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No, call or chat only.
ATT TV (DIRECTV Stream) - a little review
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Thanks
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Directv Stream just added COZI, GRIT and BOUNCE
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I hope the add a few of the other Sub-Channels like ME-TV
Welp, one more thing on my "to-do" list of improvements for DTV Stream has finally been achieved. Still got a few more to go, though. (And hey Steveknj, as for adding those Nexstar-operated CW locals such as NYC's WPIX, I'd say that will definitely happen before long because Nexstar is currently in the process of becoming the majority owner of the CW network. Network O&O local stations always get included.)
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Looks like ION was added also to channel 305. I don't believe it was there before.
No, it wasn't. ION was definitely on the list of channels I made a few months ago that were on DTV sat but not on DTV Stream. So that's another important new addition to DTV Stream. (You wouldn't necessarily think so, but in fact, ION was the 13th most-watched TV channel in the US last year.)
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That ship has sailed for me. I'm back on DirecTV "classic" (i.e. Satellite), but my son has stream and he'll be happy. When my contract is up with DIrecTV Sat, we'll see where the landscape is at that point.
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Oh, I believe it. Moons ago I made a joke on this board about the ION Channel, and someone came UNGLUED because it was the channel they watched the most.
Yeah, I knew you had gone back to sat, just thought of you with regard to the Nexstar-owned CW station in NYC since that was a sticking point for you. Will be interesting to see what Nexstar does with the CW network when they have majority ownership and control soon. Wouldn't surprise me if it's no longer even branded CW in a year or two and the line-up of series becomes almost completely different. They just cancelled a ton of CW series, so the transition is already beginning. Definitely looks like Warner's focus for DC series is now HBO Max, not CW.
As for what the landscape will look like when your 2-year contract ends (in late '23?) -- my prediction is that AT&T and DISH will have completed a merger of their pay TV services by then. Their biggest concern is avoiding political backlash over the deal that could cause the DOJ or FCC to try to stop it or put (from their perspective) onerous conditions on it (e.g. consumer protections against monopoly pricing for satellite TV). So they have a window of time between the end of the current political season and the beginning of the next one that will run from roughly this Thanksgiving through Labor Day 2023. I think they'll want the entire process, from public announcement of the deal to its legal consummation, to happen in that period.
Otherwise, they're looking at waiting until Dec. 2024. And there's the risk that the next admin may be even less compliant. Remember that Trump hated CNN, which was likely a factor in his DOJ filing to stop AT&T's acquisition of CNN's parent, Warner. As all legal observers predicted, the DOJ's lawsuit failed but it did screw over AT&T by holding up the deal for a long time, which delayed their launch of HBO Max. And now consider that in April of this year, DirecTV removed the ultra right-wing Trump-loving, Putin-loving OANN channel from their lineup, which may prove to be a death blow to the network since it was originally created at DirecTV's behest and got an overwhelming share of its distribution through them. So there's every reason to believe that if Trump is re-elected in Nov. 2024, he'll try to screw over AT&T again by stopping a merger of DirecTV and DISH.
Aside from that, it's rumored that TPG, the investor group that bought a 30% stake in DirecTV in order to put some lipstick on the pig and get it ready to walk down the aisle with DISH, only committed to a 3-year term before wanting their investors money back (with a profit, of course). The spin-off and partial sale of DirecTV was announced in late Feb. 2021 and closed in early Aug. So that means that TPG's 3-year timeframe -- when they're hoping a deal with DISH to be finalized -- is Aug. 2024. So they don't want to wait until after the Nov. '24 elections, regardless of who may win.
It's certainly possible that AT&T and DISH don't announce a deal until later than I predict, e.g. fall 2023, with it not being finalized until spring or summer 2024. But the closer the announcement and closing dates are to the Nov. 2024 election, the riskier it is that politicians in either party will rail against the deal and pressure the DOJ or FCC to scrutinize and/or stop it.
Once the deal does close, I expect the unified company may continue taking new satellite subscribers only under the DISH brand while selling streaming TV under the DIRECTV brand. Existing DTV satellite customers will be grandfathered in on their existing packages and equipment and allowed to keep it as long as they remain an active customer. Over time, they'll modify their channel packages so that new customers get the same set of options under DISH satellite as under DIRECTV streaming.
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I still don't think DISH and DIrecTV will ever merge. I think it's more likely that DirecTV moves more and more to Stream and begins, winding down DirecTV Sat to where it's just a niche offering to rural customers. A lot of that will have to do with current contracts it has with content providers which, when they expire, will more likely include streaming as well as Sat. Once the content is on par with Sat, they can begin transitioning folks like myself to Stream. And they are getting close. Once ST goes, then they will probably negotiate with the NFL to get Red Zone and NFL Network onto Stream. Once the lineups are close, they can really push to get people off Satellite. This combined app that's apparently popping up on iOS is a step in that direction. Perhaps the device apps, like on Roku will allow for both and thus start to get rid of the need for actual hardware is another step. I think things will be a lot different in 2 years.
I'd say DISH's CEO and largest shareholder Charlie Ergen has good reason to keep saying that a merger with DTV is, to use his word, "inevitable". It'll happen. It's in both sides' interests. Just a matter of negotiating the nitty-gritty terms and then getting it past the government.
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My opinion on that has been expressed in the many threads on the merger topic. Such speculation isn't the purpose of this thread.
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Why is there a 30 episode limit on series recordings given that DTV Stream now has unlimited DVR and 9 month retention similar to YTTV?
Because there is
i just got dtv streaming and the osprey box. i programmed my Harmony One and it handles everythig except voice search.
All of AT&T's pay TV services (DirecTV, DirecTV Stream, and Uverse TV) were spun off from AT&T into a new holding company called DirecTV. AT&T owns 70% of this company while an outside investment group, TPG, owns the other 30%. Both sides put their own board members in place to govern the company but, in terms of general day-to-day decision making, TPG is calling the shots.
So DirecTV Stream is kinda-sorta separate from AT&T but there are very much still ties between the two. I guess they saw no reason to spend money to completely separate out all of the back-end tech (like website logins and customer billing) that already existed between DirecTV and AT&T, so that stuff still remains, for now anyway.
TPG reportedly wants to profitably exit this deal (presumably predicated on some kind of further sale or merger of DirecTV with a new outside group) within 3 years of their buy-in, which was consummated in Aug. 2021. If that's true, look for the next sale/merger involving DirecTV to go down by summer 2024. It was reported earlier this year that TPG had already been engaged in talks with DISH as a potential merger partner for DirecTV. Meanwhile, DISH CEO and chief shareholder Charlie Ergen has repeatedly described a future DISH/DirecTV merger as "inevitable."
The biggest concern with such a proposed deal is that the US government would once again smack it down on anti-trust grounds, as they did over a decade ago the first time the two satellite TV services tried to merge. Given those concerns, it would be sub-optimal to try to get the deal approved during the heightened political atmosphere of an election season as will be the case in 2024, and is already somewhat the case right now due to this November's mid-term elections. So I continue to think the most likely scenario is that we see AT&T, TPG and DISH announce some kind of merger deal involving some or all of their various pay TV services after this Thanksgiving, i.e. late 2022 or early 2023, with a goal of having the deal approved, finalized and implemented by the start of 2024. We'll see...
Doing a trial run mainly because my DirecTV sat was moved to a new account and they told me I would lose service for 24-48 during the process. Turns out it was more like 30 minutes. I had already started the trial so will finish out my 5 days but just a few comments. Not having the box/remote is not a great experience when needing to change from say channel 2 to 671. You have to swipe on the ATV remote a bunch to get there. Otherwise picture is great. Every bit as good as sat and maybe a tad better. DVR works great. FF with the 30 second skip works good. No complaints other than the channel changing which would be solved with the box/remote and the fact there are no user profiles to keep DVR content separate for each user.
Also why isn't Extra Innings available as an addon on STREAM? That would definitely be the deal breaker for me in the future. Gotta have EI.
Also why isn't Extra Innings available as an addon on STREAM? That would definitely be the deal breaker for me in the future. Gotta have EI.
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