[bman3333]

I had my DirecTV service re-started yesterday and just wanted to post my happiness with the HR34 and H25 receivers we now have, which both received the spring firmware update immediately. Wow, what a speed difference compared to our old HR22's. The whole-home DVR service works flawlessly and I am glad I came back.

We switched to ATT Uverse last November to try the new kid in our neighborhood. We were about 1900' from the DSLAM on RJ-11, but were still able to get the highest TV profile (essentially 3 HD and 1 SD simultaneous streams, plus 12 mb Internet). The STB hardware was new and worked well, and I thought the UI, on demand, whole home DVR and picture quality were great. However, we experienced persistent, re-occurring line issues due to the noise margin being barely about the service limit of 12 db, which caused our gateway to lose it's synch and reboot several times daily. We finally decided to cancel the service after the 5th technician visit did not improve the reliability last weekend.

The DirecTV installer made an interesting statement about how he hates installing anything older than an HR24 because the legacy hardware is so much slower than the current STB's. Why on earth would DirecTV still be installing older STB's on new customer installs? This just seems to invite customer dissatisfaction. :nono:

 

[AlanSaysYo]

Just curious - since you were only away from DirecTV for 6 months, what did they charge you for the new receivers?

I assume cancelling Uverse in that same amount of time resulted in a salty disconnection fee...

 

[bman3333]

No contract with Uverse, so no ETF. The customer service retention person at AT&T was very sympathetic and did not give me a hard time, since our account had so many service calls noted.

I was charged $99, plus $19.95 "s&h" for HR34 and H25. I did not qualify for the "new" customer promotion of free NFL ticket and a $10 bill credit in year two. I did receive the free HD for two years credit for auto pay and emails.