Philips DSR7000 Combination TiVo/DIRECTV Satellite Receiver

This is my first TiVo and first DirecTV. This thing is amazing. It's truly a whole new way to watch television. It's very easy to use and the quality is great. There are just a few things I wish they would add or change.

The dual tuners lets you do some incredible things. For example, say you're watching channel A live, then switch to channel B. You watch that for a few minutes, then decide you might have missed something on channel A. You can pause channel B, switch back to A, and rewind it to catch what you missed! Insane...

The integration is pretty smooth between the TiVo and DirecTV interfaces, although in combining the two, they stripped out some features from each. My biggest gripe is that the program guide is the regular TiVo one. The program guide on standalone DirecTV units is much faster and slicker. You also don't get the DirecTV feature that lets you browse channels by logo.

Also, even though this is a Series 2 TiVo, the USB ports seem to be disabled. Unlike other series 2 TiVos, you can't connect it to broadband you're stuck with the phone line. And The Home Media option doesn't seem to be available. Hopefully a software update will enable these features.

Finally, it would be nice if it had component video output, but that's not a big deal for me.

It does have optical audio out and s-video out, so you still get pretty darn good quality. And of course, you don't lose any quality when recoprding like a standalone TiVo which is by far the best feature of this thing.

I've had 6 Tivos but up until now, they have all been freestanding (TiVo1 and TiVo2) units. I switched to satellite about a year ago and was thrilled to find that DirecTV was offering Tivos.....Until I brought mine home. What they DON'T tell you is that DirecTV TiVo is designed and built for DirecTV only. It DOES NOT record cable or over the air broadcasts, it DOES NOT support networking (a fantastic feature for getting your schedule via Internet and sharing shows between multiple TiVos in a household) and, because it doesn't support networking, it also doesn't support the Home Media Option (which allows you to stream audio and images from your PC to your TiVo). It also doesn't support web based scheduling requests or the soon to be released TiVo-to-Go. These are all features that are central to the TiVo culture and I'm amazed that DirecTV has crippled their version of the TiVo service. I'd happily pay out the few bucks a month to add a DirecTV unit to my TiVo subscription, but DirecTV doesn't allow for it.

The long and short of it is that this is not a fully enabled TiVo and there isn't much you can do about it. If you just want a PVR with a nice interface, this is probably it. But if you want TiVO, as in ALL of TiVo, then skip these direcTV units, buy a regular TiVo and hook it up to you current satellite receiver. Not only can you record over-the-air or cable this way, but you get every one of the TiVo functions that the folks at TiVo have thoughtfully built into thier units.

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I replaced my old Sony Directv received for this tivo/directv unit....

Reading the various articles on Tivo receivers, I understood that a combined tivo/directv receiver would cause no loss of image quality (a regular tivo unit would first convert the digital satallite signal into an analog signal)... so I expected both live and recorded pictures to be of the same quality that I was used to with my Sony receiver....

Well, the live picture quality is definitely less than what my old Sony directv receiver produced, which it is quite disappointing; one of the nice things of satellite tv are the crisp imagines (if you have a good tv set).

The recorded picture quality is similar to the live picture quality (so at least no further loss of quality is introduced during recording).

I am using the exact same cables (S-video) as with my old unit, so that can't be the issue.

Also I don't get the Dolby theater sound signal any longer, my Sony sat receiver delivered dolby flawless (yup, I did enable the Dolby setting on the Philips receiver using the onscreen setup). The system does pickup a broadcast is in dolby, but the audio output is simply not the 5 channel dolby surround (my audio receiver at least doesn't recognize as dolby any longer, whereas it did with my old Sony sat receiver).

The tivo stuff all works fine and is very user-friendly, but if you care about image quality or your dolby sound, you should think twice before you buy this unit !

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The concept of integrating DirecTV twin tuners with digital recording capabilities is brilliant, and the user friendliness of these machines is quite good considering the sophisticated technology. But I've only been able to experience it for about six hours before the units fail. Hard drives malfunction, tuners go out; I'm waiting for my third unit. My father has had three bad Philips DSR 7000 before giving up & buying a Hughes unit that has functioned for some time now. The warranty is terrible; 90 days and you have to pay the shipping. Philips should not have put their name on these machines, which all appear identical (RCA, Hughes, Philips) from the same joynt mfr. in Mexico. Mine came from the Philips Employee Store & I'm loyal, but this is pathetic.

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this box is awesome, but why is it $599 here. does it have somethign that the $99 one i just bought doesn't.