Tivo HD + DVR coming in 2 weeks
We recently became new owners of a 50″ Panasonic Plasma TV. With this TV comes HD capabilities. We are die-hard DIRECTV subscribers, so naturally we wanted the best of all worlds: HD + Satellite + DVR.
Unfortunately, being the holiday season, DIRECTV had these wonderful units on back order. 
So, this meant we would have to settle for standard HD satellite with no DVR capabilities. This is being installed on 12/30. But, good news! Last week (after only about an 8-day waiting period), DIRECTV’s automated service called to inform us that the DVR was available. I promptly called, kindly accepted the $299 one-time charge (spread across 3 billing cycles, of course), and scheduled the DVR for installation on 1/15.
I’m interested to see what the interface is like on this new DVR. It doesn’t appear to be a Tivo unit, so we may be giving up the use of Tivo capabilities, which would really be a bummer. But, with only one HD TV in the house, it’s not like a networked Tivo does us much good, anyway. Plus, downloading HD content via a wireless connection to a PC for offline viewing isn’t exactly, speedy either. Hopefully DIRECTV has ways to schedule programming online with this new DVR. It sure does look nice — can’t wait to get my hands on it.
[... We recently became new owners of a 50" Panasonic Plasma TV. With this TV comes HD capabilities. We are die-hard DIRECTV subscribers, so naturally we wanted the best of all ...]