Well....

My vendor has been told that the R15 is coming... somewhere between the next 20 to 40 days....

In other words October...

I guess those August 17th rumors didn't happen...

I am still on the fence about how I feel about the delay...
I am glad they are waiting to make sure they get a product they want out there... (And I REALLY hope, they "heard" the complaints about items in the manual and are trying to fix those)....

But I really would have liked to had the new box for the start of the 2005 TV series.

Oh well...

But the latest information that is out there, at least from a Supplier->Vendor->To Me...

ROTFLMAOSTC

D* couldn't give a rat's a** about us or our concerns. As long as the R15 is better than a cable DVR, they will have a successful product. Look at it this way: They have 14 million customers and only about 2 million have TiVo's. That leaves 12 million plus new subs that most likely will be very happy with the R15. Life will not be good for TiVo lovers.

A guy could dream can't he.....

Will the current promotion for existing customers (free DVR after rebate) remain in effect when the R15 is released?

Now that the new tv season is underway, my wife is itching for a DVR. Should I get one now or wait for the R15?

Since DirecTV never promises specific hardware, once the R15 is available, is there a chance that they would still send me an R10?

As stated before, yes. The promotion lasts untill 11/5/05.

Thats the $64000 question....tough one I'm afraid.



Once the R15's are released I believe you will have to specifically ask for an R10. At least thats what has been said here in theses forums.

This has also been confirmed by Robert at Valueelectronics. He said early October.

Bill

Who do you think my vendor is.....

I thought so....

Go ahead and get an R10. It is without a doubt one of the best DVR's available today. Very few people who get them don't like them. You really can't make a mistake considering its free.

Perhaps not free. Kind of depends on where you buy it. I thought D* was selling the R15 for 149 which makes it a 49 dollar dvr. Its a 100 dallar rebate and since the price is not yet 100% official yet we wont know what we will pay untill they are released.

It could be worse... if D* wanted to operate like Dish Network you'd have your R15 DVR right now and it would be bug-filled and you would have to put up with those bugs for a year - E* seems to unleash new DVRs on their customer base and let them be the 'beta testers', whereas D* seems to do it right and get most of the bugs out before FCS (First Customer Ship).

I hope you are right, but the stories I hear from R-15 testers don't sound encouraging.

That is what I was afraid of. I think the reason D*tivo's work is the software from TIVO not the hardware. I am on my second hd D* receiver and I have to reboot it all the time.

Rick

Are these stories from a month ago? Or have you heard something recently? If recent what have you heard?

Bill

Yeah Dan,

We know you can't give specifics but are the problems bugs that can be fixed, or are they more like general design/feature/useability complaints?

I can't give specifics, without violating the confidence of those that have written to me, but there are several feature specific problems, and some reliability of performance problems. The troubling part is that they appear to be quite random, which leaves little hope of them being thoroughly eliminated.

I wonder if they are bad enough to make the R15 a complete failure in the public's eyes? IOW, if D* markets this DVR to new-to-DVR subs, will it be bad enough for these DVR newbies to think it is junk?

Which leads to the $64K question, will it be bad enough for D* to re-evaluate their relationship with TiVo?

Well, considering UltimateTV is far better than DTiVO, and the Time Warner DVRs in my area are far better than TiVo, I doubt it will be very hard for DTV to come up with a winner.

Ricky

Better or worse doesnt matter to me because I am very used to tivo. Kind of like using the same flavor of toothpaste for ten years and you find a toothpaste that is proven to do a superior job but the taste is radicly different. Its tough to swallow. Eventually you get used to it. Like an ice cold pool or a burning hot bath. . Eventualy D* will exaust its supply of Directivo's and my five will have all failed and every last Directivo on ebay is gone. I will have to Get used to The R15. OH WELL!! All good things must end. Directivo Im sure will be around for a little while more. Enjoy it while you can!

Catastrophic quality issues were never enough for E* to even EVALUATE a relationship with TiVo.

Considering D* is even more stubborn than E*, I'd say the answer to your $64,000 question is "Only when hell freezes over."

You shouldn't be swallowing your toothpaste. It's not meant to be ingested.

"If you accidentally swallow more than used for brushing, seek professional help or contact a poison control center immediately".

I never said I was eating it. Unless you have no tounge I doubt if you can brush your teeh without tasting it All I can say to this reply is

I will doubt that TW DVR's are better than TiVo, but that is an argument for a different day.

Keep in mind that while UTV was much better than TiVo in some respects, it was, as is TiVo, developed by a software company. D* is a content provider and has said on more than one occasion that they want to keep to their core competency which is delivering content. So what makes them think they can develop a better DVR?

And I have to wonder, why did D* not just buy the design from MS for the UTV. It would have killed TiVo. Perhaps BG wanted too much money.

What I think would be nice is a satellite version of a cablecard. Buy your STB from whoever you want and plug in the card. Let the marketplace determine quality and features.

I doubt MS would sell the code for any price. UTV was run on a subset of Windows CE. Selling UTV to DirecTV would mean supplying an outside company with source code to Windows.

I, too, preferred UTV to TiVo. I wish they hadn't pulled the plug on it. Of course, if wishes were horses...

Actually, UltimateTV, like the DishPlayer and other WebTV boxes, ran on a derivative of BSD, not Windows CE. Even if it was, the DVR code is an APPLICATION, and so would not include any OS code.

The DVR code from UltimateTV was incorporated into Windows HME - that's why it wasn't for sale, not because of any "Windows source code" issues.

Hi, Dan.

Unless my information is wrong, when UTV came out, it ran on WinCE 3.0. Here's a link to the announcement info at the 2001 CES: UTV Announcement

To quote from the article by Paul Thurrott:

I know UTV is an application, but if you were going to purchase an application that would need continued development, how do you do that without the source?

Edit: In thinking about it, MS wouldn't have to give the source to CE, only to the UTV app. Either way, I don't think MS is fond of giving out any source code.

So Dan, are you suggesting that DirecTV may miss a October launch? I love it when one person posts from a dealer who has been wrong in the past and another "confirms" it with a reference to the same dealer and everyone thinks this is good info. Geez.

Personally, I think DTV had second rate programmers that rushed a product that had to work around significant Intellectual Property limitations and now they are scratching their heads "Geez, what do we do with this POS now" Grovel? Fix? Push out as a POS? Damn just give people a friggin date. They'll eat it up.

It may upset those diehard Tivo faithfuls, but I guarantee the new-to-dvr crowd will not know the difference nor care. The fact that there are so many people out there HAPPY with Comcrap's or Echostar's boxes should illustrate that quite clearly.