Couple things from a new subscriber

[mva5580]

Just got D* on Saturday, and have been loving it so far. The huge upgrade in the amount of HD channels, and the better selection period have me very happy and even happier that I'm now paying $5 less a month despite the increase in choice.

Anyway, I'm flipping through all my HD stations last night and I notice that there a few which seem to be duplicate entries. An example would be that I see 2 TNTHD stations, one is the 70's, or whatever it was, and the 2nd is around the 240-ish range. Same shows, same time, everything. And I believe it was also like this for ESPNHD. There might have been one or two others, but these are the 2 I definitely remember seeing on the list twice. I also think the regular HBOHD is on there twice, but as I only have them for 3 months, I won't be using them permanently anyway.

Why does the same channel show up multiple times? That's really my main question, everything else is pretty cut and dry.

I would say the one thing that is a bit frustrating is the fact that you can't watch another station while recording unless you have 2 cables coming from the wall. Are there a lot of houses that are built this way now? My house was built only a year and a half ago, and it doesn't have this. And there's no way I was going to have the guy start drilling up everywhere just for this. I hope they alleviate this in the future with a better box, or something. It's a small complaint, but I'm sure at some point I will miss being able to watch/record something else at the same time.

Installation was fairly easy, although I now have all my PC's connected wireless to the internet because my cable modem/router was installed at the same cable where the TV is. The setup in my house just made that the best place to have it, and now everything is wireless. Not a big deal, I was just surprised I needed to change this.

So while there were a couple things that surprised me, I'm overall very happy with the switch. It's amazing how many more choices I have now, and for LESS than what I was paying with Cox. Now DirecTV, as a brand new loyal customer, I have one and one ONLY request from you:

PLEASE release the HDPC box ASAP so I can watch all D* programming through my HTPC!!! I beg of you, I NEED this product.

[litzdog911]

It's just a matter of convenient grouping .... all of the HD Channels used to be in the 70's and 80's. Now that there are many more you're seeing some duplicates near their SD counterparts. Note that they don't use any more satellite capacity because the receiver just maps the same satellite signal to two different channel numbers.

Search on "SWM" (single wire multiswitch) for a new product that addresses the multiple coax problem.

[curt8403]

Just got D* on Saturday, and have been loving it so far. The huge upgrade in the amount of HD channels, and the better selection period have me very happy and even happier that I'm now paying $5 less a month despite the increase in choice.

Anyway, I'm flipping through all my HD stations last night and I notice that there a few which seem to be duplicate entries. An example would be that I see 2 TNTHD stations, one is the 70's, or whatever it was, and the 2nd is around the 240-ish range. Same shows, same time, everything. And I believe it was also like this for ESPNHD. There might have been one or two others, but these are the 2 I definitely remember seeing on the list twice. I also think the regular HBOHD is on there twice, but as I only have them for 3 months, I won't be using them permanently anyway.

Why does the same channel show up multiple times? That's really my main question, everything else is pretty cut and dry.

I would say the one thing that is a bit frustrating is the fact that you can't watch another station while recording unless you have 2 cables coming from the wall. Are there a lot of houses that are built this way now? My house was built only a year and a half ago, and it doesn't have this. And there's no way I was going to have the guy start drilling up everywhere just for this. I hope they alleviate this in the future with a better box, or something. It's a small complaint, but I'm sure at some point I will miss being able to watch/record something else at the same time.

Installation was fairly easy, although I now have all my PC's connected wireless to the internet because my cable modem/router was installed at the same cable where the TV is. The setup in my house just made that the best place to have it, and now everything is wireless. Not a big deal, I was just surprised I needed to change this.

So while there were a couple things that surprised me, I'm overall very happy with the switch. It's amazing how many more choices I have now, and for LESS than what I was paying with Cox. Now DirecTV, as a brand new loyal customer, I have one and one ONLY request from you:

PLEASE release the HDPC box ASAP so I can watch all D* programming through my HTPC!!! I beg of you, I NEED this product.


first of all :welcome_s

Duplicate HD channels are channels that were in the original HD package and are in process of being moved to new channel locations. there will be dups for a while and then the 70s channels will go away (the 70s channels were D* original HD channels)
D* = Directv (SHorthand)

[SDizzle]

Just got D* on Saturday, and have been loving it so far. The huge upgrade in the amount of HD channels, and the better selection period have me very happy and even happier that I'm now paying $5 less a month despite the increase in choice.

Anyway, I'm flipping through all my HD stations last night and I notice that there a few which seem to be duplicate entries. An example would be that I see 2 TNTHD stations, one is the 70's, or whatever it was, and the 2nd is around the 240-ish range. Same shows, same time, everything. And I believe it was also like this for ESPNHD. There might have been one or two others, but these are the 2 I definitely remember seeing on the list twice. I also think the regular HBOHD is on there twice, but as I only have them for 3 months, I won't be using them permanently anyway.

Why does the same channel show up multiple times? That's really my main question, everything else is pretty cut and dry.

I would say the one thing that is a bit frustrating is the fact that you can't watch another station while recording unless you have 2 cables coming from the wall. Are there a lot of houses that are built this way now? My house was built only a year and a half ago, and it doesn't have this. And there's no way I was going to have the guy start drilling up everywhere just for this. I hope they alleviate this in the future with a better box, or something. It's a small complaint, but I'm sure at some point I will miss being able to watch/record something else at the same time.

Installation was fairly easy, although I now have all my PC's connected wireless to the internet because my cable modem/router was installed at the same cable where the TV is. The setup in my house just made that the best place to have it, and now everything is wireless. Not a big deal, I was just surprised I needed to change this.

So while there were a couple things that surprised me, I'm overall very happy with the switch. It's amazing how many more choices I have now, and for LESS than what I was paying with Cox. Now DirecTV, as a brand new loyal customer, I have one and one ONLY request from you:

PLEASE release the HDPC box ASAP so I can watch all D* programming through my HTPC!!! I beg of you, I NEED this product.

The channels that are duplicates are there as the channels in the 70's are MPEG2 channels that have been there for years, and work with the older HD equipment. As D* began to expand in late 2007, they put HD and SD versions on the same channel number to make it easier for subs to find them. Soon, the 70's duplicates will be gone as they move these channels to MPEG4 like the new channels are.

Yes, newer houses have the "option" depending on the builder to have 2 RG6 runs to rooms. My house is 1 1/2 years old as well, and Lennar offers the DATA upgrade to do this during construction. Soon you will be able to get the SWM (single wire multiswitch) which will use that one line to your new HDDVR to run BOTH tuners. You may want to call D* routinely to check on this, and especially since you are a new sub, this is supposed to be something that an installer can make a call on in the field during new installs?

[Indiana627]

Needing 2 lines coming in is standard right now (1 for each tuner), so since you told the installer not to do this, you are missing out on half the HR20s capability. You will only be able to record 1 thing at time now, instead of 2 at time like it's designed to do (or record 1 thing and watch something else live). I ran the 2nd line myself way back when in preparation for my first DVR. Is this something you'd feel comfortable doing?

[say-what]

Welcome. You can eliminate the duplicates with a system setting. Go into Setup and under the display options, there will be an option to "hide" or "display" duplicate SD channels.

[curt8403]

Welcome. You can eliminate the duplicates with a system setting. Go into Setup and under the display options, there will be an option to "hide" or "display" duplicate SD channels.
they have duplicate HD channels like ESPN and Discovery etc/.

[dtrell]

Welcome. You can eliminate the duplicates with a system setting. Go into Setup and under the display options, there will be an option to "hide" or "display" duplicate SD channels.

the OP isnt asking about duplicate SD/HD channels. he is asking about duplicate HD channels, such as ESPNHD being in two differen channel locations (70s and 200s)

[SDizzle]

they have duplicate HD channels like ESPN and Discovery etc/.

I setup my "favorites" list for the guide, all 70's duplicates are gone. The only 70's channels laft are the ones that are not duplicated like HDNET.

[mva5580]

Thanks for the responses everyone, really appreciate it :)

And thanks for the heads up on the setting to hide duplicate channels, I'll look into that tonight. Didn't notice it my first go-round in the settings. And I guess another question, but not nearly as important as others, is that at my friends house, I really, really like the Guide colors/display that hers is. It's more of a dark blue color for the guide as opposed to the light blue on my HR-21. It didn't look like there is a way to change guide color in the settings. Would that be correct? Again really not a big deal, as I don't mind this one, I just liked hers a bit better.

And as for running a 2nd line myself, I don't think I'd be unnecessarily uncomfortable in doing it, it would be more of a logistics thing in my case. The cable box is on like the exact opposite end of the house where my TV/living room is, and there isn't much access to being able to do something like this. At least I don't think there is. But it's something I've considered. If I could have access to actually being able to run the cable, I know I could do it, I've done much more complex things then that. It's logistics more than anything.

And I'll have to keep an eye out for the SWM you guys are talking about, because if I can't run the cable, then I'd obviously be interested in that.

[SDizzle]

Thanks for the responses everyone, really appreciate it :)

And thanks for the heads up on the setting to hide duplicate channels, I'll look into that tonight. Didn't notice it my first go-round in the settings. And I guess another question, but not nearly as important as others, is that at my friends house, I really, really like the Guide colors/display that hers is. It's more of a dark blue color for the guide as opposed to the light blue on my HR-21. It didn't look like there is a way to change guide color in the settings. Would that be correct? Again really not a big deal, as I don't mind this one, I just liked hers a bit better.

And as for running a 2nd line myself, I don't think I'd be unnecessarily uncomfortable in doing it, it would be more of a logistics thing in my case. The cable box is on like the exact opposite end of the house where my TV/living room is, and there isn't much access to being able to do something like this. At least I don't think there is. But it's something I've considered. If I could have access to actually being able to run the cable, I know I could do it, I've done much more complex things then that. It's logistics more than anything.

And I'll have to keep an eye out for the SWM you guys are talking about, because if I can't run the cable, then I'd obviously be interested in that.

That dark blue guide is the older software for the D* brand boxes. At this point I think all D* brand boxes have been upgraded to the new white GUI. One note on hiding SD duplicates, I'm pretty sure the current national software release for the HR21 does not have that option, the posters here are all CE people who have it running a CE. The HR20 has it as part of the national release...... Someone with an HR21 on national, chime in.........

[mva5580]

So get a load of this. I get home last night, and I figured I would take the plate off the wall and just see if the builders happened to run a 2nd cable to the plate, just in case. I thought I might as well take the 30 seconds to see if it's there and MAYBE get an easy solution to my problem rather than go through all the other stuff.

To my (initial) joy, there WAS a 2nd cable in the wall. It was just a small amount coming up through the bottom of the interior box, where my cable I use now came down through the top of it. So I start to pull this cable up, to get the slack I would need to hook it up to the plate, and after like a foot and a half of cable, it just comes out of the wall and is in my hand. All they did, for why I will never know, was just cut off a piece of cable and put it in the wall. It's totally obvious that it was there for no reason at all, they just put it in the wall to get my hopes up. *******s.

[jacmyoung]

How long was that entire cable? It is possible they put it in so it could be used for fishing cables through the wall later.

If your house was newly built a year ago, you should have asked the builder to add extra cables for each room. That however is no excuse for DirecTV still not able to provide a single wire solution. Dishnetwork has been doing it for over two years!

[Indiana627]

Do you have a crawl space under your house or a full basement? Maybe that short cable you pulled out was long enough so the other end was accessible from below and you could have hooked another cable to it. Or tied a new cable to it and used it to pull the new cable up through the wall.

If you can, check below the crawl space/basement and see if you can find a hole that looks like it lines up with the box in the wall. If so, get a sturdy piece of wire and start poking up the hole to see if you can get the wire to appear in the box in the wall. If you can, then you can tie a new cable to the wire and fish it through the wall into the box. That's how I do mine.

[JLucPicard]

It was probably just a hunk he lopped off for size and disposed of it there.

[dtrell]

That dark blue guide is the older software for the D* brand boxes. At this point I think all D* brand boxes have been upgraded to the new white GUI. One note on hiding SD duplicates, I'm pretty sure the current national software release for the HR21 does not have that option, the posters here are all CE people who have it running a CE. The HR20 has it as part of the national release...... Someone with an HR21 on national, chime in.........

nope. My H21 has the latest NR software, and the guide is still dark blue. i dont care what color it is, i just want the damn thing to be much much FASTER on my HR21 because right now it is SLOW AS FLIPPIN MOLASSES.