Monday, January 21, 2008

Winter Update details for DirecTV HR20 HD DVR

It's been a week now since the winter update was downloaded to our HR20 and we were greeted with the following heads-up descriptions from our friends at DirecTV (in italics) and my commentary on each:

Menu Changes: with the larger text size and new order of things, the menu is now easier to read and get around
Um, I can't really tell if the text size is indeed larger (I'll take their word for it), and the new order of things seems to be referring to the fact that setup is now the fifth item in the list, and "manage recordings" is on the top level (was it always there?)

Screen Options: in the Guide, My Playlist or while watching TV, you can use the YELLOW color key to view available options.
This is actually a pretty cool update: pressing the YELLOW color key in the various environs results in the following menus:
  • Guide: Sort programs by category, jump to a date and time, change favorites list
  • My Playlist: Mark programs to delete, sort programs by category, change order of Playlist, open/close all
  • Watching TV: View previous channels, Closed Captioning, Change favorites list, audio options
Closed Captioning: We've added a quick on/off switch to TV options. To give it a try, press YELLOW while watching TV.
I'm pretty impressed with the CC function so far, especially with two young kids who LOVE to scream and yell just when I'm trying to listen to crucial dialog.

So, they're making incremental improvements to the experience.

I'd still trade all the above to get a better signal on our local FSN-HD channel so I can see hockey in high-def. As it is, the signal's not strong enough so we suffer through pixelated pucks all the time. sigh

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