- Average user rating: 2.0 stars out of 40 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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1 out of 2 people found this review helpful
3.5 stars
"I just got a DirecTV HR21 last night. The jury's still out."
Pros: Elegant design. Nicely formatted menus and program guide. Clever program search and guide sort options. Easy setup and configuration changes. Beautifully designed remote control with "soft feel."
Cons: Occasional slow (sometimes PAINFULLY slow) response to remote commands. Brand not included in older remote control config codes. Remote lacks config codes for Sony BDP or Toshiba HD-DVD.
Summary: I just got DirecTV installed last night after years with Bright House, where I also had an HD DVR from Scientific Atlanta.
The jury is still out on the HR21. It lacks some useful features of the SA unit, including a clever "skip back" function that would backtrack just a few seconds, allowing tremendous ease in restarting your viewing after FF'ing through commercials, and a "Go Straight to Live" button that would immediately jump to the live programming.
The HR21 has far superior menus and guides, however, and a particularly useful program guide with many different sorts and selections, all of which are useful.
Last night, however, it indicated that I was not subscribed to a premium HD package that I had in fact subscribed to. A call this morning to DirecTV's customer service confirmed that I was subscribed and in the middle of the call I found the missing channels working, too fast for the support person to have actually done anything. I found this curious and will keep tabs on it.
But there is a problem with sluggish, sometimes EXTREMELY slow, response to the remote. Once this afternoon after using it to "learn-program" my Onkyo home theater system's remote it became so slow that I thought it was broken. For a couple of commands it literally took over a minute for the box to respond to the simple command to display the guide. I actually rebooted the system to try to clear what seemed to be "cobwebs" but this had only marginal effect. However, tuning it to an SD channel for a few minutes brought it back up to its nevertheless sluggish normal speed. It works faster when watching SD programming than HD programming.
In my purely speculative opinion, there is something wrong with the way it processes data, possibly a too slow or too small cache or inadequate RAM.
It's shortcomings regarding programming buffering -- only one buffer -- were precisely as on the Scientific Atlanta unit.
DirectTV's channel lineup, particularly for HD programming, is so far beyond anyone else's, however, that I guess the HD-DVR's shortcomings have to be endured until they come up with a better model or renew their relationship with Tivo.
The capabilities and functionality of the HR21 is similar to and competitive with the equipment offered by other cable and satellite providers, as far as I know. Only Tivo is materially superior.
Where to buy
DIRECTV HR21 (DIRECTV Plus HD DVR):
$169.00
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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