The DirecTV HD Saga Continues

There has been no change in the number of High Definition channels that DIRECTV customers are seeing today, but some late night viewers got a sneak peak of two of the new channels early Sunday Morning.

DIRECTV ran a special test Sunday morning, and those customers who were awake were able to tune into Discovery Channel HD and National Geographic HD for three hours. 

The test was designed to see what would happen and if there would be any issues when DIRECTV launches all the new HD programming.

The majority of customers were able to watch the 3 hour preview with no issues, however in a poll conducted by DBSTalk.COM over 14% of those customers with proper equipment were unable to see the test channels.

While there has been no official explanation of why 14% of their HD customers could not see the test channels, many say the problem could lie with a defective device called a Broad Band Converter (BBC). The BBC converts the high frequency KA band signal into a lower frequency signal that can be received by the DIRECTV satellite receiver. Users with defective BBC’s will be able to get replacements from DIRECTV at no charge.

And while a large group of people will not be feeling the HD joy when the channels launch these issues will not prevent DIRECTV from launching the new services. I am told by my unofficial sources to expect the new programming this Wednesday.

One thing that excites me is that I am told that the new channels will run in their native full resolution. This excites me because over the past few years DIRECTV’s HD has been “down resed.” This means a 1080i signal coming in to DirecTV has been taken and the resolution was lowered to 1280×1080 so that they could fit in more channels. Many AV enthusiasts nicknamed this method of distributing HD “HD LITE.” With the new MPEG4 technology and because of all the room they have on the new satellite DIRECTV will once again able provide their customers full resolution high definition programming.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for Wednesday to get here. I just hope I am not one of the 14% of the folks who may be unable to tune into the new offerings.