[rj dorsett]

I am getting ready to switch to sat from cable and would like pros and cons on available DVR's. Would the Home Media Center and one regular DVR be a better solution than 4 reg DVR's? The cost is the same on startup. I have 8 hd tvs that need hookups so I will have to get 4 extra hd boxes for these.

 

[trh]

Welcome. If you want to hook up and run independently eight TVs with Directv you are going to need eight boxes. While the DVRs have two tuners and the HMC has five, they won't independently feed separately to other TVs without another receiver at those TVs.

 

[carl6]

The HR34 is RVU compliant, but I don't know if that is actually working in the real world yet. Even if it is, you would need RVU compliant tv's at every location and even then you would only be supporting five of your eight locations. Using four regular DVRs, you would only be supporting four of your eight locations. Using four DVRs plus four receivers would cover all eight locations.

Right now, you would want to consider either one HR34 and seven HD receivers, one HR34, one HR2x DVR, and six HD receivers, etc. The HD receivers will let you watch live tv at each of the tv locations, as well as allow you to watch recorded shows from either the HR34 or HR2x series DVRs (which can also watch from each other).

You need a DVR at any location where you want to be able to pause, rewind, fast forward live tv.

 

[rj dorsett]

I knew that I would have to have a receiver at each location I was just wondering if the 1-HR34,1-HR24 & 6-H25 be an advantage over 4-HR24 & 4-H25's

 

[trh]

Depends on how many TVs you want to be able to use (watching recorded video) at once.

With one HR34 and one HR24, you can only have 4 of your 6 H25 receivers streaming recorded shows from your two DVRs. With 4 HR24s each one of your 4 H25s can be watching recorded materials from the DVRs (EDIT: but if person #1 wants to watch a recording from DVR #1, then no one else can remotely watch anything from DVR #1 -- they'll have to watch from #2 - #4).

But some people don't like having that many DVRs; DirecTV doesn't have a consolidated "to do" list or consolidated series links.

 

[Jerry_K]

Just bite the bullet and put in 2 HR34s and 6 HR24s. As far as Series Links and To Do Lists, I ran five DirecTiVos on Sat and never had problems keeping track of Season passes. To Do list on TiVo is really not necessary because they never miss a recording. I had cable with five Series 3 TiVos and again never a problem with Season Passes. When you have a plethora of tuners having a few duplicate Series Links until you discover them and fix it is just a minor annoyance. And if two folks want to watch the same thing at the same time then duplication would be just fine.

 

[rj dorsett]

Thanks for all the input. I think I've decided to go with 1-HR34 2-HR24's and 5-H25's. There are only 3 of us living there now so that would probably cover us. Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought I read on here somewhere that you could set up the H25 to be a RVU client on the HR34 and have trick play capabilty on that H25 receiver.

 

[Drucifer]

But would the H25 acting like a RVU client for the HMC lose MRV with the other DVR?

 

[rj dorsett]

Well I'm new to satellite so thats a question that I can't answer.

 

[carl6]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought I read on here somewhere that you could set up the H25 to be a RVU client on the HR34 and have trick play capabilty on that H25 receiver.

I don't know if that is true or not, but worst case is you can record the show then use trick play while playing the recording, so you in effect get trick play, and with only a very minor delay from live.