DirecTV DVR software update hits the stage again, now with slightly less fail

That botched DirecTV software update a couple weeks ago that locked up DVRs everywhere, causing missed shows, global warming, spousal abuse and general melancholy amongst the populace? It's back and locking up boxes across the land again, however this time, after rebooting their HR2x units and wondering how they'll go on without a DVR'd episode of this afternoon's Judge Judy, DirecTV subs will be greeted with a message proclaiming them the proud owners of a 1080p video on-demand capable set-top box, with improved "cellphone style" search via the remote and enhanced channel guide info including more actors. We probably can't expect more than another apology letter from the satcaster, but tell us, does knowing what all this pain was for make it any easier?

[Thanks to Chris for the pic & everyone who sent this in]

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Oct 21st 2008 9:46PM]

That last one wasn't an update. It was just some guide data that the units didn't like.

Well, at least that's what DirecTV says.

And now, while the new software rolls out...

There's a thread on dbstalk of people talking about how boxes are locking up again...

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=143153

So maybe DirecTV is lying to us?

I've been running 0x290 for a bit, it works great for me.

[Andrew @ Oct 21st 2008 11:42PM]

You are correct. The last lock up wasn't a failed update. This is the first time (recently of course) that they have attempted an update. We've been doing customer candidate builds for a few weeks, but no one's boxes have been updated, until now, without going through a specific procedure to do so.

That being said. For the last several builds my box has been rebooting itself randomly. It was doing it at least once a day usually. I know it's done it 2 days in a row still. However, I'm not on the very latest build yet, so hopefully they fixed something, but I'm not getting my hopes up. It may just be my box.

[xeon @ Oct 21st 2008 9:49PM]

I just got the update but I wasn't greeted with that message when it came back up :( I wonder if I'll still get 1080p movies when they start them.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Oct 21st 2008 9:59PM]

Press the guide button, it should come up.

[Tyler @ Oct 21st 2008 10:17PM]

Got the update earlier, performance seems MUCH better... Very snappy menus now.

[Brian Wohlgemuth @ Oct 21st 2008 9:50PM]

How nice of them to kick the download during House....nice timing! :-(

[Madara @ Oct 22nd 2008 8:47AM]

No kidding. I didn't realize it wasn't recording until I missed House and the first ten minutes of The Shield. It also screwed up my Heroes recording yesterday. Why not do this early morning when most are sleeping?

[Izzy @ Oct 22nd 2008 11:54AM]

You ain't kidding. Locked up and missed the first ten minutes of House, then after Fringe it pops up and asks about downloading a new update. It took over an hour, ugh. But it's done with now.

[JOSE @ Oct 21st 2008 9:53PM]

in the middle of sportscenter!!!! total bull crap had to sit thru the stupid restart... why couldnt they just update the boxes late at night like they always have done before?... damn u directv programming guys or whatever they call you

[Cell Phone @ Oct 21st 2008 9:57PM]

DirecTV has the most mis-managed system. I have an HR21-700. For the past 6 weeks, I've had daily problems. Lockups, failures, reboots. I pay $110 a month for this? I don't get it. Who keeps sending out these program guide updates that cause all this problem? If I were in charge, I would have start cracking knuckles on the idiot that continually ruins service for the subscribers. I'm sick of it. It's not worth it. When my contract is up, CableTV, or UVerse for me. I used to be a loyal DirecTV customer, but they've done nothing to keep me happy. Nothing. It took 2 or 3 months to get billing mistakes fixed earlier this year, not that Comcast is any better.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Oct 21st 2008 10:01PM]

Did you think of calling them? What you're experiencing is not commonplace and it's not due to guide data, you clearly have a broken DVR. DirectTV will send out a replacement with a little prompting.

[max @ Oct 22nd 2008 7:19AM]

the thing about the billing errors and months to redo has happend several times to me and I pay over 160 /mo. dtv is very customer unfriendly especially in their pushing of "lease only" policy or an over inflated cost to buy. I have been with them virtually fromthe start and do not have contract (even though they say I do until i have them check. Their signal still gives me false countoring, a lot, which I don't get with ota signals and their compression gives in general an inferior picture to over the air. I am seriously considering dumping and going to uverse-een thought I own all my directv equipment. they are also getting too pricy. no customer appreciation at all.

[John M @ Oct 21st 2008 9:59PM]

My box rebooted without warning right before House. Thankfully it managed to come back up exactly at 7PM to start the recording but I would have been very, very upset if it hadn't finished rebooting in time.

[Jeremy Lynnes @ Oct 21st 2008 10:00PM]

It should be noted that the HR2x DVRs ONLY do 1080p/24 and NOT 1080p/60. A good chunk of HDTVs out there wont do DirecTV's flavor of 1080p.

[no thanks @ Oct 21st 2008 10:10PM]

only the cheap shitty ones wont.

too bad if you skimp on your high dollar purchases.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Oct 21st 2008 10:12PM]

It's not true that only cheap ones won't.

The first HDTVs that accepted 1080p/24 only started to appear 18 months ago. No matter what you spent before that, you didn't get 1080p/24 capability. Some high end makers (for example Sharp) didn't even add 1080p/24 until a few months ago. Samsung started only about 10 months ago.

Over 50% of HDTVs out there won't accept 1080p/24. And most of their owners don't even know it.

[Boo Radley @ Oct 21st 2008 11:45PM]

Actually alot of them will accept 1080p/24 even though they won't actually playback at 24p, they use 3:2 pulldown, same as when you playback a progressive DVD.

[Andrew @ Oct 21st 2008 11:45PM]

This is true. Their 1080p offering is going to be worthless for a lot of people. Unless you have a new TV or a high end TV, don't expect to get 1080p. Regardless, you can still watch the shows, but they will display at a lower res.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Oct 22nd 2008 12:12AM]

Boo:
"a lot" is two words.

And to say a lot of them will accept 24p is inaccurate, because the number that will accept 24p is small. Well under half. WELL under half of HDTVs in use. I would say less than half the ones even currently offered for sale accept it. This of course will change over the next year or two to almost 100% of HDTVs for sale accepting it. But that still won't change the HDTVs already in use.

[CaptCaveman @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:34AM]

With Directv's compression will it really matter if the show is in 1080p or not...

[rgman @ Oct 22nd 2008 3:49PM]

My tv says its unable to do the 1080p....

[mikeg @ Oct 22nd 2008 4:39PM]

Don't worry Boo.
Some of us aren't fucking retards and understand exactly that the ability to display 1080p/24 and the ability to receive it and change it to a format that can be displayed are tow different things.

for the others, they probably have the cheapest POS that Wal Mart sells and who really cares about them anyway.

[Big Sam @ Oct 21st 2008 10:01PM]

Will this allow the DirecTV2PC software to work?

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Oct 21st 2008 10:02PM]

Yes. It works with this version of the DVR software. I tried it a couple hours ago.

[Jeremy Lynnes @ Oct 21st 2008 10:03PM]

Yes, this software will allow you to use the newly released beta.

[rswingline @ Oct 21st 2008 10:08PM]

How soon before I can start ordering 1080p movies?

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Oct 21st 2008 10:11PM]

Good question, it might start populating 1080p content in a few hours. It'll all be under the on demand section.

Note the 1080p movies are 6-7GB, so you may want to be careful about how many you download in a month, or your ISP might want to say hi.

[no thanks @ Oct 21st 2008 10:12PM]

personally, i called them as it took 4 times of total reboot and reacquire of all data in a two hour window to fully reset and work, i now have 3 months free of showtime, hbo, and 6 months of starz.

all by calling, explaining my displeasure in a civilized way and asking for credit on my account.

[DP @ Oct 21st 2008 11:04PM]

And I'm sure you deserved getting something just because you "asked for it".....and the reason that we have an economy they way we do now? I'll let you think about that!

[SaltyGary @ Oct 22nd 2008 9:21AM]

DirecTv has always given me great customer service and they generally try to do the right thing. I think the people that complain don't remember what a joy it is to talk to Comcast or Cox.

[mikeg @ Oct 22nd 2008 4:44PM]

To DP.
If that person was trying to utilize the service, and was having problems with interruptions while attempting, then I would have no problem with them calling and complaining.

And in case you aren't a DTV customer ( and it seems you aren't by your post), DTV offers free premium channels to people ALL THE TIME as compensation for less than satisfactory service.

Guess what, it doesn't cost them anything to do so.

They pay a flat fee to the content providers to be able to offer their content.
Regardless of how many of their customers use it.

so instead of offering a discount on a monthly bill, they instead offer something that doesn't actually affect their monthly income.

Sounds like a better business plan to me.

It also sounds like it doesn't affect the economy at all.

[whomever @ Oct 21st 2008 10:20PM]

I love DirecTV, and I HATE their DVR's. They're nearly worthless. I miss more shows because of the goofy thing, and queue another couple I'll be watching on-line now, too.

I think I'm going to switch to the TIVO version. There's still a lot of FAIL with the hughes units.

[Boo Radley @ Oct 21st 2008 11:53PM]

It's probably an id-10t error. That seems to be the cause of most problems.

[Tom Diego @ Oct 21st 2008 10:39PM]

Late model Sony HDTVs have had a particularly tough time getting the 1080p movies to play correctly. My 1-year-old Sony that does 1080p/24 and 1080p/60 would not display correctly for the first few "cutting edge" software releases. It still fails the 1080p test, but plays the movies OK in most, but not all circumstances. It isn't a "cheap shitty" model.

[JAY 2.0 @ Oct 21st 2008 10:41PM]

YEA ALL 3 OF MY HDDVRS LOCKED UP BUT GOOD TO GO NOW GET THIS I WORK FOR THE COMP. O WELL MORE CRAP TO GO AROUND..

[asdf...g @ Oct 21st 2008 11:55PM]

DirecTV isn't nearly as FAIL as you.

[etype2 @ Oct 21st 2008 10:45PM]

No problem at all. Your making it to be more then it is. :-) Minor interruption. Everything is working fine.

[chop @ Oct 21st 2008 10:50PM]

how about directv get their bitrate quality for HD up before they start killing their bandwidth with 1080p movies. i see pixelation on every HD channel i get (and i have the choice extra package). it may not be that apparent all the time, but its there.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Oct 21st 2008 10:55PM]

The 1080p movies are downloaded over the internet, not over satellite. So it doesn't burn up the bandwidth they use for other content.

You're always going to see some pixelation on regular channels. The average joe doesn't value video quality enough to make it sensible for a company like DirecTV to sacrifice quantity of channels in order to more bandwidth to improve quality of channels. Look at how crappy their SD channels became over 10-15 years. HD will inevitably follow the same path.

You don't want to see pixelation ever? Get a BluRay drive.

[DP @ Oct 21st 2008 11:08PM]

It's more than likely that your dish is out of alignment you prob should get a service call and then have a much more improved picture :)

[Boo Radley @ Oct 21st 2008 11:57PM]

That's only if you download them from the On-demand channels. The "Movies Now" are pushed out in the middle of the night over the dish.

[Boo Radley @ Oct 21st 2008 11:57PM]

Are you watching the HD channels under 200? Those are legacy MPEG2 channels for people with the old HDtivo unit. The MPEG 4 channels are all over 200.

[chop @ Oct 22nd 2008 12:00AM]

theres nothing wrong with my dish. i have 98% signal strength. i may just be a stickler for video quality, but locals are by far the worst with pixelation. i have an h21 so mpeg4's are there, either way pixelation is present in almost every single HD channel directv provides.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Oct 22nd 2008 12:10AM]

There's nothing DTV can do about pixelation of locals. The locals can be presented in no higher quality than they are sent to DirectTV by the local OTA channels. And since those channels are pixelated already when sent out, DTV can't make it un-happen.

I have an OTA antenna (HD digital TV) and Satellite HD locals from DirecTV and you almost never can see the difference between them. And the OTA channels already are quite pixelated even when received directly by antenna. Especially the Olympics. They were pretty awful.

[chop @ Oct 22nd 2008 12:21AM]

thats weird because when i switch over to OTA its MUCH more crisp than dtv's signal.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Oct 22nd 2008 3:52AM]

chop:
HD OTA locals that are in 1080i are 1920x1080. HD SAT locals on DTV are 1440x1080 is my understanding.

So the OTA locals are slightly higher resolution. But honestly, few shows use the resolution well enough to notice the difference. The only show I record OTA still is CSI (Vegas) and even on that the difference is rarely even noticeable. Every week I consider whether I should switch to the HD SAT local just to save space on my HDD (MPEG-4 SAT locals take less space than MPEG-2 OTA locals).

[Matt @ Oct 21st 2008 10:51PM]

Spousal abuse? LOL.

[ErisS @ Oct 21st 2008 11:15PM]

After my HR20 rebooted, my PS3 Found a new UPnP Server, my DirectTV box! It shows all items under my playlist - all recorded episodes and highlights were available for play, but the PS3 found them to be an unsupported format. My Xbox 360 did not detect the box. Hopefully Sony will update the PS3 to support whatever format the DTV box is presenting.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Oct 21st 2008 11:28PM]

The files are DRMed, that's why PS3 can't play them. It'd be great if Sony updated PS3 to support the DirecTV DRM, but I don't really expect to see that any time soon.

[Boo Radley @ Oct 21st 2008 11:57PM]

it's cause the update added the settings necessary for the Directv2PC software.