You're in control of your DirecTV
Written: Jul 24 '02 (Updated Jul 24 '02)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Sound: |
 |
|
| Ease of Use: |
|
|
| Picture Quality: |
|
|
| Durability: |
 |
|
| Recording Time: |
|
|
|
Pros: You're in control!
Cons: Extra $10 a month for service
The Bottom Line: If you want to make full use of your DirecTV subscription, you could probably use a TiVo.
|
|
|
| charlesj68's Full Review: Sony SAT-T60 DIRECTV Receiver with TiVo |
After hearing other users extol the virtues of TiVo to us, we finally succumbed to their persuasion and joined the TiVolution. After reading a great many web sites I came to the conclusion that the Philips and Sony units were practically identical, but the Philips seemed to have a more frequent occurrence of modem troubles. Therefore, we got the Sony SAT-T60 unit.
We already had DirecTV, so this was an upgrade. Unfortunately, all the great deals are for new DirecTV customers only. I understand how DirecTV really wants to gain new subscribers, but they need to realize that a unit like the TiVo enables a family to make better use of their subscription, and in our case that made it worth our while to upgrade to a higher priced subscription! Anyway, enough with the whining about price, how is the unit?
The T60 is about the size of your typical VCR. It came with the unit, a remote, an S-Video cable, A/V cable, phone cable and splitter and RG-6 coax. All the included cables pleasantly surprised me. Many other consumer electronic devices leave it up to you to find your own cables. Granted these are not the $50-a-piece, audio/video-phile, uni-crystal, platinum-plated wonders one might lust after, but they were good, serviceable interconnects. The unit itself was packed with cardboard and Styrofoam support brackets; very well protected. It came with a “placemat” installation guide, installation manual, TiVo manual and DirecTV guide.
Setup was quick and painless. I unhooked the old DirecTV receiver, reversed the order that I had the receiver and VCR ordered in and hooked the receiver to the satellite and phone lines. I used the “placemat” installation guide and actually did not even notice the installation book until after it was all hooked up and working!
One note: this receiver actually has two tuners inside, so you should try to use a Dual-LNB dish with it. The dual tuner feature either allows you to record two programs at once, or record one while watching another, or record two while watching another off the TiVo storage!
With the unit hooked up, I turned it on. It searched for and found the satellites, downloaded the program guides, asked some questions to determine how it should dial the phone and finally instructed me to call DirecTV to finalize the setup. One 1-800 number call later (and seven minutes on hold with tacky 80’s music being played) and the service rep had our new receiver in action. Total time from opening box to watching TV: 35 minutes.
Since we have been DirecTV customers for a while, we already had a number of programs that we wanted the TiVo to catch. These we quickly figured out how to snag. The TiVo offered a couple suggestions for other programs that we might be interested in, most of which we declined. Then since it was getting late, we went to bed.
Next morning, lo and behold, we had programs! Some of the dangedest things play at 2:00 AM! Playing a program is as easy as popping up the list of programs, arrow keying over to the one you want and hitting Select. When a commercial appears you can hit the fast forward key up to three times for either quick, fast or warp speed fast-forward. Hitting play again drops everything back to normal, and backs up a few seconds to catch what you probably zipped over the top of. There is a button for “replay” which backs up 8 seconds and repeats what you just saw. You can combine that with the “slow” button that takes things to one-half speed and you have your very own instant-slow-motion replay. Now I just have to wait for football season!
You can search for programs based on title, time, channel and attributes. Attributes are things like How-To shows, Home Improvement shows, Drama Movies, Action Movies, etc. You can create Wish Lists that combine features like particular actors or directors and have it display everything coming up that matches the list, or even set it up to automatically record anything that matches.
It has only been a couple days, but this is certain to change the way we use the TV. There are programs that come on only when we are at work or asleep. It never seemed worthwhile to program the VCR for these, but the TiVo is so simple that it becomes easy. I’m expecting that our live TV watching will soon drop to a very small number with the vast majority of the time spent viewing programs from the TiVo.
One more note: A TiVo is actually a computer, so you should treat it as one. Make sure you have a good surge protector between it and the wall outlet, and get a protector that also filters the phone line.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 300
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
charlesj68
|
|
Member: Charles Jones
Location: Loveland, Colorado, USA
Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 0 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.