WARNING - Before you go in for the HR20

I have two and neither has missed a recording. I've never had anywhere close to 50 season passes so the limitation does not effect me.

Perhaps the engineers that designed it thought that at 50 season passes you really needed someone to tell you to get a life.

My 2 HR20's have been flawless in the last 2 months of service. Getting my 3rd delivered to me next Saturday.

HiDefGator said:

Perhaps the engineers that designed it thought that at 50 season passes you really needed someone to tell you to get a life.

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LMAFO! I was going to say the same thing. If you are watching 50 different show, you really, really need to get out of the house and find a life...

So far my HR20-700 has missed ZERO shows since June. The HR10-250 in 1 yrs time; 3!

The HR10-250 was fine until the 6* updates and it was down hill from there. I prefer the HR20 and I am happy. Would a M4 Tivo make me happy? Sure if it had all the features of the HR20! Oh, plus what they currently have.

My HR10-250 will go into the closet for another HR20 when I get a new LCD for the bedroom and a SWM.

With the new M4 channels the HR10 has seen it's day a s a HD receiver for SAT. Great for SD and OTA though.

HiDefGator said:

Perhaps the engineers that designed it thought that at 50 season passes you really needed someone to tell you to get a life.

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Yes, they have better things to do, like manage their season links according to the time of year to stay under the limit. That's quality time with the family since each family member in a typical family only gets a dozen or so.

rrr22777, my advice is to hang around here. HR20 users that spend time on TiVo forums never experience missed recordings while it's a frequent topic of discussion on DirecTV forums.

rrr22777 said:

I am a long time Tivo user who took the plunge for the HR20 because of the new HD channels available only on the HR20 (Directv DVR). I am just finding out what a big mistake that was!! So before you take the plunge consider this:

1. Missed recordings.. unit has missed 4 recordings this week saying something about the recording being cancelled by someone. During some of those cancellations NO ONE WAS HOME!

2. 50 season passes. There is a limit on the season passes!!

Feel free to add to the list but IMHO just the missed recording are enough to go back to the Tivo.

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Missed recordings, spontaneous reboots where the reason I moved from the HR10, got tired of the anguished screams from the wife and kids of the tv isn't working again!

rrr22777 said:

I am a long time Tivo user who took the plunge for the HR20 because of the new HD channels available only on the HR20 (Directv DVR). I am just finding out what a big mistake that was!! So before you take the plunge consider this:

1. Missed recordings.. unit has missed 4 recordings this week saying something about the recording being cancelled by someone. During some of those cancellations NO ONE WAS HOME!

2. 50 season passes. There is a limit on the season passes!!

Feel free to add to the list but IMHO just the missed recording are enough to go back to the Tivo.

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Well go back to Tivo, just remember to switch to Cable, drop Directv and enjoy the up front cost of the Series 3 or TivoHD unit.

Thats if you want HD in the Future, if you only want SD, then you will be fine... but if that was the case, why get a HR20 in the first place

rrr22777 said:

50 season passes. There is a limit on the season passes!!!

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Not gonna fly here I have 70+ season passes

krs7272 said:

Not gonna fly here I have 70+ season passes

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Do you watch all of that on one TV? Just wondering if two HR20's might be better on two TVs to be able to watch all of that.

wolflord11 said:

Well go back to Tivo, just remember to switch to Cable, drop Directv and enjoy the up front cost of the Series 3 or TivoHD unit.

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Just in case anyone believes the above advice is serious rather than sarcastic, and is tempted to switch to Cable, here's some advice: DO YOUR HOMEWORK FIRST!

The recent 9.1 software "upgrade" pushed to the S3 and THD is a steaming pile of S**T. Details in the appropriate forum.

HiDefGator said:

Perhaps the engineers that designed it thought that at 50 season passes you really needed someone to tell you to get a life.

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Maybe you need to learn how to use the DVR to your advantage. Drinking Bud light on weekends and eating pizza is not my idea of life.. enjoy yours.

I also don't care for the 50 season pass limit but the tradeoff is you get blazing fast times when you rearrange the order. My DTivo takes several minutes to move 1 season pass up or down in the list. My HR20 does it in less than a second.

I've had the HR20 for about six months and I don't recall a single missed recording. As for "someone in the household"...remember what we DTivo users went through when they did the new software to handle the change in the start of daylight savings this year? I was missing recordings right and left during that week or so.

gio1269 said:

LMAFO! I was going to say the same thing. If you are watching 50 different show, you really, really need to get out of the house and find a life...

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just for another point of view: some people aren't blessed with good health and have disabilities that mean they are home bound and tv is their lives. You are fortunate enough to be able bodied so enjoy.

oh and we have over 150 SP on 2 HDtivos can't put any on hr20 until we get our 110 issue resolved

newsposter said:

just for another point of view: some people aren't blessed with good health and have disabilities that mean they are home bound and tv is their lives. You are fortunate enough to be able bodied so enjoy.

oh and we have over 150 SP on 2 HDtivos can't put any on hr20 until we get our 110 issue resolved

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Yup are correct in that sense. But you can do other things beside watch TV like other hobbies. To folks like you my apologies. But to the rest....

But I can't even imagine trying to fine 100 shows worth watching let alone 50.

rrr22777 said:

Maybe you need to learn how to use the DVR to your advantage. Drinking Bud light on weekends and eating pizza is not my idea of life.. enjoy yours.

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But watching TV all day and eating twinkies is?
Maybe get out of the house every once in a while if you can....

newsposter said:

just for another point of view: some people aren't blessed with good health and have disabilities that mean they are home bound and tv is their lives.

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And what did those home bound people do for entertainment before Tivo offered them 120 season passes?

If its that important to you then get two of them. That will get you 100 season passes and 4 tuners for an extra $5 a month.

For those with tons of season passes. Why not keep a DirecTivo around to record anything in SD and use an HR20 only for HD? That's what I do. Or get 2 (or 3) HR20s. All those extra tuners would come in handy with so many shows.

And I use the DirecTivo as a backup to my HD locals since especially CBS their tower goes down it seems once a week so it's good to have the SD version of shows as an emergency backup.

In our household we have about 35 season passes across 3 DVRs and we find it hard to watch all of that. Of course we might go 2 or 3 days without even turning on a TV but that's just us.

Having said all that, I believe the 50 limit will be addressed in a future update. It has been hinted at anyway.

I'll make a comment on the 50 season pass limit.

I live in Denver and was able to get the CBS-HD feed from LA. What this allows me to do do is set up my CBS season passes on both my local channel (antenna) as well as the LA station. The west coast feed starts it's prime time programming at 9:00 Mountain time. Thus, I can schedule other shows on NBC or ABC to record starting at 7:00, and then the CBS shows can record at a later hour. If there isn't a conflict, then it records off of my local antenna (for a better quality picture).

At any rate, I watch quite a few CBS shows, so basically I have doubled up my season passes because of this quirk.

As in typical fashion, we have all of the HR20 apologists responding to yet another HR20 user pointing out a design flaw - even to the point of making fun of the OP for even having that many season passes.

Why would anyone set such a ridiculous limit when there are what - a hundred or two channels on the satellite? It's yet another indication that the HR20 was hastily designed without understanding the market. And yet another reason why the Tivo is consistently rated higher in polls.