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It turns out DirecTV wants $199 for me to *rent* their HD-DVR.

That's better than the $299 I paid for the HR20-700 and a shitload better than the $700 my father paid for the HR10-250. I can't say it's fair to pay upfront for leased equipment, but if it were free, then why wouldn't everyone just request an HD DVR? There would be no reason for non-HD, non-DVR equipment to exist. There is the option to buy an HR20 for about $800, but it makes very little sense to do so. Under the lease plan, if your HR20 becomes obsoleted (like the HR10-250 was), you would be issued new equipment. If you purchase your receiver, DirecTV has no obligation to give you new equipment for free (like what happened with the HR10-250)

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AND they want to charge me $5.99/mo for DVR service. fsck that!

And the $13 per month per stand-alone TiVo is a better value? The $5.99 fee covers all DVRs in your house. Dish Network, for example, charges $5.98 per DVR on your account. In comparison, DirecTV is a bargain if you have multiple DVRs (I have 6 on my account).

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I've decided what I'm going to do for now is keep DirecTV, upgrading to HD service, but staying with my two ReplayTV units for DVR functionality. DVRing of HD content is something I want, but not at that price, especially when I'd have to take several steps back in terms of functionality on the DVR itself.

I know some ReplayTV units can share shows over the internet. Other than this, I don't think the HR20/HR21 DirecTV DVRs can be cast aside so easily. In the beginning (I was a very early adopter), they were horrendous. However, at this point, they're perfectly usable and actually quite good. If I were offered a Series 3 Tivo with DirecTV tuning capability today in exchange for my HR20s, I don't think I would make the switch. I don't think Tivo is worse, I just wouldn't gain much.

The $5.99 DVR fee DirecTV charges actually gives you tangible results for your money. They have been operating a beta program they call Cutting Edge. About once a week, they will throw beta builds of the HR20 firmware up on the satellite. If you force a software update during these published times, you will get to test new code. Some of the new features that were given to the Cutting Edge program first were OTA HD reception, home media streaming, Video on Demand (over ethernet), and a slew of other GUI and operational refinements.

When DirecTV collects $5.99 for a DirecTiVo DVR, you get nothing for your money. The Series 1 & 2 DirecTiVo code has not been updated in over a year (except for daylight savings changes). And before that, updates were only released months or years apart.

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Maybe some day this situation will sort itself out, but right now, it's too much of a mess.

The HR21 should be available soon. This is the HR20, but without the OTA tuners. This will make manufacturing cheaper, but who knows if the savings will be passed on to the customer. I'd say that's as good as you can hope for at the moment. I don't see the $5.99 DVR fee changing. They now have a tier of service with the DVR fee rolled-in. I don't know if it's discounted in that package, but at least they'll be hiding the DVR fee inside the programming fee. Maybe you won't notice it then.
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-Rob Riccardelli
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