Direct tv multi room dvr install

However, the integration with these devices was difficult and the video quality was not necessarily perfect. SlingBox, while an excellent remote solution for streaming to PCs, Macs and Smartphones, is not an ideal solution for transmitting HD video to different rooms in your house. For starters, as good as the video quality as Slingbox HD is p there is a very perceivable lag-time when remote-controlling your Slingbox from a receiver device or software. Additionally, networking with these types of streamer devices requires either the use of very fast wireless Ethernet bridges Such as 5GHZ There are also Power Line Ethernet Adapters such as the ones produced by NETGEAR and Linksys, but the performance of these devices vary depending on the age and configuration of your home's electrical wiring and have a maximum speed of about Mbps.

While this is fine for games and Internet access, it really isn't fast enough to push HD video. DIRECTV's solution eliminates the wireless problem by using the coaxial cable that is already in your home going in and out of your satellite dish -- it creates a closed circuit between the DVR and "Receiver" devices in your home and permits the transmission of very high-quality HD video in a nearly instantaneous manner. Sounds simple, right?

After placing my order on Thursday with DIRECTV to upgrade my service, the first technician arrived the next day, late Friday morning, after I had waited several hours for him to arrive during a 4-hour expected time window.

When he got here he was absolutely nonplussed. Apparently, he didn't receive the correct order from his dispatcher , which was a subcontracting service that does the DIRECTV installs in my area. He also didn't speak English fluently. This wasn't a problem for me as I was immediately able to switch to Spanish, being a fluent speaker, but your average person might not be able to do that.

July The "initial" second visit was supposed to have occurred the following Monday. I wasn't at home, as I was away on business, but my wife waited all morning and nobody showed up. To make a long story short, another technician showed up the next day, Tuesday. Very cool. As you can see in the video I have posted above, I can now share the playlists between both of the HD DVRs in my house and also watch the content from either DVR in either room of my house.

If I so desired, I could buy additional receiver units and watch DVR content from either of these two units in other rooms. If we watch a DVR-recorded movie in the Living Room during the evening, and we get tired, we can go upstairs and watch the rest of it in the bedroom.

The only drawback to the current system is that the two DVRs are still autonomous, even though their content is shared with each other. In other words, I have to continue to program them independently and be aware that each unit is consuming recording space and maintain a To-Do recording list on each. With a single, centralized DVR it's easier because you can set content controls on the receiver units not to display movies and programming with specific ratings, but if you have more than one unit, all you can do is set a DVR not to share its playlist.

The Hopper gives customers the ability to get full DVR functions in all four rooms. The Hopper comes with three client boxes called Joey's and you can start a movie in one room and finish it in another! The Hopper records up to six shows at once and holds up to hours of HD programs. A DISH co-worker told me that the Hopper also has the ability to stream Blockbuster movies and you can watch internet on demand programs.

Pages Home. With a new install, I'd imagine that setup might be fairly straight-forward, but with an existing setup, for some per the message boards , it can be challenging. After attempts by three different installers at getting it to work in our home, I ended up researching the issues and getting it to work on my own.

The installers were very dedicated and really worked hard to get things working, but the technical issues and the newness of the technology seemed to be the difficult barrier. I'm documenting the issues we ran into as much for my own benefit in case I have to do it again! It seemed like a good time to add multi-room viewing to our package, allowing us to view any recordings from any of the three TVs. Now that it's working, it's very cool. Note: the newest models H24 and HR24 can piggyback Ethernet on the coax connection see below and do not require anything plugged into the Ethernet port.

The new setup uses a single coax to each DVR rather than the two that was previously required. Unfortunately, our neighborhood does not have high-speed and we have successfully networked our TV's without it. The hardware, of course, must be setup correctly. Multi-room requires I believe a "blue label" LMB in the satellite dish.