I can’t believe I’m writing this article in 2018. The last H24 receiver rolled off the line in 2012. If you had a 2012 car you’d probably trade it in now. If you graduated high school in 2012 you’d be finishing up your master’s degree by now. It’s been a long time since the H24 was the new hotness. Yet, like Cher and cockroaches, it still hangs on. That’s a tribute to the quality of its design.
The H24 was the last DIRECTV receiver to have an Ethernet port, and that means some people think it’s more flexible or versatile. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here’s the real story.
If you’re trying to share programs with a DVR
Using Ethernet to share programs between receivers has been completely unsupported almost since the beginning with DIRECTV. It’s not more reliable, it’s slower and you actually have to take extra steps to make sure the receiver isn’t sharing over the coax line. It’s a waste of time and effort to connect Ethernet for the purpose of sharing programs.
If you’re trying to use an IP remote system
Commercial customers may want to connect Ethernet to each receiver to control them over IP. This is a perfectly valid and common practice, but why would you run a cable to every single receiver when you could simply run one cable for every 15 receivers? Using a Broadband DECA lets you supply networking to up to 15 receivers with a single network cable by having that same network communication travel over the coax line. This makes for a cleaner install and you’ll need fewer network switches. If you have more than 15 receivers, you can add a DECA for every 15 and in this way you could control hundreds of receivers easily.
And how long has that H24 been there anyway?
They certainly are reliable little boxes but eventually things wear out. The touch panel gets flaky or the tuners get weak… and that means it’s time to look at upgrading. If you’re a home user, think about the new Genie 2. You can supply 7 rooms with live and recorded programs with tiny boxes half the size of the H24, and you’ll save money too. If 7 rooms isn’t enough, choose the HR54 DVR which will supply 4 rooms, and can have an infinite number of H25 receivers as well. One HR54 plus 3 clients and 9 H25s means 13 rooms all sharing programming, and if that still isn’t enough, you can keep upgrading. The H25, by the way, does everything the H24 does and it’s still being made. It doesn’t have an Ethernet port, but as I said, that doesn’t matter.
