New DirecTV HD UI Nearly Ready

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Rumor has it DirecTV’s high definition interface will land on their satellite set-top boxes (HR20 or H21 and up) beginning November 1 (Get it here: http://www.bestsatellite.tv/). As you can see from the video above, the new design is at once both modernized and simplified with what appears to be quite sprightly interaction. DirecTV breaks it down:

  • A sleek new look and feel
  • Lightning fast scrolling
  • 1080p HD resolution
  • Visual browsing experience
  • One place for all DIRECTV CINEMA™ and On Demand movies
  • Recommendations based on your past viewing preferences

Between this new guide and DirecTV’s whole home DVR capabilities, I wonder how many takers they’ll find for the upcoming DirecTV TiVo? Given two years of delays, DirecTiVo is expected to feature older DirecTV hardware running TiVo’s original standard definition UI.

5 thoughts on “New DirecTV HD UI Nearly Ready”

  1. I have used TiVo since 1999. The Directv whole home DVR package was the nail in the coffin for me. It allowed me to greatly simplify the TV experience for my whole family. I have gone from three HD TiVos (one from each generation) down to one Directv DVR and two tiny set top boxes. The interface and experience is fast and clean. I thought I would use TIVo forever, but it was finally time to leave them behind.

  2. I’ve been using these old DirecTivos in standard def for far too long, waiting on the HD DirecTivos to come out. This is the final piece of the puzzle for me — this HD interface looks slick, and I’m not going to pay for old hardware and an old interface just to get Tivo in HD.

    The Directv remote was also a big issue for me (it sucks), but I’ve gotten used to the Harmony remote and should be able to map the Directv DVR remote to Harmony without a hiccup.

  3. The new DirecTV HD UI is very good. The high resolution crisp text and speedy guide scrolling make this a generation ahead of TiVo. There’s no way in my right mind I would downgrade to a slower SD interface without MRV.

    The only thing I would of liked to see is more time across the screen (like Verizon IMG 1.9). However the speed of the scrolling makes up for it while still providing legibility even on smaller screens.

    Using this UI makes me laugh at cable operators pathetic attempts at on screen navigation. IMG 1.9 is pretty good but the little bit I used it I didnt like the fact there was no smooth scrolling animations in the guide. I felt lost because the guide does not scroll smoothly, you forget which direction the scroll is occurring.

  4. We just got the new guide pushed down to our receivers today and are sorely disappointed. We have a mixed environment with a nice little low res tv in the kitchen and a big HD in the living room. The DVR can’t figure this out. We now have to push ‘exit’ on the tv to get to the new guide, redrawn in low res. Hard to see and an extra step. And to top it off, the system also switches the living room HD tv into low res mode. We know that technologically this is not needed, since we have been living with HD viewing inthe living room and low res in the kitchen for a few years with Direct TV already. We just called to speak with someone who cares at Direct TV, and gee wiz, there is no way to disable it. So now we have to push exit to see the guide, and our nice big HD tv switches down. What a lovely new UI. This is so seriously flawed that we are seriously considering ditching Direct TV.

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