Channel off the air - but its not

[cpgny9]

Over the last few weeks , I've run into an issue while trying to record a show at 1:30AM. My receiver does record properly, but all that is recorded is a message saying that "this channel is currently off the air and will return in the morning". I have my recorder record all episodes of "the odd couple" at 1:30 AM on WPIX (11) New York. Sometimes, when I check my recordings, the show is there and sometimes I get that message recorded for a half hour.

Last night I was awake at that hour and when I went to watch it live, I got the message. I also have cablevision, so I quickly switched to cable and the channel was fine and it was on there.

Has anyone come across this? Why would Directv do this?

[jdspencer]

Lately, my recordings (ch82) of Conan have the screen saying that there is a technical problem. I suspect that this is DirecTV doing some testing of their satellites. Maybe WPIX is getting mixed up with this as well. The next time you're awake at that hour try a few of your other NY stations. The SD version (ch 382) doesn't seem to be affected.

[texasbrit]

Several people have reported this. It looks like something in the link between the station and the DirecTv satellite uplink is being taken offline for maintenance/replacement/reconfiguration during the early hours of the morning.

[dcowboy7]

Has anyone come across this?

yea same here i recorded "frasier" last nite but it all i got was that message too....but its not every nite it happens cause i was able to record the monday nite show.

PS: actually "the odd couple" is 2:00am.

[Mavrick]

Happens here regularly in the evening as of late for Directv pulls my locals via their analog over the air signal and they have got to where here lately a couple of the locals have been shutting off their analog signal at night but their Digital signal is still live I just wish Directv would just go ahead and upgrade to use the Digital signal instead of the analog for the analog will be going away in Feb. 09 anyway.

[Mavrick]

And to take this one step further I have lost one of my local independent stations a couple of months ago that Directv used to carry because they went ahead and went all digital and permently shut off thier analog transmitter which caused Directv to be unable to receive and retransmit them to me luckly I still get that station OTA.

[cpgny9]

Thanks for the info. That doesnt seem right to me. I dont pay a monthly fee to directv for a part-time channel, but what can you do.

[paulman182]

I have noticed our Huntington-Charleston locals off late at night from DirecTV occasionally in the last few weeks, as well.

[jdspencer]

I must point out that this happened to me with Chs 80 and 82 which are the DNS CBS and NBC from NYC. No locals here yet.