Has anyone bought a TiVo for DirecTV since the switch?

Question

I have an old-school DirecTV Tivo that's on the brink. I'd like to buy an actual TiVo rather than a DVR from DirecTV, but in looking at their website it says you can't record two programs at once with satellite, only cable. I'm thinking since I already have the dual tuner coming from the dish, this wouldn't be true, but I would like to know if anyone else has successfully done this. Thanks.

Answer 1

I have an old DSR6000 (integrated Tivo/DirecTV receiver) that finally died two weeks ago. We loved our Tivo and were devastated, but had been planning to upgrade to an HD unit anyway. My husband and I did some research and found that the DirecTV DVR doesn't get the greatest reviews. Cnet gave it a decent review, but also mentioned that it doesn't always record what it's told to record, it crashes a lot and it sometimes has audio/video dropouts that make it unwatchable. Also, it costs $300, and we found out that's just to lease the unit. You can't actually buy it from places like Best Buy, it's lease only. When you cancel the service you have to return it. Plus, you can no longer use a Tivo with DirecTV as they are no longer supported and don't have the integrated tuner. You can buy a Tivo and buy a DirecTV tuner and hook them up together, but you can only record one show at once and it's not integrated nearly as well as the old models were.

We looked at alternatives and came up with the following:
You can purchase a Tivo and use it with cable and record two programs at once. However, in our area that would cost almost 50% more than what we were paying for DirecTV. Also, many cable companies use a type of switching that doesn't work with the cable cards in the current generation of Tivos, which means you could buy one and find out it's worthless if your company implements this kind of switching.

The other option is to switch satellite providers. We switched to Dish network and got a free (leased) HD DVD, plus more channels, for less than our old DirecTV bill. We're not too thrilled with the DVR - it got better reviews than the DirecTV model but it's really painful to use after the Tivo. I's not designed well, it's not friendly, it's not ergonomic, it's really annoying. But we can at least add an external hard drive and it does have 50 hours of HD recording and 250 hours of non-HD recording. Our plan is to keep this plan for 18 months (we signed on for that period) and at the end of the contract we're hoping that FIOS TV will be available in our area and will work with Tivo. At that point we'll buy a Tivo and switch to FIOS. We just have to hang in there until then and hope the new DVR doesn't drive us insane.

Your options may vary, depending on your area and whether you have HD issues or not. We've had teh Dish for 24 hours now, so I can't state if it's better or worse than DirecTV. However, it's a free DVR vs paying for a new one, so that's something.

Good luck. The world isn't kind to us Tivo users.

Answer 2

I just had directv installed Thursday with HD DVR and couldn't be more happy with it. I've already recorded 10 or so shows and have a lot more scheduled. No problems at all yet and you don't have to worry about integrating with Tivo. The lease does protect you from problems as they will replace it if there are problems (you can always drop the extra maintenance coverage fee later if you don't need it). If I had problems like shows failing to record I'd tell them to give me a different one. It tells you if there are schedule conflicts and tells you when it needs to change channels to record something scheduled when you're watching a show - I don't have line 2 hooked up yet for recording while watching another channel, but will soon. I can see how some scheduled things could inadvertantly be missed sometimes. Also, the channel you're watching has a 90 minute buffer so you can pause or rewind within that buffer during live tv. I've never had tivo or cable before so I can't give you comparisons.

Answer 3

I think the issue you had before with Dish is that the satellite was too loose. Maybe the tech didn't install it right or just loosened over time. Rain normally will have little to no affect on satellites. The main factor that affects them are wind. If the dish is not properly installed or loosened wind will move the dish affecting the reception. I would go with DirecTV because of price, dependability, channel selection, and HD channels.