Hr20 sells itself, oh wait not even close read inside!

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JamesJ

AKA Stuart628
Original poster
Supporting Founder
Jul 21, 2004
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Akron (Cleveland), Oh
Okay so I know that was the corniest thread title ever but, what a great story, and a happy ending for Directv :). I had my brother and his new wife over to pass out candy for the kids in the neighberhood. While they were over they wanted to check out the Hr20, and Directv in general as they are fed up with Dish and want something new. I turn on the old Hr20 we watch about 10-15 minutes of the florida state game, go to pause the game, nothing....Rewind....Nothing. I am use to this because this box if you leave it sit for 10-15 minutes watching a channel it forgets it is a DVR and dosent pause rewind nothing (you know the whole reason you get a dvr ;) ). So I have to channel up, then down and it works...well I go to show him a good episode of Americas funniest video that I Had recorded, which I have watched after I recorded it....Fire it up, and it gives me the old Would you like to delete this...yes thats right it wouldnt play. I tell them dont worry I know how to fix this, reset it..well it goes into a state of being set on the reset for the next hour and a half....after about 20-25 resets I finally format the Hard drive, and it gets up and running...My brother and his wife are at this point saying, no big deal things happen even their box acts goofy (they are being nice and I am pissed I had to format my hard drive and start from scratch) so I get it up and running and he asks to see the mpeg4 channels, turn to mpeg4 and....FREEZE have to reset, which only took 15 times and no format this time...at this point my brother and his wife call it a night, and go home to watch Dish Network, my wife goes upstairs mad she lost her shows, and I am pissed, finally the box starts up, no shows, nothing, temp is at 116 and the box is not acting up anymore.....so the happy ending for Directv you might ask? is that they dont have my brother and sister calling them like I am for free credits and or to get out of my contract as my box was GREAT. but with each software update gotten worse...I really want my sunday ticket, but not at this price, I want a dvr to do its baisc functions and i have one that does nothing, but make me lose time reseting it! I have done 3 formats in the last week, and I have lost 4 shows this dvr has recorded but wont play (this week alone) also it wont pause or anything....but now that its up and running tonight I havent seen a problem, what a shame Directv rushed this out the door, and what a shame they have the people working on the software they do this could have been a nice box, but you can be certain just like I told people to get directv and this box when I first got it...I will be telling them (or in my brothers case showing him why) not to get directv or this box, STAY FAR FROM IT! until they get the software figured out, this is the bigges waste of time/ my money there is.
 
Stuart sounds like you got a receiver that has gone bad and is getting worse. I have had my HR-20 as long as you and have not had any problems. Same receiver. Mine works fine and yours doesn't. No other explanation I can think of.
 
Stuart sounds like you got a receiver that has gone bad and is getting worse. I have had my HR-20 as long as you and have not had any problems. Same receiver. Mine works fine and yours doesn't. No other explanation I can think of.

its the software....This last software round has pretty much made my box unusable till the next software release, my friend has exactly the same syptoms as me. There is no way my hardware is bad as everything that has happened has been software related (no pause,fast forward, no playing back recorded programs.)
 
its the software....This last software round has pretty much made my box unusable till the next software release
I'm running the exact same firmware release as you on 2 HR20's with NO problems. Sorry.

It's either your cabling, your connectors, your dish, or perhaps a bad box (in that order).
 
I keep reading threads bashing the software and I am not so sure. I've had an HR20 since beginning of September and 1 or 2 minor issues during that entire time. I almost think there are hardware defects that are causing most the issues on specific boxes (users). If your unit can not pause live TV, thats a lemon to me. Just like cars, there are great car lines that have bad ones here and there. I would call D* or take this back where you got it and get another one.
 
I'm running the exact same firmware release as you on 2 HR20's with NO problems. Sorry.

It's either your cabling, your connectors, your dish, or perhaps a bad box (in that order).
The actual hardware could be different in his hr 20.. different motherboard revision etc. This happens ALL the time with dishnotwork..its a shame D* is following the same path
 
I'm running the exact same firmware release as you on 2 HR20's with NO problems. Sorry.

It's either your cabling, your connectors, your dish, or perhaps a bad box (in that order).

I disagree 100% like the last poster stated, my HR20 could have different hardware that reacts differently with the software...also the other 2 people I have recommened this box two have the SAME exact problems, at exactly the same time (the software update) I am getting a new box in two days, but I firmly believe this is the Software making it do this.
 
If the public would not been screaming "Why isn't this box out" maybe some of these issues would have been taken care of ahead of time.
I waited 1 year and 8 months for it, I could have waited longer, I didn't have it, so I wasn't missing it. another month or so maybe they would have had the software and the OTA situation figured out by then, MAYBE, maybe not....
They could have continued to work on it and probably had it out in time for Christmas.

Fortunatly , I have NOT had any of the problems that have been mentioed in the forums, mine has been very stable.

I have 2 issues that most of you guys have to deal with that I do not ....
I have NO MPEG4 programming, so I don't know how the MPEG4 is working, or IF my mpeg 4 is working (thats a whole nother thread) and as you all are waiting on the OTA tuner.

Had D* not started sending these out for release, the public would have been a nightmare, much worse than it is now.

Jimbo
 
Jimbos, they had to get this box to market because people wanted to be able to record their MPEG-4 locals and RSNs. D* really should have had a functional MPEG-4 capable DVR before implementing the scheme.
 
Jimbos, they had to get this box to market because people wanted to be able to record their MPEG-4 locals and RSNs. D* really should have had a functional MPEG-4 capable DVR before implementing the scheme.

I agree with you, I was responding to Stuarts post, somewhere it was mentioned about rushing it out to the public. I forgot I didn't hit reply first.

Jimbo
 
I've had mine since first week of sept. I have not had to reboot one time. My dolby digital 5.1 , caller id has worked flawlessly since day one. My one problem is recording mpeg locals, especially 1080 signal's. In a word (unwatchable) which is a bummer because I would like to record Bruins games in HD. I don't trust mpeg 4 Yet! I'm really looking forward to OTA. Overall I'm pretty happy , and it is wife approved but she does like Tivo better. I hate that peanut remote.(tivo)
 
well, just to let everyone know, my new box will be here tuesday, I think the Hard drive got fried after all the resets, power cord plugs, today after a couple resets it started making funny noises.....I am thinking this could have been some of my problems the last couple days, lets just hope this new box plays nicely and I get it in time for a new software upgrade!
 
lets just hope this new box plays nicely and I get it in time for a new software upgrade!
As you know, all your updates will update themselves when you activate it for the 1st time, it downloads all the updates that have been released in it's set up.

Jimbo
 
So it was a hardware problem.

no, it was software, the hardware didnt go until my numerous resets, trust me...the Hard drive was fine before sat night, then when I had to do 20 + resets that day, and 10+ on sunday thats when the hard drive went....my problems I have had before that have had NOTHING to do with the hard drive going.
 
As you know, all your updates will update themselves when you activate it for the 1st time, it downloads all the updates that have been released in it's set up.

Jimbo

I know I was saying I just hope the first day I get it (tues-wed) there is another software out in the wild.
 
no, it was software, the hardware didnt go until my numerous resets, trust me...the Hard drive was fine before sat night, then when I had to do 20 + resets that day, and 10+ on sunday thats when the hard drive went....my problems I have had before that have had NOTHING to do with the hard drive going.

Thats not necessarily true. Hard drives can go over a period of time before the finally quit on you. I work in the biz and have had literally dozens of hard drives go in my laptop and they exhibit strange behavior (like sofware or OS going bad) before they finall quit (usually with the click of death). So you may have had software issues but I just dont think something was right with the box (hardware) from the beginning.

Lets you hope you have good luck on the next one. :up
 
I've had mine since first week of sept. I have not had to reboot one time. My dolby digital 5.1 , caller id has worked flawlessly since day one. My one problem is recording mpeg locals, especially 1080 signal's. In a word (unwatchable) which is a bummer because I would like to record Bruins games in HD. I don't trust mpeg 4 Yet! I'm really looking forward to OTA. Overall I'm pretty happy , and it is wife approved but she does like Tivo better. I hate that peanut remote.(tivo)

Thats the Boston 1080i MPEG4 locals. It includes NESN HD, NBC and CBS. Fox and ABC look fine (at 720p). The channels look the same on H20 boxes. I agree they are unwatchable and no excuse for the bad quality!! :mad: I did read that D* fixed the New York MPEG4 ones so lets hope they fix Boston too. I really want to watch Bruins' games and just cant. Its that bad.
 
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