What I've heard is the live TV feature doesn't work the same on the DirecTV DVR as it does on the DirecTV Tivo. On the Tivo, you can switch between 2 tuners, having 2 shows paused at the same time. On the DVR, you can't switch between them without setting one of them to record. Of course, the user interface for recording and playing programs is different. But, with the DVR (or at least with the HD DVR), you can watch some shows on demand. The DirecTV DVRs and Tivos both have dual tuners. You can't get that with a receiver/standalone Tivo combination, even a dual tuner standalone Tivo, since those tuners are cable/OTA. I have not heard of any hacking of the DVRs, but the HD DVRs can be expanded with an eSATA hard drive. I'm not sure if the SD DVRs can do that.<br>
<br>Note, I don't have any personal experience with any of the DirecTV DVRs. There is a guy at work that has a SD DirecTV Tivo, and a DirecTV HD DVR. He uses both, but he has had far less problems with the Tivo. I will say, there is a version of DirecTV Tivo software out there that has some serious bugs. His version is older, so it doesn't have the problems. Another guy at work has a DirecTV Tivo with the buggy version of software. He was sent a SD DVR by DirecTV, and hates it. He can't wait to get the update to fix the bugs (I have the update on my SD DirecTV Tivo).<br>
<br>Not sure how much all of that helps. Feel free to e-mail me OL if you have any more questions.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 8:44 PM, Zachary Kotlarek <<a href="mailto:zach@kotlarek.com">zach@kotlarek.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
On Apr 25, 2008, at 6:14 PM, Dan Hockey wrote:<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Would it be better to stay away from the receiver/dvrs?<br>
</blockquote>
<br></div>
I personally don't like the current built-in DVR in the DirecTV systems. But I'm really pick, and frankly I don't like any of the available hardware DVRs, OEM or otherwise, and I'm not much happier with the software options -- I've been looking to get a better video system up and going for years, but short of writing it myself (something I've started and stopped doing more than once) I just can't find anything that does exactly what I want.<br>
<br>
If all you want is to record shows and play them back within a few weeks of their airing on the same system where they were recorded, plus the standard "live" show manipulations, the DirecTV DVRs are probably fine. And unlike stand-alone DVRs they will let you capture the raw data stream without A-D conversion or transcoding, and they actually know what channels you get, as opposed to which channels are available in your zip code. But if you want to transfer your media between devices, or use the DVR to playback media from another source, or store/archive shows for more than a few weeks, you probably won't be happy without non-trivial device hacking.<br>
<br>
Zach<br>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Tim