Tag Archives: directv

Jan 31

High definition

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Last week, I replaced my little, and aging, TV with a nice big model, a much-appreciated hand-me-down from a family member who has upgraded to a flat screen.

My new TV is high-def capable, although the previous owner never actually hooked it up to a high-def signal. I, on the other hand, wanted to take advantage of its capabilities. I was at the end of my DirecTV contract, and I called customer retention yesterday and got a 12-month price break by renewing, plus I replaced my old receiver-DVR combo with a sleek new high-def model. They installed it today, with a new dish, and the picture looks gorgeous – and just in time for the big game on Sunday.

I had to remember all the shows I had the old DVR set up to record, and set them up over again on the new model. It takes an extended period – up to a day or more – for the upcoming program schedule to fully download, and you can’t set up a program to record until the DVR knows it exists, so there are a few shows I still need to set up.

I’m like a kid in a candy shop.

Mar 03

TV update

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Because I know you’re all waiting with bated breath:

The DirecTV guys replaced everything but the actual physical dish on Monday: the receiver/DVR, the cables between the receiver and the dish, and even my remote (although they let me keep the old remote anyway, as a backup). They may have been late, but they were thorough and courteous.

So far, it seems to have worked. Nothing I’ve watched on playback has frozen up. My DirecTV, so far (knock on wood), seems to be working properly. If something does go wrong, it’s apparently wrong with the wiring of the apartment, not DTV.

Mar 02

Between noon and 4

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I know I’m not the only person who gets frustrated with the process for service calls — I’ve heard standup comics and others make fun of the idea of someone showing up “between 8 and 2,” or whatever it is.

Last month, I got DirecTV installed. That service call was on a Saturday morning, so I’d have been home anyway. But I’ve had to have two service calls since that time, and I had to take time off work to stay home and wait for the service tech. In both cases, I signed up for the 12 noon to 4 p.m. time slot. For the first of those appointments, the service tech called me at 3 p.m. to tell me he’d be there at 4 — he actually got there at 4:15.

Today, it was 2:30 and I called the DirecTV customer service number to check on things. A few minutes later, I got a call from the service tech — who tells me it will be after 4 p.m. by the time he gets here.

The frustrating thing about this is that it’s so one-sided. I had to get here by noon, because if I’d been even 15 minutes late I might have gotten a note from the technician and might have even been charged a missed service call fee. But he can get here, not only at the end of the agreed-upon period, but outside of the agreed-upon period.

I don’t know whose fault this is specifically. Perhaps DirecTV is overbooking the service techs; I don’t necessarily mean to fault the service techs themselves. The one who came two weeks ago was a really nice guy and we had a pleasant conversation about my involvement in Mountain T.O.P.; he grew up in the community where Mountain T.O.P. is based.

So I don’t know exactly who is to blame. But something about the system is wrong. And they know I’m locked into a contract and can’t do anything about it.

Still, if they can get my problem fixed today, on the second visit, all will be forgiven.

Feb 17

Shatner’s Raw Nerve

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Well, my DirecTV problem appears to have been solved.

The service technician who came by today was raised in Altamont and noticed the Mountain T.O.P. license tag on my car and the Costa Rica plaque on the wall (he himself has been on a mission trip to Honduras). He listened to my description of the problem, and said, “I don’t know why they didn’t just send you a new box. It’s obviously the box.” My DVR / receiver was a refurbished model which apparently wasn’t quite refurbished enough. He replaced it with a brand new one, which — being the current model — has a couple of additional bells and whistles. So I actually came out better in the long run.

Anyway, one of the biggest pleasant surprises I’ve gotten from my expanded channel lineup has been “Shatner’s Raw Nerve,” on the Biography channel. When my out-of-state brother and I discussed this show a few weeks back, sight unseen, we rolled our eyes and wondered what the point was of William Shatner jumping into another new TV show. But the two episodes I’ve seen in the past week have both been great — and not at all what I was expecting. It’s a one-on-one interview show, with no live audience or comedy. Shatner’s interviews with Kelsey Grammer and Drew Carey were surprisingly personal and intimate — Grammer discussed his troubled childhood and how it affected him, while Carey talked about a change in his own personality and about how he’s learned to be less competitive and value love and forgiveness.

A show called “Shatner’s Raw Nerve,” from an actor who is sometimes known for scenery-chewing, would lead one to expect a host who draws attention to himself. But Shatner, at least in the two episodes I’ve seen, does the exact opposite; he keeps the focus on his guest, and allows the guest to feel comfortable talking about himself.

I’m anxious to see the show again.

Feb 09

Spoke too soon

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I have, as you’ve no doubt determined, been very happy with my DVR and DirecTV service since it was installed on Saturday — but there appears to be a technical problem.

Sunday afternoon, without warning, my DirecTV receiver/DVR suddenly gave me a blue screen of death, reset itself, and then began walking me through the same setup process that I’d observed the installer going through on Saturday morning. I didn’t know the answers to some of the questions — plus, I realized that something was wrong — and so I called DirecTV customer support. The technician walked me through the process and said it was probably a software upgrade and would be a very rare occurrence.

In any case, I lost the scheduled programs I’d already programmed into the DVR, and I had to wait several hours for the program guide to re-download itself, a few hours at a time, before I could schedule recordings too far in advance.

But, no matter, because the technician assured me it was a one-time or very rare occurrence.

Right?

Well, it did exactly the same thing this evening. I called and began talking to another tech support person, who was on the verge of scheduling a technician to come out and check on me, when — it never rains but it pours — my cordless phone’s battery went dead. So now, I had to call back, and obviously there was no way to reconnect me with the same technician.

The new tech support person wanted to try something different — reformatting the hard drive on my DVR/receiver. That’s happening right now, but it’s supposed to take an hour and a half or more. In the process of telling me how to trigger the reformat, she told me to press two buttons at the same time and hold them until the “record” light turned on. This was harder than it sounded, because the “record” light was located right in the center of one of the two buttons I was supposed to be holding down.

Somehow — and this is pure intuition — this doesn’t seem like a software problem, and I’m skeptical that the reformat will do anything to solve it. I wish I’d been able to stay on the line with the previous technician.

In any case, every time the machine resets it forgets the information for my local TV stations, and the DirecTV technician has to turn them back on. That can’t be done while the disk is reformatting, so, once the reformat is complete, I’ll have to call back and get my locals turned back on, if tech support is even answering their calls by that time.

I really do like the DirecTV service so far and I’m hopeful that this problem can be resolved quickly.

Feb 07

Satellite

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Well, the DirecTV is in and it works just fine. I almost feel guilty for having it, even though it will cost me less (at least for the next 12 months, and then for the 12 months after that it will probably run about the same as my expanded basic cable had been running me, only with more channels).

I was happy to get dozens of channels which I’ve never had, and to get back a few which I’ve lost over the past couple of years as they were bumped up into a digital cable tier. I’m happy to get a three-month free trial of the premium channels, even though I won’t keep them. In the meantime, I can watch “Flight of the Conchords” on HBO.

One of the new channels is BBC America, where I’ll be delighted to watch “Doctor Who” reruns and “Torchwood.” But I had to laugh at my first taste of BBC America: “Gladiators,” which is the UK version of the show known here as “American Gladiators.” We used to think that all British TV was classier and better than American TV, because the only British TV we ever got to see was on “Mystery!” and “Masterpiece Theatre.” In recent years, we’ve discovered that the Brits have just as many guilty pleasures as the rest of us, and in fact some of our reality shows are adaptations of formats that originally aired in the UK. (I think we can take the blame for “Gladiators,” however.)

I’m already learning how to use the DVR to record favorite shows. I can even set it from any web browser, or from my cell phone!

Feb 04

Attention, AT&T:

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You need to tell the people at your reward/rebate service center that you switched from Dish Network back to DirecTV on February 1. I called with a rebate-related question and the woman told me, sort of haughtily, that since AT&T was affiliated with Dish Network there’s no possible way I could be eligible for a rebate from my DirecTV installation.

Feb 01

Will the third time be the charm?

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I have tried on two previous occasions to get satellite television. Some years back, when I was renting a house, I tried to get Dish Network, but they could not get a good line of sight from the house without putting the dish on a pole in the front yard, which would not have been appropriate.

The last time, I tried to get DirecTV. I ended up with a lemon of an installer. He called me the night before the scheduled appointment and told me it usually wasn’t possible to install satellite service at apartments. I told him that two of my neighbors already had satellite service, but he said they probably weren’t properly grounded.

The installation appointment was for the follwing afternoon, but the installer said he would swing by the next morning — when he knew I would be at work — and quickly check to see if an installation was possible. He called me at work the next morning and said it wasn’t possible; I’m convinced he had some reason for not wanting to work that afternoon (it was a Friday, if I recall, and I suspect he wanted to get an early start on the weekend). In fact, I believe he lied to me and never actually stopped by the apartment.

Now, the apartment complex is a virtual forest of satellite dishes; many of my neighbors are Latino and I’m guessing that they get the Spanish-language package from Dish Network.

I’ve wanted to try again for several months. I liked the channel lineup package from DirecTV better than the one for Dish Network, and I knew that on Feb. 1 AT&T would be switching its preferred satellite carrier from Dish to DirecTV, meaning that I could get DirecTV service on my phone bill.

I placed my order this afternoon and I’m crossing my fingers that nothing else goes wrong.

I’m particularly excited because I signed up for a DVR package. My brother and one of my co-workers have been telling me for years how great it is to watch TV on one’s own schedule as opposed to the official schedule.