Here’s one short article.
You can connect up to 8 clients to your Genie. It doesn’t matter whether they are wired or wireless, but you can’t connect more than 8. However, there’s a little more to it than that.
If you have an older Genie, models HR44 or HR54, only 3 can be active at any one time. If you try to use a fourth one you won’t be able to use live TV or even watch recorded. They can be any mix of wired or wireless. If you have an HR54 you can add one 4K client.
If you have a newer Genie 2 like the tower pictured at the top, you can have 7 clients active at one time. Two of these can show 4K streams. Although there’s mixed information from AT&T, it seems like you can actually have seven 4K client boxes as long as only two of them are doing 4K at any time. If you try to watch a 4K program on a third client, you simply won’t be able to.
What about people with large homes?
This may not be a problem for a large home where people don’t spend time in every room, but if you’re looking for the ability to tune to 8 shows at the same time (for example for a man cave) or if your four kids all like to watch TV in their rooms (I know, what is this, 1976?) then you need to be thinking of other options.
Adding standalone receivers is a good way to give you some backup for live TV watching. If you aren’t already maxing out your Genie you can stream from it as well. However, this option is only available for those with older Genies. AT&T’s policy doesn’t allow for standalone receivers if you have a Genie 2. If you have an HR54 Genie you can also add any number of HR24 DVRs to increase your recording capacity.
There’s another option. Consider using a tablet or smartphone and DIRECTV on demand to get that same recorded content. That route also gives you over 100 channels of live TV as well.
Will this ever change?
The folks at AT&T are asked every year if customers can use more than one Genie DVR in the house. So far the answer has been no. There isn’t really a hardware limitation but it’s a matter of re-engineering the software to make it customer-friendly. With two Genies in the home, they compete for the ability to connect to clients and there can be all sorts of chaos.
I have to say it is probably unlikely that this will ever change. Perhaps in the days when DIRECTV was seeing massive growth, but probably not now. AT&T’s representatives have said repeatedly that the Genie 2 solution fits over 95% of its customer base and the remaining 5% can use HR54 Genies with additional HR24 DVRs. That seems to be the path forward.
Of course, if you want to build the ultimate DIRECTV system, look no further than SolidSignal.com, where you’ll find everything you’ll need to personalize and get the best possible TV-watching experience.
