# DirecTV is just getting on my nerves everytime they do anything



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

I guess DirecTV is just on a streak nowadays trying to give me a full list of resons why I'm gonna cancel them at the very first opportunity that arises...

The latest thing is, of all things, them getting rid of iTV (formerly PAX) and _ALL_ the local PAX channels. (http://www.directv.com/see/landing/pax.html)

I wouldn't really normally care much -- I mean, it's PAX after all -- if it weren't that they're showing "Early Edition" and I've grown to really like the show.

Sure, they have 14 hours a day of infomercials. BFD. I remember when SciFi was practically the infomercial network throughout the night, too. And it's not like iTV is the only channel with infomercials regularly scheduled; they just have a lot of them right now.

They have a digital station in NYC someplace, though I don't get it right now with the way my antenna is aimed -- might have to investigate that now I guess.

In principle, I just find their action despicable in getting rid of the local channels. Much like their decision to not care at all about having non-major-network HD local stations right now, this just shows how they're not interested in competing with cable's offerings anymore. I just don't get what they're doing; they're not going to survive any marketing campaign by competitiors with these things.

Oh, and then there's the way DirecTV puts it on their web site -- just makes you want to vomit; I guess DirecTV's new motto is "we are as we say, not as we do"



> We're committed to making DIRECTV your family's ultimate entertainment experience by *offering you the best programming at the best price*.
> 
> When DIRECTV agreed to carry iTV (formerly the national PAX TV network) and PAX local stations, the owners promised that their programming would consist of general, family-oriented entertainment. Now, most of their programming consists of infomercials and other promotional shows. As a result, we have terminated our agreement to carry iTV and local PAX stations. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. *We believe that this change was necessary to uphold our standards and meet the expectations of our customers.*


Earlier this year, they dumped HereTV -- a channel I had to pay $9.99 a month for, alone. And it was only on the air 12 hours a day. For awhile it appeared they were going to provide the channel just for one day a week, 12 hours that day, letting DVR people, I suppose, take advantage of it... still for $9.99 a month of course... but that apparently went nowhere.

And before then I finally found it objectionable how poorly SciFi channel was being compressed. And of course, the whole HD-lite issue just keeps brewing -- it's not as bad as some make it out to be, but it seems the problem doesn't get better over time -- it gets worse and worse. I'm now seeing macroblocking occur a lot more often on high-motion scenes.

Then, who can forget the whole we're-dumping-TiVo ordeal we're going through now.

Oh yeah, and a price increase.

So where exactly are the things I'm supposed to put in the positive column of the comparison? I actually cannot think of one single item that could occupy the positive side of a comparison. What is going on with DirecTV these days that's good? Anyone?


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## kepper (Nov 28, 2003)

Sounds like an "easy" way for D* to free up bandwidth with few customer complaints. 

Cable companies have to comply with the "must carry" FCC regulations: any local station that elects "must carry" status must be carried by the cable companies in their local broadcast area. They cannot receive compensation from the cable company if they are "must carry" stations, but they must carry them.

I wonder if a similar set of rules applies to DBS companies? And I wonder if PAX has elected "must carry" status on their local channels?

The local PAX channel in Los Angeles has SIX subchannels on ther digital channel.  Of course, D* doesn't carry them but... 

Kevin


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## SpacemanSpiff (Jan 31, 2004)

Funny, they drop Pax because of the many infomercials. Yet they carry all those shopping channels and so many other networks that are infomercials all night as well.

Not that I watched much Pax, but it just seems stupid.


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## lee espinoza (Aug 21, 2002)

Directv Pays for Pax, the shopping channels pay DIRECTV.


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## Redux (Oct 19, 2004)

lee espinoza said:


> Directv Pays for Pax, the shopping channels pay DIRECTV.


That can't have anything to do with it. DirecTV terminated its contract with PAX "to uphold our standards and meet the expectations of our customers."

Shame on you for implying some kind of pecuniary motivation for what was purely in their customer interest (shielding us from middle-of-the-night infomercials, apparently).


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## btwyx (Jan 16, 2003)

I couldn't care less about PAX, I've trimmed it out of my channel list. But D* have definitely been annoying recently, for the other reasons you mention, as well as no 6.2 and no bug fixes.

They're so annoying I've decided I'll have to try Comcast when the S3 comes out. I didn't think anything would ever get me back to cable, D* are amazing salesmen (for their competition).


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## lee espinoza (Aug 21, 2002)

Redux said:


> That can't have anything to do with it. DirecTV terminated its contract with PAX "to uphold our standards and meet the expectations of our customers."
> 
> Shame on you for implying some kind of pecuniary motivation for what was purely in their customer interest (shielding us from middle-of-the-night infomercials, apparently).


*When DIRECTV agreed to carry iTV (formerly the national PAX TV network) and PAX local stations, the owners promised that their programming would consist of general, family-oriented entertainment. Now, most of their programming consists of infomercials and other promotional shows. As a result, we have terminated our agreement to carry iTV and local PAX stations.*

that is why DirecTV terminated its contract with PAX


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## tbeckner (Oct 26, 2001)

lee espinoza said:


> Directv Pays for Pax, the shopping channels pay DIRECTV.


I agree with Lee, the shopping channels pay DirecTV, but DirecTV should remove them or at least QUIT causing them to reappear in the CHANNELS YOU RECIEVE, which is a real pain and very annoying.

I have a SHORT list of things that have bothered me in the last year and bet other people could add to this list:
Price Increases, when no price increase was promised
Dropped TiVo and replaced TiVo with a buggy DVR with a bad feature list
Shopping Channels which keep popping up in Channels You Receive
Over Compression on many different channels, thus picture quality problems
Replaced Uninterrupted Music with Radio
Promised Local HD channels for years which may happen in major markets in the next couple of years
Customer Service that has dropped below even the Dish Network in 2004 and a cable company (WOW! Cable) in 2005 (JD POWER & Associates)
Expensive blacked out NFL Sunday Ticket Games (they could change their contract with the NFL)
And there are additional things that are still coming:

They are going to try their hand at ORIGINAL PROGRAMMING, which we will be paying for if we like it or not (MORE PRICE INCREASES)
It appears that they have dropped the Home Media Server (NO HMO/MRV) (notice there was NO CES announcement this year)
BTW, if we don't say anything about how we feel about the direction of the company and how we feel we are being treated, then how will they ever know that we are upset, except for the historical high churn rates of the past three years?

Although I am installing cable on Thursday, I am not dropping DirecTV. (I waited until the cable company ran their spring special to add cable, with free installation and $26.75 per month with one digital box) And I get back Music Choice in the bedroom via the digital box and analog cable throughout the rest of the house for some local channels. (DirecTV does not offer local channels for my area and will likely never offer them.).

Although cable still has a problem of wanting to nickel and dime you to death, which is still an annoyance, on the technical side they appear to have come a long way.

IT IS HUMAN NATURE TO NOT WANT TO CHANGE, but at some point we all reach that point where the pain of changing is less than the pain of staying.

*I once worked for a high technology company who believed that the right thing to do was to always keep the customer on edge (unhappy), but never make them unhappy enough to leave to another company. And that company grew from only 10 employees (when I started with them) to almost 100 in just 4 years, and later the company grew to almost 500 employees before the owner sold out to Pacific Corp and the company is now owned by AllianceData. *


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## tbeckner (Oct 26, 2001)

lee espinoza said:


> *When DIRECTV agreed to carry iTV (formerly the national PAX TV network) and PAX local stations, the owners promised that their programming would consist of general, family-oriented entertainment. Now, most of their programming consists of infomercials and other promotional shows. As a result, we have terminated our agreement to carry iTV and local PAX stations.*
> 
> that is why DirecTV terminated its contract with PAX


That is what they are saying, but I doubt it is as simple as that.

DirecTV carries tons of PORN on both their specialized channels and in their PPV channels (Soft Porn). And they carry a lot of shopping channels, which with local channels number well over 10 for each customer. In addition they carry so many channels other than PAX that fill about 30 percent or more of their airtime with infomercials. And then you add all of the other channels that carry programming that is right on the edge.

No, Lee, here I disagree with you, it is not that SIMPLE. If it was they would remove all of the shopping channels, all of the hard core and soft core PORN, and all of the channels that fill about 30 percent or more of their airtime with infomercials. I would say that there is more to this story than what they have released.

The "family-oriented entertainment" reason is a cover for the real reason.


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## Jolly1 (Aug 19, 2004)

Personally, I'm glad PAX/iTV is gone. I block them out on the local channels as well.

The shopping and religish channels are annoying, but setting up "Favoriites" seems to keep them at bay. And if I could vote on it, I'd drop ALL of the religish/quasi-religish channels - they serve no purpose at all. That would free up bandwidth.

NFL Sunday Ticket, MLB, other sports packages, premium movie services, porn, soft or otherwise, is something you actually have to pay extra for. So if you don't like it, don't pay for it. Clearly lots of people do pay.


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## kubedawg (Aug 26, 2005)

regardless of if you like/dislike pax, they do have valid reason for removing service from pax, as they were promised something by the network, and the network did not comply. it's as simple as that. not many people watch pax, especially because of the 15+ hours of infomercials on there, but it was Pax that made the wrong decisions, not DirecTV. And it's definately not like the lifetime situation with dish where the viewing of that channel was very high, but maybe directv would have had a different approach if the viewing of that channel was high, but it wasn't, again, back to it being the fault of pax.

The only problem I have with direct right now is their r15's, which are a load of crap in my opinion. They dropped a good product(dtv with tivo) for an unstable buggy pos, with less important features, and more "interactive" features. 

The only good thing about the r15 is that it will be able to move programs already recorded to other rooms or to portable media devices such as the ipod, and the fact that it doesnt require a phone line to use it....

I definately hope when the hr20 comes out it will have live tuner abilities and something similar to the wishlist because without it, I will continue buying the old dtvtivos until there are no more. 

Why try to fix something that ain't broke, even if it costs more money to keep it the way it is? im sure there are huge costs for r&d so it evens out the price a bit...

thats just my two cents on the subject.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

Like it or not, these are local channels in many markets. By removing them, DirecTV can no longer say they carry all local channels in those markets; instead it'll be "we carry the local channels we think you need." 

But I suppose the reason they're actually running obnoxious banners over the channels telling DirecTV subscribers they're dropping the channel after February 28 is to try to coerce PAX into making some changes -- perhaps either replacing infomercials with more programming or to get them to renegotiate their contract. It'd be interesting to see PAX's spin on this development.

10 replies and no one has come up with a positive item for the comparison, though. We may not all agree on what the negatives are, but we certainly seem unable to find anything good about what's changed in the last year or so.


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## JimSpence (Sep 19, 2001)

I believe that the shopping channels require DirecTV to have them reappear as part of their contract with DirecTV.


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## Jabberer (Oct 4, 2000)

I agree that there are many things wrong at DirecTV nowadays. They're no longer the clear choice vs. cable that they once were. 

There is 1 (and only 1 that I can think of) promising upcomming change. Still vaporware at the moment, if it it were to come about, I'd be much more likely to stay with DTV over going to my local Time Warner. The recent rumors/announcements/etc. of a DTV tuner for the PC combined with the last rev. of WMCE supporting 4 tuners combined with the idea/rumor that DTV support will be native to XBox360s have me thinking that if DTV can pull off the integration and functionality I'm hoping for, I'll probably stick with them long term. I envision a great big honking server with 4 tuners in my basement and 360s at each TV. Give me that, and I'll be a happy boy. So, at this moment, I'm in a "wait and see" pattern. 

And yes, I know I can do most of this today with current extenders and tuners, but then I'd have to use Time Warner and I sooooo don't want to go back to those guys.


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## skaeight (Jan 20, 2004)

kubedawg said:


> The only good thing about the r15 is that it will be able to move programs already recorded to other rooms or to portable media devices such as the ipod, and the fact that it doesnt require a phone line to use it....


I'll believe it when I see it. Those features are one of the few things that would make me consider switching to R15's and sticking with d*. However, I highly doubt they ever come out with those features. HMO was there for them to offer, but they decided not to.


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## islander (Sep 15, 2002)

Nuts! Last year i (PAX) started airing Conference USA football games. 

So while Dish shows CSTV, i, and all the "CSTV All-Access" games (In Demand) for free, DirecTV won't show anything but straight from CSTV... not even offering them as pay per view. 

I'm starting to think I picked the wrong satellite provider.... especially now that DirecTV dropped TiVo.


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## newsposter (Aug 18, 2002)

dswallow said:


> but we certainly seem unable to find anything good about what's changed in the last year or so.


I think the fire sale of Hdtivos last fall was a good change from $1000. But that's just my opinion  I'm slightly biased since mine was virtually free.


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## morgantown (Mar 29, 2005)

newsposter said:


> I think the fire sale of Hdtivos last fall was a good change from $1000. But that's just my opinion  I'm slightly biased since mine was virtually free.


Yea, and the free SD DVR's going on right now. I look at both deals as a way DTV see a significant portion of the TiVo group as a good sized chunk of its business that it is trying to appease.

That will work for me untill the MPEG4 only day comes. By then if the NFLST is not DTV only, I will have to consider all options (including digging a line for cable to my house).


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## Martin Tupper (Dec 18, 2003)

PAX carries a bunch of Orioles baseball games here in the DC market. Guess I have to watch more Nats games.


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## minorthr (Nov 24, 2001)

I have the same problems as everyone else here with D*. 

The R15 is garbage, lack of HD, and price increase are at the top of the list. I'm hoping the Series 3 tivo comes out or the Comcast tivo gets released before the end of this year. If the HMC ever materializes it will really have to blow my socks off to get me to stay with D*.


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## trainman (Jan 29, 2001)

dswallow said:


> The latest thing is, of all things, them getting rid of iTV (formerly PAX) and _ALL_ the local PAX channels.


Actually, it's only the i/Pax owned-and-operated stations (read on)...



kepper said:


> Cable companies have to comply with the "must carry" FCC regulations: any local station that elects "must carry" status must be carried by the cable companies in their local broadcast area. They cannot receive compensation from the cable company if they are "must carry" stations, but they must carry them.
> 
> I wonder if a similar set of rules applies to DBS companies? And I wonder if PAX has elected "must carry" status on their local channels?


Yes, a similar set of rules does indeed apply to DBS companies. I read elsewhere that i/Pax didn't opt for must-carry with DirecTV for their O&O stations; they instead opted for retransmission consent, tied to DirecTV carrying the national feed along with those stations. Their agreement with DirecTV apparently contained language about what kind of programming they would be carrying; the DirecTV lawyers say they're violating the agreement, so off they go.

It's apparently a long and involved legal process for i/Pax to switch the O&O stations to must-carry status with DirecTV, so it's possible they could come back, just probably not very soon.


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## HogarthNH (Dec 28, 2001)

JimSpence said:


> I believe that the shopping channels require DirecTV to have them reappear as part of their contract with DirecTV.


My understanding is that it's more technical than that.

The annoying channels don't broadcast 24/7. 
Stuff is set up to not display channels that have been disconnected, and to add to "Channels I Receive" channels that are "added to the lineup" automatically. (TNT-HD, for example)

So every time the channel "cycles", for lack of a better word, TiVo/IRDs think "Aha! New channel!" and add it to visible channels you receive.

Stupid, but it happens. I've also seen it happen to more than just shopping channels -- (CD USA & here!, for example) So I don't believe it's purely monetary.

H


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## spanishannouncetable (Dec 12, 2001)

Trainman nailed it. The contract national PAX had with Directv expired, and since they opted-out of must-carry for their O&O's in order to get Directv to keep the national PAX the O&O's got the boot, too.

They can file for re-instatement of must-carry status for the O&O's in 2008, which means they probably won't return until 2009 (if their still on the air 3 years from now). To get back on Directv before then they would have to do some major butt-kissing, I think


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## tbeckner (Oct 26, 2001)

HogarthNH said:


> My understanding is that it's more technical than that.
> 
> The annoying channels don't broadcast 24/7.
> Stuff is set up to not display channels that have been disconnected, and to add to "Channels I Receive" channels that are "added to the lineup" automatically. (TNT-HD, for example)
> ...


Actually, CD USA is a shopping channel and here! I believe is LONG GONE.


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## tbeckner (Oct 26, 2001)

Jolly1 said:


> Personally, I'm glad PAX/iTV is gone. I block them out on the local channels as well.
> 
> The shopping and religish channels are annoying, but setting up "Favoriites" seems to keep them at bay. And if I could vote on it, I'd drop ALL of the religish/quasi-religish channels - they serve no purpose at all. That would free up bandwidth.
> 
> NFL Sunday Ticket, MLB, other sports packages, premium movie services, porn, soft or otherwise, is something you actually have to pay extra for. So if you don't like it, don't pay for it. Clearly lots of people do pay.


Actually, I don't purchase those channels, but what I was pointing out was that they where using the "family-oriented entertainment" reason, and if that was the real reason, then I said they should remove those other channels. In addition, many channels, including many network channels now carry INFOMERCIALS during the day on weekends and all night long. So the infomercial reason still a crock.

I personally don't care about the PAX channels being removed, because I removed them years ago from my list of "CHANNELS YOU RECIEVE". I was just pointing out that one of the reasons that DirecTV gave "family-oriented entertainment" was really a crock.

BTW, with all of this infomercial junk on TV today, thank God for the DVR.


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## Billy Bob Boy (Jul 25, 2004)

Have they changed their minds? Its the 2 of march and i still get pax or I. I hope they keep it long enough to get all early editions I am 33 eps short of the entire series.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

Jolly1 said:


> The shopping and religish channels are annoying, but setting up "Favoriites" seems to keep them at bay.


That works, but then real new channels don't show up either.


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## tbeckner (Oct 26, 2001)

wmcbrine said:


> That works, but then real new channels don't show up either.


What they really need to do is setup a CHANNELS YOU RECEIVE category based pre-selection, in other words categories like, Shopping, Religious, PPV Movies, PPV Specials, Subscription Sports, etc, that can be selected or non-selected to allows new channels to appear. If they did that, it would work like an OPT-IN/OPT-OUT function, so we wouldnt be bothered by channels appearing in categories that we dont care to watch.

This would take care of annoying pop-up channels and would take care of any new channels we might want to watch. Although, if they would stop the almost weekly reselection of some of the shopping channels that would cut out a real annoyance.


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## dtremain (Jan 5, 2004)

tbeckner said:


> Although, if they would stop the almost weekly reselection of some of the shopping channels that would cut out a real annoyance.


Yes, but what we see as an annoyance is the very reason they do it.


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## stevenrichart (Nov 12, 2005)

I just recently dropped Direct and went to Brighthouse Cable. This is a big step since I have always had Direct with Tivo. I have to admit, the cable service is better but with less channels. 
And guess what... No dropouts during a rain storm. 

Bye Bye Direct.


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## Billy Bob Boy (Jul 25, 2004)

stevenrichart said:


> I just recently dropped Direct and went to Brighthouse Cable. This is a big step since I have always had Direct with Tivo. I have to admit, the cable service is better but with less channels.
> And guess what... No dropouts during a rain storm.
> 
> Bye Bye Direct.


Bye! I will take the minute or two droupout from rain fade anyday vs the construction cable line cut 3 day wait. I hope there is no construction going on between You and the cable company. Remember It is a cable. Rain fade only lasts a few minutes or so. If the phone company is working and oops. or a truck backs into the pole and oops Bye bye CABLE. Dont expect to get reinbursed for the week of lost cable over the year. Due to rain fade over the course of the year I lost an Hour  mabye less(And I live in s fla) Enjoy! Hey mabye you will get lucky and the cable will stay in tact for a while. Over a period of 5 years i lost my signal perhaps 3 to 4 hours total! when I had cable before that I lost it at least 3 to 4 hours per week(Sometimes for days)

After the hurricains the cable was out for a week or more and my Directv was going strong.

Rain Fade(HA!!) Beats the heck out of cable fade!


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## tbeckner (Oct 26, 2001)

Billy Bob Boy said:


> Over a period of 5 years I lost my signal perhaps 3 to 4 hours total! when I had cable before that I lost it at least 3 to 4 hours per week(Sometimes for days)


I haven't lost the DirecTV signal for 3 or 4 hours in the 11 plus years that I have had DirecTV, the biggest problem being the usual Sun Spots at the usual times every year. And I would say that your cable system is way behind the times, the cable system here in Bend, Oregon has Fiber To The Curb (FTTC) and is all underground, and we haven't lost cable for 3 or 4 hours in total in the last 4 years.



Billy Bob Boy said:


> After the hurricanes the cable was out for a week or more and my DirecTV was going strong.


I would say that your dish is well protected or you haven't been hit directly by a level 3 or 4 hurricane.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

tbeckner said:


> I haven't lost the DirecTV signal for 3 or 4 hours in the 11 plus years that I have had DirecTV, the biggest problem being the usual Sun Spots at the usual times every year. And I would say that your cable system is way behind the times, the cable system here in Bend, Oregon has Fiber To The Curb (FTTC) and is all underground, and we haven't lost cable for 3 or 4 hours in total in the last 4 years.


Unless the cable company takes delivery of programming over fiber to redistribute to subscribers, the cable company itself will suffer just as much sunspot loss of signal as any individual DirecTV or Dish Network subscriber.


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## tbeckner (Oct 26, 2001)

dswallow said:


> Unless the cable company takes delivery of programming over fiber to redistribute to subscribers, the cable company itself will suffer just as much sunspot loss of signal as any individual DirecTV or Dish Network subscriber.


I agree completely, in fact they can have had weather and sun spot related loss of signal at the exact same time as some my DirecTV signal loss over the years.

I currently have a mixture of DirecTV programming with 5 DirecTiVos (all with MRV, and a very big thanks to the ZIPPER people) and one SA TiVo and Digital Cable, which I added so I could access MUSIC CHOICE. And I have to say I am very impressed with the quality of the all digital feed from the cable company. They have come a long way in the last 11+ years.

I guess what you where talking about is what is the cable company's feed source. Well since we exist in the middle of nowhere, the cable company's feed source is a large farm of very large satellite dishes, each about the size of my house. But understand even they have outages once in a while, but then again, so does DirecTV today. In the early days, DirecTV worked very hard to deliver a very reliable quality signal, but over the years the reliability and quality of their signal has gone downhill. Today with over compression and IMHO far too many shopping channels, they have to compress the signal more to get more out of their aging equipment, so we all have suffered the lost of the quality that was once their hallmark. Since getting digital cable, I have noticed that the digital cable signal quality even with the CHEAP Motorola DCT700 cable box is superior to the DirecTV feed on a real time basis.

*What a pity!*

Additional Edit:

I just made a comparison of the picture between DirecTV and the Digital Cable feed with the NBC Golf program and when Mickelson swung on Digital Cable there are no visible artifacts but on DirecTV there are visible artifacts, and that is just a golf swing. And the overall picture quality IMHO is slightly better on my Digital Cable feed through the cheap Motorola DCT700 cable box.


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## Billy Bob Boy (Jul 25, 2004)

tbeckner said:


> I haven't lost the DirecTV signal for 3 or 4 hours in the 11 plus years that I have had DirecTV, the biggest problem being the usual Sun Spots at the usual times every year. And I would say that your cable system is way behind the times, the cable system here in Bend, Oregon has Fiber To The Curb (FTTC) and is all underground, and we haven't lost cable for 3 or 4 hours in total in the last 4 years.
> 
> I would say that your dish is well protected or you haven't been hit directly by a level 3 or 4 hurricane.


Actually we did receive the direct blow from wilma A strong 3. My dish is extremely secure as should all. My dish has survived many strong cains.


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## LeapfrogTIVOdude (Jul 22, 2005)

I-Tv is working with Directv to keep it on the air go here:

http://www.ionline.tv/directv/


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## tbeckner (Oct 26, 2001)

Billy Bob Boy said:


> Actually we did receive the direct blow from wilma A strong 3. My dish is extremely secure as should all. My dish has survived many strong cains.


This is the way it should be.

Since I went with DirecTV in 1994, I have done all of my own installations, and I have never had to reinstall or realign my dish, but then again the last hurricane (was described as a hurricane) we had was back on October 12, 1962 (a little over 43 years ago, see info below) and it was only about a level 1, if barely hurricane level. It had substained winds between 68 MPH to 70+ MPH, but gusts reached as high as 179 MPH.

*The "Big Blow" of Columbus Day 1962*

With little fear of exaggeration, it can be stated that the Columbus Day Storm of 1962 was the most powerful windstorm to strike the Pacific Northwest in the 20th century.

In sheer gustiness of wind, as indicated by the ratio of maximum gust speed to sustained wind speed, called the gust factor, the Columbus Day Storm behaved more like a hurricane than a typical midlatitude cyclone. The large number of 1,000-year-old plus trees blown down suggests that the Columbus Day Storm may have been the event of the millennium, though such inferences are speculative at best.

The Columbus Day Storm was born explosively when the highly degraded extratropical remains of *typhoon Freda* drifted into a powerful storm formation zone off of northern California and regenerated the ailing cyclone. The extratropical cyclone origin gives the event a unique place among Northwest windstorms, for, as far as is known, this has not happened at any other time in the period of climatological record. Certainly the remains of dead typhoons have arrived on the Pacific Coast on many occasions since 1950, but few have come ashore as strong storms, and none but the ghostly remains of Freda in 1962 have been spun into a terrific wave cyclone. The abundant energy that arrived with the tropical system may partly explain the level of violence achieved during the Big Blow. And this tropical influence suggests that the storm of 1962 be placed in its own category. A lone, dark overachiever whose closest cousins may be those powerful extratropical storms experienced on the East Coast, such as post-landfall hurricane Hazel of 1954.


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