[jayman9207]

Part of the customer experience for the company I work for is Sports on many big TVs (no we are not a sports bar franchise) and we have almost 30 corporate owned stores. Yesterday, we had two of our stores HD receivers die on us and we were left scrambling to get some form of sports media onto the TVs and are waiting for DirecTV to send us replacement receivers.

Now we are a premium select DirecTV customer as our franchise exclusively uses DirecTV throughout all stores (almost 1000 stores now). I only point this out because it might make a difference to the question I am asking as I am not looking for a solution for all of the stores. I am only looking for a solution for just our corporate owned stores. Is it possible to get same day receiver replacement? If not can we have a couple of HD receivers on hand to use as replacements? Thanks.

 

[Yoda-DBSguy]

Purchasing at least 1 "Owned" receiver per location address to keep on hand along with a new access card would do the trick as you could turn it on/off at will with a simple call until the actual lease replacement receiver showed up for swap out of the defective unit. :grin:

 

[jayman9207]

But I thought you couldn't outright buy and own a receiver. I thought they were all leased.

 

[Yoda-DBSguy]

But I thought you couldn't outright buy and own a receiver. I thought they were all leased.

There are a couple of ways to outright "buy and own" a receiver.

You can purchase a HR21Pro from a few dealers (amazon dot com, solidsignal dot com, weakness dot com, etc). These also come with new access cards so no need to get one as you would in the senario below. These receivers are purchase only units and have never been leased by DirecTV. Additionally they are rack mountable and incoporate a better fan venting system, IR control mini-jack port, and an rs232 serial control port connection.

Or

You can purchase one of several used but owned receivers from ebay, other sources or even some members here, etc. If going this route, you'll need to confirm that the receiver is indeed owned with directv by giving them the RID number provided by the seller prior to purchasing the unit (confirm with the access card department at directv. You'll also need to get a new access card for $20 from them as priorly activated cards from another account or receiver won't cut it.

 

[jayman9207]

We don't use or need a DVR reciever. Can you recommend a basic HD reciever we can buy from the dealers you mentioned?

 

[Herdfan]

DirecTV will even sell you one if you can get in touch with the right department.

One other thing for you to consider is OTA. Not sure where your locations are, but a good antenna on the roof will get you a lot of networks in HD.

Does every TV have its own receiver or are you using a matrix switch?

 

[jayman9207]

Can't use OTA as the programming has to be sports / sports related. We are using a matrix switch so each store only has one HD receiver.

 

[dielray]

You should check if you lease or own. I know commercial accounts I have installed for have had owned receivers. I'm not sure if it's different for corporate accounts. If you own, you can just order an extra for each store and then deactivate it.

 

[carl6]

For the size/type of account you have, I would expect you have some type of account manager at DirecTV. That would be the place to inquire. Also, as dielray noted, commercial accounts typically have owned equipment as opposed to leased, in which case you could simply order a spare and retain it unactivated.

Last option if you can't find another way to do it would be to have a spare, active, receiver at each location. The obvious downside is $6 a month recurring cost (multiplied by 1000 locations adds up).

 

[jayman9207]

I wanted to post here before engaging our rep as they can be hit or miss sometimes. I will have to inquire about our receivers to see if we in fact do own them. In theory that would simplify things I would think. The solution I am looking for immediately relates only to our corporate owned stores and not all of the franchised stores but if there is some sort of global solution that we could additionally offer to our franchisees then even better! Thanks for the suggestions and help so far.

 

[JACKIEGAGA]

Let us know what happens.

 

[Herdfan]

Can't use OTA as the programming has to be sports / sports related.

I was thinking football. Lots of football on the networks. Better a lousy regional game than no game.

 

[jayman9207]

It looks like you guys were correct and yes we do own our receivers. We are going to contact our rep to see if we can get a couple of replacement receivers then to have on hand. I will post again once we talk to our rep. Thanks again for the help!