DirecTV DVR without phone connection

[IceRunner]

I'm about to switch to DirecTV from Dish (although I still have time to back out) and noticed that they strongly urge you to have your DVR connected to a land-line phone line.

The logisitics of my house and the fact that I have Vonage would make it a pain to do that unless I bought a wireless phone jack.

I talked to a DirecTV technical-support guy and he said that I'd be able to run it OK without a phone line, but it could become slow and eventually lockup. In that case, it would be rebooted and I'd lose the programs that had been saved.

Has anybody else had any experience with this?

Thanks in advance!

 

[cr0mag]

Either get some of those 'wireless' phone jacks, or do like most of us and just don't worry about the phone jack at all. I have two of the older SD tivo units that have not made a phone call in years. Hope that helps.....

 

[boba]

The DVR+ will work without telephone no problems. I just put a system in saturday for a customer who was cell phone only. Directv dosen't like this type of customer because they will buy fewer PPV and they can't check locations of receivers but they won't refuse service.

 

[ProfStata]

"but it could become slow and eventually lockup"

I would like to hear a technical explanation of how that would work.

 

[damaged]

"but it could become slow and eventually lockup"

I would like to hear a technical explanation of how that would work.

Well, let's just say it was true (I cannot say if it is or not), I suppose if the phone call sent data to D*, and this process was not allowed (no phone line for example), then it would have to save/archive this data somehow until it can make a call, it maybe using RAM or disk, or a combination, perhaps to store this data, if this data builds up, it could result in a low-memory condition (possibly introducing page swapping which is slow), this kind of condition could be solved by rebooted (thereby erasing the data), or allowing it to call in.

This is purely hypothesis on my part.