Replacing R15 with another R15

[jshirele]

Greetings all: My R15-100 recently bit the dust in a very, very weird way. I think it's the tuner section going out, but it constantly blinks into a "searching for signal" screen, and only powering it down completely 4-5 times gets it to complete both the signal lock and download of the guide info. Also, and this is very strange, if we turn on the microwave (several rooms away), it also kicks into searching for signal, but stops when the mic stops. Everything else seems to work just fine, so I have no idea. I bought a new R15-300 to replace it on eBay (still waiting for it to come in). Will I only need to switch the smart card over to the new unit, or will I need to contact D* to have it re-initialized? Also, can I just move the old hard drive over to the new one so I don't lose all the shows we've recorded already?

Any info would be highly appreciated, or anything I haven't thought about yet, or any ideas on what happened to the first one (just because I'm curious). BTW, I'm only replacing it with another R15 unit to minimize fuss; I realize there are vastly better ones out there

[WK-Michael]

You should be able to move the card over, and have DirecTV pair the card with the new unit.

[jshirele]

Thanks for the super quick response! So I _will_ have to call D* up to have them "pair" the card with the new receiver? You'd be surprised at how hard it is to find this basic piece of information out!

Any thoughts on if I can move the HDD over?

Any speculation on what happened to my original box, with the weirdo microwave interfering with it thingie?

Thanks again!

[WK-Michael]

Yes, you will have to call them.

We don't think you can move the drive over.

Drives do fail - they're spinning 24/7/365, so over time, that happens.

[jshirele]

I probably should have made this clearer - the problem with the soon-to-be old one is only related to the tuning section. DVR portion works just fine. We can watch recorded material without any issues. It's only the tuning section which appears to be affected by randomly going in and out until it just displays a dark screen and I have to power cycle it several times to get it to grudgingly come back. Or of course whenever I turn on the microwave oven, it goes over to "searching for signal" and then returns to normal when the mic turns off.

But you're saying that you don't think I could move the HDD from the old one to the new one even if it's healthy? Does it get formatted some magical way that writes something on it to tell it what specific box it's installed in? If I can't move it, it's not the end of the world; was just hoping to save what we already had recorded...

[WK-Michael]

Right - the drives are serialized to the unit, and likely won't work in another unit. We really don't work with the R15 (we hate it) but for all other DirecTV DVRs, you can't move drives and keep content, so we doubt you can with this one.

[jshirele]

Thanks again for the quick responses! I'm guessing you probably can't just copy the recordings over either, so we'll likely have to start from scratch and just burn what we have over to DVDs (mostly a lot of kid's programs for the little ones).

For the record, I hate the R15 as well especially after it's recent behavior. BUT... we can't get HD over satellite from where we live (too deep in the woods, the SAT's too low), and we're waiting on our local cable franchise to upgrade to support HD in the next 6 months. This is just a limp along thing for us for now.

[WK-Michael]

When you can get cable, you can get a great unit:

http://www.weaknees.com/3

[jshirele]

Yup, that's EXACTLY what I'm hoping to do! Can't wait to get into the Tivo camp from everything I've heard/read. I originally bought an IR extender from you guys, so that's how I got here.

[WK-Michael]

Cool!

So just make sure you don't have to agree to two more years with DirecTV when you move the card over to the replacement unit.

[jshirele]

DEFINITELY won't! Thanks again for all of your help. BTW, what's with the Weaknees name? How did that come about?

[WK-Michael]

Long story, but early on it our history, we thought it made good sense (you get "weak-in-the-knees" experiencing TiVo . . . ). So then we grew, and people (oddly) remembered it, and here we are.

If we had to do it over again, we'd name it "Google" unless that was taken already.

[jshirele]

That's actually pretty funny, and makes a great story. When we get our cable installed, I'll probably be back with some more dumb questions. Not sure how DVRs work with cable, since I've only had the integrated D* box.

P.S. I think "google" may be taken. You might try something a little more upbeat like "yahoo".

[WK-Michael]

"Yahoo"? weird, but kinda catchy.

When you go to cable, come see us! There are some great TiVos for cable - best TiVos yet!