# If DTV decides to stop supporting Tivo, will you cancel DTV immediately?



## Leila (Apr 28, 2006)

If DTV decides to stop supporting Tivo, will you cancel DTV immediately?
I was asked this question when a DTV installer came to swap out my
snow-damaged dish today. *She* seemed amazed to see that all 7 of my
DVRs are running Tivo.(HD and SD) By the way, this is the first time I've
seen a female DirecTV installer...

I think my answer will be "no" because I don't have any decent alternative'
to DTV. Local cable company, Cox, sucks big time. FIOS TV will never reach
my neighborhood.(Verizon can't even bring cheap DSL to my area after all
these years)


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## rminsk (Jun 4, 2002)

DirecTV has not stop supporting any of the receivers that are in the field. My Sony B65 still works and UltimateTV systems still work.


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## nrc (Nov 17, 1999)

I did a poll about this back in October. The summary: 9% here said that they would definitely be leaving DTV, 26% said that they would probably be leaving DTV.
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=321721

I'm in the probably category. I'll try an S3 next winter to decide but the Wow! lineup and pricing looks good and the Wow reviews on the S3 forum are generally positive.

"Immediately" is hypothetical since DTV can't afford to switch out all the TiVos they have in the field that quickly. But if anything happens where I can't have my HR10 without extending my committment (hardware failure, etc) I'd probably switch immediately.


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## Steve609 (Nov 6, 2002)

YES...

I will go with Comcast w/ TiVo! :up: 

Steve609


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## Win Joy Jr (Oct 1, 2001)

I am canceling as of 1/28 when I get FIOS installed, and the main reason is the dropping of TiVo based DVR's. DirecTV as made a choice, and I will not be going forward with them as a sub...


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## TomB (Apr 28, 2000)

Will have to actually see what the replacement options are from DTV, but am in the probably category. Would love to get FIOS, but do not see it planned for my neighborhood. We get rain fade (signal loss) EVERY time it rains, despite having good signal strength normally. Not that a cable situation would be without problems, but....


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## sluciani (Apr 21, 2003)

Win Joy Jr said:


> I am canceling as of 1/28 when I get FIOS installed, and the main reason is the dropping of TiVo based DVR's. DirecTV as made a choice, and I will not be going forward with them as a sub...


If you are a Tivo fan, I'm curious why you are "pulling the plug" so early? If they started tomorrow, it would take D* at least a year or two to wean everyone off MPEG2. You can probably enjoy your Tivo service for another 2-3 years, if not longer. The re-signed Tivo contract with DirecTV runs into 2010.

/steve


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## reh523 (Feb 28, 2006)

No only if D* stops the NFLST......


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## jcricket (Sep 11, 2002)

I'm in the same boat as nrc. I'm keeping my HR10 and R10 for as long as they work or until there's a compelling alternative. If either dies and I'd be "forced" into a 2-year commitment if I got a new receiver with D*, I'd definitely leave - given the current state of things with the R15 and HR20. Here's how I see the current DVR landscape: 

* The Comcast cable DVRs are cheap, but only "OK". Maybe that will change with the advent of Moto/Tivo, maybe not.

* I'm scarred from my Dishplayer experience so I don't know if Dish is something I'd be willing to try. But their latest DVR seems to get fairly good reviews. Maybe they're something to look into.

* The HR20 seems like a crapshoot (might work fine, might cause your wife to divorce you) right now and the R15 is a total POS.

* The S3 looks "great" but it's way to expensive for me to justify, especially with the probable obsolescence of CC 1.0 and the current lack of two-way communication negating On Demand and PPV ordering.

So, I'm sticking with what I have, especially since there aren't that many national HD channels I'm missing and I get reliable OTA reception. Nothing so compelling I need to jump ship.

I will say that unless the HR20 is both reliable and cheap (under $99 up-front), I'll probably look at other vendors (especially Comcast with the $0 up-front and no commitment) for my TV in the next year.


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## Scott Corbett (May 29, 2003)

reh523 said:


> No only if D* stops the NFLST......


What is that?


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## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

Scott Corbett said:


> What is that?


National Football League Sunday Ticket...

that is why I have D*, and that is why I will stay...

don't forget that D* has a 3-year agreement with Tivo...so we won't need to make this decision for some time...the decision will be made to switch away from Tivo because the mpeg4 offering will be too hard to ignore...


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## TyroneShoes (Sep 6, 2004)

If DTV makes my 3 HR10s into boat anchors, I would certainly have to place them on the bottom of my list of appropriate vendors. I'd likely go back to DISH (shudder!) since they have a better HD selection than Cox or DTV and a significantly better HD PVR than anyone other than Tivo (who is significantly better than DISH at the moment).


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## newsposter (Aug 18, 2002)

rminsk said:


> My Sony B65 still works .


wow, i have one of them. Turned it off when i got up to 2 HDtivos though. Got that plus the t60 for 300 bucks back in the day..


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## JRAllas (Mar 26, 2006)

I dumped Comcast in 2004 for DirecTV. The biggest selling point for me was a receiver with a built-in Tivo. In 2006 when I bought my 65" HDTV and PURCHASED ($399) my HR10-250 from DirecTV I was very happy. Now that I hear they might be phasing out all the Tivo units, it upsets me. As much as I hate Comcast for their poor service, if the Tivo they offer is as good, or better, than the DirecTivo units it will be difficult to stay with DirecTV. I refuse to move to DirecTV's excuse for a DVR. I've heard far too many complaints. I can get content from anywhere. How I'm able to view and manipulate it is more important to me.


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## gquiring (Dec 13, 2002)

The way my HR10 is working I will be glad when D* dumps these boxes for the HR20. I have never been a 'huge' Tivo fan. My first DVR was a Replay and I always felt they were better but what sold me on the D* Tivo was the dual tuners. 

What will make me jump ship is FIOS. I can't see jumping to cable as their HD offerings are only slightly better than D* today (in my case at least) but come the end of the year I think most cable companies will lag D* in HD offerings.


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## Mark Lopez (Jan 1, 2000)

No. It's just a DVR. Give me one (any brand) that records and that's all I need.


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## Todd (Oct 7, 1999)

I'd switch to Cox and buy a TiVo S3....


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## Deacon West (Apr 16, 2006)

TyroneShoes said:


> If DTV makes my 3 HR10s into boat anchors, I would certainly have to place them on the bottom of my list of appropriate vendors. I'd likely go back to DISH (shudder!) since they have a better HD selection than Cox or DTV and a significantly better HD PVR than anyone other than Tivo (who is significantly better than DISH at the moment).


Yeah, significantly better by infringing on TiVo's patents.


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## nuke (Sep 8, 2003)

Tivo is a big factor in the equation. I liked the seamless integration with D* and I liked their way of doing business better.

Now that they've become equally evil, that's eroded their advantage that might have got me to go with a non-tivo DVR, perhaps grudgingly.


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## newsposter (Aug 18, 2002)

gquiring said:


> The way my HR10 is working I will be glad when D* dumps these boxes for the HR20. .


you can dump all them now for HR20. And while I haven't followed the HR20, if you just scan the thread titles of this link, you can see it's far from bug free. So you just would be replacing one headache with another 

http://www.dbstalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=112


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## sjberra (May 16, 2005)

newsposter said:


> you can dump all them now for HR20. And while I haven't followed the HR20, if you just scan the thread titles of this link, you can see it's far from bug free. So you just would be replacing one headache with another
> 
> http://www.dbstalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=112


Scan the threads here - the HR10 isn;t faring to much better either. Just as many issues and just and many irrate people


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## sluciani (Apr 21, 2003)

gquiring said:


> The way my HR10 is working I will be glad when D* dumps these boxes for the HR20. I have never been a 'huge' Tivo fan. My first DVR was a Replay and I always felt they were better but what sold me on the D* Tivo was the dual tuners.
> 
> What will make me jump ship is FIOS. I can't see jumping to cable as their HD offerings are only slightly better than D* today (in my case at least) but come the end of the year I think most cable companies will lag D* in HD offerings.


I have no desire to leave D* at this time. I'm lucky enough to have 4 HR10's, all upgraded to 6.3B, that work just fine. Like everyone else, I experienced the 6.3a OTA audio dropouts, but this has been fixed. Between the 4 major networks, HBO, TNTHD, UHD, HDNET and CW & PBS via OTA, the wife and I are already Tivo'ing 20-30 hours a week of HD, which is normally more than we can watch. I'm curious what additional channels cable, FIOS or D*'s MP4 satellites will offer that might cause us to want to record even more content than we do now?

I can switch to the HR20 now if I wanted to, but the new contract D* signed with Tivo provides Tivo support through 2010, so I'd rather watch and wait at this time.

/steve


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## wkearney99 (Dec 5, 2003)

Rumor has it that Comcast will start using Tivo on their boxes. If they manage to implement the equivalent of an HR10-250 (dual ota, dual digital) then it'll be time for us to drop DirecTV. If I have to switch I'd prefer to go to FiOS as it's already on our street. But I've heard no word on whether Verizon will ever use Tivo. Yes, I realize and S3 with cablecards can do some of this but that requires a separate Tivo account and more per month. I'd prefer to have it rolled into the service instead of being separate (and more expensive as a result).

DirecTV had a good thing going and they let Murdoch's arrogance at not being able to buy Tivo completely ruin it.


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## deezel629 (May 30, 2006)

Anubys said:


> National Football League Sunday Ticket...
> 
> that is why I have D*, and that is why I will stay...
> 
> don't forget that D* has a 3-year agreement with Tivo...so we won't need to make this decision for some time...the decision will be made to switch away from Tivo because the mpeg4 offering will be too hard to ignore...


Yeah me too. They pretty much have us football fanatics by the you know what. Now that it looks like D* is going to be the only provider of MLBEI, it looks like I'm going to have D* for a long time.


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## hoopsrgreat (Jan 2, 2005)

Who has more to offer??
If D* significantly has more HDTV channels in 2007 than anyone else, where are you going to go? Tivo is great, but it isnt everything. What good is tivo if your service provider has little Hd content?

They have football, they have hoops, and they have baseball. Get all of that stuff in HS and they have it all.

So cancel D* immediately? sure, and watch what?


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## wkearney99 (Dec 5, 2003)

Which assumes a lot about how much HD content we'd be interested in watching. If more stations actually produced HD material that might matter. And since I don't care _at all_ about sports channels it's even less worth putting up with DirecTV's nonsense.


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## badmonkey (Apr 8, 2003)

Definitely not. Content is much more important to me than the DVR technology. Especially Sunday Ticket, as mentioned above.


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## tgibbs (Sep 22, 2002)

I originally switched from Comcast to DirecTV because at the time it was the only way to get a HD TiVo. I will absolutely dump DirecTV like a shot if they drop TiVo support or switch any of my existing HD channels to MPEG-4 (locals I don't care about; I get them fine OTA). Currently I have a HR10-250 that I use for DirecTV and a Series 3 that I use exclusively for OTA. I have a minimal Comcast cable account that I don't currently use at all (it's actually cheaper to have cable TV than not have it, because it qualifies me for a better package deal for my phone and internet service). The day that DirecTV announces that they will no longer be supporting TiVo, I'll call Comcast and order two CableCards and a service upgrade.


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

I just signed up for Verizon FIOS this weekend and also placed an order for an S3 Tivo. I found an online vendor that has them for $615 including shipping. I already have a buyer for one of my upgraded HR10-250s for $575 so my final cost for the S3 Tivo is only $40 plus the subscription fee. Right now, Tivo is offering a 3-year sub for $299, making the monthly cost around $8.31. Two cablecards from Verizon run about $2.95 each so my monthly fee ends up being around $14 to use the S3 Tivo. I got the wideband internet added to my existing Verizon phone service so I'll be getting a discount on my TV service for subscribing to the entire package. Verizon also gave me $100 back in the form of an American Express debit card to sweeten the deal.

I just finished putting together a HTPC, which I plan on using for recording my local HD channels via OTA antenna. I had been recording about 90% of my shows via OTA anyway so this eliminates my need for the mirroring fees I used to pay to DTV for my extra DTivos and receivers. The S3 Tivo will be used to record the miscellaneous cable channels that DTV used to provide. I'll only be connecting two standard receivers with Verizon. The one fly in the ointment is that I still have a commitment with DTV until September of this year. I plan on contacting DTV to see what it would cost if I terminate their service early. Otherwise, I'll be keeping a bare minimum service with them until the commitment runs out. 

The best thing is that Verizon doesn't require a commitment for the TV service so I can always go back to DTV if and when they beef up their HD lineup. I can still use both the HTPC and the S3 Tivo for recording OTA channels so I'm not stuck with hardware that will become obsolete anytime soon. I'd need all new mpeg4 hardware to receive the new HD channels anyway so making the transition now will probably pay off better for me in the long run.


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## RS4 (Sep 2, 2001)

I'm waiting to see what the Comcast Tivo offering will be and also what the NFLST cost will be this year. I love the 30-sec skip and don't think anyone else besides Tivo has it, so I'm sticking with them and a TV service that I can use their box. 

I'm not seeing a lot of value anymore in the NFLST especially since the NFL now shows games on Thursdays. There were a couple of weekends that I only watched one NFLST game, so I'm beginning to wonder about it. There was one week where they had no HD games that I wanted to watch.


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## Texceo (Mar 11, 2003)

No


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