# HR10-250 vs HR21-700



## hepcatz (Jul 18, 2004)

Ok...So i finally took the bait....Got D to send out an HD DVR for the "expanded hd prgm'ing"..... Well.....Let's talk about that abit...

Ok the interface on the new box isn't that bad, and the DLB issue is one I could learn to live without, but removing the OTA tuners was just plain STUPID!!!

So far the box has locked up twice...I haven't loaded any CE firmware either...the release it came with is 0x18a...(the CE firmware has similar issues) which requires a power cord removal reset.....

other than that, the newer channels are cool...although...few stations are actually broadcasting HD versions of their shows...(4:3 content in a 16:9 HD feed)...

I'm still learning my way around this box, but I wouldn't give up my HR10-250 where I record all my Broadcast/D* HD Series shows and since primetime is in full swing..I willl be waiting to upgrade my bedroom box....

Keeping in mind that I have had the box a week....I wish we still had an HD TIVO solution for Direct TV.....Tivo still is the high end intuitive solution to DVR's. 

Even the "ACTIVE" function on the new box....well...doesn't work...

I am tempted to call in and try to get the HR20 instead of the HR21..but I assume the HR21 has a faster processor in it and the drive is stated to be one of the AV class (DVR purpose built) hard drives....

I miss my OTA's only because i no longer get NBC HD over D's MPEG 4 variant...I do record a lot of NBC programming during primetime, so, I dunno....

The box looks great (the HR21), and the menu'ing at times works well...I still think it is easier to navigate the TIVO platform but when you have been with TV since the series 1 and had the old sony D* receivers connected it should be easier and more familliar....

It seems that direct tv really has Quality control issues on the software side....They really shoud attend to this before working on DOD, VOD, Media sharing etc....

What do you all think....

Would I do it again...Sure...I still have my HD Tivo working and wouldn't rely on just the HR21...(which is in the family room and is mostly for the Kid's stuff anyway...)


----------



## thumperxr69 (Mar 22, 2004)

Good luck requesting one.  That will not happen according to them. They send out what they can and the HR20 suppies are low. I too am F%$#@!. D* is not broadcasting my locals in HD and they are forcing the ocnversion to HR21s too fast. I could go and on. I have been on the phone for 4 hours over the past 3 days trying to request an HR20.

T


----------



## stevel (Aug 23, 2000)

I have the HR21 (was a beta tester) and it works fine for me. You have old firmware - 01B4 is the current national release. Active channels work on my box.

I will admit that I am puzzled that D* would go through the bother of designing a new box without the tuner, but I guess they have their reasons. Supposedly, there will be a lot more locals available soon.


----------



## shanew1289 (May 7, 2004)

I just upgraded to the HR20. I did not know what I would get till it showed up. I did get two HR20's at least.

My HR20 does NOT pull in all the stations like the HR10. Going to check on the conenctions, etc but they should be fine.

I do not get the PBS kids or other Subchannels from the Sats. So OTA is still needed here and I am glad I got a box with OTA.

Overall I am ok with the boxes. The FF and REW is a little "clunky" compared to tivo. I cant swap tuners. I have to know what channel is on other tuner and use prev channel to flip. If they are not recording, the buffer is lost. 

But Watching the Illini and Mizzou in HD last night, was WOW. If only they still stuck with Tivo.

It will be a long time till I pull the Tivos off my remaing SD tv's though.


----------



## hepcatz (Jul 18, 2004)

thumperxr69 said:


> Good luck requesting one.  That will not happen according to them. They send out what they can and the HR20 suppies are low. I too am F%$#@!. D* is not broadcasting my locals in HD and they are forcing the ocnversion to HR21s too fast. I could go and on. I have been on the phone for 4 hours over the past 3 days trying to request an HR20.
> 
> T


well...maybe i can get the feed waivered....who knows


----------



## phox_mulder (Feb 23, 2006)

I just got my HR21 on Thursday.

Haven't had a lot of time to play with it, but the few recordings I set up did record.

Interface is faster than the HR10, I have yet to see a "please wait" clockface, although I have seen a progress bar style please wait a couple times.

I need to "borrow" a 20 foot patch cord from work to see what the ethernet port does.

I haven't seen any lockups yet, not sure what software version I'm on.

I almost never watch live TV so no DLB isn't a huge thing, it would have been nice for comparing SD and HD versions of the channels to see if it was actually HD or just stretchovision.

My HR10 and S3 can handle my OTA recordings, as long as my HR10 keeps chugging along with the recent rebooting.

Mythbusters looks great in HD.

Guess I'll be spending a little time over at DBStalk now.


phox


----------



## hepcatz (Jul 18, 2004)

phox_mulder said:


> I just got my HR21 on Thursday.
> 
> Haven't had a lot of time to play with it, but the few recordings I set up did record.
> 
> ...


Yup...that is what i have been doin...but DBStalk hasn't had much coverage on the HR21 specifically....It's grouped in the HR200....


----------



## BHyde (Dec 14, 2003)

Here's what I did - bought the HR20 at Best Buy.
I also bought a Tivo Series 3 - best price was thru Amazon - since DirecTV doesn't carry all my locals in HD. SO I have a Series 3 and HR20 side by side. Guess which one we like best? (IT'S NOT EVEN CLOSE - TIVO, TIVO, TIVO.)
We plan to do all our viewing of the locals HDs on the Series 3, and watch all the other stations on the HR20.


----------



## bonscott87 (Oct 3, 2000)

hepcatz said:


> Yup...that is what i have been doin...but DBStalk hasn't had much coverage on the HR21 specifically....It's grouped in the HR200....


There is a forum there for the HR20/HR21 combined.

That's because the HR21 is pretty much exactly the same as the HR20 but without OTA. Other then that it's the same software and pretty much same hardware.


----------



## flapbreaker (May 23, 2002)

I too just upgraded to the HR21. I've used Tivo from the beggining so was very reluctant. I must say, I've been pleasantly surprised. Dare I say the HR-21 is better {Gasp}. Seriously, there's quite a few features on the HR-21 that I like better than the HR-10. I think one of my biggest beef's with Tivo is at times the boxes were incredibly slow. I love the one touch record of the HR-21. It's almost like you didn't do anything. I keep waiting for more steps. I like being able to put bookmarks that I can jump to when I re-watch a show. The menu system is quick. I could go on but I won't. Maybe I'm in the honeymoon phase but so far I'm impressed. 

My installer forced the HR-21 to download the latest software. Maybe this didn't happen for the original poster.


----------



## newsposter (Aug 18, 2002)

phox_mulder said:


> I just got my HR21 on Thursday.
> 
> Haven't had a lot of time to play with it, but the few recordings I set up did record.
> 
> Interface is faster than the HR10, I have yet to see a "please wait" clockface, although I have seen a progress bar style please wait a couple times.


note your SL's wont populate right away. They told me you need to wait a day for 'next weeks' to fill in. It's one area i dont mind the please wait on tivo because i 'immediately' know about conflicts, not after a day.

this wouldnt be important unless you are power users though.


----------



## phox_mulder (Feb 23, 2006)

newsposter said:


> note your SL's wont populate right away. They told me you need to wait a day for 'next weeks' to fill in. It's one area i dont mind the please wait on tivo because i 'immediately' know about conflicts, not after a day.
> 
> this wouldnt be important unless you are power users though.


I replaced my R10 with the HR21, so I only set up recordings for the few Thursday night and Friday night recordings the R10 would have been doing.

Then I spent yesterday going through this weeks recordings to make sure I set them up.

Before moving the R10, I took pictures of the Season Passes and ToDo list so I could duplicate as much as possible (in HD whenever possible of course  )
I had a lot of SP's that currently aren't airing, so I printed those pictures out for when those shows come back (if they even do), but I'm confident I'm set up for the duration of my R10's ToDo list now.

Now I need to see how long it takes to fill up the drive on the HR21 to see how many of my HR10 recordings I can move over so I can get everything watched on it so I can replace the dual drives in it with a much bigger single drive and hopefully fix my lockup problem.

I think I'll be attempting the eSata external drive on the HR21 very soon.

phox


----------



## daperlman (Jan 25, 2002)

what is the difference b/t the HR21 vs HR20?


----------



## stevel (Aug 23, 2000)

daperlman said:


> what is the difference b/t the HR21 vs HR20?


Main difference is that the HR21 has no OTA tuner. Otherwise they're functionally the same, though somewhat different internally.


----------



## tucsonbill (Aug 11, 2004)

stevel said:


> I will admit that I am puzzled that D* would go through the bother of designing a new box without the tuner, but I guess they have their reasons.


Stevel, I touched on this in a rant in another thread, but I don't find it puzzling at all. You may recall that the original Dtivos didn't have tuners either. D* wants you to think of them as your ONLY source for TV. I think that the only reason they ever offered boxes with OTA tuners is that they had too -- since that's where most of the HD content that anyone wanted was at the time. That is changing rapidly now, but alas I like others can't get HD locals from D*. That too will change with time. I wasn't in the first wave to get ntsc locals from them either. I've only had the HR21 for 3 days, and honestly haven't even bothered check the software version -- but then, I haven't had any problems yet.


----------



## cramer (Aug 14, 2000)

stevel said:


> I will admit that I am puzzled that D* would go through the bother of designing a new box without the tuner...


I'm not. ATSC tuners are not free. And they've spent billions to put two new birds in the sky to offer HD locals.



tucsonbill said:


> You may recall that the original Dtivos didn't have tuners either.


For the non-HD Dtivos to have tuners would've made them substantially more expensive. They would've need an NTSC tuner and an MPEG encoder. For the HR10, there's no need for an encoder, so it's a lot cheaper. (That still doesn't explain why they were $1k when released.) At the time that would have been an additional $200+ per box (for dual tuners.) That Sony MPEG encoder was a very expensive chip. The broadcom encoder found in the S2's is almost free by comparison.



phox_mulder said:


> Interface is faster than the HR10, I have yet to see a "please wait" clockface, although I have seen a progress bar style please wait a couple times.





flapbreaker said:


> I think one of my biggest beef's with Tivo is at times the boxes were incredibly slow.


It should be. The hardware is much newer and faster than the aging technology in the Dtivo/HDtivo. The HR10 has been far underpowered from day one -- tune 2 HD channels and watch how slow it gets, playing back a 3rd HD stream makes it laughingly slow, but it still manages to record and playback without a glitch.

Plus DTV makes everything look much faster by doing everything in the background. In many places, the tivo does what needs to be done immediately. However, I don't think any tivo users would mind the SP manager being a background task.



phox_mulder said:


> I almost never watch live TV


You'll be watching live tv all the time now since you cannot turn off the PIP.


----------



## phox_mulder (Feb 23, 2006)

cramer said:


> You'll be watching live tv all the time now since you cannot turn off the PIP.


Just because it's there doesn't mean I'll watch it. 

I actually watch live TV for at least 10 hours a day, I just don't pay attention to what I'm watching, just that it's there, moving, and producing sound.

Like right now, Shark is on at least 20 monitors in front, next to, and behind me.
I'm not watching though, 30 minutes in and I couldn't tell you a bit about the plot.

3-4 weeks from now when I'm caught up, I'll sit down and watch it at home, and maybe even enjoy it.

phox


----------



## stevel (Aug 23, 2000)

I understand that the ATSC tuner is not free, but they had designed not one but two boxes (the HR20-700 and HR20-100) including such a tuner. What was the payback of designing yet another box (HR21) without it?

My guess is that they simply wanted to come up with a cheaper design going forward, the term is "value engineering", and they took this opportunity to remove the ATSC tuner. I liken it to the constant redesign of the Linksys WRT-series routers, which ended up including one with different hardware and no Linux inside.

This makes sense only if they intend to stop producing the HR20. There are certainly lots of indications that this is indeed happening, what with HR20s disappearing from the channel, but Earl has been saying this is not the case.


----------



## PittCaleb (Sep 23, 2003)

stevel said:


> I will admit that I am puzzled that D* would go through the bother of designing a new box without the tuner, but I guess they have their reasons. Supposedly, there will be a lot more locals available soon.


A Comcast box doesn't include either an SD or HD tuner, so DTV isn't alone in this. We have just become accustomed to having one, to deal with the shortcomings of locals and then HD locals.

This may be my last post at TiVo Community. My 2x-700 is on its way (although it's 11:30 and they were to be here between 8 & noon). I will be bummed if I don't get the 20 with the OTA tuner, although to be honest, I haven't installed my antenna since moving here. In MI, I used my antenna to get Toledo HDs and got the Detroit locals in SD. I'm in in the NYC market now and get the big-4 in MPEG-2 on my HR10-250, so never installed my antenna. Doubt I ever would, so the 21-700 would be fine really. Smaller, lighter, cheaper and cooler would be nice. Why include stuff people won't use.

That said, they should ask if you currently use an antenna, I'd bet the majority of people don't and they could get the 21 without a problem.

PittCaleb


----------



## JohnB1000 (Dec 6, 2004)

Sorry if this has already been said but I have two HR20's and I don't have any wish or intention to get OTA signals. Maybe people are gonna need to start trading systems.


----------



## TonyTheTiger (Dec 22, 2006)

I am also in the group that doesn't get HD locals OTA, so it makes no difference to me which box I have as long as it works. I have D* locals and I have to be grateful for that. My local cableco wouldn't know HD if it hit them in the face. I did hear a rumor, though, that they have been bought out by a larger corporation, so there MAY be a little hope of more choice soon.

I have two HR20s, but absolutely not OTA, so I may be willing to swap down the road.


----------



## tfederov (Jul 6, 2003)

daperlman said:


> what is the difference b/t the HR21 vs HR20?


See my sig.


----------



## daperlman (Jan 25, 2002)

stevel said:


> Main difference is that the HR21 has no OTA tuner. Otherwise they're functionally the same, though somewhat different internally.


That has me puzzled. Will the HR22 have only one tuner  If the pattern continues eventually the HR60 will be a rock.


----------



## newsposter (Aug 18, 2002)

daperlman said:


> That has me puzzled. Will the HR22 have only one tuner  If the pattern continues eventually the HR60 will be a rock.


but a lightning fast rock able to get all mpeg48 stations and record 1000 hours on a 1 gig drive.


----------

