Transition Complete
Our transition from TiVo DVRs to D*DVRs is complete, but it was a mind boggling process having to deal with CSRs who seemed completely clueless about DirecTV equipment and satellite dish requirements. I thought what we needed was simple enough…a replacement dish to support the HR23s. After explaining to the third CSR what we needed to do, I was informed that they would not schedule a dish install unless I connected the new HR23s to our existing 3-LNB dish. I kind of lost it at that point.
I eventually convinced this person to take down the serial and access card numbers of each HR23. When he punched those in and saw they were valid new devices, that had never been activated, he accepted my request for a new dish install.
The good news is the dish installer that showed up three days later was an absolute pro. Within 30 minutes he had removed and replaced the old dish with a slimline 5 LNB dish. While he was doing his thing on the roof, I disconnected the DirecTiVos and hooked up the HR23s with two RG6 cables each. The setup process went quickly and the dish installer called someone to activate the boxes. I gave the installer a substantial tip for his great work.
The next day I checked signal strength and was not surprised to see close to 100% from all satellites. We are 20 mile south of Boston, MA.
I needed to deactivate the DirecTiVos and dreaded the idea of calling DirecTV to accomplish this. So I did not call. Instead I emailed DirecTV a very flattering (tongue in cheek) thank you for their fine performance and , just oh by the way, could you deactivate the old equipment and confirm whether they expected me to ship those 6-year old boxes to them. They asked me to verify the access card numbers for those DirecTiVos. The numbers on the access cards did not match what they had listed on my account. I made that clear in my follow up email by providing both numbers. The DirecTiVos have dropped off my account and as expected they did not want those boxes back.
I have my wife’s DirecTiVo and her HR23 connected to the TV she usually watches so that she can enjoy the 200+ hours of recordings on it. That DirecTiVo is also running my TiVo NCID server software which allows us to continue to have callerID pop up on our PCs.
If the new DirecTV HDTiVo had been available, we probably would have opted for those; however, the transition to HR23s has been quite acceptable and easy. There is a lot to like about the new boxes and the active CE program is encouraging, just hurry up with the MRV national release please.
