Installed yesterday - both outputs work on HR21

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Eric_C

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Apr 18, 2004
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Well I had D* installed and my E* setup taken out.

Initial reaction...the 622 is a far superior DVR to the HR21. After I got into it a bit more however there are some things that both do better than the others.

Ease of use and speed goes to the 622. Flipping pages in the guide is instant on the 622, as is the 30 sec ff and rr, no delay. The HR21 has a delay in it that I don't care for. However the visual 30 sec ff is nice compared to the 622's instant skip of 30 seconds.

The HR21's search feature is nicer when it narrows things down as you type. Also the fact that picking the channel and time you want to record is much better. On the 622 lets say you pick The Colbert Report to record and I use this example because it was a PITA on the 622 to record this show without getting 5 copies a day. On the HR21 you pick the channel and time all in one screen where the 622 you had to bounce around quite a bit.

The 622 does a much better job though of picking more broad choices. I told the HR21 to record all NHRA races and it picked up one but not the one next week because the descriptor was a bit different. On the 622 it would record them all.

Playback of recorded shows is a toss up...I like the way the 622 looks compared to the HR21 being clunky. BUT the ability to quickly delete shows on the HR21 is great compared to the multi step process on the 622.

I wish the 622 would add a delete folder function but instead you had to go through 3 steps to delete each item.

One big feature the HR21 is missing and I won't notice it until football season is the SWAP feature the 622 has.

You can be watching one channel, pause it, flip to the other tuner and watch another. This is great for sports. As one game goes to commercial, pause, switch to the other game, unpause and FF to the actual game. When commercials start for that one, swap back to the original game, FF through the commercials, back and forth.

Watching Speed HD today made it worth it. The Formula 1 feeds are not HD but D* has one helluva upscaler. PQ is far superior.

Overall PQ....its hard to tell....some D* channels looked on par, others look way softer.

I think if D* hired a bit better group to redesign the UI and make it more competitive they would have a true equal....Dish still has the advantage on being able to record 3 streams in HD assuming 1 is OTA and of course the swap feature.

The HR21 did not like my Tversity media but I use my PS3 for that anyways. It found it ,showed the pictures but kept erroring out trying to view them.

Also output did work on both TV's. Another smart plug for the HR21. The 622 used the whole screen for the guide which on my Samsung 61" 1080p DLP resulted in the overscan cutting off the botton but the HR21 does not use the whole screen leaving room.

I have a Westinghouse 47" 1080p in the bedroom and there is no overscan on LCD so it was never an issue.

I have the Samsung hooked up on component, the Westinghouse on HDMI and both work and play at once.
 
I've never had Dish, so can't compare myself, but added a couple comments below.

Ease of use and speed goes to the 622. Flipping pages in the guide is instant on the 622, as is the 30 sec ff and rr, no delay. The HR21 has a delay in it that I don't care for. However the visual 30 sec ff is nice compared to the 622's instant skip of 30 seconds.
They are reportedly working on performance. I just got a new software version on my HR21 on Friday that did improve it considerably, although it's still far from instant.

You can change the 'visual' 30 sec FF to instant if you like. Go to search for a program, type in '30skip' for a keyword search. To change it back, type in '30slip'.

Playback of recorded shows is a toss up...I like the way the 622 looks compared to the HR21 being clunky. BUT the ability to quickly delete shows on the HR21 is great compared to the multi step process on the 622.
If you didn't know already, you can push '-' twice to skip the "are you sure" message you get when pushing the 'red' button.

One big feature the HR21 is missing and I won't notice it until football season is the SWAP feature the 622 has.

You can be watching one channel, pause it, flip to the other tuner and watch another. This is great for sports. As one game goes to commercial, pause, switch to the other game, unpause and FF to the actual game. When commercials start for that one, swap back to the original game, FF through the commercials, back and forth.
Many former D* Tivo users sorely miss the dual live buffers (myself included). As you say, that is a great feature if watching sporting events. I haven't really used it yet, but there is a workaround with the D* receivers, but requires you to be recording at least one of the programs.

I copied the following from a previous post that I bookmarked for when I need to remember how to do it :)

Dual Live Buffer Workaround

Setup

* Tune to Show 1 and press {®}
* Tune to Show 2 and press {PAUSE}
* Press {LIST} and play Show 1

Switch between tuners

* Press {PAUSE} then {PREV}

When finished, you can keep or delete the Show 1 as necessary

Have fun with your new HD!
 
On our old E* SD DVR we had years ago we used to use that procedure to watch two shows at once.

Thanks for the tip on the 30 second thing, I'll check it out.
 
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