What I like:
First, I got to say I am shocked at how much better the picture is with DirecTV than what I had with DishNetwork. SHOCKED!!! I've heard others say it was a little better and I just thought maybe I'd see less compression artifacts or something... and I could only see those with DishNetwork if I stood up and got closer to the TV than I would actually watch a program. But there's a greater depth to the picture from DirecTV. Much more clear and three dimensional. DishNetwork is flat in comparison. Of course I'm talking about HD. Since I had Absolute with DishNetwork, the few SD channels were either duplicates or worthless so I didn't watch them and can't give a comparison there. DirecTV's SD doesn't look very good to me but I don't think low resolution signals on a high resolution TV ever looks good.
I was concerned about going from the vip722 to the HR24. I read review after review of the HR24 looking to see if there was a comparison to use of the vip722. Everyone always talked about the sluggishness of the HR series DVRs with terms of hitting a button on the remote and waiting 5-10 seconds for the DVR to respond... that would drive me crazy. The reviews on teh HR24 weren't all that helpful. They pretty much said the HR24 was better but didn't go much farther than that in their description. After using the HR24, I've very pleased. If anything it's zippier than my old vip722.
MRV is a real treat. It's what I've been waiting on for years. I really thought Dish would be the first to do this since they had the Dual DVR thing going so early on and that they had the sling tech built into the vip922 so I thought multi-room DVR in HD was coming on the vip922 but that never materialized. I really think Dish dropped the ball on this one by not realizing what made the Dual DVR idea so attractive to someone like me. I think Dish put too much weight on the idea of only needing one receiver and not enough wait on the idea of being able to manage your DVR throughout the house while watching HD. I have three HDTVs and for the first time ever, I have HD hooked up to all three at the same time.
I like all the extra info regarding programs in the guide (after highlighting a program and hitting 'info'). Much more comprehensive.
I really like Cinemaplus. It's so much better than Dish's On Demand that it's not worth comparing. Not even close. I've been using it to repopulate my DVR with a good selection of movies and also loading up the queue with movies that are at the theaters now for when they become available. I've also been using the DirecTV website to do this. Really cool.
Smart Search is more comprehensive than the search function on the vip722. I like how it looks up VOD stuff as well as future broadcasts. I've noticed a lot of recent network shows available for download via VOD so this will be the first place I look if I miss a recording.
Managing recordings and series is easier to do with more options with the HR24. Took me a bit to figure out the terms though. Everything uses a different word for the things that the vip also does (or does similarly) so at first I thought it didn't do a lot of the things I was expecting to do but I figured it all out, or most of it anyway.
I LOVE Media Share. I had no idea the HR24 would network to my computers. When I saw that it would in the manual, it was just a matter of turning on the media server from my laptop and there was the option on the HR24. Selected it and all my computer media was there for to to use from my DVR. I was expecting to go through and selecting this and that and waiting for things to load and such... just overall expecting to put some effort into it. Nope, clicked on videos and there was our home videos that I'd saved on my computer, selected the first one and started watching the kids playing from 4 years ago. It was all pretty much automatic.
The 'Active' feature is quite cool. I think Dish had something similar but wasn't quite as convenient so we never used it.
I really like how the sports score thing works. I only wish it worked on all channels and not just 'sports' channels. Not that I wasn't cover up part of "Desperate Housewives" to keep track of the NFL game but because most of the sports I watch are on non-sports network channels such as ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox.
Direct2PC is really cool. I often work in the back yard with a football game being carried to my computer via Slingbox but my Slingbox is a legacy unit without HD. Direct2PC will give me HD access where ever I am within reach of my router.
I like that I can set it to Native output. I know others complain about how long it takes to change the channel but I don't find it all that much slower than what I'm used to with the vip722 if it's slower at all. I guess my TVs do the handshake quickly enough. Also, I didn't think that would be a big issue for me. I'm not a big channel surfer. I find what I want to watch with the guide or playlist, select that, and leave it there.
Now, for what I'm not pleased with:
I'm not crazy about the guide overall. It may be that I just need to get used to it and I'll like it more. My wife is not a 'techie' kind of a person and will often make a quick negative judgment on things and never be able to change her mind. As such, I was very worried she get into that guide and tell me she hated the whole thing. After all, the guide and media list is pretty much all she's ever going to use/see. But to my surprise, she really likes our new system. So the guide can't be that bad. Honestly though, I think it would be MUCH better if when I blocked a channel, it wouldn't show up in the guide, or better yet, I could set it so that the guide didn't show channels I don't subscribe to like on the vip. If it does do that and I'm not seeing how to do it, someone please point me in the right direction. I know I'll get used to the reverse ordering of the channels but there's so much junk it's hard to see what's there, making it almost worthless to simply scroll through to find what's on.
Perhaps my biggest disappointment is the lack of custom folders in the playlist. I used to put all the kids recording in a folder called "Kid's Stuff". Then the stuff that the wife and I would watch would be sorted into categories that I set. Now the categories that I set are pretty similar to the categories that can be sorted from the playlist but I wish I could weed out all that Kid's Stuff. Makes for a much easier to sort through playlist.
Another thing that's bothersome, and it may be that I just haven't figured it out yet, is getting recording to work from the 'keyword' autorecord option the way I'd want to. When setting up a new vip DVR, it was easy to set a series recording for something that didn't happen in the immediate future by using DishPass to record an 'exact' title from a particular channel. I can't seem to figure out how to do that on the HR24. For instance, I want it to record new Hung episodes on the main HBO channel when they start showing them this summer. With DishPass, I'd just set it to record only titles that exactly match "Hung" on channel 300. With the HR24, I can only see how to set it up for an exact channel if there's an episode on that particular channel in the next two weeks which right now is only on 502 and I want it to be on 501 so we get the first showing on HBO East. If I use the keyword autorecord option, I get all kinds of recordings... like Harold and Kumar's White Castle (WTF???).
I wish Direct2PC did live TV. I know all I have to do is set what I want to watch to record and then I can watch it from there but it's less convenient. Small issue really.
As cool as Media Share is, it only supports a limited amount of media file types. I understand why that is and I don't expect it to expand what it supports BUT, it would be cool if there was a little FREE app that could jun in the background of my computers that would re-encode or make shadow copies of my media files so that files that aren't to HR24 standards would still be available. Again, I wasn't expecting Media Share at all so this is a small issue. Another Media Share issue is that it seems to be bit rate sensitive which I find odd. I have two recordings on my computer that were recorded from an OTA ABC broadcast. It would start playing them and then simply state the video bitrate was too and high and stop playing it. Seemed kinda strange that the HR24 can send HD video via Direct2PC but can't receive it via the same network but maybe that's an issue that will be worked out in the future, I did notice that it's being called 'beta' right now.
All in all, very happy with the transition. It's hard to argue against the better picture and MRV.