[EDIT: Crap, I posted this in the wrong forum by accident. Mods, please move this thread to the non-HD DTV forum. thanks]
Hello All,
New member here. I have done lots of reading here the past few days and woudl appreciate your help. I've had DTV for 4+ years with a HDVR2 tivo box. I got the "Welcome. Loading please wait..." grey screen. I have tried reseting, unplugging, etc. Thanks to this great forum and dbstalkcom, I now have learned that my box (very likely the HD) is fried. I went to BB and bought a R15 for $99. In 1 minute I realized that is sucked and that I liked my old tivo box better. The KILLER was not having the Dual Live Buffer (or whatever it's called) that enables me to pause a show, switch tuners, and come back to the original paused show. I CANNOT live without this feature! I will be returning the box to BB at some point in the next 30 days. I need some help/opinions on my next options.
Browsing this site I have learned the following: 1) the R10 is the last tivo enabled box, but they are discontinued and thus have to get one through Ebay (~ $100) or weaknees, but weaknees is preffered to Ebay due to some issues activating an Ebay box; 2) weaknees and dvrupgrade sell (or should sell) r10's, but cost over $200; 3) dvrupgrade sells pre-formatted hardrives that I can install in my HDVr2, thus enabling me to keep the Tivo I love, at about $150 for a 250GB version (I assume the install is pretty straight forward); the last Tivo DTV HD box HR10-250 (or somehting like that) will not work with the new MPEG 4 HD channels, but will with the "old" HD channels; 5) at some point, DTV will migrate the "old" HD channels to MPEG 4, and thus, the last Tivo HD DVR receiver will not work with any DTV HD channels, but will still record OTA HD (although I have no idea how to do this); 6) read some conflicting reports of DTV not activating the last HD DVR tivo box (HR10-250) unless the customer pays the $10 HD channel fees.
I use OTA for HD. I have a panasonic 42 inch HD plasma that I use in my main viewing area. I have considered "upgrading" to DTV HD, but now, knowing that NO new DTV HD receiver for the foreseable future has the dual tuner buffer, I will not. I asked DTV about this, and the response from 3 service reps was that Tivo has a copyright on the Dual tunner buffer, and for that reason, it cannot include the feature in any proprietary DTV box. With all this background, here are my questions:
1) Is there any difference in picture and sound quality form a HDVR2 and a r10? i.e., is there ANY reason I should get an R10 instead of somehow making my HDVR2 work again? Note that I have never seen an r10 and don't know its dirfference with an HDVR2. I have a pretty good sound system (yammie receiver and axiom speakers). I already notice a difference in picture quality from the HDVR2 and the R15...the R15's image is softer.
2) what should I do in terms of getting a replacement or fixing my current box? I'm leaning towards gettign the pre-formatted hard drive from dvrupgrade for my dead HDVR2. It seems the easiest. Although, this depends on you guy's answer to question # 1 above
.
3) I can have a "regular" non DVR DTV HD box (h20?) with the new 5 LBN antenna to view the new MPEG 4 HD channels. Can I still have a tivo box (HDVR2 or R10) hooked up to the 5 LNB antenna to watch SD shows?
I would really appreciate your help and your patience in bearing withme in this long post
. Feel free to volunteer any info I missed and to suggest/recommend other options for me.
THank you.
ps. I will post a similar question on the dbs forum as well (covering all bases
)
