DIRECTV HR21 (DIRECTV Plus HD DVR)

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  4.0 stars

  "Works as advertised"

  by jahpeople on October 6, 2008

  Pros: HD DVR
  uh ... remote

  Cons: Sorta slow, but I'm used to it.

  Summary: I switched from Dish Network to Directv without having any great justification for doing so. If anything I was just curious about Dtv's service and stb. Installation and activation went smoothly, and I was up and running in no time.
  
  First thing I noticed, firmware update ... incredibly slow firmware update. Once rebooted with newest firmware took another 7 minutes or so to be usable. By this time I was SO ready to watch some tv. Results are good. HD looks decent, as good as any satellite or cable I've seen, DVR functions well, and the various sorting and browsing options are convenient.
  
  A few Gripes
  1. Box is kind of slow. This box replaced my DN vip722, which was also slow, and plagued by a ton of other problems besides. This one seems faster but you'll still wait a full second, at peak performance, for remote commands to have any effect. Was hoping for something a little faster, seems like it's still in beta stage.
  
  2. Bad menu layout, bad guide design, bad "info". Navigating this thing took some getting used to. It's much easier now that I know where everything is, but as with most stb's the process was far from intuitive, or painless.
  
  3. Media sharing! Sucks! Will pretty much only play pics and mp3s as more popular file formats are incompatible with the box. Slow as all get out anyway.
  
  4. On demand? Seriously? Just awful. Limited selections that will only even display half of the time consist mainly of karaoke tracks and short 3-5 minute clips from full length shows. It's a bragging right to have on demand on satellite, even though it relies on your high speed internet connection to do all the heavy lifting, but this service seems like it was designed as an afterthought.
  
  5. Channel Lineup -
  This is one of those that is a personal preference thing, but directv is guilty of the same crimes as the other satellite company and the dreaded cable company; padding the heck out of their channel lineups. There are a ton of HD channels, but only a bare handful are actually active, the majority are labeled PPV, NFL, NHL, or some like nomenclature.
  
  On top of the obvious fudging of the number of HD channels, there's the horrible organisation of channels, and just outright dumb networks. Some channels appear multiple times, and I don't mean twice ... like 4 times here. Also what's with all the shopping networks? I don't need to browse 15 different networks selling shoddy wares to know that I won't be purchasing said wares. Lame.
  
  Final Thoughts:
  
  While I've included some personal gripes about this specific box, and taken the opportunity to make a few jabs at all service providers, in the end the HR21 is a very decent piece of hardware. It looks pretty on the outside, performs admirably on the inside, and the all-around experience is fairly good. Still the box's slow performance is a nuisance.
  
  For some the exclusion of an OTA input was a deal breaker, not so for me. I've viewed satellite and broadcast of my own local affiliates side by side, and they look identical ... to me. Until 1080p at a full 30Mbps bitrate MINIMUM becomes standard, this is about as good as it gets for HD tv. Recommended.
  
  Updated on Oct 30, 2008

  Wow I feel foolish, my box is the HR22 not the HR21 ... oops. Anyway disregard.

  Thank you for submitting your feedback!

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• 2 replies to this review

• reply by: jahpeople on December 8, 2008

  Re: switch from DN to DTV. I do miss having the Travel Channel HD, but I've sort of gotten over it. The on demand feature has many more options now than were available on install, due to some incredibly slow list loading, not sure what that's all about, but I've actually grown used to having ondemand now.
  
  Right now I'm eager for the release of 1080p content. A recent update brought 1080p resolutions to this box, and I downloaded a test trailer for The Hulk to check it out. It looks great, not as crisp as blu-ray but it's much better than anything else on cable/satellite. My only fear is that 1080p will be reserved for PPV content for a long time, which is a shame.
  
  With DN I would routinely lose signal during heavy rain, light snow, and sometimes even heavy cloud cover. To date, I have not lost signal once with DTV. I don't know what they're doing differently, it's possibly I'm simply better situated geographically to receive DTV, but I never lose signal.

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• reply by: drumstorm on November 2, 2008

  Do you regret your decision to switch from DN to DTV?

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