Too Many Cooks...?
Written: Sep 04 '02
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Pros: Custom tailors "programming" to your individual lifestyle; Fantastic image quality; Digital 5.1
Cons: Unresponsive channel surfing; limited storage capacity; glitchy; pass-the-buck customer service
The Bottom Line: Avoid this receiver in favor of newer, more fully fledged offerings from first-party vendors.
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| stickypixl's Full Review: Philips DSR6000R DIRECTV Receiver with TiVo Servic... |
As a relatively recent convert (circa 1998) to satellite TV, I have been very pleased with DirecTV's basic functionality and quality. Ventures into additional service offerings, however, have been marred by abysmal reliability & sub-par customer service (did anyone but me fall for DirecPC?). Most recently, I purchased a Philips DirecTV receiver which featured a built-in TiVo PVR. Purchased on sale for $150, it seemed like a great idea at a bargain price. In fact, it was just that...for about four months.
Rewind: My wife records soap operas and must-see-TV on a daily basis and during basketball season I subscribe to NBA League Pass so I can record all my favorite team's games for posterity. This amounts to mountains of videotape cluttering up the place, so when my wife's birthday rolled around in late 2001, TiVo seemed like the perfect gift for me. Er, I mean her. Additionally, the Philips DirecTV receiver had built-in Dolby Digital 5.1 decoding at a significantly lower price than competing units.
Real-time: Although there is an annoying delay when switching channels on this particular receiver (TiVo-induced lag, I assume), image clarity is superb and the freedom from conventional programming is empowering. Stumble across a must-see, non-network program that's already in progress? No problem! Begin recording up to 20 minutes into a show and it will preserve the program in its entirety. Can't get enough info about a particular actor or non-network show? No problem! You can use TiVo to search all available programming to find your favorites. In fact, you can even program the thing to automatically record an entire upcoming season of your favorite series. The only real problem functionality-wise is that there just isn't enough room on the hard drive to capture and store as much TV as you'd probably like. And you must remember to mark your favorite recordings to save or else record them onto videotape ASAP or TiVo will record over them the next time you choose to record, although it will warn you first. If you're adventurous and mechanically inclined, there are tips and tricks online for adding additional hard drives to the receiver. I imagine that most people are not so inclined, however, and purchasing a different model with greater storage capacity probably makes better sense.
Fast-forward: The real problem with this unit has been reliability. After a few months of trouble-free use we received a message uploaded by DirecTV informing us that local channels were now available in our area. Prior to this service availability, TiVo users in our area were unable to record local channels, as they were received via traditional antenna rather than satellite. The new service came at an additional expense, but we happily called DirecTV for activation, eager to put TiVo through its network paces. Unfortunately, after 40+ minutes of trial and error with DirecTV customer service, we determined that my dual LNB dish had its second LNB configured to receive DirecPC signal and would have to be realigned in order to receive the local content. We decided to terminate the new service until we could complete the required realignment. That's when our troubles began. We now might manage to get through 20 minutes of a broadcast before being interrupted by a message that the receiver needs to reacquire information from the satellite. This process requires anywhere from a few minutes to up to 15 minutes to complete and usually ends with another message saying that the receiver was unable to establish a connection. It now does this several times a day for about a week, then mysteriously corrects itself for another week before doing it again. We have been bounced between DirecTV and TiVo customer service and have done every routine diagnostic in their arsenal to no avail. After less than a year of use, we have been referred to Philips for warranty service. Unfortunately, our 90-day labor warranty has expired and servicing the receiver at our own expense would likely cost as much as our initial purchase.
To further complicate things, it appears that Philips and Sony no longer manufacture these DirecTV/TiVo receivers as DirecTV has recently partnered with TiVo to offer TiVo service exclusively in their own branded units. I suspect that the problems we have been encountering are somehow related to these corporate boardroom shenanigans, but who really knows? My two older Hughes receivers without TiVo have given me no problems whatsoever. I've learned as a result of this to be very wary anytime you enter into a customer relationship with one of these conglomerates. There are just too many parties involved, each scapegoating one another, ultimately leading to no good resolution. Perhaps this is what we should expect to be the legacy of "conversion"
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 150
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Epinions.com ID:
stickypixl
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Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
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