NICE AND EASY: How long can you use a DIRECTV DVR without a satellite connection?

Just imagine your dish gets knocked down by a storm. Say a branch falls on it. Or, just imagine something more benign. Imagine you are going on an RV trip and you want to take your DVR from home. (This is completely legal by the way, so long as there’s no one home trying to watch DIRECTV at the same time.) It seems like a good idea to you, but you wonder if it would even work at all.

Before answering the question…

Let’s talk first about that second option, where you want to take equipment from home and put it in your RV. Like I said, it’s legal, and there’s nothing to stop you from doing it. But, if you have a Genie system, like 99% of DIRECTV users today, you’ll need to take the actual Genie DVR, not the little client boxes. If you have the Genie 2, the one that looks like a tall triangular tower, you’ll need that AND the little client box. If you plan to use your DIRECTV system in your RV, there are solutions. Skip to the bottom of the article… we can help. But for now, on with the question.

Does your DVR need therapy?

DIRECTV DVRs are insecure. They need to receive constant signals from a satellite or they begin to get very worried and eventually shut down. Usually that’s not a problem, but there are a few times you would want to use a DVR after it’s been deactivated or without satellite service. I pointed out a few of them at the beginning of the article, and I’m sure you can come up with more.

Once time is up, there’s really nothing you can do to get those recorded programs to play. Everything will be fine when you do connect back up to satellite, but until you do you have a boat anchor. Even if you opened the case and took out the hard drive (which you should not ever do) you’d find that the files are encrypted and without the receiver they were recorded on, they don’t work.

How it works

You can power up a DVR with no satellite attached. It will complain for a while, then try to show live TV. While the DVR will give you constant errors on live TV, you can usually go to the playlist and watch recorded programs for 3-6 days. The DVR gets a signal from the satellite roughly once a week that authorizes it to continue showing programs. If DIRECTV didn’t do that, you could just disconnect your service and keep using it forever.

The way to get around this

There are options for getting around this. You could stream instead of playing DVR content. Of course, you’ll need a strong signal in the RV. Or you could put a DVR in the RV with its own satellite system. My point here is that you have options. It’s not all or nothing. However, in order to really understand what’s going on it will take more than just a blog post. You’ll need to talk to the experts. Call the folks at Signal Connect. When you call during East Coast business hours, you’ll get a real technician, not a script reader. That’s because our phones ring in our Detroit-area call center, not overseas.

Don’t believe me? Call 888-233-7563 and find out what real customer service feels like. If it’s after East Coast business hours, fill out the form below. We’ll get back to you, usually within one business day.

About the Author

Stuart Sweet
Stuart Sweet is the editor-in-chief of The Solid Signal Blog and a "master plumber" at Signal Group, LLC. He is the author of over 10,000 articles and longform tutorials including many posted here. Reach him by clicking on "Contact the Editor" at the bottom of this page.