ReplayTVBlog

Wired is reporting that a recent software upgrade to DirecTV Receivers has disabled the serial control of the receivers used by both ReplayTV and Tivo DVRs to change channels and control the DirecTV Receivers.

DirecTV users with standalone Tivo and ReplayTV units are, of course, not very happy with this software upgrade. While the ReplayTV thinks that the channel has been changed on the DirecTV receiver, nothing is happening on the receiver end and the wrong TV program gets recorded.

Of course, enter the conspiracy theorist, who say that this was done intentionally by DirecTV to get people to buy a DirecTV receiver with Tivo integrated. The response from DirecTV: This is just a software bug that they are currently working on and should be fixed sometime in the (hopefully) near future.

There is a simple solution to this – just use the IR blaster that comes with the ReplayTV to control the DirecTV Receiver. While this may not be as elegant a solution as the serial cable, it’s what everybody else who uses a ReplayTV with a cable box has always had to use, and it works.

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