Category: DirecTV

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DirecTV Product Information WeaKnees News

Now Selling LNBs and SWM LNBs Separately

We’ve been getting more and more requests for LNBs for DirecTV dishes. The LNB is the portion of the dish assembly that receives the signal from reflector and transmits it down to the receivers. We now sell both SWM LNBs and non-SWM LNBs separately.

sl5s-large

In many cases, if you have an AU9 reflector set up, you can switch the LNB to either go to or from a SWM system. So if you want to have a SWM dish, you could swap out the LNB (our SWM LNBs include the necessary power inserter) and then the one remaining wire coming off the dish would carry up to eight tuners-worth of data to make internal expansion easier, or to get two signals to a DVR that only has one wire.

Conversely, if you have a SWM dish and you want to go to a regular non-SWM dish, you can do that too. Why would you want to do that? The SWM dish is less expandable than a non-SWM dish with a SWM8. Using a standard 5LNB dish can enable more than eight tuners-worth of data (essentially, unlimited) with our SWM expander products.

Of course, another reason you might want a new LNB is just because you want channels that are available on a 5LNB system and you have a 3LNB system using the same reflector. So you could swap out with a 5LNB unit, and gain access to channels on the 110 and 119 satellites.

Finally, you might just need to replace a failing or broken LNB.

Please note that anytime you replace an LNB, you do risk mis-aligning the reflector.

And if you have more questions about SWM in general, please see the info over at SWM8.com.

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DirecTV Product Information

DirecTV Double Play – Dual Live Buffers on HR2x HD DVRs!

Well, it finally happened. DirecTV enabled dual live buffers on the DirecTV HD DVR. So that’s the HR20, HR21, HR22, HR23, and HR21 Pro. If you’ve got the latest software update, you can now have a buffer of two shows at once, without any fancy remote gymnastics.

If you’ve gotten the latest OS update, you’ll be seeing this screen soon:

double-play-1

Then, when you’re watching your first show, you just press the Down arrow, and you’ll see this screen:

double-play-3

Of course, I chose a bad program in the background there, because these results DON’T last. For whatever reason, DirecTV implemented this in a way that it dies on its own after two hours. So the next time you sit down at your TV, you’ve got to re-enable the feature. That’s as simple as just pressing the Down arrow and then OK again, but it seems silly, and it means that if you’re recording two shows at once, you don’t really get live buffers.

Here’s the screen with those details:

double-play-4

Anyway, even with a bit of a hitch, it’s still a great feature.

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Customer Contacts DirecTV TiVo News WeaKnees News

Another Customer Wish NOT Granted: DirecTV and DVD

While we’re on the theme of what customers want but they can’t get, we should put to rest another request: the DirecTV TiVo with DVD.

Yesterday’s installment concerned the request for an HD TiVo with DVD. That one can’t work at this point and probably in the future for technical reasons.

But the idea of a DirecTV DVR with an integrated DVD burner really, really could work for technical reasons. The issue here is more about copyright, and, in general, DirecTV’s unwillingness to push the envelope with content providers.

Why is this different from a standard TiVo with DVD which does, in fact, exist? The big reason is that on the Humax models that we sell (and on the older Pioneer and Toshiba TiVo models with DVD) the recordings are made from analog inputs. That means that the quality, while very good, isn’t quite as good as the all-digital quality of recordings to DirecTV TiVos and other DVRs and the HD TiVos with CableCARDs. If you take that all-digital signal and pump it to a DVD, then you’ve basically got a digital copy that’s pretty amazing. DirecTV doesn’t want to be the gatekeeper on that.

Of course, if that’s what you really want – all digital copy to a DVD – then there is a way to do it, just not with DirecTV. You can get a standalone TiVo or HD TiVo and copy your shows over a network to your PC or Mac, then burn them there. But DirecTV won’t help you there – at least, so far. There’s a chance that the upcoming DirecTV HD TiVo will have networking features . . .

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Customer Contacts DirecTV Product Information TiVo News TiVo Upgrade WeaKnees News

DirecTV HD TiVo Update

The update is:

No update. Sorry. We’re still hearing 2010.

Unfortunately, despite our best efforts to get some sort of update, we just can’t get anyone to talk about the release date. But we decided to post on the blog because we get SO many inquiries about this. We think this will be a very popular product.

Of course, since our two biggest interests are TiVo and DirecTV, we may be uniquely positioned to hear from everyone who wants information. But it’s a lot of people, generating a lot of pent-up demand.

If you want the latest news (when there actually is some), we’d recommend you:

1 – Sign up on TiVo’s list for DirecTV information.

2 – Sign up on our general list for TiVo and DirecTV news.

3 – Watch this blog.

4 – Follow us on Twitter.

As soon as we have any news, we’ll likely post it to here and on Twitter, and if it’s substantial, we’ll probably send out an email.

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DirecTV Product Information TiVo News

New TiVo HD Box Note

I just opened up a new pallet of TiVo HD units, and I saw this new graphic on the boxes:

New TiVo HD Box Graphic
New TiVo HD Box Graphic

So this made me think, are people mistakenly buying these boxes, assuming they’ll work with satellite TV? Or is TiVo changing the packaging so that they can distinguish it with the DirecTV HD TiVo when it ships?

I’m hoping that this means the latter, and that this also means they’re working on designing the packaging for it. Judging by the amount of requests we’re already getting for it, the DirecTV HD TiVo should be a pretty big hit.