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DirecTV Now iOS App Update Adds 2018 iPad Pro Support, Cloud DVR for HBO and Cinemax, and More

macduke said:
The AT&T Watch TV app also updated for new iPads. I'm surprised I never hear anyone talk about that anymore. It's largely the same as my DirecTV Now subscription, but doesn't have live sports, but only costs $15 a month! Do people really care that much about sports? When I had DirecTV Now it would have blackouts for local baseball and football, which are the only sports I watch, and most of the time it didn't even have the football game because it didn't have our local channels. You can just use OTA for that, though we don't get it at our house even when I bought a nice Leaf antenna, so let's just say I have found "other means", lol.
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It doesn’t have locals or Viacom channels either. Just turner owned stations. Not really comparable at all.
 
deeddawg said:
For me the big benefit is being able to use DTVN at both our home and our little weekend/vacation place. I can put up with some annoyances for the huge savings vs. two cable bills.
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Yes, I've also found it to be a nice side benefit while traveling. It also saved me from having to replace some outdated RG59 coax that cable would require.

BasicGreatGuy said:
I just double-checked my December bill, and it shows $35.00 on the website. It also shows $35.00 was charged to my credit card for the "Go Big" package, which includes HBO.
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That's a lucky anomaly. DTVN has had a lot of promos, including free HBO, but they've ended. AT&T bundling discounts have also been closed to new users.

It's evident that AT&T feels the service has moved past the user acquisition phase, and now looks to balance the books.
 
nburwell said:
The service isn't as bad as it was when it originally launched. The service does have some hiccups, but it's not bad overall. Plus, I do like getting HBO for $5/month. If it weren't for that (and Viacom channels that most other streaming services don't have), I'd go back to Playstation Vue.
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I agree with all this. It's not really that great of an app but the price is still good and the fact that you can get HBO for only $5 a month makes it a good deal. It still has a long way to go.
 
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nburwell said:
The service isn't as bad as it was when it originally launched. The service does have some hiccups, but it's not bad overall. Plus, I do like getting HBO for $5/month. If it weren't for that (and Viacom channels that most other streaming services don't have), I'd go back to Playstation Vue.
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I am in the exact same boat! hard to pass up HBO for $5 and Viacom channels. Otherwise PS VUE has the best features and most stable app.
 
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I tried DTVN for a long time because of the price. I finally got tired of the crappy Apple TV interface. Now using a competing service and I love the unlimited DVR, but even more than that, love being able to pause LIVE TV indefinitely. This was one of the headliner features of the original TiVo, but on DTVN you can't do it. Sure, you can pause to freeze the video playback, but when you resume it jumps you back to the live point, skipping everything in between. That's pretty much useless. Also, DTVN does not support the Siri voice control for things like "skip ahead 2 minutes" or "what did he say", two things I use constantly on Apple TV.
 
Techwatcher said:
DirecTV Now is awesome and looks awesome on my 3rd Gen iPad Pro. People like to hate for no reason.
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I hated it because it didn’t work, constantly had freezes, and the DVR they promised later in launch year never materialized that year. So I gave up and went to Youtube TV which while not without it's own occasional problems is oh so much better.
 
MadeTheSwitch said:
I hated it because it didn’t work, constantly had freezes, and the DVR they promised later in launch year never materialized that year. So I gave up and went to Youtube TV which while not without it's own occasional problems is oh so much better.
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Sounds like you're referring to experiences well over a year ago, given that the DVR launched in May 2018.

Believe it or not, they've actually updated the software many times since then. 😎

The other aspect is people seldom mention what hardware they ran the DTVN service on. That makes a difference too.
 
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johnfrombeyond said:
I tried DTVN for a long time because of the price. I finally got tired of the crappy Apple TV interface. Now using a competing service and I love the unlimited DVR, but even more than that, love being able to pause LIVE TV indefinitely. This was one of the headliner features of the original TiVo, but on DTVN you can't do it. Sure, you can pause to freeze the video playback, but when you resume it jumps you back to the live point, skipping everything in between. That's pretty much useless. Also, DTVN does not support the Siri voice control for things like "skip ahead 2 minutes" or "what did he say", two things I use constantly on Apple TV.
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What is the name of the service with unlimited dvr?
 
ksnell said:
I was actually considering cutting the cord and going with this service primarily with Apple TV. Do you currently use it? Is it that bad?
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I agree that it mostly okay. I do not like their guide, but I am BETA testing their Osprey streaming device, and it goes back to their traditional channel numbering scheme.
 
Techwatcher said:
DirecTV Now is awesome and looks awesome on my 3rd Gen iPad Pro. People like to hate for no reason.
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DTV Now has definitely improved leaps and bounds since the service first launched. Although I'm a big PS Vue fan, I switched us to DTV Now a couple months ago and everything has been pretty smooth for the most part. There are some issues where the DVR records an incorrect show. But fortunately we can watch the show via the network TV app instead.

And getting HBO for $5/month definitely helps (compared with $15/month regularly). Although I'm not sure how long the $5/month price will last.
 
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calvito89 said:
I am in the exact same boat! hard to pass up HBO for $5 and Viacom channels. Otherwise PS VUE has the best features and most stable app.
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I definitely agree that PS Vue is leaps and bounds more stable that DTV Now. I never had Vue record an incorrect TV show like I have with DTV Now (although it mainly only happens when my wife records a show on MTV).

But it's hard to pass up HBO for $5/month. I may shop around if DTV Now ups the price of HBO, but I'm staying put for now.
 
deeddawg said:
Sounds like you're referring to experiences well over a year ago, given that the DVR launched in May 2018.

Believe it or not, they've actually updated the software many times since then. 😎

The other aspect is people seldom mention what hardware they ran the DTVN service on. That makes a difference too.
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Duh...I am sure they have updated. My point which still stands and my reason for leaving was they repeatedly missed their own targets for rolling out a feature that their competitors already had. I got tired of waiting for promises to be delivered upon. Well over a year behind what it should have been. That is unacceptable. Also don’t like company politics and who they give money to, so that was another reason. As for hardware, I ran it on a Samsung Android phone, a current (then) ipad and a (at the time) current apple TV, all with equally disastrous results. Sometimes it’s not the hardware...it’s the SERVICE. That certainly was the case here.
 
nburwell said:
I definitely agree that PS Vue is leaps and bounds more stable that DTV Now. I never had Vue record an incorrect TV show like I have with DTV Now (although it mainly only happens when my wife records a show on MTV).

But it's hard to pass up HBO for $5/month. I may shop around if DTV Now ups the price of HBO, but I'm staying put for now.
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My one complaint about recording on the cloud DVR is that I can’t easily skip commercials, or rewind if I missed something. Siri commands don’t work, like “what did he say?” or “skip ahead 30 seconds” ... so I have to manually scrub on the timeline, and that’s a tedious process at best with the remote touchpad. If only it provided thumbnail views like all the other major apps, it wouldn’t be so bad. I’m not sure if that’s something their content licensors are preventing them from implementing or not.
 
MadeTheSwitch said:
Duh...I am sure they have updated.
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Complaining about your experiences with a very old (relatively) version of the software in a thread discussing the current version isn't very helpful IMHO -- and frankly is potentially misleading to other Macrumors readers.

Sorry you're still carrying around that anger, but DTVN today is way better than what it was in late 2017. Still not perfect by any means, but there's been a lot of improvement since then.
 
deeddawg said:
Complaining about your experiences with a very old (relatively) version of the software in a thread discussing the current version isn't very helpful IMHO -- and frankly is potentially misleading to other Macrumors readers.

Sorry you're still carrying around that anger, but DTVN today is way better than what it was in late 2017. Still not perfect by any means, but there's been a lot of improvement since then.
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Uh huh. That must be why some people are still complaining about bugs with it in this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ming-tv-services-with-some-drawbacks.2164453/
 
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