RCA DIRECTV SYSTEM DRD435RH – SATELLITE TV RECEIVER – DIRECTV

I’ve had one of these for a few years, which I bought to replace my original DirecTV receiver which had died. It was relatively simple to set up – I had to call DirecTV to activate it, and they needed to send me a replacement access card, so it took a couple of days. I have it hooked up to a mythtv DVR through a tv tuner card. Mostly this setup works fine. I can change channels via the serial port, picture is fine, not much else to say.

However, every now and then it just hangs. Picture goes black. Changing channels doesn’t do anything. Only way to fix it is to pull the plug for 30 seconds or so, plug it back in and wait a minute for it to reboot/rescan. this doesn’t happen very often … maybe 10 or 20 times in the few years I’ve owned it, and I can go months sometimes with no problem.

For many users this would be fine … if you are just watching TV live, for example, you’ll immediately notice and can just go pull the plug for a bit, though you’ll wind up missing a couple of minutes of your show. For me using it in a DVR it is frustrating, as I might not watch my recorded programs for a while and by the time I do there may be several days of recordings that quietly failed. I’ve missed watching a number of shows that were important to me.
Rating: 3 / 5