Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Worked great, but then BOOM, February 3, 2010
This review is from: RCA DIRECTV System DRD435RH - Satellite TV receiver - DIRECTV (Electronics)
I got this unit to use with DirecTV in 2002. It performed very well. Occasionally, it crashed, and had to be unplugged for a few seconds to be reset. This happened only every few months, so it wasn't a big deal. Sometimes the box responded slowly to the remote, but it fixed itself after a few hours. The menu operation was close to perfect. I liked this practically trouble-free thing, until February 3, 2010.
That morning, I was in the office and heard what sounded like an M80 firecracker in the living room. The dog ran into the hallway in a panic. I went to see what made the noise. Smoke was pouring out of the DRD435RH receiver. The room was filled with it and it smelled really weird. I unplugged the very hot box, unhooked the cables and tossed it outside. I suspected a voltage hit, but nothing else was damaged. VCR, DVD, digital converter box, DVR, TV sets, computers, everything was fine. The UPS didn't beep or show anything wrong. The receiver simply chose that moment to explosively die. I looked inside and it was black and melted in places. It may have started a fire if I didn't work at home. As it is, the failure was mildly inconvenient and DirecTV is sending a new box.
So, this was a wonderful product for eight years until it literally blew up.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
mostly fine, hangs periodically, May 2, 2009
This review is from: RCA DIRECTV System DRD435RH - Satellite TV receiver - DIRECTV (Electronics)
I've had one of these for a few years, which I bought to replace my original DirecTV receiver which had died. It was relatively simple to set up - I had to call DirecTV to activate it, and they needed to send me a replacement access card, so it took a couple of days. I have it hooked up to a mythtv DVR through a tv tuner card. Mostly this setup works fine. I can change channels via the serial port, picture is fine, not much else to say.
However, every now and then it just hangs. Picture goes black. Changing channels doesn't do anything. Only way to fix it is to pull the plug for 30 seconds or so, plug it back in and wait a minute for it to reboot/rescan. this doesn't happen very often ... maybe 10 or 20 times in the few years I've owned it, and I can go months sometimes with no problem.
For many users this would be fine ... if you are just watching TV live, for example, you'll immediately notice and can just go pull the plug for a bit, though you'll wind up missing a couple of minutes of your show. For me using it in a DVR it is frustrating, as I might not watch my recorded programs for a while and by the time I do there may be several days of recordings that quietly failed. I've missed watching a number of shows that were important to me.
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