DirectTV Sound Problem
 

i've had a couple of problems getting sound on CBS with DirectTV in the past week. The first half of the national title game, and the last hour+ of The Masters, no sound. Only on this one channel, and not for the entire program, it had sound early on(and last week during the national title game sound came back for the 2nd half).

The DirectTV lady wouldn't(or couldn't?) help me once she realized that I don't have the box hooked up to a phone line... the menu option she wanted me to look at was there, but not in the same place she told me to go to.

Anyway, just wanted to see if anyone else in the Atlanta area w/ DirectTV has had any problems lately? It sounds like a broadcast problem from old threads i'd read about similar problems, but maybe someone here has had an experience that would help. I'd really rather not lug the box over to someone else's house and set it up on a TV to get a phone call made if I don't absolutely have to.

We've had some issues with our Tivo'ed local CBS affiliate stuff where sound would go out for short bits. Lost about 15 seconds or so of Survivor the other night.

Not sure how much of this is the affiliate, DirecTV, or my TIVO going bad (the hard drive is starting to sound a bit loud...)

Threadjack: Any chance your TiVO is under warranty? They just gave me an all new TiVO at Best Buy when mine started doing this since it was under warranty, and a bigger size than what I had before.

The problem went away after I reset the box a second time tonight, so I'll try doing that if it happens again.

No, my TIVO is over a year old. Plus, we're on the list for the MPEG-4 upgrades in the current round (started this month), so I'm hoping all this equipment will get replaced soon anyway.

Of course, if they try to charge me like $300 or more to upgrade, I may be on cable soon. Over the last 2 years I spend $400 to get an HD receiver, $100 to get a TIVO, and another $300 to upgrade the HD receiver to an HD-TIVO. If they try to hit me with large "lease" charges to go to MPEG-4 and the "interactive" receivers they are pushing so hard, I will VERY likely be back on cable (only VERY likely instead of definitely because Time Warner Cable sucks pretty bad in the customer service department, so it'll have to be talked over and depend on the deal they give me).

Sort of off-topic, but a question anyways. I just bought a HD-ready projector for a home theater I am setting up in my basement. I love the Sunday Ticket and have never had any problems with Directv at all. (We had tornadoes and rain that you wouldn't believe last weekend and the signal didn't even flash once) My question is if cable and directv are almost exactly equal what gives with the $500 HD-DVR? The services cost about the same a month, have very similar pay-per-view, pay channels, regular channels, and service fees. But my local cable company will give me a HD-DVR for free and Directv wants me to pay $500 to LEASE theirs? This makes no sense at all and has me completely baffled about what I am not understanding. I love the NFL and really can't get rid of my service but I would really like a HD-DVR, but the fuck if I am paying half a grand to lease a piece of equipment. I could pay the cable company $41 a month for a year and have directv and cable!

A key reason I'm even THINKING of leaving for cable is that DirecTV is slowly turning into a cable company. My cableco isn't getting better, but DirecTV is definitely getting worse.

It used to be that paying $300 for DirecTV equipment wasn't a big deal because the cableco was (and is for me) still $20/month more expensive, even with the internet and phone bundling deals. So after 15 months, you've broken even and are making money. But at the rate they've gone from standard boxes to TIVO to interactive/NDS to MPEG-4 means you need new equipment every year or so. If they don't slow it down, you WILL be losing money on DirecTV.

Their big advantages were always:

• All-digital picture with very high quality: now most of the cablecos are flipping over to all-digital, and without MPEG-4 many of DirecTV's channels are overcompressed (to the point of making some movie scenes, such as the dungeon scenes in "The Count of Monte Cristo" unwatchable), and they've got "HD-Lite" where they are reducing the resolution on their HD channels.
• Customer service: being phased out as they get rid of the independent dealers and start hiring contractors to do installs, requiring installs (making it difficult to do yourself), and outsourcing their call centers. They are quickly coming down to cable's level on this.
• Price: between the pay big bucks to lease instead of own your equipment and the annual rate increases they used to bash cable for (especially after comitting to no increase this year and then doing it anyway), they are quickly coming in line with cable.
• Sunday Ticket: well, they've still got it, but they are starting to really gouge for it, especially last year when they charged $99 extra to get the HD feeds, then blacked out all the local feeds. The blackouts look like they may be a thing of the past given comments from some of the NFL people (they took as much of a black eye as DirecTV did over it), but the price is still way up there.

DirecTV is starting to really disappoint me. If my MPEG-4 upgrade for HD locals, more HD channels, and better quality (read much less compression on my existing channels) comes free or close to it, I'll stick around. But if they try to charge me another $300+ (ESPECIALLY since they still don't have the mediacenter hub or the HD-DVR for MPEG-4), it's going to be awfully tempting to jump ship...