Sonic.net DirecTV beta customers wanted

[Ray Abbitt]

Hi Dane,

Shame you went with DirecTV. Had Dishnetwork for 8 years. Bought in to
the market bull of DirecTV and switched to them for HD when I got my HD
TV. Was with them for a year and never got a good problem free picture
and had even worse support. Finally told them to shove it and moved back
to Dishnetwork. Have been with them for 8 months now and not single
problem HD related or otherwise.

That sounds like a bad installation. See also the followup from another
customer for a less biased corroboration.

Less biased corroboration? Really.

This is one of the challenges we've seen in satellite service, and one of
the big reasons we decided to offer it. By backing satellite TV with
Sonic.net's own staff of installers and customer service reps, we can
bring some real value. Instead of a random contract installer, you get us
standing behind the product.

Perhaps, but that doesn't help with DirecTV DVRs and that's something you
have no control over. However, when Sonic makes the DVRs, then that would be
time to reconsider.

See my earlier post with respect to DirecTV installation and service in this area. And as a customer (even though I work for DTV), my HR20 HDDVR has now worked flawlessly since the day I got it (in January of 2007). At least 90% of the probems I have seen with HDDVR's (as long as they were not installed prior to 2007) have been installation related. In the past too many "techs" first step in troubleshooting has been to replace the box rather than fix the underlying problem. At least with the techs on my team (roughly 40% of the techs from the Santa Rosa office right now) the LAST thing they do is replace the box. Proper troubleshooting (a hard skill to teach) and proper installation practices fix most of the problems. If you want to discuss this further, my personal email address in the header is good, my company email is given in my previous post and if you ask me from either address I will give you my company cellphone number.

-ray

[Ray Abbitt]

Perhaps, but that doesn't help with DirecTV DVRs and that's something you
have no control over. However, when Sonic makes the DVRs, then that would be
time to reconsider.

Which is not out of the realm of possibility, what with the open source
MythTV option and Sonic's army of Linux experts.

I've played with modified TIVO's (they run Linux by the way) and spent some time playing with MythTV (better be a real techie rather than a couch potato for this option--but I had fun with it) and currently still have a standalone TIVO (standard definition) which I use for some rather specialised uses in addition to my DirecTv HDDVR (which I originally got just so that I had a better grasp of it's operation so it was easier to answer customer questions). My TIVO can still do things that my DTV DVR can't (although in some cases the DVR can do more of them than are currently advertised or supported) but most of the things the TIVO can do that the DVR can't are currently in test (mostly more alpha than beta and now that I actually work for DTV rather than a contractor there may be chances for getting test units). The one thing that the DTV dvr's will probably never have is the equivalent of "Tivo Suggestions" because of patent issues. (And I apparently was one of the few who really liked that feature.) And of course there are some things I can't mention without getting in trouble with my employer.

-ray

[Ray Abbitt]

Personally, I much prefer to look after all of my own inside
wiring (phone, data, cable) versus having a gorilla from the
phone/cable company romping through my home ;-)

The Gorillas that did my house in Stockton last week. They did a great
job, using the existing wires that were already there. So we have HD
tv in two rooms here, and no cables running outside or inside except
for the where the tvs are. So that would be 4 cables all going though
walls and roof.

So your house was already wired with RG-6 with solid copper center conductor and no splitters. (Assuming that everything was done to DTV standards.) My techs absolutely love going to a house like that. Unfortunately there are way too many houses that are wired with questionable quality RG59--which might be marginally usable as long as you don't have HD and might even work with HD, but you WILL have problems.

-ray