DirecTV Gets Family Friendly

DirecTV is working to make its guide listings more family friendly and this week have rolled out a new Parental Ratings feature to its online listings service.

By visiting the DirecTV online guide at http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/epg/theGuide.jsp customers will now find when selecting a show and its program description will find a tab for “Parental Ratings” by selecting this tab customers will be given an age appropriate rating plus a description of the show with information that parents need to know. The new Parental Ratings feature is powered by Common Sense Media.

Not all shows have this new feature but a number of PPV and movies do. As a parent I would love to see DirecTV bring this feature to their set top box guides as well.

Dish Rolls Out More HD Locals

For Dish Network customers in Cedar Rapids, MI; Champaign, IL; Dayton, OH; New Orleans, LA and Toledo, OH they are happy today as the nation’s second largest satellite television providers rolled out HD locals in their areas.

In addition Dish added some missing HD local channels which added.

The local channels added are as follows:

Abilene, Texas – KTXS ABC Ch. 12
Wilkes Barre, Penn. – WOLF FOX Ch. 56
Lincoln, Neb. – KHAS NBC Ch. 5
Albany, N.Y. – WXXA FOX Ch. 23
Chattanooga, Tenn. – WRCB NBC Ch. 3
Syracuse, N.Y. – WSYR ABC Ch. 9
Greenville, N.C. – WFXI FOX Ch. 8 and WCTI ABC Ch. 12

Digital Transition So Far So Good

Well a number of stations flipped over to all digital this week, and while our elected officials decided that America wasn’t ready for the digital switchover. Looking at the reports where the switchovers did happen this week it appears that America was ready after all.

I have spoken to a number of television stations which flipped the switch this week and have been told the amount of calls they have received has been minimal, with the most common problem being some people didn’t understand that they needed to scan for stations on their digital converter boxes.