I've been living at my inlaws for the last month while remodeling work is being done on my house, so my media center isn't really doing much. I've been forced to mainly use their DirecTV Genie (HR34) for watching shows, since their internet connection isn't fast enough to stream from my media center (7MC). For those who are curious, here are my observations of the Genie so far.
Cool Genie Stuff:
-It automatically asks if I'd like to record 30 min extra for sports events
-Nicer interface than previous DirecTV boxes, not as nice as 7MC though
-Multi-room works great
-integrated ondemand is awesome (too bad I can't use it w a slow internet connection)
-5 tuners. Doesn't beat my InfiniTV 6, but not too shabby.
Genie Annoyances:
-It always has to be playing TV! If I stop a recording, it reverts to LiveTV. Drives me crazy!
-The apps feature looks good, but does almost nothing. Call it a "marketing" feature.
-While better than in the past, the menus are still cumbersome compared to 7MC
Consider this my daily use DVR review. Yes, I could blow the Genie out of the water for lots of other reasons. Honestly if I weren't invested so heavily in 7MC, I would strongly consider the DirecTV setup.
DirecTV Genie
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mdavej
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The main things I miss from my satellite DVR days are PIP, quick tune, dual live buffers and buffer recording from the beginning. I wish WMC could do those things.
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kmp14
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That "always playing live tv" thing is really annoying. Can really mess up recording sporting events if you accidentally catch the live scores 
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kingwr
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The picture quality of DirecTV is unparalleled -- not Dish, not UVerse, and certainly not my local cable co. (Charter). Of course, you have to have a great TV to see the difference.
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mdavej
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Now that Charter has rolled out SDV in my market, to my eyes it's on par with DirecTV for HD and an order of magnitude better for SD. So I'm happier with WMC overall, aside from the few things I posted earlier. And since cable has all my local sub channels, I don't have to bother with OTA anymore either.kingwr wrote:The picture quality of DirecTV is unparalleled -- not Dish, not UVerse, and certainly not my local cable co. (Charter). Of course, you have to have a great TV to see the difference.
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woodchuck
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Another update... It has been almost two months with the DirecTV Genie now. I must say that I consider it a serious contender as a media center replacement. I'm not going anywhere until my existing cablecard rig dies though (or the guide updates turn to crap). My favorite feature of the Genie: Newer Samsung SmarTV's support a feature called RVU. This allows you to access the Genie with no set top box at all. It has the effect of making the SmarTV act a lot like media center. You can get DirecTV channels (all of them), and use any SmarTV feature you'd like with a single remote (like Netflix or Amazon).