Poll: for those of us receiving the non-rebate "No strings" DVRs from DirecTV

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My refurbished DTivo arrived this morning. It's a RCA DVR40. Is this hackable? I'm surprised, because the front of the unit looks exactly like my R10 (except for the RCA graphics). Everything appears to be in order, although I haven't yet hooked it up. It came with a manual for a Hughes unit.

 

Yes it is. Check the Underground Forum for more info.

 

Just a follow up to my earlier post today. FedEx dropped it off this morning, I won't know what I got till tonight. So much for requiring a signature, FedEx just dropped and ran, my wife discovered it when she went out to get the mail and almost tripped over it.

 

How are you guys finding out your tracking #? When I look at my account online it says no shipping required.

 

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I called customer service. He confirmed that the unit was being shipped and gave me the tracking number. The status on the order showed "Not Applicable."

 

I got the same thing, RCA DVR40. I've hacked it and have been pleased to find out that the ethernet speed is about 4-5x that of my R10. With my R10 I usually only get about 0.6MB/s but with the DVR40 I'm doing about 2.6MB/s. So now my challenge is to shuffle things to make the new DVR40 my primary TiVo and use my R10 as a MRV client.

 

I didn't think the R10 could have that stuff enabled without removing and redoing the prom. Did you do that?

 

When I e-mailed Customer Service (I didn't feel like holding for an hour) I was told in no uncertain terms that the unit was not being shipped, that it would be coming with the installer. Then the next evening when I got home it was waiting for me. It came via Fed Ex.

Now I have postponed my install date to ensure that the unit is installed, activated, and working properly before I cancel the install.

Now where did I put my coax crimper? It takes me longer to do each crimp , but mine look nice and neat and perfectly hexagonal, whereas the ones the installer did look like they were done with a pair of pliers.

 

Yes, I removed the factory prom and soldered on a socket and threw in a hacked prom. In retrospect I think it is more effort than the R10 is worth given the poor ethernet speed.

 

But if you postpone the install, how will it ever get installed?

 

ordered sunday night, recieved a hughes HDVR2 today via fed ex, no installation date made and i haven't been called about one yet. can anyone tell me if this unit is RID?

i've got an r10 already and i'm not sure which one to use either, all i really want is to upgrade the space - can anyone give me a good comparison between what the HDVR2 can be hacked to do that the r10 can't?

 

No it is not RID. I had to make a call to retention phone number to not get one of the Pleebs for activation. My first call was some guy that hardly spoke English, or was muffling everything into his headset. Said he cannot activate a receiver without an RID. I immediately called 800-824-9081 and got someone that activated me with no issues.

The HDVR2 can be hacked with everything on the Zipper. The R10 cannot. You can upgrade size of drive on both units rather easily.

Replaced my main room's R10 with the hacked and upgraded HDVR2. Then proceeded to replace my master bed's R15 with the R10.

 

I just finished activating the DVR40 (Hughes) that arrived this morning via Fedex. Had a couple of interesting bumps along the way.

After finally getting the setup completed, it attempted to dial out. Phone didn't work. Couldn't figure out why. The phone jack is on the opposite wall, so I have to use a wireless phone jack to get a phone line to the receiver. The phone test said it wasn't getting a dialtone. Stuck a phone in the jack...sure enough, no tone. Temporarily ran the cable across the room to complete the phone setup. Truns out the wireless phone jack module by the receiver is bad (the other one works). We had a lightning event here last summer, which is probably when it died...I never heard a complaint from the old receiver, but now I guess I need a new one.

Call customer service to activate the unit and remove the old one. After 45 minutes on line (and that was using the special 'you're a great customer" phone line), the nice CSR and I walked through the setup. She asked me for the RID number. I had the card number, the serial number, no RID number. (I seem to recall having one of these on my Tivo R10). She kept trying to get me activated, but no joy. She finally sought some help and they got it working. She came back and told me about some problem with last year's MLB-EI not expiring..."it's really convoluted" she said. Cool, no problem.

I was in the middle of asking her to cancel my Friday morning installation appointment when the phone made a noise and went dead. I'll call them tonight...I'm not waiting another hour for that.

After everything I went through to just get the order places, I'm happy this is finally over.

 

That phone number is magic. I called and somebody answered immediately. I told her the HDVR2 that was delivered yesterday did not have an access card so she hooked me up with the people that send them. They charged $ 20 and credited $ 20 to my account for the card. If the installer brings another unit,depending on the unit, I will just use that one and mail the card back.

 

Installer arrived with an R15....Guess I'll take it for the spare room.

 

Is this offer still valid ? I tried the DVR4ME in the offer code prompt on the web-site and it didn't work.

Thanks.

 

Offer is good until Feb 28, 2006 or until supplies run out. You may want to try again, but be warned at least one person said they had multiple charges on their card and they never got the order to go through. Others tried tons of times (this was before D* fixed some bug that caused some peole to get an error when trying to do ths offer) and never got extra charges on their card.

 

I promised that I would get back when I saw what I got. I got a refurbished RCA DVR40. It came with the cables, remote, new card and manual. My installation is scheduled for Friday morning and as we want the receiver installed in a new room and need two lines run, I'll have the installer do it.

 

I actually had an RCA Series 2 35-hour one shipped to me AND the installer brought a 100-hour one that I assume was an R15 - I couldn't find a model # anywhere on the box, but there was no TiVo symbol anywhere to be found on the box.
I went with the RCA since I already had it completely connected and in the bedroom entertainment center and many people seem to be having problems with the R15.
The installer just made the phone call to DirecTV to turn it on and deactivate the old receiver.

Rob

 

Ditto here. I called DirecTV (the number they list next to your order for making changes to your order) and got my FedEx tracking number... strange that I ordered on 02/02 and it did not ship until 02/07. Coming from Memphis to central Ohio, 13.5 lbs. ship weight.

A few days ago I went to my DirecTV account web page and pushed my 'scheduled install' from 02/09 to 02/24 - that should give me time to get the DTivo and do a 'self install - self activation' and then cancel the install droid coming out.

Since I just want it for a spare I'm going to temporarily remove an active unit, get this new box authorized, wait a day or two, de-auth it and put it back in its box.