Hopper vs direct tv

I've been a DirecTV customer since 2000 when the DirecTivos with 2 tuners first came out. Currently have 3 SD DirecTivos on modulators/IR repeaters. I never went HD with DirecTV, because the wife (and me, too) could not bear to give up TiVo for D* PVR. The equipment is old, and have had to do Ebay replacements over the years.

Now two of the TiVos are rebooting often, and are not long for this life. I think it's time to go HD and switch to E* to get 1H/2J. Can anyone give some insight into what kind of transition we will have from TiVo functionality to Hopper? I realize I will be going from 6 tuners to 3, but much of our recording is prime time, or Disney Channel/Nick Jr shows that replay all day & night.

I have had Directv tivos. The buffers were 30 minutes. The Hopper has 60 minute buffers. If you switch between the buffers and watch 2 shows at the same time, I would suggest a 2 Hopper and 1 Joey system. I had 2 HR units with D*. I always watch both buffers and like having the ability to switch between the buffers. On tivo you use the down arrow to swap tuners. On the hopper you use the swap button. I think the short cut to the to do list was list/list. On the hopper you hit the dvr button 3 time and takes you do daily schedule. I do like the hoppers compared to the HRs, because they are more like the tivos in my opinion.The HRs you need to enable the dual buffers, by hitting down arrow twice everyday and it could timeout and you would need to enable it again. The HRs do have 90 min buffers.
 
Thanks for the info bb83. Some other questions:

Does the Hopper have 8 second replay and auto-back when you stop fast forwarding? Or were those involved in the TiVo patent lawsuits?

Are you able to quickly scroll by page through the list of recorded items? How quickly does a show start playing from when you hit the play button?

Can you hit the record button and have everything in the live buffer saved as a show?
 
Didn't know about Disney HD, thanks for the info (but doesn't bother me)new DirecTivo does not support multi-room viewing, and has only 2 tuners. Seems too little too late for TiVo and DirecTv. Before I learned about the Hopper, I was considering cablecard and a Silicon Dust HDHomeRun tuner system, connected to a Win7 Media Center PC, and some Xbox 360's for the other TV's. It would have cost a bunch of money, and would not have made the wifey happy. I'm really interested in doing proper whole-home viewing (in HD) and having a single device be the tuners. The Hopper seems like the perfect solution, and as a new customer, the hardware is free.So my real question is, how will the Hopper UI compare to what we are used to with TiVo?
If you were thinking about going the cable card route and you want to stay with Tivo's, why not go with Tivo with cable cards? And I've read that Tivo's can now communicte with each other over your home network. Although it would probably be even more expensive than going with a HTPC and Xbox 360's.
 
If you were thinking about going the cable card route and you want to stay with Tivo's, why not go with Tivo with cable cards? And I've read that Tivo's can now communicte with each other over your home network. Although it would probably be even more expensive than going with a HTPC and Xbox 360's.

That's exactly what is preventing me from doing that. Standalone TiVos (and their monthly service) are outrageously expensive. I'm a TiVoholic, but the shock of spending that kind of cash is the cure to my addiction.
 
That's exactly what is preventing me from doing that. Standalone TiVos (and their monthly service) are outrageously expensive. I'm a TiVoholic, but the shock of spending that kind of cash is the cure to my addiction.
You can save some money by paying for Lifetime Service. But that upfront cost is a killer.
 
davelanton said:
Does the Hopper have 8 second replay and auto skip back when you stop fast forwarding? Or were those involved in the TiVo patent lawsuits?
10 sec replay. Never noticed auto skip back (I think my DirecTV DVR did that), but you could end ffwd with the skip back button and achieve the same thing. I use 30 sec skip instead of ffwd 95% of the time and skip back if I overshoot.
Are you able to quickly scroll by page through the list of recorded items? How quickly does a show start playing from when you hit the play button?
Scrolls very quickly, but there are thumbnails instead of a list, so you have to cursor around a bit to select what you want. Playback starts instantly.
Can you hit the record button and have everything in the live buffer saved as a show?
Yes, that's one of the options. It's couple of steps.

From your questions, it sounds like the hopper is going to be a lot faster than your TiVo. I think you'll be pleased.
 
A couple steps means two. Step 1, according to you, is clicking the "record" button. What is the final step, to record a live show with what's in the live buffer?

"Can you hit the record button and have everything in the live buffer saved as a show?"
Yes, that's one of the options. It's couple of steps.
 
I'm asking because you said it can be accomplished in a couple steps. I don't know how to do it, in only a couple steps, so I would appreciate hearing how. We all would.

Sorry, I was confused. It was a couple of steps on my 722 and I assumed Hopper was the same. Now we know. Thanks digiblur.
 
One more TiVo feature we are used to: When fast forwarding or rewinding, clicking a button on the remote skips by 15 minute increments (skip to tick mark is what it's called I think). Very handy for jumping to the midpoint of a 2 hour recording, for example. Is there something similar on Hopper?
 
No. DirecTV has that feature too, but Dish does not. That and bookmarks are the 2 features I miss the most from my old DirecTV DVRs.
 
IIRC, 300x is the max (5 minutes per second), which means ffwd 15 minutes, for example, would take 3 seconds. You can always jump directly to the beginning as well.
 

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