DTV TiVo Dealer said:
More than 100,000 HR10-250's have been sold to date and most at $999.99 plus tax and these folks have been enjoying their HD DVR service and could not have been happier.
And when DirecTV starts rolling out new HD channels, and leaves all these customers high and dry, how happy are they going to be then? Even if the new HMC is as good or better than the TiVo, which is a big question yet to be answered, there won't be any available to swap for how long? Six months? A year? Given a choice between keeping current HD offerings and my HR10-250, or giving up the DVR in exchange for more national HD channels, I'm staying with the TiVo. More channels are no good to me if I can't have my DVR search for the movies or programs that might interest me (WishLists). They can't seriously expect people who are used to TiVo to give up the DVR and go back to channel surfing in search of something to watch. I can't believe they didn't go ahead and develop an updated version of the HR10-250, fixing it's current hardware problems and making it compatible with mpeg4. It would probably be ready now, and they could have swapped out the 100,000 or so and been done with it.
DTV TiVo Dealer said:
Now we will see more HD content, the HD DVR drop to under $500, non-recordable HD receivers are under $200. The features of the HR10-250 are unmatched by any other multi-channel provider.
DirecTV apparently feels that this unmatched feature set is not worth saving. Or will the under $500 HD DVR match or exceed the TiVo's features? No one seems to know at this point, at least that I've read. Will it have season passes? Wishlists? If it doesn't, it's a huge step backward. Expandable storage? Sounds like no way. My current expanded HR10-250 holds 70 hours of HD material. I'll probably need two to three of the new DVRs to match that. The HMC is what I'm really looking forward to, but again, other than multi room viewing, how will it be better than an mpeg4 version of the HR10-250 would be? And when will it be readily available? A year from now? Until we get more specific details, I am just not optimistic that I'm going to be happy swapping my current equipment.
And the rumors that they might be considering cutting off the mpeg2 streams sooner rather than later? Can that be true?
BTW, thanks for all your valuable input on these issues.