Multi-Room DVR for Direct TV?

[tdmontg]

I use to be a very loyal Direct TV customer (8 years) until 2 years ago. My neighbor got Dish with the multi-room DVR's and I made the switch.

A supervisor with Direct TV told me when I was cancelling my subscription that they were almost ready to release their multi-room DVR. That was 2 years ago....

I see in the news where Verizon is introducing their multi-room DVR and Comcast is in price negotiations and possibly going to do the same.

Does anyone have any information about Direct TV's efforts to do this? What happened to their Multi-Room DVR plans 2 years ago?

 

[jcrandall]

This is an area that DirecTV has not touched, and has not announced any plans to (which tells me they aren't going to).

If you specifically want to save the $5 to view two programs at once than Dish is the only sat provider at this point. I don't see that changing any time soon.

I'm going to move this to the regular DirecTV area, it is not releated to the CE program.

 

[madpoet]

The roadmap plan from all the meetings in the Spring showed a slide where it looked like it was planned for 2010.

 

[NutFlush920]

This would be nice simply for the DVR content being accesable from either TV. Other than that, $5 is a small fee to pay.

 

[Aridon]

This would be nice simply for the DVR content being accesable from either TV. Other than that, $5 is a small fee to pay.

It already is, just run a video switch and run a wire to the TV. You can pick up a switch at Walmart for $20. The better ones are more expensive.

Sure you can't watch two different things but for most its enough if you don't want to pay the $5.

 

[NutFlush920]

I am fine with my setup. I just DVR my shows on both. No big deal.

 

[rad]

DirecTV in a number of conference calls with Wall Street has said they plan to have a whole house DVR solution, that's the only 'official' word I've seen. However, the rumor on the street is that the Media Share function that's in the HR2X's now is part of the plan to allow HR2X's to view programming recorded on one DVR on another DVR via inhouse ethernet network.

Now while this isn't like Dish's dual output DVR's that allows for TV2 it does have one big advantage, you'll be able to watch HD content from one HR2X on anyother HR2X in the house, Dish's box is only SD on TV2 and it's RF/coax the worst picture quality you can get fed to a TV.

 

[Hemi 6.1]

Dish's box is only SD on TV2 and it's RF/coax the worst picture quality you can get fed to a TV.

Its not that bad! Lets not get crazy. Its the same coax that feed's your receiver. On an SD TV the SD coax is more then fine. The SD PQ on my SD Sony tv hooked TV2 Coax, Looks better then my HDMI connect HD TV ,In Standard Def. Direct and Dish receivers. But my D* R16 Hooked to my Sony SD Tv looks the best in SD.

 

[rad]

Its not that bad! Lets not get crazy. Its the same coax that feed's your receiver. On an SD TV the SD coax is more then fine.

Hemi, when it comes to PQ the order from worst to best is, coax, composite, s-video, component, DVI/HDMI, that's just a fact. It's not the wire/media that's the issue is how the signal is being put on the wire so you can't compare the coax feed from your dish to the coax feed from the STB to the TV.

Let's see if you feel the same way if you ever upgrade that 2nd TV to HD.

 

[Hemi 6.1]

Let's see if you feel the same way if you ever upgrade that 2nd TV to HD.

I doubt they would use coax. But for SD programming its not bad at all. If I hooked to my HD TV maybe that would suck.

 

[jcinci]

I don't really care about watching two different things on two different tv's in the house from the same DVR. I want to be able to transfer one recorded show do another DVR in my house. That would allow my wife and I to watch one thing that we've record and let the kids watch something else that we've recorded without worrying about which DVR we've recorded the shows on.

 

[scottie_h]

I don't really care about watching two different things on two different tv's in the house from the same DVR. I want to be able to transfer one recorded show do another DVR in my house. That would allow my wife and I to watch one thing that we've record and let the kids watch something else that we've recorded without worrying about which DVR we've recorded the shows on.

Obviously everyone has different habits and opinions, but I agree whole-heartedly. It would also increase capacity in a sense, because you could record anywhere, regardless where you wanted to watch it. We typically watch most programming in the living room, but if the space was low and we wanted to record something, we could record it in the bedroom but still watch it anywhere we wanted. (yes, I need an external drive in the living room, but that's a whole different discussion! )

 

[Phoenix1]

DirecTV has had whole-house DVR capability on their roadmap for quite a while. I worked for one of their chip suppliers back in 2005 and it was there then. There is no reason that their DVRs couldn't do this now (with a software upgrade), but their non-DVR receivers have no way to receive the content from the DVR. They are not network capable (no hardware for networking built in). They would have to ship all new non-DVR receivers that are network capable in order to do the whole-house DVR thing.