online.wsj.com — "Cable subscribers will soon have the option of buying their own TV set-top box rather than renting one. That new freedom may soon trigger an old question: Is it better to own or rent?" When I got DirecTV the only way I could get an HD box with DVR (which sucks BTW) was to buy it....
Jun 7, 2007 View in Crawl 4
buelldozerJun 8, 2007
Oh, so you're starting a major upgrade at the last minute (3 weeks out) and whining about how hard it is?Gimme a break. Your company should have had this s**t nailed down 12 months ago. You'll get no pity from this SysAdmin who does major system upgrades on a fairly regular basis.Any competent support person could, and should, have told you this 18 months ago!I pity your companies customers.
barovelliJun 8, 2007
I work for a big ol cable company too, and have been getting ready for this stuff since fall.I've got a new DCH 3416 DVR, and if you RTFM it installs just like the old ones. From a user standpoint it's the same, save for it actually responding to remote button pushing. Also have some new cable cards and hear that 2 way is working fine - when the host hardware supports it.
thundercat1971Jun 8, 2007
Buy an S3 Tivo. All of your problems will be solved.
smoken_dcJun 8, 2007
The Direct TV DVR sucks big time let me list the things it does not do or does poorly1.no suggestions based on what you like2.list shows in the order they where recorded? why3 this is the big one when fast forwarding does not work at all when you hit the play button to stop the fast forward it stops when it wants to and you end up going back and fort to get to where you want 4 crashes all the time and I mean all the time the HD version is a Little better but not much when my Direct TiVo stopped working I was upset and am still thinking of leaving Direct TV but Comcast sucks more not much of a choice 5 push one button to watch a recorded show on TiVo 5 or more buttons to preform the same action on the Direct TV one6 menu navigation is lame if I push guide I want the guide for the fave group I am watching I don't want to chose that option every time I want to look at the guide7 Crashes all the timeman I could go on for ever
bijaJun 30, 2007
It infuriates me that we have to have a cable box or PVR in order to get the Premium channels through the cable company. As someone pointed out, some TVs will let you use a card but then you don't get all the features like video on demand. I would like to be able to only get the Premium channels and local stations and forget about all the other cable networks. You can't do that. To get the premium channels, you have to also get Extended Basic cable channels. Most of those channels are crap. Some might be acceptable, but they ruin it by putting pop-up advertising on the screen while you are watching a show. It isn't enough that you also get way too many commercials also, now they have to have commercials while you watch. I find that intolerable. The best solution I can come up with is to just keep a Netflix subscription and rent everything including TV shows I might want to watch. The big downside to that is I can't get the current HBO and Showtime series because they are not out on DVD yet. I wish there were more alternatives. I thought switching to satellite would be a good alternative until we found out you have to pay extra to get the local stations. My husband does watch a few cable stations that I don't care about and they are not available with satellite unless you get their biggest package deal.
lawrenceellisonOct 5, 2009
I've used both cableTV and directTV and they both suck! About a month ago I was able to find something that made it possible for me to get more channels than I had on cableTV and directTV put together. Also there is no monthly fee. Hope this helps! You can check it out here - <a class="user" href="http://budurl.com/dgtv4yourpc" rel="nofollow">http://budurl.com/dgtv4yourpc</a>