I suppose I was asking for trouble when I mentioned that I would never trade in my DirecTV TiVo for the DirecTV Plus DVR. Super Bowl XLI, 3rd quarter, the picture suddenly freezes. I didn’t press the pause button and nothing on the remote seems to work. This had happened a handful of times over the last few weeks, but a reboot would always solve the problem. Not this time. After I accepted the fact that my TiVo was not coming back, I placed a call with DirecTV. I explained the situation to the rep who kindly offered to ship out their DirecTV Plus DVR in exchange for a new 2-year commitment. I said, “no thank you, your DVR is awful.” The rep asked, “have you ever USED our DVR?” I answered, “yes, have you ever USED TiVo??” He told me that he had, but I think he was lying.
As I saw it, I was left with 3 options:

  1. Give in and take the DirecTV DVR (I refused this as a matter of principle)
  2. Buy another DirecTV TiVo at Weaknees or eBay (over $150 to get what I have now)
  3. Give up DirecTV entirely and get a standalone TiVo

After much contemplation, I went with a refurbished standalone TiVo for $50 and $13/month TiVo service. Paired with the basic, basic cable package from Comcast, I would be paying $40 less each month than I was with DirecTV. Sure, I’ll miss the excellent picture quality and the huge storage upgrade I had with my DirecTV TiVo, but now I’ll finally get to try some of the features that are only available on standalone TiVos, such as the Home Media Option and hopefully in the near future, Amazon Unbox on TiVo.