DirecTV Launches First New HD Channel
DIRECTV HD customers woke up this morning to find a brand new HD channel in their guides on channel 498.
Unfortunately it is just a static graphic that reads…
Important HD Information
Congratulations!
Your HD is setup correct and you are seeing this broadcast
from our new HD satellite. By the end of this month, we’ll have
many of your favorite channels in HD, with over 70 launching
in October and up to 100 by the end of the year.
But the image is being transmitted in full 1080i, which officially makes it DIRECTV’s first new HD channel.
This has been the first official communication from DIRECTV since missing its planed launch on September 19th. While DIRECTV never publicly advertised the 19th date, many customers reported being told that date by DIRECTV customer service representatives over the past week.
A number of DIRECTV retailers have reported online that customers have been calling them up asking what happened to the new channels.
The cause of the delay has not been announced, but a rumor floating around the Internet is that it is a computer / billing system issue that kept them from launching the new services.
No word on the exact date when customers can expect more HD from DIRECTV.
DIRECTV is a communications company, yet they have done a very poor job in actually communicating at what has been going on. Their silence on the issue has caused DIRECTV a public relations black eye.
Internet discussion forums were flooded on Wednesday with people wanting to know what was going on. Lots of people were upset with DIRECTV, callers in to the call centers were told things such as “the HD launch has been delayed” all the way to “the new channels should be online now.”
So many people wanted information that they load of people trying to get to the discussion forums actually crashed one forum; I should note that it even brought my site to a crawl. (When the day was over my site served over 5 million hits, transferring over 21 gigabytes of data!)
Much of this fustration, confusion and anger that many customers felt could have easily been remedied if DIRECTV released a simple public statement.
There was no official explination or statement made by DIRECTV.
Perhaps it’s time DIRECTV clean house of its communications department and bring DIRECTV’s communications department into the 21st century.
Jeffro commented:
Also channels 480 and 481 can now better confirm if your BBC's are working.