There are many reasons why someone might prefer a Hx2x over a Genie or not want to replace their entire setup with a Genie 2 and clients, there's no need to attack them over it:
- They might prefer the UI layout
- They like having their own DVR playlists and quick tune lists, especially if you watch some of the same shows as someone else in your household but at your own pace, and don't want someone deleting an episode before you have a chance to watch, or lose your resume position if you had to stop watching and someone else finished the episode.
- They might have a bunch of recordings of older shows that will likely never stream anywhere legally (i.e. I still have a ton of classic episodes of All My Children, One Life to Live and General Hospital saved from SOAPnet's marathons on one of my HR24s, not to mention shows that Zaslav/WBD, Iger/Disney and Paramount recently purged from all digital platforms so they don't have to pay royalties)
- They like features that have been removed from the Genie like on screen Caller ID or the ability to automatically view channels at their native progressive/interlaced framerates or resolutions
- They have a slower internet plan or one with datacaps, and don't want their bandwidth/allotment hogged by Genie's automatic VOD downloads or by someone not realizing they are watching a streaming channel like Cheddar, i24 or Tastemade on a regular basis.
- They prefer switching to SD during rainfade instead of Keep Watching with Broadband because of datacaps/slower speeds or so that they can still rewind/fast forward (yes you can do this with Genie, but it involves going into the menus and reactivating SD duplicates, and by the time they reappear, you might have missed a key part of the show)
- They don't want dynamic ads and promos fed to them everytime they pause TV
And to answer the OP's original question about the sluggishness. Try rebooting your receiver every few weeks. If you have a lot of Boolean searches or series recordings that are set to catch every possible airing on all channels, that can slow things down too.
You can still add them to your account, and they're still releasing firmware updates for them, the latest one rolled out last month. It's not just bug/security fixes, some of them have included new features. Like about a year ago they added a function to switch to SD during rainfade, a while back they added an Instant Purchase Over Remote (IPOR) function that displays previews and a targetted offer if you turn to an unsubscribed premium channel, and post-repack they readded the ability to scan for channels with an AM21 instead of only displaying what's in the OTA database.
