My posting of the WeaKnees upgrades announcement for DirecTV HR20 HD DVR boxes sparked a response on DBSTalk, the sat TV forum. Apparently, it’s not hard at all to upgrade with an external e-SATA drive, and high-capacity drives and drive enclosures are pretty cheap. This post summarizes the general thoughts on the thread fairly succinctly:
“With the Weaknees upgrade you 1) may lose the warranty, 2) you lose the original drive so who knows what you do if you ever need to return your HR20, 3) if you ever need to switch HR20s, or upgrade to D*’s next DVR (whenever that is), you’re back to square one. A Weaknees benefit is that you don’t need to assemble anything.
“With the e-SATA upgrade, you need to buy two parts (the Seagate DB35 750GB HD + MX-1 Enclosure), takes literally 5-10 minutes to install, plug it in, and re-boot. No issues with the warranty, can easily upgrade later to another HR20 or successor to the HR20, and can easily replace the drive if it ever fails (5-year warranty).
“While Weaknees has been great in the past, doesn’t seem compelling at this time for the HR20.”
