Customer Reviews

DIRECTV HD Receiver (Lease)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

If you like spontaneous resets during your bowl parties, this is the receiver for you! There's nothing better than entertaining a room full of friends and family with hand- and shadow-puppets while this POS resets. Takes a full 5 minutes to cycle through the reboot and DirecTV initialization. Meanwhile, you get a blank or blue screen on your HDTV! Count on 20-50 of these resets during any given football weekend.

It just now reset again during my Rose Bowl party!

Here's the best part: DirecTV knows about the problem! And has done nothing to fix it, just keeps selling them like hotcakes to unsuspecting buyers like you.

Allows you to receive DirecTV's HD channels, can attach OTA antenna to fill in the HD channels that DirecTV doesn't offer (yet). relatively easy-to-use interface.

Good: Automatically switches to the best resolution for each HD station; very clear picture and sound quality with HD channels, lots of outputs, including HDMI for digital to digital throughput.

Bad: DirecTV's HD receivers have the reputation (deserved, unfortunately) of having dropout problems. Even installers admit that these boxes will occasionally drop audio for 10-20 seconds, and often at the same time either pixelize the image or drop the signal entirely to a blue screen. This usually occurs just as the mystery you've been watching for 45 minutes is about to be revealed. Mine also reset the favorite channels every week or two; I'd notice because I would press the channel-up button but nothing would happen. This only happens if there are no channels to move to. I'd go through the tedium of picking the 80 favorite channels I wanted from the 600 available, but it would clear them again within a few weeks.

I had to have DirecTV replace my box after I documented 1-2 dropouts every watched hour; that was up to 40 interrupted hours in a 20-hour viewing month. It has gotten better, but I still have occasional sound dropouts every week. If I didn't get free DirecTV with my home rental every month, I'd probably give up and switch to cable.

Bottom line: It's what you need to get HD from DirecTV. Just don't expect it to be perfect

Yes, of course this isn't a DVR, Neither Amazon nor Directv descriptions say that it is. I got this as a second HD receiver (see my other review of the HR20-700 DVR as well) for a bedroom where I didn't need the recording capability, the HDMI output to my 30" Samsung is spectacular. This one seems a little slower than the HR20 version, but I may not have the proper software version. Overall, I like it. (it replaces a Samsung SIR-TS160 which was only 3 LNB cabable)

I guess I got the good one. I've had none of the drop out problems and while I had a problem with the system being VERY slow initially, I called DirecTV and reset the box and it's been great for the last few weeks. The picture is very good, the speed of the system is good, and I've had absolutely NO drop outs of either audio or video since having the system (about 3 months).

As I say, I'm guessing I got the good one (at least for now) but I have absolutely no complaints with the box.

Now if we can just go back to having FREE TV like we had years ago. There's something about paying for television and still having to sit through commercials! :-(

My gosh, were to begin when talking about DirecTV and their equipment. I was a Dish TV (satellite) user for 5 years, but then last year bought a HD TV and went with DirecTV instead of Dish because DirecTV had more HD channels available at the time. A huge, huge mistake. I had this HD receiver for just 6 months and it stopped working.

I made several phone calls to customer service before I could get them to finally agree to send me a new receiver. DirecTV customer service was a nightmare. The support person I spoke with always was a person from a foreign country. They seemed to have trouble understanding me, and sadly, I had trouble understand them, so dealing with DirecTV on this problem became a real frustration. Finally, DirecTV agreed to send me another receiver. Guess what, that receiver was also bad.

So now I had to go through the struggle of dealing with DirecTV customer service again. Finally, they agreed the new receiver they sent me was also bad, so they agreed to send out a DirecTV service rep with a new receiver.

The service rep was very nice and installed another receiver, and boxed up the two bad ones so he could take them back. But guess what, when the service rep went to set up the new receiver it also did not work. I thought this is just unbelievable. The service rep told me that DirecTV was having a lot of trouble with this particular line of receivers, and said that he had a refurbished older HD receiver that he would install. So he installed the older refurbished one, it worked, and I am still using that old receiver.

But here is another catch with DirecTV. I found out a moth later, that even though the original HD receiver that DirecTV sold me was still under warranty and even though it was one that DirecTV knew had a lot of problems, DirecTV had the gall to reset my contract at the point I finally got the old refurbished HD receiver installed for another 2-year period of time!

I can not wait for my "reset" 2-year period of time to be over with DirecTV so I can switch back to Dish TV. In fact, I will switch back to Dish TV even if they still offer fewer HD channels than DirecTV!

The first one I had mysteriously stopped receiving local channels, so they replaced it. The second one developed distorted tinny audio, and then a tendency to reset spontaneously. The screen goes gray, and then the box goes through a five minute satellite download cycle. That was real fun during game 7, inning 9 of the world series.

The unit gets scorching hot, and I once had to reinsert the ID card several times to get it to come back to life. These and other experiences with DirecTV have completely weened me off of television over the last year, and frankly, I am not missing it.

I have had two of DTV's HD receivers for approximately 10 months. I've had 5 service calls from techs, 2 boxes swapped out and i am currently having problems with both existing boxes. One box drops the sound and the other drops the picture first and then the sound, and must be rebooted to work again.

I have had 4 including a HD DVR fail within the last 6 months! 2 were replaced, but when the other 2 failed within 1 week, I was told they now required a service man to come out and check, at my expense! ($49.00) I declined and shut them off. Like all big companies, the service does drop down. Still better than dISH.

I own the receiver for almost a month and it has been working great. There are no pauses or lags, and it brings a much better HD experience than I expected.

Stay away from this receiver and direct tv in general. Had heard all the hype by cable companies, online reviews, etc. but decided to give it a try. Big waste of time.
First the company will blatantly lie to you about what you will receive in high def. For example they'll tell you that you're going to get your local ABC, CBS, ABC affiliates in high-def even if they know better. Then once they've roped you in they admit the truth but give you absolutely no recourse. Why purchase the subscription to only find that you can't watch the super bowl, world series, etc. in high-def? I mean watching baby elephants in the sahara is nice in discovery HD but not too many people have "baby elephant watching parties" while super bowl parties are the norm.
I was a subscriber for less than 48 hours before I opted out to avoid the early termination fee. The receiver itself was below average with the above bugs noted. Particularly annoying were the exceptionally long wait times while it downloaded software updates and re-booted the system. On average took 4- 6 minutes while staring at a blue screen.
Customer service? Non-existent. Rude and un-helpful. Spoke with 8 representatives before I finally got the truth regarding my particular situation and then was berated by this representative and told what a good company Direct TV was and my upset wasn't justified.