For the past month I had been using a DirecTV TiVo model R10 that I had purchased. Although it's not perfect, I loved it. However, I had some issues with receiving local channels, and DirecTV said that there was nothing they could do from their end and that the best solution was for them to lease me a newer model DVR receiver at no initial cost. I still think the local channel issue was their problem, but I didn't complain since they were paying for everything except the monthly lease fee and I thought it would be good to have a newer, better receiver. Boy was I wrong. The new receiver that came was a DirecTV R15. If I had known ahead of time that this was the receiver they would be sending, and if I had read the reviews here and elsewhere, I never would have let them send it to me. I connected everything and called in and had it activated. It automatically did a software upgrade which took a few minutes. I quickly discovered that one of RCA video outputs initially worked and then failed and never worked again. That wasn't a big deal, though, as I only needed one output anyway and the receiver has two sets of outputs, so I just used the other video output.

Upon using the receiver to watch live TV, I had no complaints. It seems like a typical DirecTV receiver. It's fairly fast and easy to navigate between menus and channels and to configure its settings. I like the remote control layout and its functions, even though it's different from that of the TiVo R10's. However, when I tried to use the DVR features, that was another story. One of the main purposes of a DVR is to be able to quickly search for programs you are interested in and tag them to be recorded. The search capabilities are so limited that they are almost completely useless. You can search by keyword, title, or channel number, but that's about it. That's fine if you know the name of the show you're looking for, or if you know a keyword. As far as searching by channel number, it sorts the list by time, not by show, and there is no way to change it. What's the point in that? You can do the same thing by looking at the program guide grid, and do it for several channels at the same time. The TiVo R10 has so many search options available that I don't think I would ever use them all, but they're there if I need them. There's a search available for just about anything you could imagine. This is necessary because you have to search a database of many thousands of programs to find what you might be interested in watching. I would usually spend about an hour every couple of weeks or so to search for and tag the shows to be recorded with my TiVo R10. I could not imagine how long it would take to do find search for and tag the same number of shows with the R15. I didn't have the patience to find out. It would have to be well over 10-20 times that amount of time.

I know are some complaints about video quality. I did record a couple of shows, and the video quality seems fine and the playback navigation functions work well. It would be nice if it had the 30-second skip function (the undocumented "back door function that TiVo has). Instead it has a 30-second fast-forward function. As far as long-term reliability (other than the video output problem mentioned above), I couldn't tell you, as I only used it for an evening before I got so frustrated and disappointed with it that I called DirecTV and told them that I wanted to send it back and re-activate my old R-10 and live with the local channel problem. Oddly enough the local channels are coming in now.

I understand that DirecTV stopped using TiVo and started making their own DVR receivers in 2005. That's fine if they want to do that, but they seem to have learned absolutely nothing from TiVo. The simple fact is that TiVo knows how to make a DVR, and DirecTV does not. The sad part of this is that DirecTV could easily fix these issues, even for those R15's already in use, because it's all software-based. All they have to do is add the search capabilities and some other user settings like TiVo has done, and the R15 could be a decent DVR receiver. I wouldn't recommend that anyone get this receiver unless they don't care about using it for recording. As far as its DVR functions, once you have used a TiVo, you'll be very disappointed with this receiver. DirecTV, I hope you're reading these reviews.