The launch of DirecTV's vaunted whole-home DVR service came with a simultaneous surprise that drove subscribers buggy a day later. While the company said the glitch was unrelated to Monday's product launch, it occurred a day later and suspiciously impacted HD DVRs-the units that are part of the whole-home service.
Whatever caused it, the subscriber universe was incensed, especially since the problem was first noticed by other subscribers, not DirecTV. "Luckily, there's Twitter," wrote Ina Fried on CNET, who said a fellow reporter pointed her to a DirecTV tweet telling viewers to power cycle and reboot the system. "I did that and after two lengthy reboots (each one takes about 10 minutes) things appeared to be back to normal," she wrote.
Apparently DirecTV has caught onto the problem which it called a "transmission glitch ... affecting some of our HD DVRs" and automatically reset the affected receivers. "There is nothing further that you need to do," the company said on its Web site.
Of course, Cox Communications is the only cable operator so far to try its hand with a whole-home DVR. Cox announced the service, along with a new Cisco set-top box, at The Cable Show in Los Angeles last month.
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