DirecTv and the Phillips DSR 6000

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DirecTv and the Phillips DSR 6000

In early 2002 I purchased a Phillips DSR 6000 from American Satellite, at a cost of only about $30 with shipping and tax. I was a new customer of DirecTv and if I stayed for a year, the TiVo would essentially be nearly free. Many retailers still offer deals such as these.

This was my second TiVo (first being a 35hr Series 1 machine I won in a TiVo contest in 2000), and my first time as a Directv user. I was instantly impressed at the picture quality of digital TV. Having owned a ~10 year old 27" mid-range television for the past few years, I never really thought I'd notice higher quality input but it was instantly apparent: the crystal clear picture was a definite improvement. Phillips has since replaced the DSR 6000 with a newer DSR 7000 model built on the Series 2 Tivo system, but the system served me well and I hear they are still in great demand on eBay due to their hackability (to get free directv, not just tivo hacking).

Directv and Tivo combined

I've since spent considerable time using Directv without a Tivo at the homes of friends and family and I must say that after trying it both ways, a Tivo is pretty much mandatory for satellite TV. I've often said that Tivo helps you "squeeze the shit of TV into a few diamonds" and when you're talking about a channel lineup that includes literally hundreds and hundreds of channels, it becomes very difficult to locate and watch your favorite shows. I went from a basic cable system of 50 channels to my ~300 or so on Directv and found that navigating the immense number of choices, and remembering what time to turn on each was daunting. A Tivo was perfect for grabbing a show no matter what channel or time it was on. After a few weeks of finding new favorites by word-of-mouth and a little surfing, the Tivo was filling up quickly and shows were only lasting a few days.

TiVo features, reliability, and upgrades

This model was very easy to upgrade, due to it being designed to handle two hard drives from the factory. After a few months of perfect operation, I sprang for a 80Gb prepared upgrade drive (a review of that is to come), cracked the case and installed it. With the expanded capacity I enjoyed longer shelf life for shows before their self-deletion and it wasn't until the unit was about six months old that problems arose. Reading the Tivo community site, it appears that reliability has been a common problem for the 6000, and on one hot (100 deg F/37 deg C) day the machine up and quit. The unit felt hot to the touch and I realized that airflow around the unit was more important than I thought.

After failed reboots and calls to customer service, the unit was shipped back to Directv and a refurbished replacement arrived shortly (I kept my 80Gb drive, they didn't say anything about the voided warranty). The replacement TiVo worked fine with the upgrade drive added, though for some reason the internal fan was very noisy. I suspect it was a return due to a lose ball bearing fan, and the Tivo Community again helped me find a cheap replacement fan that was more efficient and silent. I did my best to improve cooling around the unit to prevent a repeat of the previous failure.

A couple months passed before another problem cropped up as the factory hard drive encountered a problem that sent the Tivo into continuous reboots. The Tivo Community had similar threads on the problem, and they all pointed to hard drive errors. I did some diagnostics on the drive and figured it was time for a replacement. I purchased a 120Gb drive and ended up preparing it and copying the old data off the damaged drive. With the new drive setup my tivo was sporting 200Gb of space and all my saved shows were still there. Over time, about the only drawback of having so much capacity seemed to be that the Now Showing list would take a good 30 seconds to load, due to the slow processor and tons of data. Many shows were being saved for months on end and a full Tivo meant there were a good 150-250 entries.

Conclusion

Over the 18 months or so that I used the DirecTivo it served me well and I plan to go back to Directv from the cable system I'm on in my new home. To be honest, reliability was definitely a problem though I found ways of working around it. For that reason, I will probably spring for a new series 2 DirecTivo. Though I must say I'm hesitant to go with a series 2 directivo since DirecTv has crippled the USB ports and held off on the Home Media Option (with no definite plans to enable either anytime soon).

Directv with combined Tivo is a great system though, and I found it made the vast number of choices manageable.

by Matt Haughey July 17, 2003 in Product Reviews

Comments

Awesome post; the only thing I have to add is that the advantages you saw with TiVo on a satellite system are similar on most of the present digital cable systems. My cable system has around 150 channels, and has a terrible guide system to boot. TiVo deals with all that for me.

One other advantage I've seen with TiVo: I didn't really have to deal with the change of channels when I moved from NYC to Boston recently. What's NBC's channel number? Who cares? Just tell TiVo to go to Law & Order, and it'll do it.

Posted by: Jason at Jul 17, 2003 5:42:41 AM

What, if anything, do you plan to do about the 30-sec delay on the Now Playing list? I have the same problem, after upgrading to 208 hours, and it's becoming enough of a pain that I'm considering UNgrading to bring the hours down. Is there a hack to fix this?

Posted by: Ed at Jul 17, 2003 6:08:52 AM

It looks like 9th Tee is developing a solution to the 30-sec delay.

If you're up for some serious modification, they also sell memory chips.

I've never tried either product, though.

Posted by: Joe Berkemeier at Jul 17, 2003 6:41:10 AM

Jason - yeah, I forgot to mention that some digital cable services offer pretty much the same package as Direct and would also make a Tivo necessary. I guess the bottom line for me was that a Tivo was a nice convenience on my 50 channel cable system, but I could see how people lived without it. Once I was plunged into hundreds of channels, I was drowning in content and I can't imagine how people negotiate having something like 7 channels of HBO and still remembering what time a movie is on. When I watch Directv at someone's house now, it feels useless without a Tivo, it's just the chaos of everything on at once.

About the delays on Now Playing lists and Season Passes (something I also forgot to mention -- sometimes setting a season pass would take 4-5 minutes on my system), I have seen those cache and memory cards, though I haven't heard any reviews of them. Now that I have a series 2 Tivo, I'll post about how it handles 160 hours of content when it's fully built up. I'm hoping the faster processor helps.

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Jul 17, 2003 8:42:00 AM

i am confused, matt. i see no such $30 deal on the American Satellite site. is there something i am missing or another site i should know about?

Posted by: bobby uhlenbrock at Jul 17, 2003 10:57:53 AM

Sorry bobby, I just linked to their general tivo/directv page. It appears they don't have the same deals currently (they actually offered a $0 deal when I ordered mine, if I went with a lower quality dish).

It's probably worth checking out the sites listed on Tivo's Directv page (the retailers linked on the right), you might find one outfit is offering a vastly reduced price (Orbit has a $49 deal right now).

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Jul 17, 2003 11:23:06 AM

I just took advantage of a deal with DirecTV that got me a Hughs HDVR2 for $199, not yet installed. Based on my preliminary research, it looks like, if you can obtain what's called a U5 drive image (apparently based on a Linux kernel that doesn't lock out the device if you make mods to the Linux initialization and other files), you can hack the thing to turn on the USB ports and use them to hook to a USB/Ethernet adapter. You can apparently also upgrade the hard drive capacity without having the U5 image. Don't know if anyone has yet figured out how to extract the video as they've been able to on the Series 1 units, though that would be sweet, since I like to archive certain things on my PC.

Posted by: John Jorsett at Jul 17, 2003 1:29:05 PM

My tivo recently went down. As mentioned channel surfing through hundreds of channels is quite a pain in the ass. With out the tivo I am lost. Unfortunatly it is no longer under warranty. Through all our searching and diagnostics it seems one of the drives is bad. I wanted to know if there was an available drive image of the core o/s for the tivo. I intend to transfer it to a new drive and be back on my way to 'easy tv'

any info that you have would help please email to rockstar@three56.com

Posted by: Jesse at Jul 24, 2003 10:42:38 PM

I had a tivo 212, one of the early ones and then i bought a 6000. The 6000 doesn't record continuous 60-90 min like the old one. It starts from scratch each time you change the channel so does anyone know how to change the 6000 so it will continuously record like the old models?

Posted by: Rob at Nov 27, 2004 4:42:39 PM

very happy except i wish i bought something else because i am doing a wireless network in my house and this product does not work wireless.it was a waiste of my money and time.

Posted by: bill at Jan 28, 2005 6:14:55 AM

I bought a phillips dsr7000 off of ebay last month and activated it the next day of recieving it. It didn't come with a remote so I ordered a tivo remote off of ebay but when I got the remote it wouldn't work with my directv/tivo. Well, Since the remote was a silver Thomas (UK) Tivo version I figured that that was why the remote didn't work so I called Directv and they let me order a universal remote that was supposed to work with my phillips dsr7000. When I recieved the remote I punched in the code but this remote wouldn't work either. So, I called directv again and they and I come to the conclusion that my reciever was faulty and they told me that though I bought the reciever from somebody else it was under warranty since I activated it on my account and it hadn't been (90) ninety days yet. Well, by this week I will be getting a (70) hour dvr to replace my (35) hour dvr for free and no shipping or other charges. Not even an extension on my current one year contract. So before you fall into buying a dvr from thier site and committting to a 2 year contract consider buying a dvr from ebay and hopefully something will go wrong with it before (90) days and you can get a free dvr.

Posted by: John at Sep 24, 2005 9:56:38 PM

I tried to hack up my philips astro receiver model dsr4201/68 and its working. Now i can insert any expires smart card and stay watcing all ppv channel for free. The singapore hackers hack the astro smartcard with pc smartcard reader while me hack-up the receiver. Which one is the best?

Posted by: Philips hackup at Sep 14, 2006 3:40:55 PM

Hi dude,
can you tell us how did you hack your DS44201/68? and can you post a picture of that receiver?

I'm interested to do it.

thanks

Posted by: Hellbound at Jul 19, 2007 10:50:09 AM

Can u tell me how to hack dsr4201/68?

Posted by: John at Sep 24, 2005 9:56:38 PM

Posted by: Philips hackup at Sep 14, 2006 3:40:55 PM

Hi dude,
can you tell us how did you hack your DS44201/68? and can you post a picture of that receiver?

I'm interested to do it.

thanks

Posted by: Zamzam at Jul 2, 2008 10:22:05 AM