Hey there Solid Signal fans. Let me tell you why I’m asking for your opinion on this particular question. There’s a new version of the DIRECTV app for phones and tablets. You can read my review of it here. This new app merges the experience of DIRECTV Satellite and DIRECTV Stream into one app. It also updates the look and feel for DIRECTV Satellite users, who hadn’t seen a lot of changes to their app in years. All of that is great, except… it no longer allows you to download programs to your device. And I want to know if that’s a problem. First, I want to give you a little history, some stuff you might know about already.
Project Nomad
This unassuming box was known as Nomad. Nomad started as an internal project within DIRECTV back in about 2009. The idea was to give people a way to watch TV on their phones. Remember that live streaming at that point was pretty much impossible. Even if you had a faster connection, there were no unlimited plans. So the idea was that you would download programs when you were at home and take them with you.
The first-generation Nomad box finally released in 2011. It took about 4 hours to prepare one hour of video, and 15 minutes to transfer it. You could queue it up so that it would do about six hours of video a day, which would take an hour and a half to transfer. Your phone probably wouldn’t have held more than that anyway.
The GenieGO hardware
The second-generation box, launched in 2014, cut those times in half and added some other extra features. But, it was never a runaway success. By that point, streaming had started to take hold and the idea that you had to wait to download seemed like a bit of a drag.
Enter Mobile DVR
DIRECTV really got their act together a few years later. They built GenieGO functionality into the DVR itself in 2016. You can read my review here. On top of that, they added the ability to stream from the DVR itself. The streaming function was officially discontinued in 2019, although it still worked in some cases.
Building this function into the Genie DVR reduced the time for this whole thing to about 6 minutes per hour of programming. But, most users still ignored this feature, preferring to go to DIRECTV’s expansive on demand library instead. A few HDTV fans used it for longer flights, I guess.
And now here we are.
Here we are in 2022 and it looks like all streaming and offloading from DIRECTV hardware is pretty much out. You can still use the on demand library, which is bigger than ever, but that doesn’t give you access to local news or much older programs you may have been saving.
How much of a problem is that for you? I’d really like to know, and so would the folks in DIRECTV’s El Segundo, CA headquarters who read this blog too. Leave a comment below. Who knows, maybe they’ll change their minds based on what you have to say.
