[dpeters11]

If you're on a receiver and hit record, it will ask you which DVR to record to. If that DVR isn't available (already recording two things during that time), it will tell you and you can select another one. This cannot be done from one DVR to another, only a receiver. You cannot access the series manager or to do list.

The H25 is really fast, the H24 should be as well, the others not so much. The biggest limitation of course is that you can't pause/rewind live TV and the no access to the DVR lists.

DirecTV won't lease you more than one HR34.

 

[BlackDynamite]

Directv won't lease more than 1 HR34? That's pretty lame. That throws a major monkey wrench into my plans.

Any idea if they plan to change that anytime soon? Or is there some kind of workaround?

It seems crazy that they wouldn't let customers get the latest and greatest equipment.

 

[dpeters11]

I believe you can get one from a reseller, but DirecTV won't send more than one themselves. I got my first one from Solid Signal, and it's not even an option to add to my account.

 

[BlackDynamite]

So if I can only get 1 HR34 from Directv, will the AM21 work with an HR 21? Our what HD DVR do I need in order to use the AM21?

Also, does Directv sell/lease the AM21 or do I have to get that from a 3rd party?

And which HD DVR is the fastest? My HR 21s are slow as molasses, even with the new interface.

I guess I'll have to plan to get one HR 34 from Directv, another (or maybe 2) from a 3rd party, and the rest will have to be the fastest available HD DVR that will work with my 3D TVs and an AM21.

Will Directv hook all if this up if I buy some of it from a 3rd party?

 

[dpeters11]

The AM21 works with all the HR boxes except the HR20 (where it isn't needed, but no 3D) The fastest DVR is the HR24. You can get an AM21 directly from DirecTV or anybody really. They are not leased, so there is no issue buying one from any reliable seller.

 

[BlackDynamite]

So lets say I buy an HR 34 (or 2) from a 3rd party before I move. Lets also say that when I schedule the move with Directv, I order an HR 34 from Directv, and somehow get them to swap my HR 21s for HR 24s, and buy a few AM21s from Directv at the same time.

Would Directv setup all the stuff (HR 34s) I got from the 3rd party as well?

 

[Skiman]

So lets say I buy an HR 34 (or 2) from a 3rd party before I move. Lets also say that when I schedule the move with Directv, I order an HR 34 from Directv, and somehow get them to swap my HR 21s for HR 24s, and buy a few AM21s from Directv at the same time.

Would Directv setup all the stuff (HR 34s) I got from the 3rd party as well?

Any authorized installer won't be able to. In order to successfully close their work order, everything they're installing needs to be on their original work order (and before everyone else jumps on me and starts screaming that's not true, I'm giving the technically correct answer - I know there's a longer answer that goes waaaaaaay down the rabbit hole, but let's not go there!)

The other problem is you can't call up and say you want to swap your 21s for 24s. DTV can never guarantee a certain model of receiver, only the type of receiver (HD, HD/DVR, SD, SD/DVR). And if you're wondering how anyone can guarantee an HR34, it's because that receiver type is an HMC (Home Media Center).

 

[BlackDynamite]

Any authorized installer won't be able to. In order to successfully close their work order, everything they're installing needs to be on their original work order (and before everyone else jumps on me and starts screaming that's not true, I'm giving the technically correct answer - I know there's a longer answer that goes waaaaaaay down the rabbit hole, but let's not go there!)

The other problem is you can't call up and say you want to swap your 21s for 24s. DTV can never guarantee a certain model of receiver, only the type of receiver (HD, HD/DVR, SD, SD/DVR). And if you're wondering how anyone can guarantee an HR34, it's because that receiver type is an HMC (Home Media Center).

There has to be some way to specify receivers because they swapped my HR 20 for an HR 21 when the HR 20 didn't support 3D TVs.

How would you guys suggest I reach my end goal here? Should I just cancel the service and then order as a new customer from a local seller that promises to give me HR 24s and an HR 34, and see if I can bribe him to hook up a couple extra HR 34s?

It's kind of ridiculous that you have to jump through hoops the get the equipment you want. It seems like there would have to be an easy way.

 

[Getteau]

I guess after reading the thread I'm still confused as to what you are trying to accomplish. It sounds like you need to be able to connect 6 TV's to DirecTV and you currently have 3 HR21’s and are slaving 3 other TV’s off those 21’s.

Right now, HR34's are $400. You are talking about getting 3 of them, so $1200. Plus you will need to pay for the 3 additional RVU clients (at this point, that's an H receiver at $99 apiece). So for 6 TV's, you are talking about $1200+$300=$1500. On top of this, you would now be at 18 tuners, so you are looking at an SWM 32. IIRC, the 32's have to have 2 separate DECA clouds. Since everything is going to run over single wires, I'm not sure how you would get all the boxes see each other. Plus you lose the ability to pause/rewind at all the RVU clients.

On the flip side, you could go to Solid Signal and buy 6 - HR24's at $200 for a total of $1200. You stay under 16 tuners so you are in a single DECA cloud for MRV and will be able to see all shows on all receivers. You also get to pause/rewind from all locations. Down side, you have to manage 6 different playlists.

You could also skimp on the number of HR24's you need to buy by placing your existing 21's in places you don’t watch a lot of TV (i.e. your TV's that are slaves to the existing HR's.).

Or maybe I just misunderstood what you are trying to do and you can ignore everything I just typed above.

 

[BlackDynamite]

I guess after reading the thread I'm still confused as to what you are trying to accomplish. It sounds like you need to be able to connect 6 TV's to DirecTV and you currently have 3 HR21's and are slaving 3 other TV's off those 21's.

Right now, HR34's are $400. You are talking about getting 3 of them, so $1200. Plus you will need to pay for the 3 additional RVU clients (at this point, that's an H receiver at $99 apiece). So for 6 TV's, you are talking about $1200+$300=$1500. On top of this, you would now be at 18 tuners, so you are looking at an SWM 32. IIRC, the 32's have to have 2 separate DECA clouds. Since everything is going to run over single wires, I'm not sure how you would get all the boxes see each other. Plus you lose the ability to pause/rewind at all the RVU clients.

On the flip side, you could go to Solid Signal and buy 6 - HR24's at $200 for a total of $1200. You stay under 16 tuners so you are in a single DECA cloud for MRV and will be able to see all shows on all receivers. You also get to pause/rewind from all locations. Down side, you have to manage 6 different playlists.

You could also skimp on the number of HR24's you need to buy by placing your existing 21's in places you don't watch a lot of TV (i.e. your TV's that are slaves to the existing HR's.).

Or maybe I just misunderstood what you are trying to do and you can ignore everything I just typed above.

I don't know what a DECA is, it's way above my level of Directv knowledge, lol.

The end goal is 6 TVs and 2 slingboxes (and I don't want the slingboxes to interfere with TV watching on any of the TVs, but still able to broadcast live TV on both of them at the same time).

I can probably get the new customer pricing on all of this because I'm not under contract. I can cancel my account at any time, and then reorder the service when I move (which won't be for a few months).

So my ideal setup would just be an HR 34 on each TV and each slingbox. I now know that isn't feasible though so I'm thinking maybe 2 TVs get HR 34s, the other 4 TVs and 2 slingboxes each get an HR 24.

If that is too many tuners for DECA to work (whatever that means) then probably 1 HR 34 and the other 7 get HR 24s.

Is that feasible and still able to use whole home DVR?

 

[dpeters11]

There has to be some way to specify receivers because they swapped my HR 20 for an HR 21 when the HR 20 didn't support 3D TVs.

They can specify that you get or don't get a 20 that's about it.

The only thing I can think of on the HR34 front and get a SWM 16 with a second box is to go with a local installer, but it won't be a free install.

I am by no means an expert on the proposed setup, but I seem to remember that a SWM32 wasn't recommended, that it was better to cascade two SWM16s. Probably due to the 2 clouds on the 32.

 

[Getteau]

I don't know what a DECA is, it's way above my level of Directv knowledge, lol.

The end goal is 6 TVs and 2 slingboxes (and I don't want the slingboxes to interfere with TV watching on any of the TVs, but still able to broadcast live TV on both of them at the same time).

I can probably get the new customer pricing on all of this because I'm not under contract. I can cancel my account at any time, and then reorder the service when I move (which won't be for a few months).

So my ideal setup would just be an HR 34 on each TV and each slingbox. I now know that isn't feasible though so I'm thinking maybe 2 TVs get HR 34s, the other 4 TVs and 2 slingboxes each get an HR 24.

If that is too many tuners for DECA to work (whatever that means) then probably 1 HR 34 and the other 7 get HR 24s.

Is that feasible and still able to use whole home DVR?

Sorry, I combined a few things in that post. Let's take a look at the two individual pieces and then see how those two fit together. Forgive me if you already know a lot of this info. I also believe this is correct, but I'm sure others will chime in if I mixed anything up

The Single Wire Multi-Switch, SWM, is what you use to connect your receivers (think of it as a fancy coax splitter). On the SWM side, you have SWM 8's, 16's and 32's. The number refers to the number of tuners each specific SWM adapter will support. For example, a SWM 8 can support 8 tuners. Those tuners could be 8 individual H receivers, or 4 HR DVRs or a combination of the two. The main thing to remember is that you can't have more tuners than the number your specific SWM supports. So in a case with 3-HR34's, you are looking at 15 total tuners. So you could use a SWM 16 and still have one spare tuner for something like an H25 receiver. In this example, you would have 4 physical boxes, 3-HR34's and 1-H25, but you would be using 16 tuners. So don't confuse receivers with tuners. If you added an HR24 to that mix instead of the H25, you would be using 17 tuners and an SWM 16 would be one tuner short (because the HR24 uses 2 tuners compared to the H25 that only uses 1 tuner). So you would have to go with an SWM 32 to get all the receivers to receive the DTV signal. Under the covers, an SWM 32 is just two individual SWM 16's.

DECA stands for DirecTV Ethernet Coax Adapter. On the HR 23's and below, you need the DECA to take the network signal from the network port on the box and place it on the coax along with the signal from the dish (The HR24 and 34 have the DECA built into the box). So basically, you have a network cable that connects to the HR21's network port, that network cable then connects to the network port on the DECA and the DECA connects to the COAX line.
Here's a picture of one. If you look at it, you'll see the coax from the dish connects to the left hand side. On the right hand side, you have a piece of coax that connects to the HR. It's hard to see, but there is also a network port on the right hand side that you use to connect a network cable between the DECA and the HR's network port.
http://www.amazon.com/DirecTV-DECA-Network-Adapter-HR20/dp/B0041INCYI
If you need to connect your receivers to the Internet for On-Demand or connect your receivers together for the whole home service, you will need DECA to do it (connecting without DECA is a whole other situation and isn't officially supported by DTV).

So how do DECA and SWM fit together? The DECA cloud is the private network the receivers use to talk to each other over the coax cables. The coax cables are all connected to each other through the SWM adapters. So as long as the receivers are going through the same SWM adapter, they can talk to each other and share content. However, as I understand it, an SWM 32 is actually 2 physically separate SWM 16's wrapped up in a single package. Because of that, you end up with two private networks (one on each SWM 16). Since you have two networks, the devices on one network can't see or talk to the devices on the other network. That would cause you issues in a whole home setup because you would want all the receivers to see/talk to each other. That's why dpeters recommended cascading two SWM 16's together instead of using a SWM 32 (I didn't realize you could do that, so that was news to me).

I know that doesn't answer your question as to what to order, but I hope it may explain some of the stuff that goes on behind the scenes and affects how you can hook everything together.

The other thing to note; when DTV rolls an installer to your house, they know how many tuners you currently have and how many tuners you will need with the new equipment. They then build the installation order to include the correct SWM adapter. Also, in the past, the SWM 16's were very expensive and not all installers had them on their trucks (unless the job they were going to required it). I can only imagine how scare the SWM 32's are. So what I am trying to say is don't expect your installer to have an SWM 16 or 32 on his truck if he doesn't know ahead of time that you need that many tuners. To say it another way, don't let the installer show up thinking he's going to need an SWM 8 for the job and then spring 2 more 34's on him and expect he'll be able to get them all connected to the dish (let alone connected for whole home service).

 

[west99999]

Under the covers, an SWM 32 is just two individual SWM 16's.

Not trying to be rude but if you are not sure of something you should keep it to yourself a swm32 is 4 seperate swm8's in one housing and they are used for commercial jobs they dont communicate with each other through the 4 seperate swm8's and a residential account in NO case will get one authorized to be installed by a DTV tech.

 

[BlackDynamite]

Oh I was thinking that connecting all of my receivers to my home ethernet network would be good enough for the whole home DVR.

It's a good thing I decided to ask about this here. You guys have been a lot of help.

So basically, it sounds like my best bet is to buy an HR 34 from a 3rd party. Then call a local Directv authorized retailer/installer and order the service as a new customer. That way I can request the HR 24s and tell them no deal if they can't provide them. I should also tell them ahead of time I want an HR 34 in addition to the 6 HR 24s. And I should tell them I have an additional HR 34 that they will also need to set up, and tell them it needs to be a whole home DVR setup.

Hopefully the whole home DVR isn't limited to only 16 tuners. I'm looking at more than 16 tuners in every scenario.

 

[west99999]

Oh I was thinking that connecting all of my receivers to my home ethernet network would be good enough for the whole home DVR.

It's a good thing I decided to ask about this here. You guys have been a lot of help.

So basically, it sounds like my best bet is to buy an HR 34 from a 3rd party. Then call a local Directv authorized retailer/installer and order the service as a new customer. That way I can request the HR 24s and tell them no deal if they can't provide them. I should also tell them ahead of time I want an HR 34 in addition to the 6 HR 24s. And I should tell them I have an additional HR 34 that they will also need to set up, and tell them it needs to be a whole home DVR setup.

Hopefully the whole home DVR isn't limited to only 16 tuners. I'm looking at more than 16 tuners in every scenario.

If you are currently a customer you will not qualify for any new customer deals until 2 years after you have no longer been with DTV. Also if you buy an HR34 from a dealer then call for a new install it will not get added to the order so most likely unless you pay the installer he wont hook it up cause he wont get paid for it.

 

[Bartman94]

There is no practical reason to have more than one HR34 in your house as with more than one you'll consume all of your tuners with a quickness while not having access to all 8 of the televisions in your configuration. You also don't want to go over 16 total tuners because just as Getteau stated if you go with a SWM32 you're looking at 2 separate networks that won't be able to communicate with each other. For your setup BlackDynamite here is the way you want to go:

1 HR34 HMC (5 tuners), 4 HR24 HD DVR's (8 tuners), and 3 H25 HD Receivers (3 tuners). This gives you a grand total of an even 16 tuners to stay within the parameters of a single network SWM16 system, and also gives you the 8 total receivers you're looking for to control all the TV's in your house without any of the those TV's being an RVU client.

And in this configuration you will be able to record up to 13 programs simultaneously, you'll have a total of 3TB of storage which equals 2,400 hours of SD programming or 600 hours of HD (not to mention even more if you want to add external hard drives). This will be ton of storage space and more tuners than you'll ever need at one time.

This is the perfect setup for what you're trying to accomplish BlackDynamite.

 

[dsw2112]

As a point of clarification -- a SWM32 if four SWM8's NOT bridged for DECA connectivity. They are also used for MDU's only. Two SWM16's are utilized when the tuner count exceeds 16 in a normal residential setting. The two separate networks will need to be bridged for all receivers to "see" each other.

 

[Getteau]

Not trying to be rude but if you are not sure of something you should keep it to yourself a swm32 is 4 seperate swm8's in one housing and they are used for commercial jobs they dont communicate with each other through the 4 seperate swm8's and a residential account in NO case will get one authorized to be installed by a DTV tech.

Thanks for the info. For some reason I thought I saw a post a long time ago, maybe in one of the first looks documents, that showed the 32 being 2-16's bolted together.

 

[BlackDynamite]

I can always sign up under my Wife's name if they won't let me get the new customer discount, I'm not worried about that.

So if I am understanding this correctly, I can potentially get 2 SWM16's and somehow bridge them together? And this would allow me to have more than 16 tuners (that can all see and talk to each other) in a whole home DVR?

I'm sure I can probably find some local retailer/installer to do it for me. I may get charged extra or whatever, but I'm sure someone will be happy to do it. I just want to make sure it's actually possible and I know what I want when I call them.

I was hoping to just go through Directv for it all but it now sounds liek that will be out of the question.

On that note, if I cancel my service with Directv and then call back to reorder it as a new customer, what would they charge me for the receivers that I have right now? Would they just send me the receivers comparable to what I have now at no charge? That would make the most sense if they don't want to treat me like a new customer. Or what would they charge me for me to get the same HR 21s that I have right now (presuming I send them back when I cancel)?

Also, what would Directv say if I bought an HR 34 somewhere else, ordered another one from them, and told them about the additional one I had, and asked them to install them both at the same time? I don't mean spring it on the tech when he gets there, but when I buy the HR 34 from Directv and schedule the install, if I tell them on the phone that I have another HR 34 I want them to install too. Would they do it or is that against the rules or something?

 

[Bartman94]

Just out of curiosity, are you planning on running a hotel or something with 6 RVU television clients in addition to 10 - 15 other non-RVU televisions? I am trying to figure out why you're so convinced you need more than one HR34 and a SWM32 system installed in a home. Before going through all this trouble of figuring out what you can order from who, and who can install what and when and this and that, why not keep it as simple as possible while still achieving the end result you're looking for?