ElectroNext.com

The worst combination of hardware and software I've ever seen (2008-12-20)
I have worked as both an electronic technician and computer programmer for the past 40 years.
NEVER have I seen a more worthless combination of hardware/software.
Direct TV's solution to all problems is to reformat the hard drive.

Microsoft operating systems are bad, but at least all you have to do is reboot.
Imagine if after every 75 hours of using your PC you had to reformat the hard drive!

Would you consider that acceptable?

The core problem is the operating system for the R15 does NOT have a disk defragment utility.
As the hard drive becomes increasingly fragmented performance and reliability degrade.
The only recourse is to reformat the hard drive, which of course erases everything on the disk.
So you lose all setup/configuration settings and recorded programs...

Works great, love it !!! (2008-11-25)
We got the DVR free in 2007 as a 1-year package deal on DirecTV at a steep discount. By mid-2007, most of the bugs had been removed and the DVR works very reliably.

The DVR does everything it's advertised to do. The program guide works well, you can search for programs by title and actors. While doing just about anything, it puts a PIP display in the upper right corner of the screen. We have ours programmed to 'record series' for about 20 shows, you can tell the DVR to keep 1,2,3,5,all shows in a series. Live TV pause works great, you can hit exit to return to live TV. The 30-second skip feature works pretty well, as does the 'skip back' button if you've gone too far ahead.

I especially liked the subtitling feature implemented by direcTV when you hit the mute button. There is no need to activate real subtitles (stupidly, there are 8 subtitling standards to choose from, but direcTV has done away with that stupidity !!!)

As someone who has only used high-end VCRs in the past, this unit is great and we couldn't be happier. I don't understand the gripes of the Tivo users, it seems that many of them are unwilling to learn a new user interface, i.e. laziness has factored into their review opinions.

My only gripe is that it holds only 100 hours of programming. I'd like to see a model that holds 200 or 500 hours of programming ! ! !

Reading the manual won't help these problems. (2008-11-24)
I have rarely written reviews in the past on any kind of product or service, but I frequently rely on them before making a purchase. Unfortunately, I didn't read any in this case, but I wish I had. This product is awful. And to those who claim everyone else must be incompetent because they haven't read the manual, I'd like for you to let me know in the manual where it says how to prevent these kinds of problems:

1) When I manually set something to record one time through the guide, I expect the machine to record it, not to record 10 minutes of black screen and nothing else.

2) When I play back something that actually managed to record, playback freezes and skips, and then quits back to the regular live programming. I have to start the playback over from the beginning. It regularly takes us about an hour and fifteen minutes to get through a one-hour recorded program, even considering fast fowarding through commercials. We're usually extremely frustrated and annoyed by the time we're done watching playback, that is when we aren't frustrated to the point that we just quit in the middle of the show. It's not a satellite issue, because the same programs, when watched live, play just fine.

3) Service for this product is just as bad. Normally, I love DirecTV service. They're usually very friendly and helpful. But they recommend re-formatting the hard drive to resolve the issue. This is just not an acceptable resolution, because it will delete all of the shows I have recorded. I regularly keep a decent inventory of shows to watch and there is no way to watch them all before my next show records. So if I constantly have shows recording, it will take me weeks of extra tv watching to get through the shows I currently have plus all of the new shows that record. So, what I've decided to do is use this POS to watch (and suffer through) what I can't watch on the internet, then delete everything else, and watch those deleted shows on the internet until I get the old R10 Tivo model on eBay.

4) I have to admit, the remote control is pretty poorly designed. It doesn't bug me so much now, since I've had it for a few years and become accustomed to it. But it is pretty poorly designed.

Anyhow, no axe to grind with DirecTV, other than this box is terrible. Normally the rest of their service is great.

Never Had A Problem (2008-10-07)
We have also had this box for 2 years now in our bedroom and never once had a problem with it. In fact we have a TiVo brand in the living room and I perfer this one over the other one 10 to 1. Im not sure where the complaints are coming from..but i love ours and again never once had any issues with it. I am actually going to purchase 2 more of these boxes for the kids room.

NO PROBLEMS HERE (2008-07-02)
We've been using the R15 for more than a year and have had very, very few problems with it. As has been already said, the naysayers giving this product 1 star should learn how to oh, I don't know, READ THE MANUAL before they complain about a problem that's easily fixed. And this is not the forum to be airing gripes against DirecTV customer service in general, it's supposed to be about this DVR.

Anyway...

I personally found the service and remote to be rather intuitive. I don't believe I referred to the manual more than once the first day we had it.

The only recent problem I have had more than once is with NASCAR Hot Pass. There are times when the video simply freezes and I have to cold boot the device. It doesn't happen all the time, but enough to make note of it. If it was truly problematic, however, I would call DirecTV but rebooting the DVR is something I can live with. If it gets to the point where I have to do it more than once a race, then I'll call.

My two cents is that this is a good product that does what it advertises.