[mchero]

Been a long time Comcast customer for 10+ years with two Tivo HD's in the house. Was getting really frustrated with the lack of Tivo upgrades plus the fact every time I'd get a Comcast bill the price would go up! Had the bundle & dropped everything but Cable modem. My Fairpoint DSL was the only other option.... No thanks!


Talking to a Directv sales rep at out local Sam's Club I was really impressed with all the Directv hardware. The five tuner HD DVR was a must have but I ended up with the HR24-500 in the living room, two HD boxes and two standard boxes. I was surprised that the standard boxes could not see the HR24-500. Thus the reason for the 2nd HD box. Will the standard set top boxes ever be able to play with the Whole Home system?

I'm at work now but when I get home I'll update my signature with all the hardware I'm running at home. I'm a bit lost on this SWiM device everyone is talking about. Is the SWiM up on the oval dish? I have just one coax run from the dish to the power panel in the basement. I believe the installer put in a splitter that injects power into the coax and installed one of those DECCA boxes behind the HR24 with my Comcast cable modem.

The system runs like a champ. I'm very impressed with the installation, programming and picture quality. Now I need to get the recordings off my 2 HD Tivos and sell them! Tivo was a vast improvement over the Comcast hardware but the new DirecTV Whole Home system blows Tivo out of the water!

If I recorded a program on the living room Tivo I could watch it in the bedroom but I'd first have to transfer the recording to the bedroom DVR. A HD program would stream just fast enough to watch while transferring BUT not fast enough to skip commercials. I started recording most of my programming in SD. The fact I could not delete or record on the living room Tivo from the bedroom Tivo was real frustrating. I'm not saying Tivo was bad but it's starting to fall behind technology wise. Yes they recently came out with new Tivo tuners but I was not willing to flip the cost of two new Tivos.


I would have liked to have gotten the HR34 but I'm OK with my current hardware. Perhaps when the bugs are worked out of the HR34 I'll request an upgrade.

Thanks for listening all! This is a great forum!

Robert
Concord NH :grin:

 

[Davenlr]

My only suggestion would be to get the HR34 now, rather than later, as it will restart your two year contract if you upgrade later (if that is an issue). It also has twice the hard drive space as the HR24-500, which might be an issue with all those other rooms.

Have no idea about the SD stuff, I refuse to watch SD

 

[mchero]

Thanks for the reply Davenlr. Should I call or can I request on-line?

 

[dpeters11]

I'd call. I also think it's fairly safe to say your SD boxes will never do whole home. I'm assuming you don't have an R22.

 

[Davenlr]

Thanks for the reply Davenlr. Should I call or can I request on-line?

I would speak with the case management department. Tell them you ordered an HR34, but the installer installed an HR24 (which is I think what you said happened), and tell them you really wanted the HR34 instead. Will probably cost you about $99 more $.

Nothing you can really do online after the fact, other than ordering one from and online retailer for full lease price $399.

If case management cannot help you, call back and say Cancel at the first two AUTOMATED prompts, and then you will be connected with retention dept, and explain you did not get what you ordered.

Also advise them you did not order any SD boxes, since they are not whole home compatible, and they will probably move the HR24 to one of those rooms (giving you the HR34 and the HR24 as a backup DVR, which both will be able to share on whole home).

It sounds like the sales rep just talked you into one thing, and then put down something else on your order. Being new, you would have no idea what box was which until the installer was finished and you wondered why your DVR only had two tuners instead of 5, and why two rooms cannot share the video

 

[Justin85]

HR34 is going to cost you a small fortune ($399 or more) unless you swing a deal with retention, since you are brand new.

Edit: Davenlr beat me to it... Do as he says above.

 

[west99999]

You have already accepted this equipment most likely will not get an HR34 without jumping through ALOT of hoops and also possible charges. Most likely not worth the headache if you are happy with your equipment.

 

[trh]

From the first post, you currently have an HR24, 2 HD receivers and 2 SD receivers. That is 6 tuners. If you swap out the 24 with an HMC 34, you'll have 9 tuners which means they will have to come out and make some hardware changes to your dish and install a SWiM 16 multiswitch (you won't have 1 wire coming off the LNB, you'll have 4 going to the SWiM16 and then one wire going to each of your boxes.

So DirecTV won't be able to just send you the 34 for you to install; it is going to require a tech to do the changes.

And BTW, Welcome!

 

[mchero]

Thanks everyone for the replys.

 

[jdspencer]

Personally, I'd replace one of the SD receivers with another HRxx DVR. Then you'd have four tuners.

 

[n3vino]

I was able to swap out an sd box for an H25 at no cost since I was within the two week window since installation. They did extend my contract for two years, but no big deal since I was a new customer anyway at that point. The Op might still get the new customer price on the HR34

 

[BoostedBlazer]

Personally, I'd replace one of the SD receivers with another HRxx DVR. Then you'd have four tuners.

X2!! With external HDD attached to each and you could still do it for around $400 and have 2TB of HDD space for storage!