After many weeks of struggling with poor service with Comcast cable that went unrectified, I switched to DirecTV. My main reasons for changing: personal recommendation, better user interface, more HD and cost savings over the first year. I’ve been using the service for around two weeks and I’m really enjoying it. Here are some of my findings if you’re thinking of switching:?
Installation
An easy purchase and provisioning online. A great and painless install. Very professional and courteous installer. Just one piece of criticism. He didn’t take away an old dish that was attached to the property when he promised he would. Old useless analogue satellite dish anyone? Shall I craigslist it??
User interface
The user interface has a very good design and menu options are intuitive and work as you’d expect them when you press a button. More space on the screen is devoted to the channel guide so you can see around six channels in one go in the guide. The display is nice with the barker screen (the preview window) and if you have a HD screen the resolution makes using the box easy. Recording programmes and series settings are easy, one press of the recording button for a programme, twice for a series link. The search function is powerful and you can type in programme names using your remote, like you would a mobile phone using the letters below each number. Downside is that sometimes some menus can be a little slow to load, the On Demand section especially. However, so was Comcast, so I’m OK with that.
The box
I have a the latest DirecTV HD DVR box. It’s got a meaty processor and 500GB of storage for all that HD I’m going to record. It connects to my router so I can download programmes that are OnDemand and also link it through my home network as a media server. More on that later. The remote is infrared and wireless so you don’t need a line-of-sight.
Remote recording
I love this – probably the best bit. You can schedule recordings or OnDemand recordings via your PC, Mac or mobile. I use the mobile application on my Blackberry all the time. You sign in, do a programme search and hit record – it’s that easy. It probably takes around a minute to get actually sent to your box. Last time I used it – I was out for lunch and watching a football game. Couldn’t watch the end – got my Blackberry out, bing, bang, boom, ESPNHD2 – got home later, there it was. Love it.?
Media Server
The box allows you to connect to it over your home network to another PC. Using some downloadable software, you can view an interface just like you’re using the DVR in the room. Very cool. Sometimes, if I’m at a great distance from my router and I try and watch a HD show it fails. You can also stream content from your PC through the DirecTV box.
OnDemand
I would say this is not true OnDemand, you’re basically making a selection from a list and then it downloads the program over your DSL. Programmes can take a long time to download (and I have a 20Mbps connection) – HD ones take an age – let it run overnight. However, you don’t have to wait until the download completes before you watch. The user interface is a little clunky and it’s difficult to find what you want.
Programming
A great selection – and many channels in true HD. And I know get to watch the Daily Show at 8pm as I get the Comedy Show east coast feed.
All in all, I’m glad I switched.??
You can download the userguide and find out more (PDF), by clicking here.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 7:55 pm and is filed under Personal. You can leave a comment and follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
We did the exact same thing when we lived in MV, comcast was awful so we switched. The only downside was no Tivo. We switched back when we moved just to get the Tivo again.