Pause Live TV on Whole Home DVR System

"This was great until I found out AFTER the installer left that the H-25 receiver is not capable of pausing and rewinding LIVE TV. "

I think your main focus was make sure your wishes were carried out before the installer left. Had you watched him or spoke with him during the install -you may not have had this upset.

Stay on the Sup and you should be able to get things right-Good luck 

What directv engineers need to do is simply make the pause button on whole home receivers act as a macro button that basically starts the program recording on the remote dvr and then plays and pauses the program. Actually seems like a really simple engineering problem to solve since that set of commands is basically what the work around for this limitation is. So lets get this straight this is not some hardware limitation, it is simply a lack of brains on the programmers part. What they should actually be doing is programming the remote whole home receivers to do what the DVR does, and every channel change start a record so that the process is seamless like on the DVR.  Sure there would be a slight pause from what is actually "live TV" but who cares.  Directv programmers are just really bad.  Just look at how bad the streaming from a networked computer is to a whole home receiver. It is so bad it hardly works! (streaming music works very slowly, and movies never work because it doesnt support even the most common of codecs). Yet I can do this from my home computer to my cell phone flawlessly for christs sake!  We need to demand better from Directv.

lukester,

I have been an applications programmer for over 30 years and there are major flaws in your "theory" of a simple macro command recognition in a HD Receiver's software. Remember, the HD Receiver does NOT have a hard drive to even record the live channel's buffer in. So now your "magic macro" tells the HD Receiver to request a remote HD DVR to record the live channel(even if I'm the kind of user that channel surfs and may change that the live channel on my HD Receiver 10 times in two minutes?????). Well, upon initiating that request, my home has 4 HD DVR's, so how does the HD Receiver pick one??? Oh, you say....that's easy, just pick any of them. But wait a minute, the HD DVR the Receiver picked has a hard drive that is completely full and cannot store the HD Receiver's live channel buffer:0( Oh, just pick another one.....rinse & repeat because that one's full too. Oh well....ALL of the HD DVR's hard drives are full what logic do I execute now???? Not as easy as you made it out to be...huh???

P.S.

I have none of the "problems" you describe using Media Share. Maybe you need to start a post in that forum and we can help you determine what's causing your technical issues. And BTW, the video you see on a "smart phone" has such a dumb-downed resolution(easy to see though on such a "tiny" screen) and in no way is relative to DirecTV's network features.

Yes, multiple DVR's work great, make sure they are HD though. 

I have a comment as to your thesis above.  Hardly a day goes by that a new subscriber doesn't post that he is an expert and it would be so easy to add this or that feature to the Whole Home or Cinemaplus or some other system.  I have no idea how hard that would be but I don't think you really do either.  The Whole Home system was a long time in development and you'll find that the soon to be released Tivo Directv DVR will not be able to participate at all.

My suggestion to you is to learn all of the ins and outs of the Directv DVR (and there are quite a few) and become an operations expert, you'll enjoy the experience and you'll find that you don't need and maybe don't even want live TV pause.

Most experienced DVR users practically never watch live TV.

lukester01,

Guess you didn't discern my jist with my pretend scenario. I intentionally meant to show it to be extremely difficult, if not impossible, and believe me as an experienced analyst I left out a whole lot of "gotchas" that would prevent any single macro from triggering a software application that would most likely take more memory to execute than is is your PC(much less in a DirecTV Receiver). The ad hoc management of real time remote DVR recording hurts my head to think about it:0)

Like user dcd eluded to, learn more about WHDVR and the abilities of the HD DVR's for time shifting and sharing content and you will forget all about pausing live TV on a HD Receiver. It's really NOT feasible from a hardware or software perspective.

Hey guys!  I'm realize that I'm just a dumb old layman customer that has been faithfully paying his Directv bills for over 10 years now but I do know that my H-25 receiver does not pause live TV, does not show on the guide that a program has already been set to record, and does not seem to have the capability of offering an alternate option when their are previously set recording conflicts.  Yes, my upgraded HR-25 in the living room seems faster than the HR-22 it replaced, but for the H-25 in the bedroom to be called an upgrade is a pitiful misrepresentation by Directv at best.  A local Directv supervisor is scheduled for tomorrow to replace my H-25 piece of cr*p with another HR-24, so hopefully this upgrade comedy of errors will come to an end and at no cost to me as repeatedly promised by Directv.  Again, I will keep you posted.    If you tech guys would get your act together and try to think things over from the customers' point of view, most of these problems could be avoided.  QA lads!

Hey guys -- I'm investigating getting Direct TV (switching from AT&T Uverse) and I'm trying to get a handle on what's available with Direct TV. With a HDDVR (any room DVR service) and 2 HD receivers can you pause live TV from the receivers? Can you initiate a recording from the receivers? With my current set up I can do both.

you can only pause live tv from the dvr. you can initiate recording to the dvr from any of the three provided they are networked.

although not truly pausing "live", a workaround is to initiate a recording on the hds and then select the show from the playlist to watch. the faster you do the process, the closer to "live" tv u will be

a few other limitations are that you cannot order a movie from a simple receiver, nor can you look at the guide and see what is set to record.  I would suggest you go with a dvr in every room so that you can pause live tv from any tv.  From what I hear you can access other dvr's from other dvr's. Not sure if they tell you on the guide what is set to record on other dvr's though. I do not have that setup. I wish I did because the not pausing live tv is a real pain.

also u cannot set up a recording from one dvr to another dvr

Finally got my second DVR (HR-24) installed and sent back the woefully inadequate H-25 (non-DVR) receiver with the Directv tech supervisor.  

I would recommend an HD DVR in EVERY room in which you want to be able to pause live TV, have an indication on the guide that a program or series has already been set to record, and have a pop up window indicating options if a conflict exists with a previously recorded program.  

Also, you will not have to deal with some pain in the neck "workaround" to pause live TV by remembering to record everything you watch just in case you want to pause it.  This is part of an upgrade?  What a laugh.  Please see my previous posts above.  

Let the buyer beware!  Know exactly what you are getting before you obligate yourself to a 2 year commitment.  In all fairness, my experience with Directv has been pretty good over the last 10 years, but sometimes there is a  communication between the national rep you talk to on the phone and what ultimately ends up on the work order of your local installer.  If you have a question or legitimate complaint, be persistent.  Thank you Directv for finally taking care of my request to my satisfaction. 

Navydude,

When using two dvr's does the one dvr know what is set to record on the other dvr? I'm wondering about the display of the R icon in the guide.

Thanks

Luke

On the DVR "guide", when a show or series is set to record, a large red dot will display on all shows set to record.  This is an easy way to tell what is set to record without going into the menu and checking "Series Manager".   These red dot indicators did not show up on the list of the (non-DVR) H-25 receiver.  This was one of the dealbreakers with me on the H-25 receiver.   See above posts.

If you have DVRs that "share" recordings with each other, it shouldn't make any difference which DVR it was recorded on as far as viewing goes.  It would only be relevant if you were trying to limit the percentage of hard drive use on that particular DVR (not normally a problem with me as long as I keep my already watched programs regularly cleaned off (deleted) from the DVR. 

I understood that each DVR had its own list of recorded shows which could be set to share with the list(s) of the other DVR(s), if they are set to "share" these lists.  The tech set up each DVR by establishing a prefix (name) of the recording on the list, i.e. in my case LR for living room DVR recordings and BED for bedroom DVR recordings. 

I am still trying to find an consistent easy way to find these LR or BED prefixes.  So far, sometimes I see the designation and sometimes I do not.  I think it may have something to do with designations only showing up on recordings set on DVRs other that the room you are in at the time. 

As far as I can determine, the recordings on both of my DVRs show up on one consolidated list and I am still trying to determine an easy way to determine which is which (LR or BED) so I can delete shows set to record in a room in which I don't usually watch particular programs.  For example, my wife watches her type of shows normally on the bedroom DVR and not on the living room DVR so I am trying not to have those shows set to record in the LR thereby not taking up space  on the LR DVR.

I hope this is helpful.  I am still familiarizing myself with all aspects of the new HR-24s.  I would still HIGHLY recommend a DVR (not merely an HD receiver) in EACH room in which you want full functionality (see above posts).

So if you look at the guide on the bedroom dvr, does a red dot show next to shows set to record on the living room dvr? I'm trying to figure out if there is there still the issue of not knowing if a show has been set to record or not? (from the guide)

Luke