Rob G

DTV Offers Tivo Users An Upgrade And A Headache

Well, you called yourself an "idiot," so I'll leave the judgments to others, but I certainly wouldn't consider removing a valuable feature like the OTA tuner an incremental upgrade (from HR20 to HR21). The OTA tuners in my HR10-250, which picked up the local HD broadcasts for me were what finally allowed me to use Picture-in-Picture cabability in my TV set (to monitor concurrent football games) after 15 years of having that feature touted in every set I bought. And, of course, they're especially handy when bad weather causes the dish to go dark. I would hope that after a long and fruitful partnership with Tivo, DirecTV would have a DVR that is more similar than those pitiful Motorola boxes that the cable companies pawn off as "just like Tivo," but I suspect the features and functions aren't quite as powerful and refined as Tivo, which is now on version 9.2, I believe, of it's software. Doest the HR20/21 let you record a show on one TV and watch it on another, like my Series 2 Tivos do? Do they let you transfer them to your home computer's hard disk to preserve them so they won't be deleted, and then let you transfer them back for viewing on your TV at your leisure? I suspect not.

DTV Offers Tivo Users An Upgrade And A Headache

Tivo HD is not an "option" for Comcast. Tivo HD takes a Cable Card that Comcast must supply you by law (effective July 31). The "option" that Comcast hasn't rolled out yet is offering Tivo software on on its own Motorola DVRs, which presumably saves you money up front by not requiring you to buy the $299 Tivo HD and paying a monthly fee to Tivo for its service.

I was also a very happy DirecTivo user (HR10-250), who switched to my cable company's (RCN) Motorola DVR and found it horribly inferior to my old Tivo. I've since bought an TivoHD which works great with cable, and appreciate it now more than ever, having lived without it for six months. ...