Option if no OTA or LIL? Maybee?

[keep amonte]

I wrote D* an email prior to reading about Santa and his present;

As an 8 year old customer I am very displeased with two items;
1. My over the air antenna is not functioning. This is apparantly due to the fact that Directv has not enabled it. I do not have HD locals and this unit advertises that it records OTA HD. this is ridiculous and I would like an honest explanation for this.
2. The Directv website advertised 12/06 for local HD channels, and yes I know it is only the 13th, but I am gettng the feeling that this is not going to happen. The CSR's I have spoken to have no information as well. I would like an explanation for this as well. I would have no problem breaking my contract and paying a severence fee for all this.
Sincerely, D

Here is their reply;

Thank you for writing and letting us know your concerns about Local Channels in HD. I apologize for the inconvenience and confusion this issue may have caused you. Although local channels in HD is not yet available in your area, we've begun to roll out local HD programming. We're already serving select cities and hope to add others by the end of this year.

The Tulsa, OK market area is in the list of areas that we will be offering high definition local channels by late December 2006. (schedule subject to change).

Furthermore, we will be adding more cities and programming's soon after these and gradually expanding our coverage over the next two years, as we deploy new satellites that use state-of-the-art MPEG-4 technology. The local channels we offer will carry a mix of digital standard-definition and HD programming.

In addition, Over the Air Antenna Channels is not yet supported by the new HD DVR. However, a future software download that will occur in early 2007 will add this functionality. Moreover, If you have an antenna, you can connect it to the receiver now. This way, you'll be ready to use it after the download occurs.

Furthermore, you are important to us and we certainly want to keep you as a customer.

A service specialist will call you in the next few days to discuss what we can do to meet your needs.

Thank you for your patience, and for giving us the chance to respond to your concerns.

Sincerely,

Christie
Employee ID 100184027
DIRECTV Customer Service

So they call me today and I explain my angst. The CSR says she will put a request in for me to get national HD locals until mi LIL HD arrive!:eek2:
I ask why this wasn't offered earlier, she could not reply. So she put in touch with HD proramming department.
After 5 minutes on hold, my call was dropped. I am too tired to deal with this. Santa and the OTA gift is enough for me!
However, for those of you that do not have either, I wonder if it would work for any of you?

[Doug Brott]

I wrote D* an email prior to reading about Santa and his present;

As an 8 year old customer I am very displeased with two items;

Don't you have to be older to get DirecTV? :D j/k

1. My over the air antenna is not functioning. This is apparantly due to the fact that Directv has not enabled it. I do not have HD locals and this unit advertises that it records OTA HD. this is ridiculous and I would like an honest explanation for this.

If you didn't get the "gift" last night, then no, you do not have OTA enabled. Ridiculous or not, the explanation is simple - DirecTV has not released the software necessary for you to receive OTA. Now, the natural question is why haven't they released it?

Having been active on these forums the past couple of months, it is patently clear why it has taken so long. There were a number of killer bugs in the system (RW/FF broken, missed recordings, HDMI failures, lockups). What probably happened was all of the energy devoted to fixing OTA was converted into fixing the broken software. With the release of 0xFA, stability was improved greatly. There were still occasional problems, but by and large, I believe even the most staunch problem reporters were starting to warm up to the HR20. The software finally started to "have some legs."

The secondary issue is that DirecTV really cannot afford utter-disaster miscues. Sure, there have been problems, but WHAT IF the code base they release locks up each and every HR20, causes every program recording to be missed and generally fouls up everything. That's really the delay. It takes time for DirecTV to move from the alpha-tester (in house) to the beta-tester (outside source) and with 0x108 there is now DBSTalk.com members, the gamma-tester.

DirecTV simply has to follow a very structured protocol to make sure the many thousands of customers can maintain service availability. You have never had OTA on your HR20 (promised or not), so they haven't taken anything away from you. They just haven't yet lived up to their promise.

[Sharkie_Fan]

So they call me today and I explain my angst. The CSR says she will put a request in for me to get national HD locals until mi LIL HD arrive!:eek2:
I ask why this wasn't offered earlier, she could not reply. So she put in touch with HD proramming department.
After 5 minutes on hold, my call was dropped. I am too tired to deal with this. Santa and the OTA gift is enough for me!
However, for those of you that do not have either, I wonder if it would work for any of you?

Good luck with that. :)

If I understand the way locals work, D* doesn't make that decision - you have to get waivers from your own local station giving D* permisison to send you nationals. Even if D* doesn't offer your locals. It's a couple of clicks of a button in the D* system and it will send out waiver requests to the local networks. I know at least one of our local networks has a blanket policy to deny all waiver requests.

[Juan Valdez]

So they call me today and I explain my angst. The CSR says she will put a request in for me to get national HD locals until mi LIL HD arrive! I wonder if it would work for any of you?

This is what D* did for me. They don't carry our locals (HD or SD) over the dish here (Missoula MT) and so they gave me the LA high def feeds. They were really cool about it and I am very grateful.

Hope it works out for you.

[petergaryr]

Good luck with that. :)

If I understand the way locals work, D* doesn't make that decision - you have to get waivers from your own local station giving D* permisison to send you nationals. Even if D* doesn't offer your locals. It's a couple of clicks of a button in the D* system and it will send out waiver requests to the local networks. I know at least one of our local networks has a blanket policy to deny all waiver requests.

Correct. It is the decision of the local station. I had the same situation where HD locals aren't available in Jacksonville and until "Santa" paid a visit last night, I didn't have OTA enabled either....so basically not way to record network HD programs.

The CSR I had contacted weeks ago about this did put in a waiver request, which was very quickly refused by every Jacksonville station. Their argument was that I am within the reception area of the local HD stations, which is true if the OTA tuners in the H20 were working.:eek2:

[bluedogok]

I still haven't received the update, must not be out to our part of the country yet.

[keep amonte]

Well low and behold a CSR called metoday and asked me if my issue was resolved. I explained to her that my two calls were dropped and I just gave up.
She told me that the OTA function on the HR20 was still getting bugs removed and it would most likely be 1/07 before the sowtware release.
As of Tulsa LIL HD, it still shows late 12/06 :)
As of tyesterday, my request for national HD Locals is in the works. I will know in 45 days.