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DirecTV has launched a beta test of their video on demand service for those who have the HR20-700 DVR. As far as I can tell, you must have this model DVR as the other models aren’t yet supported, though it sounds like they will be in the near future. If you do have the HR20-700, here’s what you need to do in order to get video on demand setup and working.

• You must connect the HR20-700 to your home networking router or directly into your cable modem using a CAT5 networking cable. You cannot setup the VOD without this connection.
• You will need to reset the box by pushing the little red reset button on the front right side behind the access card door. As the unit reboots and while the blue lights on the front of the DVR are spinning around, with your remote type in the numbers 0 2 4 6 8 (do not hit enter). This will force a software update, which may or may not be necessary, but it won’t hurt to make sure.
• Once the unit has rebooted, hit the Menu button on your remote. Go to Help and Settings => Setup => Network. Select the Connect Now option.
• It will walk you through the process of setting up the network connection on the DVR. It uses DHCP to acquire an IP address, subnet mask, gateway, and DNS from your router or cable modem, so you shouldn’t need to do anything. If your home network doesn’t support DHCP, you will have to manually configure the DVR and since there are too many possibilities, I will leave that up to you to figure out.
• Once you’re done configuring the network settings, select the Get Connected option. When I did this, it failed to connect to the remote server 6 times. Keep trying. I think their servers are just overloaded with people connecting. Mine eventually connected.
• After it connected, I had to reboot my DVR again by pressing the little red reset button in the front right access panel.
• Once the DVR reboots, you should see an On Demand option within the menu. When you select this option, a new screen will pop up but it’s very unlikely you will have any shows to choose from. This takes many hours to populate.

Anyhow, that’s it! You’re setup and can start downloading the shows once they start appearing in your On Demand list.

I have an 8 Mbit/sec connection and shows download pretty quick, but depending on your speed, it could take longer. You can queue up as many shows as you like and they will download one at a time. Even before the show has finished, you can start watching it. I haven’t seen any HD content yet, but I hear it’s on the way. Be warned, that an HD show will be many times larger in size and will take much longer to download.

The shows also have expiration dates. If you don’t watch it before it expires, I believe it will automatically delete. However, I’m sure you can download it again provided it’s sill available.

It’s a cool feature and I could see this being a big selling point with DirecTV. It will certainly make them more competitive with the cable industry provided they offer just as good of content for their Video on Demand service.