Some quick clearing took care of that. I also decided to try the scan by channel or scan by time. Here was one of the gotchas again. "All Channels" isn't really all of the channels, just the "Channels You Receive". And "Favorites" is really a subset of the "Channels You Receive", but the entire list, by default, isn't selected. Very confusing. And, there is only one "Favorite List". Period. No separate lists for selecting certain channels. However, you can do a search by theme. It still would have been nice to have a list of "Music", "English", and "Spanish". (One of these days, I will learn Spanish.)

Another trick that I learned is that, by pushing the down arrow, I can switch between tuners. However, with LiveTV, there is only a 30 minute buffer on each channel, verses the 60 minute buffer on the 501. Minor annoyance, but then again, how often do I watch live TV? If, while scanning the channels, there is a program that you are catching the tail end of, you can "select" the program, then go into the options, then search for upcoming showings. This is a few more steps than on the 501 where pressing "search" will automatically put in the program name in the search box.

Then, another shortcut found on TivoCommunity came up. I went to Now Playing and tried Slow-0-Record-ThumbsUp. A submenu then appeared, allowing me to sort by record date, expiration date, or alphabetically. This was going to be one of my gripes with the TiVo... but not now.

One thing missing is a "guesstimate" on the amount of recording space remaining. The engineers at TiVo must have figured that the end user would want to watch related programming, so it will fill the hard drive with suggested recordings based upon thumbs, season passes, and wishlists. Suggested recordings are always the first to be erased if space is needed, and I kinda use that as guide as to the disk space remaining (1 movie=2 hours). Recordings that you requested get deleted last and based upon age and "Save Until" date, and recordings can be set to save a certain number of episodes or until space is needed. There is also a option that should be rarely used on the stock TiVo called "Save Until I Delete" which will save the recording until you explicitly delete it. If you set it on a season pass, then you will quickly run out of room. Avoid using this option until you get a larger hard drive.

I also tried out Wishlists. I created one for Alfred Hitchcock, since there is always going to be a movie of his on in a two-week period. But, it said that "The following will not be recorded." HUH? Time to recheck the manual... oh, it's supposed to default that way. The wishlist will scan the database for matches, but will not record the program unless you say so. You can set the wishlist to record every Hitchcock movie when it is sent down. I'm not sure on the priority of this through.

Standby mode seems to work differently with the 501 than with the DirecTivo. When you put the 501 in standby mode, it would still put out a blank video signal, while the DirecTivo outputs NO video signal, so I get a "Unusable Signal" message on the TV. On the other hand, if you tried to put the 501 in standby while recording, it would look at you and say "Do you want to abort this recording?" I'm told that it's not necessary to put the unit in standby as the receiver is constantly receiving program data, while a power-down is necessary for the 5xx series in order to receive the nine-day guide.

The worst part about the TiVo is the on-screen guide. Dish's 501's guide came up a lot faster than Tivo's guide which appeared to be "paint by numbers". I wish there was a way to go through the guide faster. On the 501, you press the 30-second forward, it goes forward one day. 10-second back, it goes back one day in the guide. Enter a number and press left or right, it goes forward or back that many hours. But, it's not likely that I will use the program guide much. The Tivo includes a guide which allows you to scan by channel or time, and is much faster.

As for the remote... did I get a peanut remote? The DirecTivo remote is a IR remote only, but I had no problem controlling the DVR even though the remote wasn't pointed anywhere near the Tivo. Unlike the 501 remote which uses 4 AAA batteries, the DirecTivo remote requires 2 AA batteries. It is too soon to determine battery life at this time.

Am I saying that the DirecTivo is better than the 501? Yes, but we knew that already. Dish's software is strictly timer based, while the TiVo software is named based. But, someone at Echostar must be smoking something while putting his head in the sand if they expect the fee to succeed. In addition, the DirecTivo is a dual-tuner DVR, and goes for $249 retail, which is about the same price for a single tuner Dish DVR. The Dish DVR performed what I expected for a fee-free DVR, but it is essentially a Digital VCR (although it has more timers). The TiVo software is superior in most respects than Dish's DVR software.

The HDVR2 lacks the ability to control a VCR. For some strange reason (software history, perhaps?), the 50xs had the option to DVR (which is the default), record to VCR (never got it to work), Auto-tune, and Reminder. All those are missing, along with Mr. Blinky the flashing clock that would pop up whenever a recording would go off in about 5 minutes even if you are watching something pre-recorded event.

But, the DirecTivo is designed to work best as a time-shifting device. It's great for catching that movie at 2:30 AM on Turner Classic Movies. But, as a stand-alone receiver, it has some limitations. I can look at my mother's HBH-SAs and there are some functions that are really nice that are simply not there. But, my mom will watch whatever's on. I time-shift. Whatever works.

So, what next? Hopefully, I can hook a UPS so that the HDVR2 will continue running through a power outage. And, I'm definitely going to upgrade the hard drives to something a little bit bigger in November once the major part of the warranty is up (end of November).

If you plan on getting a receiver, I would recommend looking at the manual beforehand for both Dish Network and DirecTV. The manual for the 50x series is located here, while you can view the manuals for the DirecTV Hughes HDVR2, Phillips DSR 7000, and RCA DVR29.

If you are purchasing a new DirecTV system, I highly recommend getting a PVR. I also recommend getting the Triple LNB Dish so that you are set for future upgrades.

_This impressions/review is Copyright 2003 by Mark Holtz and DBSTalk. Reproduction of this review without consent is prohibited._


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## Nightfall (Sep 1, 2003)

Excellent analysis. I will be a new Directivo user tomorrow (hopefully) if the install goes well. I am eagerly anticipating the install and being able to play with my directv system.


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## Begemotik (Sep 1, 2003)

and for me . . . Thursday afternoon is when the DirecTV installer will visit.


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## spanishannouncetable (Apr 23, 2002)

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"I also tried out Wishlists. I created one for Alfred Hitchcock, since there is always going to be a movie of his on in a two-week period. But, it said that "The following will not be recorded." HUH? Time to recheck the manual... oh, it's supposed to default that way. The wishlist will scan the database for matches, but will not record the program unless you say so. You can set the wishlist to record every Hitchcock movie when it is sent down. I'm not sure on the priority of this through."
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Auto-recording wishlists are prioritized on the Season Pass list like any other Season Pass. Just add it to the SP mix according to its importance to you.

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"As for the remote... did I get a peanut remote? The DirecTivo remote is a IR remote only, but I had no problem controlling the DVR even though the remote wasn't pointed anywhere near the Tivo. Unlike the 501 remote which uses 4 AAA batteries, the DirecTivo remote requires 2 AA batteries. It is too soon to determine battery life at this time."
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All DirecTiVos now come with the standard peanut-shaped black remote. Sony's SAT-T60 has a Sony-designed silver remote that some like better. I have both, and like both equally. In my experience, good alkaline batteries last about a year in both types.


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## cnsf (Jun 6, 2002)

Let's not forget missing Caller ID and multiple show deletions/Manage files.

Otherwise, the move to DirecTV was the best thing I ever did.


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## scottwood2 (Sep 19, 2003)

Great post. I currently have the 508 and may swithch as well. What do you think of the picture quality compared to E*? I have heard that the newer Hitachi has a better picture than the current 35 hour models.


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