Your Thoughts on DirecTV Charging for MRV

[Scott Greczkowski]

We reported here at SatelliteGuys.US that DirecTV was considering charging $3.99 a month extra to enable the Multi Room Viewing (MRV) feature when its made officially available.

Now that we are coming closer to the MRV rollout it appears that this charge will be a real one.

At the other site many diehards are upset at DirecTV for charging for MRV.

What are your thoughts on this issue? Is DirecTV nickle and diming too much?

 

[ClemSole]

MRV is not worth a penny and if they do charge for it we will not enable it.

 

[SupaFresh208]

Good thing I live in a studio apt no need for MRV...but still what a waste of money.

 

[Juan]

What is MRV?

 

[JamesJ]

What is MRV?

Multi Room Viewing.


And to be honest it sucks, but to even it out I will drop my movie packages and actually save money in the long run....less for directv and I get MRV.

 

[david_gilbert]

i think it is dumb to charge for it. to me they are becoming like the cable companies and coming up with all sorts of creative things to bill to customers. what's next, they gonna start charging rent for the remotes?

 

[hancox]

I will very likely consider dropping D* completely, if this happens. U-Verse has a compelling channel lineup, and while it's not the best for PQ, enough is enough with these fees.

Minimally, I'll run the numbers and see if it's worth it.

 

[yorktown]

I don't have a use for MRV but if I did I wouldn't pay for it.

I think MRV should be part of the DVR monthly price.

 

[Juan]

Multi Room Viewing.


And to be honest it sucks, but to even it out I will drop my movie packages and actually save money in the long run....less for directv and I get MRV.

I want to know what is "provided" do u use your own home network?

 

[JamesJ]

I want to know what is "provided" do u use your own home network?

Software so the boxes can communicate is provided...yep you use your own network...I agree with you in your point and where you are going juan.

 

[dfergie]

DirecTv bought Replay and their software and adapted it to create Mediashare and MRV, it was free with Replay and should remain free with DirecTv, it's not like they are coming in and adding a new box or wiring your house to do this... It is all done from the software so I believe they are just wanting to "milk" subscribers just because they can...

 

[darrencp22]

DirecTV should give me a discount! This code so far has slowed down my HR DVRs. There should be a "DVR Latency Discount" applied to my bill.

 

[Juan]

It might work better if they were to charge a 1 time activation fee ( i.e. Dish EHD) but a monthly charge is stupid

 

[ChrisK114]

I do not think they should charge extra for it. It should be included if you have a DVR. Companies nickel and dime customers too much as it is.

 

[iceturkee]

don't you need to have the same model hddvr's to make mrv work in the first place? i doubt my hr21 pro and my hr20 will interact with each other if i understand things correctly.

 

[dfergie]

Your HR20 and HR21 should work just fine together...

 

[hancox]

DirecTv bought Replay and their software and adapted it to create Mediashare and MRV, it was free with Replay and should remain free with DirecTv, it's not like they are coming in and adding a new box or wiring your house to do this... It is all done from the software so I believe they are just wanting to "milk" subscribers just because they can...

Great point on ReplayTV!

 

[Ken S]

It should be included as part of the ridiculous $6/month DVR charge. The worst part is that based on the quality of software that comes out of DirecTV it will be a buggy, partially working, slow mess. Mediashare has now been in beta for three years and it still has few features and poor performance.

The really strange part is...let's say someone is signing up... they can get 2 DVRs and pay 2 x $5 (leasing fee) and 1x $6 (dvr fee) for a total of $16/month
or they can get a DVR and a receiver and get 1/2 the recording space, no DLB on one set and pay 2x $5 (leasing fee), 1x$6 (DVR fee) and 1x$4 (MRV fee) for a total of $20/month. So, getting less costs you more. Yes, I understand it still brings the sharing functionality, but to me that's just not worth $50 - $75 extra a year.

But...then again if people don't do it DirecTV might just drop some more channels or put some in specialty packages like HD Extra or the Sports Pack.

 

[AntDogg65]

I don't think it works very well to begin with. Especially when trying to view HD content, I bought another router thinking that this was the problem and it still wasn't happening for me. I won't enable it, but if it works right, $3.99 is not a bad price for what the service is supposed to do.

 

[AntDogg65]

don't you need to have the same model hddvr's to make mrv work in the first place? i doubt my hr21 pro and my hr20 will interact with each other if i understand things correctly.

You can have any ethernet enabled box the last I checked. For example, I have a HR23-700 and I used MRV to view this content on my H23-600. SD content worked great, but HD content, not so much. It was slow, buggy and eventually would cut off as I guess it was too much data for it to handle.