Any suggestions?

My parents have a model similar to that DTV receiver in their house on one of their TVs (their main TV has a DirecTivo). At first I seem to recall having the problems you mentioned with the serial cable when I tried connecting my Tivo to it. The Tivo, however, comes with an RJ-to-minijack cable. You mention that you used an adapter. Did that come with the Replay unit, or is it just something you picked up for the purpose? The problem might be with the connection. I may have possibly had the problems when I tried using the DB9-to-minijack cable that came with the Tivo on one of the ports on the back of the sat receiver (by the way, the Tivo's serial side is the one with the minijack).

So maybe there's a problem with the conversion of the DB9? I'm not sure why the PVR companies even use it as an option. None of the new receivers I looked at had the 9-pin connector. It was lucky if there was a low-speed data port at all. Maybe that's just what I saw, though.

And I have to second my vote to simply get a DirecTivo. I have an SA Tivo and I'm jealous of my parents' DirecTivo. I can't tell you how much nicer it is to record two shows at once and watch a third. I can't imagine the improvement it would be to go from an IR blaster setup to an integrated two-tuner unit. I had the IR blaster setup with digital cable for the first month I owned my Tivo. I called Cox and asked them to take the digital receiver back. The IR blaster is far too frustrating.


ps-I'm not complaining about the Tivo/sat receiver setup, though. That serial cable worked perfectly, and changing the channel is exactly like changing it with cable. It's instantaneous.

pps- The one thing I don't like on my parent's DirecTivo is that it has an audio delay. Any change of the channel, FF/REW, or playing of a program has about a 2 to 3 second delay in the audio after the video starts playing. Why is this, and can it be fixed?