# Software Update?



## Duffycoug (Feb 12, 2007)

I've been waiting for my 6.2 to update to 6.4a, but I guess it's not going to happen? I have it connected to phone line and it makes daily calls without problem and gets the service downloads, etc.


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## Admdata (May 10, 2010)

You will be there forever, Directv no longer updates directivo's though the sat anymore, I called directv and that is what they told me. At the time I was running 3.1 software. Now I have 6.2 (much better) will upgrade to 6.4 once I buy a new hard drive. With instantcake.

The only dvr's that directv does update is there own brand on crappy interfaced ones (yes I have one of those) my sister in law uses it!


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## shibby191 (Dec 24, 2007)

Admdata said:


> The only dvr's that directv does update is there own brand on crappy interfaced ones (yes I have one of those) my sister in law uses it!


To be fair, the SD DirecTivo's haven't been sold for over 5 years now and the last update was a few years ago. You can't expect a company to continue to offer updates on the sat bandwidth many years after they should have already been updated.


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## catocony (Nov 14, 2006)

Why not? There aren't that many users trying to get an old DirecTivo cranking again and they should be very happy that users are still happy with the old gear.

Besides, how much does it really take to deliver updates to a handful of units a week? Just like in the hot thread about no dial-in number for setup, that is just dumb not to provide support to loyal users who stick with old gear when they can easily move to new stuff.


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## shibby191 (Dec 24, 2007)

catocony said:


> Why not? There aren't that many users trying to get an old DirecTivo cranking again and they should be very happy that users are still happy with the old gear.
> 
> Besides, how much does it really take to deliver updates to a handful of units a week? Just like in the hot thread about no dial-in number for setup, that is just dumb not to provide support to loyal users who stick with old gear when they can easily move to new stuff.


I'm not familiar with the dial-in issue, but Tivo provides local dial in numbers, not DirecTV.

Also some of you may not realize that DirecTV will no longer even activate non IRD units anymore which includes a few of the earlier DirecTivo's. You have to drop support at some point. Should Microsoft continue to provide updates for Windows 98 or NT? Millions of people still use it afterall? At some point you have to cut the cord.

Honestly I don't know why the updates are no longer in the stream but it shouldn't surprise anyone considering how old these units are. DirecTV doesn't provide updates for *any* of their older receivers that aren't current generation. Why should DirecTivo's be "special" and continue to get updates in the stream when DirecTV doesn't even provide updates for their own boxes at a certain age? That's my point.


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## Duffycoug (Feb 12, 2007)

Ummm, mabye because we are PAYING customers who purchased the units FROM directv?


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## shibby191 (Dec 24, 2007)

Duffycoug said:


> Ummm, mabye because we are PAYING customers who purchased the units FROM directv?


Because at some point old stuff get's unsupported. DirecTV certainly no longer supports the 10 yr old RCA and Sony recievers or my old Hugues E86 HD receiver. I couldn't reactivate it if I wanted to being a non-IRD receiver. And firmware updates for them haven't been available for many, many years.

DirecTivo's are awesome, they are. But you need to step back and take a look at how OLD they really are. They haven't been sold for *5 years* now. At some point they aren't supported anymore. All the non IRD ones will now no longer even be activated just like any other non IRD DirecTV receiver.

I'm basically playing devil's advocate here in that you can't expect these things to be 100% supported forever. Nothing ever is.


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## Duffycoug (Feb 12, 2007)

we'll agree to disagree...if I ran my business that way I'd be out of business.


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## whitepelican (Feb 15, 2005)

shibby191 said:


> Because at some point old stuff get's unsupported. DirecTV certainly no longer supports the 10 yr old RCA and Sony recievers or my old Hugues E86 HD receiver. I couldn't reactivate it if I wanted to being a non-IRD receiver. And firmware updates for them haven't been available for many, many years.
> 
> DirecTivo's are awesome, they are. But you need to step back and take a look at how OLD they really are. They haven't been sold for *5 years* now. At some point they aren't supported anymore. All the non IRD ones will now no longer even be activated just like any other non IRD DirecTV receiver.
> 
> I'm basically playing devil's advocate here in that you can't expect these things to be 100% supported forever. Nothing ever is.


The funny thing is, despite the fact the DirecTivos are ancient in electronics terms, DirecTV has not yet come out with a better SD-DVR. I don't believe there are too many people who would claim the R15/R16 are better. They haven't added any functionality to them that would warrant "upgrading" from a DirecTivo to a R15/R16. So, since most people who are using SD DirecTivos have been quite happy with the units, I would think DirecTV would want to keep those things humming along.


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## Rudy1957 (Sep 19, 2003)

People bought them and they are actively in the field. This is way different than old MS operating systems that are now technologically obselete. The DirecTivos are not old by any standard except where tech change has been rapid, and that certainly isn't the case here. Sears doesn't stop supporting 10-year-old washing machines or air conditioners. Sony doesn't stop supporting 10-year-old TVs.

The only reason to stop supporting them is to drive them out of consumers' hands, which they've been trying to do ever since they brought out their own DVRs that don't have licensing fees to Tivo. Those are technically inferior by most accounts. We have to keep our own boxes servied and running. The least they could do is supplying the operating system software and update it to any system changes.


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## shibby191 (Dec 24, 2007)

Duffycoug said:


> we'll agree to disagree...if I ran my business that way I'd be out of business.


Guess it works for DirecTV since they have been obsoleting old receivers for over 10 yrs and they keep on growing. FYI that Dish does the same thing.

You honestly believe they should keep on supporting 7/10/15 yr old boxes? Some of which can't even handle the number of channels now available on the system (as in the premium sports packages can't be received on the really old receivers anymore for example)? Disconnect yourself from the DirecTivo emotional issue for a minute because the issue has nothing to do with Tivo. It's just BAU (business as usual) and the DirecTivos are now at the age they are starting to "fall off the rolls" so to speak along with all the other Sony Sat B2's and Hughes E86's out there.

According to Tivo's own numbers there are now only 750K DirecTivo's left, maybe, and that number drops by over 100K every quarter. Not much incentive to continue to "innovate" a dead product line and one that has been dead for 5 yrs.

Sure, ok. We agree to disagree.


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## catocony (Nov 14, 2006)

Shibby, your point is partially valid except that, for the last four years at least, DTV has done everything in it's power to ween users off of DirecTivos. I even received a free R15 about four years ago "just to try". 4-5 years of bad information from CSRs on support, ability to swap cards, software updates, etc. The story always has been "we'll upgrade you to R15/R16, no problem". Well, those aren't upgrades in the least bit. 

So yeah, if DirecTV had been taking care of DirecTivo customers the last 5 years and then gradually started a process of "your boxes are getting old, give our private-label stuff a test drive" then I would believe it. As is, when they've been lying to DirecTivo customers for half a decade, I don't believe it.

I would guestimate that many hundreds of thousands of DirecTivo users decommissioned DirecTivos over the past five years when there was no technical reason to do so. I remember a conversation from 2006, the first crappy call I ever had with DirecTV which has led to 4 years of sub-par customer service for me, where I was explicitly told, after calling in to try and figure out how to do a call with Vonage and couldn't "you need a phone line to call in every day because that's how you get your programming update. If you don't have a phone, then we'll upgrade you to a Hughes unit since we don't require a phone line". Luckily I logged in here years ago and discovered, as I had long expected, that daily calls are useless and not necessary, but how many people didn't log on here and just did what the CSRs recommended? There was undoubtedly a campaign in the 2006-2007 timeframe to get as many DirecTivos out of the field as possible, as I witnessed myself.


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## shibby191 (Dec 24, 2007)

Well, I certainly don't doubt DirecTV is/was trying to replace older equipment like DirecTivo's with current gen stuff, what company doesn't. And DirecTV has done it with other stuff too (like when locals first started up on 119 and our original receivers couldn't see 119 we had to get our receivers replaced). As for DirecTivo's, why wouldn't they try to convert anyone they could to a current gen box when support would soon run out on the DirecTivo's because they had no long term contract with Tivo anymore. Might as well get as many converted in case that happens. That's good business. It was only just in 2008 that the support contract was renewed.

FYI that the DirecTivos for a very long time did indeed need near daily calls because the guide data did come from the phone calls. Only in later years did it start coming down from the sat and a phone call was only needed once a month to keep the nag screens away and for activating software updates (which again used to come down the phone line in the daily call but later went up in the sat stream). So the CSRs were correct up to a certain point in time. Then I'd say some were misinformed or still thought things were still the old way. Believe me, coming from working in a call center environment many years ago, the front line CSRs at any company have very poor training and the turnover is so high that what training they do get leaves with them 6 months later. So while that doesn't excuse misinformation to customers, it's not the CSRs outright lieing to you to try to trick you or anything, just misinformed in most cases. If you want to believe you were lied to that's fine, but most likely it's simple ignorance.

Anyway...all I'm saying is that it's not some big "conspiracy" here. Just normal everyday business that occurs in many/most corporations, including DirecTV's direct competition.


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## catocony (Nov 14, 2006)

Call it lying, call it ignorance, the fact is that customers were (and still are) given bad or incorrect information on a constant basis. Do I mind DirecTV trying to get people to upgrade 6 year old equipment? Not really, if the new product is superior. Did I mind DirecTV trying it with me 4 years ago when the units were only end-of-sale about six months prior? Absolutely, since the DirecTivos were still pretty new then (I consider 6 months new) and, to this day, the software on the DirecTivos is superior to R15/R16. 

So, if you're argument is that, today, in August 2010, that DirecTV shouldn't support equipment that is at least 5 years old or so, that's somewhat accurate. The problem is, they tried their best not to support it when it was only 6 months old, simply because they decided to try and squeeze a few extra bucks out of customers by building their own private label, garbage DVRs. That's my point, they were crappy with DirecTivo owners for years, so now that there's actually a real reason to swap out gear - it's old - DirecTV gets no thanks from me or many other DirecTivo holdouts since they've been trying to swap out my great box with crappy stuff for half a decade.

The erosion in the quality of DirecTV support over the last 5+ years is certainly not limited to DirecTivo owners. Just about everyone's customer service - from satellite to ISP to wireless to whatever - is crud compared to 10 years ago, and it wasn't pure gold back then. That's not really the discussion here though. This is a simple discussion that hundreds of thousands of customers have stuck with DirecTV for a reason, and DirecTV should be happy that we've stuck with them despite their crappy service.

Unfortunately, in this day and age, you don't really aspire to good service. The goal is to not be the worst, not to be the best. Just like the old joke where a bear is chasing you and your friend through the woods, to survive you don't need to be faster than the bear, just faster than your friend. That's the corporate mentality now. Don't be good, just don't be the worst one out there.


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## Duffycoug (Feb 12, 2007)

shibby191 said:


> Guess it works for DirecTV since they have been obsoleting old receivers for over 10 yrs and they keep on growing. FYI that Dish does the same thing.
> 
> You honestly believe they should keep on supporting 7/10/15 yr old boxes? Some of which can't even handle the number of channels now available on the system (as in the premium sports packages can't be received on the really old receivers anymore for example)? Disconnect yourself from the DirecTivo emotional issue for a minute because the issue has nothing to do with Tivo. It's just BAU (business as usual) and the DirecTivos are now at the age they are starting to "fall off the rolls" so to speak along with all the other Sony Sat B2's and Hughes E86's out there.
> 
> ...


Yes, they should support boxes that have EQUAL function to the horrendous DVR product that they currently DO support....if it's outdated that another issue....these are NOT...they receive EVERY channel I need in SD and have BETTER functionality......

so yes, we'll agree to disagree.


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