Philips DSR6000R DIRECTV Receiver with TiVo Service
A great device.
This is just a great product. I've had directv for a couple years, so I'm going to focus on what tivo added when I replaced my old receiver with this one:<br />(1) the ability to interrupt live programming without missing anything. Say you're watching a show, and you get a phone call. Just pause (it is always recording what you're watching), complete your call and then resume.<br />(2) No wrong tape/missing tape/wrong tape speed/over-record problems. A problem with VCR recording is making sure the tape is in and set up properly. It's a nuisance at best, and can cause the recording to mis-fire completely at worst.<br />(3) Leave town and record. If you need to leave town for a few days or a week, you can still record the shows you want without having to worry about tape capacity.<br />(4) Record by program rather than time/channel/code.<br />(5) Multiple search options for locating programs of interest. Title, description, cast names, category are all options. You can locate programs easily, two weeks in advance (no hunting through program grids).<br />(6) Season pass. Once you find a program of interest, if it is recurring, you can subscribe by &quot;season-pass&quot;, which will record all the episodes of a show (and you can choose first-run only if you want) even if it changes time, day, or length.<br />(7) Watch-while-recording. If you are recording a show, you don't have to wait until it is over before you can start watching it. Suppose there is a show you want to watch that starts at 10:00. Just show up at 10:20, and you can start watching from the beginning, skip the commercials, and still finish at 11:00.<br />(8) Manage old recordings. If you've got a significant amount of back-logged recording, managing it with tape is a mess: which tapes have what on them, avoiding over-recording, finding the programs, etc. With this device, however, you have 35 hours available by title presented in a simple menu. To be sure, you can't permanently archive this way, but ifyou want to it will play to VCR for you - without your having to make sure you get clean, labeled tapes set up in real-time.<br />(9) Quality. Because you're capturing the over-the-air pre-compressed signal, the recorded version is as good as the live version. This is a significant advantage that this has over the standard tivo.<br />(10) Easy to set-up. I already had my dish set up, so this wasn't difficult - the only thing was that the regular directtv people don't know all the steps on transferring my account from my old receiver over to the tivo box, but they have dedicated support people who know what to do.<br />Overall, this is just a very wonderfully well thought-through product. There were quite a few times when I first got it when I thought of something that would be convenient if it would do for me, and each time there was a way to do it.