It was a double header if you were watching on Versus (DirecTV Channel 608). They shared the same commentators, etc.. for the INHD broadcast.

Versus Broadcast Schedule
HDNet Broadcast Schedule

Was channel 608 hi-def?

I'm not a DirecTV subscriber, but it shouldn't be. Versus is a standard def only channel. The games on the schedule that are marked HD will be shown on INHD in high def as well as Versus in standard def, so you'll need to adjust your DVR accordingly. Perhaps two season passes or wishlists with the HD one having higher priority.

Yep, only select VS. games are in HD. There isn't a dedicated HD channel for VS. yet, so the providers that do carry the channel and want to show the HD version will have to use a 'special use' channel. I kinda though that by now there would be a HD Vs. channel, but I guess they don't really have enough HD programming at this point to do that.

In anycase, anyone here have the new (is it out yet?) HD stand alone TIVO? I'm moving soon and was giving some thought to it, but the price is really a tad too high.

I was prepared to buy one immediately and transfer my lifetime membership until I found out that you can't get guide data for them in the UK. I may be moving there in a little over a year and I couldn't justify the expense for just a year. Especially since the price will likely drop after all of the early adopters buy and I'd not be able to get my money back out of it. Check here for reviews.

No, but there have been 3 "upgrades" in the past 3 weeks. The official word that is OTA is coming before Dec 1st, but it's rumored to be coming "much sooner."

The upgrades have been focused on HDMI compatibility, proper DVR function, and proper MPEG4 recording. The box still isn't ready for primetime, but it's getting better with every release. The worst thing it did to me was dump a program that was missing chunks due to rain fade instead of just keeping the partial. That has apparently been fixed, but since getting the new (huge) 5-LNB dish, rainfade seems like much less of an issue. It's raining here right now, but the MPEG4 HDTV channels are working like a charm without issue.

On the whole, I think I'm more pleased with the HR20 than I would have been with an HR10-250. Compared to even the 6.x Tivo software, the menus are lightning-fast. Setting up a season pass (series link) is as easy as pressing the record button twice when hovering over a show in the guide. Contrary to my initial pros/cons, skip-to-tick and skip to end/beginning do exist. The only thing I wish it had was the dual live-bufers, but word is that DirecTV is considering adding this.

One major funtion that was enabled in last week's software upgrade was the eSATA port. It's now possible to upgrade your recording capacity simply by plugging in an eSATA drive to the back. The downside is that you can only use the internal drive or the external drive, not both at the same time. This may change, and there is talk of adding the ability to move shows between the two drives for archival purposes, but this is all largely unsubstantiated.

I'm geeked about all of those updates. In the past, DirecTV had to wait for Tivo to write updates and then they had to negotiate the features and probably pay Tivo for it. If DirecTV stays active like this, it's promising. When I worked for Hughes, they weren't known for updating their receiver's software at all.

I wonder if they follow any forums... Is the TivoCommunityForums following this at all or do you have another site?

Once they allow transfers between units, I'm there! Ethernet would be preferred.

dbstalk.com has the most active forum for this box. Earl Bonovich is a DirecTV insider of sorts and has stated that DirecTV is reading the forum.

Since DirecTV doesn't have as much in the way of choice of receivers these days, the HR20 is their flagship product. It really has to work as designed asap, or it can severely affect their reputation. Many people on that forum resent being treated as beta testers, but I would have to imagine the vast majority of them knew that going in. With the latest update that came today, I would say this box is working well enough now for the common user. One major issue that remains is pixelation during fast forward of MPEG4 recordings. Other than that, most of the show stoppers appear to have been ironed-out. There are still minor things like incompatibility with some HDMI TVs and caller ID display not always working. I'm confident these things will be fixed based on the frequent updates, but I use neither of those features.

There is still some polishing that needs to be done. OTA is the most requested, but sound effects are also disabled due to the complexity of inserting them into the digital audio stream. There was another grayed-out function, but I can't recall it right now. Dual live buffers would be great, but that was never an intended feature.

I would bet show sharing is in the works. I'm sure some form of video extraction will become possible due to the ability to use external storage.

It seems that if you pay for local channels, you get the local HD channels for free. Even if you didn't, it would be included in the $10 HD fee. So... why would people want OTA turned on unless their city doesn't broadcast the locals in HD?

Seeing how people have been talking about this unit since January and some people have reviewed it with earlier software, I found this review that is pretty recent: Link.

It mentions that you can't hide unsuscribed channels from the Guide... is this still true? I hope that's on the to-do list if true.

Local HD channels are only available OTA, they don't go through a satellite. At least that is how it was explained to me.

Long ago, before HD, I had east and west coast feeds of the big three networks. (Originally, the east coast CBS feed was my local station (which was also, incidentally, the first HD broadcaster in the US), which was kinda neat, but they changed it to the NY station at some point.) Then, at some point, the local ABC and CBS stations complained, and their feeds were removed, but I kept the NBC. Then, when I got HD, I had the HD feeds of NBC, too. Then someone decided that I was only eligible to receive the east coast HD NBC feed. I don't know what the rules are, but they seem very haphazard.

I heard Detroit was first so that's what prompted me to ask.

I always hated the way DirecTV receivers worked in that respect.

I read some of those complaints on the forums a couple weeks ago, and as far as I could tell, those who were complaining were either:

a) encountering the video and audio stuttering shortly before the upgrade, indicating the upgrade was unrelated.
b) reporting broadcasting problems that weren't the fault of their equipment at all
c) having hard drive failures completely unrelated to the upgrade (the timing was just coincidence)
d) having audio dropout problems when using the digital audio output of the tivo (which I don't use).

Now, the fact that someone you're working with personally has been having a problem, and you specifically have checked it out with him and you're sure it's none of the above, carried more weight with me than all the posts on the community forums combined. So I'm a bit worried.

I may go to my parent's house tonight. I will check out what's going on. I have my doubts that they got the upgrade.

Thanks. It would be nice to know for sure.

So, when I got to my parent's their HR10-250 was "pending restart," so it wasn't running 6.3a yet. Of course, I forced a reboot and about 30 minutes later they were up and running with the new software.

I can't say it's much faster, but I was only really testing it for a few minutes after it was upgraded, so the system could have been thrashing the hard drive with other post-upgrade activity. I set it up to use grouping and then changed the channels for a bit. Everything seemed smooth, but if there's a problem I will probably hear about it on Monday.

Back off-topic, when I came home the HR20 wasn't responding to my Harmony 880 or the original remote. I had to reboot it to regain control. That never happened before and some people have been experiencing the same thing with the new software. Thankfully, it managed to record everything requested, so the reboot is just an annoyance. Never the less, that probably shouldn't happen this far into development.

On the other hand, it's probably difficult to test for such issues when you're putting out new software on a weekly basis. I like being on the bleeding edge, so I prefer the rapid releases. "Normal" users might be less happy about having one thing fixed only to break something else.

Brad, you can hide the channels you don't receive. That review must have been based on an old version that didn't allow that.

You have to manually tell it what you receive.

Gah. I hate that. Wonder why, so many years along, they haven't ever made that feature available.