[geeks] directv and tivo

[James Fogg]

> [short version]
> What is my best deal for a Directv Tivo?

A friend owns a large audio/video/satellite company in the North East
and I've picked up some info from him recently. I'm also a 5+ year
Directv subscriber.

If you can find a satellite dealer who knows his shit you will probably
find that he has a stash of older Tivo receivers in the back room. They
are allowed to re-activate them.

However, most dealers are moving away from Directv at light speed
because they are screwing the dealers. Also, if you want multiple TV's,
Dish Network is a better deal (no +$5 per month per receiver like
Directv) and their hardware approach of daisy-chaining receivers off one
LNB I find more attractive. Recently Dish Network improved their
programming selection so they are very competitive with Directv.

Both companies DVR's have Tivo-like programming schedule interfaces to
the sat companies programming database, so you can search by name,
actor, time, see when it shows again, etc. I wouldn't expect there to be
known hacks to offload the stored shows to your computer like there is
for Tivo, but then again I don't think those hacks applied to Directv
Tivo units anyways.