Poll: What's the most important feature in a DVR?
By Richard Lawler 
posted August 8th 2010 4:12PM
posted August 8th 2010 4:12PM
posted August 8th 2010 4:12PM
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I have to say capacity because I hate having to delete a show or Movie that I want to keep forever. I just wish that there were easier ways short of a complicated HTPC setup that will allow you to have a DVR with removable storage, that is something where the DVR has never beaten the old VCRs in.
This poll must be broken every response has 1 vote
@Michael Kirschner they all start that way.
I would say the most important feature in a DVR is the tuners and how many tuners the DVR has.
@IseWise But if you have 10 tuners and it misses many of your recordings you wouldn't want something with less that was guaranteed to record everytime?
@brennok
With 2 tuners I often comes across scheduling conflicts and have to reschedule my recordings or all together miss recordings, but with 10 tuners I would probably never have to reschedule. Therefore a DVR with a lot of tuners would probably be a lot more reliable in the sense that recording conflicts would probably never arise.
I think the most important DVR feature is comprehensive and accurate program schedule data. I hate it when a program does not get recorded due to incorrect schedule data.
@jwilliams I would file that under reliability, but I definitely agree.
Reliability pretty much trumps everything else for me. If it skips recording or breaks often all the other features are useless.
1. Reliability
2. Tuners
3. User Interface
4. Capacity
5. Internet / networked features
6. Multiroom
7. Ease of initial setup
8. Remote scheduling
Without reliability, the rest doesn't matter. If you can't count on the DVR to do its job, then why use it.
I'd have to say user interface.
However, that's mostly because my current DVR (Sky+HD) has excellent EPG data, plenty of room (for what I use it for, anyway), it's reliable-ish, and most of the time the two tuners are fine. That said, I still do have plenty of complaints about it.
Definitely high def capacity . If you recorded everything in standard def it wouldn't be a problem - but who the hell does that ? I had some problems early on with the Comcast DVR I got 4 years ago that were fixed with firmware updates . But not before I lost some shows in HD that I'd still like to have when it falsely read 100% capacity . I mean Stephen King's 'You Know They've Got a Hell of a Band ' from TNT in HD in 2006 - where do you find THAT in HD without a rebroadcast with parts cut out ?
Is it too much to ask for all of the above? Everything in the poll is important for having a good dvr.
You need all those things plug you need the ability to own the unit yourself. Leased units lead to the same kind of thing we had with the WE300 telephone set. Functional but not innovative. Just look at how long cable cos have offered dvrs with 160gig hds for example. If there was real competition, that would have changed 10 years ago.
@johnw248
Yours offers 160GB?
I wish mine did....
I mostly remedy this by only using it for cable-only shows, i.e. SciFi, Discovery etc, and using Windows Media Center as my primary 2TB DVR.
Commercial skipping is No. 1 for me.
Speed should be listed here.. processor speed, whatever. The #1 most annoying thing about most DVRs is they are slow to bring up the guide, slow to change channels, and slow to react to things like play/pause/rewind/fastforward. I could care less about the finest UI on the planet if it's slow.
Dangit you guys know I'm right about this!
@blackacex222
Yes, and ours while very slow to begin with has gotten like 50x slower since they moved to SDV. :-( I press fast forward to skip commercials than Play at the end of the commercials and it picks up the play after the *next* commercial break, with only about a 5X fast forward.
One of the things I love about MCE - almost instant response time at least on the PC and the XBOX. The Linksys extenders are a bit sluggish but nowhere near as bad as the DVRs.
I would have to say capacity and user interface is very important for most DVRs. In addition, let's have better options right out the box. The ability for the user to attach a blu-ray/hd-dvd drive, a bigger hard drive to carry with you on the road and you plug it up to any other dvr in the world. No matter who the provider is. Also, at least three tuners to be able to record at least three shows or sporting events at one time. Can we say commercial skipping out the box. Give the customer the ability to turn on commercial skipping or not. Beta testing for new software. This way, when new software is available from that provider, the customer/user has the option of sticking with the old interface or new one. Lastly, create open source forums for each DVR. In this way the user can help add extenders and various other fixes and tweaks to the DVR itself. By the way, integrate the HTPC with the ability to add the likes of a Ceton or Homerun tuner to any provider. Weather it be Sattelite, cable, or just plain old OTA television. Tuners should be offered by all paid providers and a technician shouldn't have to come out and install something they don't know how to install anyway. I said a mouthful. Nice poll Richard. You and Ben keep up the good work on the Podcast. Peace.
Ownership?
Being able to own your system rather than leasing makes many of those options possible -- or at least configurable.
2.5 years ago I got a pair of DirecTV HD DVR's installed in my home and proceeded to attach 1TB drives to them to increase capacity. Even under strong management of recordings it is difficult to have more than 40% capacity free.
I do not understand why some companies (e.g. DirecTV in this case) doesn't simply have a limited stock of high-capacity HD DVRs for those willing to pay more. Of course, going beyond 2/2.5TB required controller conditions to support disks of growing sizes.
I feel multiroom is most important, if I miss a recording I just "acquire" it from other sources. We have WMC7 and it is simply awesome for multiroom.
Cory
CableCard.
I have an awesome Magavox no frills DVR, but the lack of cablecard regulates it to bedroom use. My TivoHD does the job in the living room with full HBO HD, etc..