DIRECTV Plus DWO2-10021 HD DVR (Lease)

Don't waste your time and money with this unit or Direct TV go with what ever cable company is in your area. They lied to me and stole my money and time. I had to send the DVR back to them 4 times, 4 and it still doesn't work. I have to reset it daily, the HD picture is not that great, and the record function doesn't work most of the time. So I called Direct TV and ask them if they were coming out with a better version anytime soon and they said they were still trying to fix the problems with the current one. I told them I had returned mine 4 times and had been very patiant but was tired of wasting all my time calling them up and returning DVR only to have to do it over and over. Please give me my money back and let me out of my contract, they said no. They told me if I didn't want my DVR I should return it to who ever sold it to me 2 months earlier. This product should not be on the market.

Direct TV in their brilliance decided to bail out on TIVO and venture out on their own with an HD DVR. It was a bad move. Their DVR is as user-friendly as an upside-down lawnmower. Where TIVO would require two menus, this one requires three or four, and only after you learn the pathways because they don't really make any sense. It frequently locks up, requiring a complete re-set. The "prioritizer" allows you to select tv shows for future viewing, but if there are no upcoming shows, there's no apparent way to delete the item off the list. It looks like something that TIVO might have thrown away two years before they ever put anything on the market. TIVO is light years ahead of this device.

Having a DVR is better than not having one. This is Direct TV's only option. But if there's nothing that firmly ties you to Direct TV, you should really consider whether you want to go with them, since this device is as bad as it could be.

All the bad reviews I've read here are correct. I'm writing a piece comparing the Warner Cable and DirecTV programming and how the difference is like night and day! The DirecTV remote is also extremely slow, and there are several more layers to the programming before you can get to where you want to go. If two programs overlap, there's no way you can compromise to record one partially. With Time Warner's programming, you can specify one to record a shorter length to accommodate the other for full recording, or vice-versa. With DirecTV, it's all-or-nothing! Their equipment and service are the absolute worst. Any move you make with DirecTV, they will EXTEND your contract! I'm only waiting for my contract to expire so I can cancel them. In the meantime, I'm just holding tight.

One would think that in 2007 we as a buying public would not be subjected to the kind of heinous lunacy D* is dropping all over us. Your choice as a would be HD subscriber is cable or Dish which has better equipment, or DirecTv which has better programming. Here's a little window into the love/hate relationship I have with this box:

*The user interface is clunky, slow, non-intuitive, and not very user friendly.
*I have the latest firmware updates (as of Jan 30, 07) and I still can't get reliable recording on all shows if I add more than 30 titles to the "Prioritizer" list. (The list of all the titles or keyword searches you want to record.)
*The manual search does not work, at least not with any regularity.
*First cable/sat device I've ever used that locks up and requires a restart or full on hard power cycle (pull the plug, wait, then plug it back in). I've had to do this roughly ten times since November.
*The device will flat out ignore some of the lower titles on the Prioritizer when there is no conflict.
*D* HD content consists of about 15 channels. The movie channels show old movies mostly (we watched JAWS last night) which speeds up the "newness" of the HD itself.
*The unit will flat out lock up in the middle of recording at times. I thought it might be a heat problem so I rearranged my equipment and made sure there was plenty of moving air around the device. Didn't work.

Understand that I want this box to work. I want it to work with such fervor that I am willing to sit here and take this bunk from D* for a little while longer. But honestly, if they didn't have the lock on the NFL package, I feel that most of the HD users would have been gone a long time ago.

One last negative I must mention. During the second best game in NFL history (Colts vs. Pats for AFC championship) the recorder locked up and froze during the last minute of the game. My friends and I watched in disbelief as Payton was marching down the field and I had set the recording to go an extra hour (NFL always runs over the time allotted) and with just under a minute... BAM!... it locked. I couldn't change the channel, go to the list screen, stop the play back... nothing. After a reset (which takes about five minutes) we were greeted with the Colts celebrating and no recording of the last two possessions in the game. Ridiculous....

On a positive note, the HD picture of sports, local TV, and good quality cable shows like The L Word, Dexter, The Sopranos etc is quite good.

To sum up, it's a piece of junk that is temperamental and poorly designed but to get the NFL package and all the other goodies that D* has in their lineup, you have to use it.

A petition needs started for a class action suit against Directv for this piece of junk they call HR-20 HD DVR.
Almost daily I have to hit the red reset button because:
A) There is no picture on any channel
B) The remote quits working
C) Channels just disappear from the available channels menu

And yes, it is quite slow changing channels.