Video Segment 03 – Alignment of new DIRECTV Ku/Ka Band Dish – Connecting the multi-sat LNBs, determining dish settings – Aligning the dish for both Ku and Ka frequency bands – Fine-tuning the dish for narrow Ka band reception
Product Description
This digital document is an article from RBOC Update, published by Worldwide Videotex on October 1, 2003. The length of the article is 762 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: BELLSOUTH AND DIRECTV DEBUT DIGITAL SATELLITE TV SERVICE.
Publication: RBOC Update (Newsletter)
Date: October 1, 2003
Publisher: Worldwide Videotex
Volume: 14 Issue: 10 Page: NA
Distributed by Thomson Gale
BELLSOUTH AND DIRECTV DEBUT DIGITAL SATELLITE TV SERVICE.: An article from: RBOC Update
Product Description
DirecTV H21 Satellite Television Receiver
DirecTV Digital Satellite Television Receiver. Activation and DirecTV subscription required (sold separately.)
This product is only available for sale in North America.
Access more than 225 national and local DIRECTV channels with DVD-quality picture and CD-quality sound (activation and subscription required, sold separately), including local and premium channels. The DirecTV H20 Receiver features:
Add the DirecTV H21 to your Raymarine 45 STV Antenna System and start getting all of your favorite programming while at the dock or underway.
*The Raymarine 45 STV antenna system is currently not compatible with DirecTV HDTV service, and will deliver only standard definition programming to the H21 receiver. Please check www.raymarine.com periodically for more information on upcoming product updates.
DirecTV H21 Satellite Television Receiver
Customers in select a package that fits both a family’s budget and viewing preferences. They are informed in depth the disclosures and guidelines DirecTV sets forth, including Landlord Permissions, install procedure, pricing and promotions, contract terms and conditions and the dreaded rebate process.
The outline of the rebate is fairly simple as the rebates are heavily advertised (normally a 21 dollar monthly savings). The promotional price is always reflected after the full price is crossed out. This is so tempting that current customers of the Satellite TV provider have called to take advantage although these are strictly available to new activations.
This rebate is a proactive rebate. It is solely on the customer to make sure the correct procedures have been followed. At one time there was an actual 800 number a customer could call. This was often busy, long hold times, or if successful need to be called within a specific time for the rebate to be activated. On the phone you generally receive no confirmation number or no proof your rebate has been activated.
The time for this rebate to take affect was an ongoing problem. The average 21 dollars in savings would not appear on the first month or sometimes the second month either. A new DirecTV Customer’s first few payments would be at the full price before promotions and often higher than what they were paying with Dish Network or a cable provider. Then one day the toll free number stopped accepting calls. A rush of calls from confused DirecTV customers began . They are advised to call a DirecTV customer service 800 number, which is a Five-dollar per call charge. I cannot imagine the amount of consumers within that period that had difficulty with the process. It had to be hundreds to thousands. Which when you consider a 21 dollar per person increase in payments I assume this adds up to quite a bit.
So to ease call volume and increase website driven customer service, It then became mandatory for a rebate to be activated on line. These were the steps…Register for a DirecTV online account, verify that your email address works, and submit your rebate. Sounds simple enough.
A lot of problems arise before the process even starts. Many customers have dial-up internet (a majority of rural America). If someone used your email address before (ex boyfriends, girlfriends, or immediate family members) DirecTV detected these as active accounts and ineligible for new customer promotions. Customers with old accounts who activated an online account 3-4 years ago are also detected as existing. Some people just don’t have the ability to access the Internet or email addresses. There is an alternative mail in rebate process that takes 3-4 months to activate. Once registered there are a series of sent confirmations, customers had to consent to receive emails from DirecTV; if they did not consent they would not receive an email. Emails from DirecTV were sent to a spam or junk folder. There are two emails sent to customers, one to thank them for registering and one to confirm the email address. The correct email then has to be confirmed. This leads customers to believe the process was complete. The thank you email is a congratulatory format even though there are still a few steps left.
The process is usually 15 minutes on a good day…if a customers type fast and have a vast knowledge of the internet. Finding the actual rebate tab is difficult (as it is buried on their home page).
If you made it past step two and are brought to the actual rebate activation DirecTV now attempts to halt halting the process by blaming it on Technical Difficulties (The main reason I decided to write this article).
You are presented with a 16 or a 21-dollar rebate and by clicking submit your rebate is activated. However, clicking submit would result in an error message. This occurrs 100% of the time and too often to be an actual error. The website would say they were experiencing difficulty please try again later! My belief is this is not an actual error, but another stepping-stone DirecTV implemented to make the process more difficult. A quick click of the back button or the refresh screen would immediately fix the DirecTV rebate website issues. This, in my belief, led to a lot of less experienced users halting their activation, resulting in additional breakage.
It normally takes two statements / billing periods for the rebate to take affect. Even if all these steps were taken a customer was still at risk of paying full price for their first few statements. You also have 60-90 days to activate these rebates or they will be unavailable.
In addition new customers receive 3 free months of Starz, HBO, and Showtime. They are promotional and complimentary however, there is no way to remove these free trial periods. The correct timeframe to remove those before the billing cycle starts charging a customer is still a timeframe I unaware of.
Over 20,000 DirecTV customers have filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau in the past three years. Those complaints are just regarding cancellation fees that customers were never informed of and don’t include everything else that could go wrong with their service. The result of all these complaints is that the Better Business Bureau has changed DirecTV’s rating from a grade of C-minus to NR for “No Rating.” This means that the company has received so many complaints that the company’s grade is now below failing. I know when I signed up for DirecTV they did tell me about the two-year contract, but informed me of cancellation charges. So being a DirecTV customer I couldn’t help but feel somewhat concerned. So I did a little digging, actually a little is an understatement; a lot of digging sounds more like it. Sure people are complaining about cancellation fees but there must be a reason why they cancelled in the first place, right? The first thing I tried doing was to find their contract. This was a mission in its self. After several hours, about 50 different websites, and a couple of Hot Pockets later, I finally found the “Terms and Conditions.” They read more like stereo instructions then a contract, but from what I could understand the fee for canceling their service is $20 x Months Remaining. This I was unaware of. I have had DirecTV for six months now and I have never seen this contract, nor did anyone tell me when ordering. Now I understand why this fee came to be a surprise to most people. They don’t tell the subscribers about it and the fees are hidden so well with in that contract, it’s like they were hiding buried treasure from a boat full of angry pirates. Still they will only charge you these fees if you cancel your service. So I decided to look into some of the reasons why people have cancelled their service. Some of the things I found were normal everyday stuff you would expect when running a business. On the other hand there were some things I found that concerned me. Local channels are huge for a lot of people when it comes to TV, even if you don’t watch them regularly. ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX are local channels. Now if you were a customer coming from cable, you wouldn’t think twice about the availability of these channels. They have always just, been there. Well, what DirecTV fails to tell you is that your local channels are not always available. So if you don’t ask they won’t tell, which seems like a reoccurring theme with them. So you might be signing up for two years of television service without your locals. That means no local news, no local sports, and no Simpsons! I lucked out on this one. I live in a major city so my local channels were available. If you live too far away from a major city you may not be so lucky. The major reason I found for people canceling their service is somewhat ridiculous. I couldn’t believe it at first, but it starts with DirecTV’s prize possession the NFL Sunday Ticket. Now try to follow this because it’s a crazy scheme DirecTV has come up with! DirecTV has a football package called NFL Sunday Ticket. What they do is rope you in by offering their best programming package “Premier” free for five months, if you order the NFL Sunday Ticket. Here is the price break down: NFL Sunday Ticket = 5 Payment of $59.99 Premier Package = $109.99 (first 5 month’s free) So there is some savings there but that’s how they get you. When you sign up for DirecTV and the installer comes to your house he will hook up a DirecTV receiver to each TV. What they fail to tell you is, that you will get whatever model receiver the installer has to best fit your package. You couldn’t request the newest models even if you wanted to. So if you are getting an HD programming package and the installer has an older model HD receiver lying around that’s what you’re getting. Most people wouldn’t even notice the difference when it comes to the receiver and that’s what DirecTV counts on. When you sign up for the NFL Sunday Ticket they don’t tell you the terms and conditions. Why? Because you didn’t ask! It states, “**A D10 (or later model) interactive DIRECTV Receiver is required.” So you’re probably thinking what happens if the installer doesn’t give me the right receiver for your Sunday Ticket? No problem DirecTV’s got you covered. If you want a new receiver whether it’s because you want a newer model or even if the receiver broke DirecTV will gladly replace it and here is how. On most occasions they will make you pay upward to $199 to upgrade your receiver. If it’s broken they will replace it for free with the same model. What they didn’t tell you “because you didn’t ask” is that, every time you upgrade or replace a receiver it renews your contract with them for another 2-years. This is the main reason why 20,000 people are surprised when they receive a cancellation fee of $480. I would be surprised too! They offer you this great deal to save money. They sell you the NFL Sunday Ticket, and then give you the wrong receivers forcing you to buy new ones, putting you into a longer contract. So in the long run you end up spending more money then you were going to save! ONE BIG SCHEME!!! I have read a lot of stories about how customers confront DirecTV about this. Some people get hung up on, some get calls from collections, and a lot of them are forced to pay the cancellation fee, but all of them just hit dead ends with no way out.
Product Description
This digital document is an article from Los Angeles Business Journal, published by CBJ, L.P. on December 15, 2008. The length of the article is 351 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Satellite TV service expected to retain high viewership: analysts see DirecTV’s movie offerings as recession resistant.(TELEVISION)
Author: Charles Proctor
Publication: Los Angeles Business Journal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 15, 2008
Publisher: CBJ, L.P.
Volume: 30 Issue: 50 Page: 7(1)
Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning
Satellite TV service expected to retain high viewership: analysts see DirecTV’s movie offerings as recession resistant.: An article from: Los Angeles Business Journal
Product Description
This RCA -DIRECTV Receiver is loaded with features to take your entertainment to a new level. The fiber optic digital audio connection provides virtually distortion-free digital sound and simplifies audio connection (when connected to a compatible receiver). In addition to the great sound, you’ll also enjoy the convenience of Advanced Program Guide, The Guardian and Viewing Suggestions. Push the limits on entertainment with an RCA -DIRECTV System.
RCA DIRECTV System DRD435RH – Satellite TV receiver – DIRECTV
Product Description
DSX5500’s Satellite Audio/Video Interface (SAVI) acts as a control hub for all of your home theater components. Its Pay Per View EZ Search enables you to conveniently and quickly view all of your PPV options, alphabetically, with the touch of a single button on the remote control. The Advanced Program Guide (APG) allows users to see up to 31/2 days of programming that can be searched by actor, director, title and category. DSX5500 features Picture-In-Guide so you never miss your favorite program while searching the guide. Its caller ID allows users to view incoming caller information right on their TV screen. The compact design of the DSX5500 provides a slimmer chassis with the same classic footprint as standard A/V equipment.
Philips DSX5500 – Satellite TV receiver – DIRECTV
Product Description
With its astounding variety of channels and choices, crisp digital-quality picture and sound and one-of-a-kind sports and events… DIRECTV service offers everything you’d want in your television experience. With the DIRECTV D11 Receiver you can expect more than ever before, with access to over 225 channels, including over 30 premium movie channels, with all the convenience of DIRECTV service. DIRECTV Pay Per View offers a handy choice in recent hit movies, plus exciting live sports, concerts and specials. There’re exclusive sports subscriptions for every taste and team. Even access to 36 commercial-free music channels!
DirecTV D11 Digital Satellite Receiver
Product Description
This digital document is an article from Wireless Satellite and Broadcasting Newsletter, published by Thomson Gale on January 1, 2007. The length of the article is 659 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: DirecTV to launch world’s first fully integrated, portable satellite and TV system.(SERVICES)
Author: Gale Reference Team
Publication: Wireless Satellite and Broadcasting Newsletter (Newsletter)
Date: January 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 17 Issue: 1 Page: 11(2)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
DirecTV to launch world’s first fully integrated, portable satellite and TV system.: An article from: Wireless Satellite and Broadcasting Newsletter
Why continue to pay $90 month after month for satellite tv. The monthly rates just keep going up and up and up. Well you get the point. The point is to stop paying for those monthly payments to the satellite tv company providers and start getting your tv programming for free.
