Yesterday night, we had outages on several channels, e.g., channel 40, 50, and 56, maybe more, but these are the ones I noticed after being alerted to it by a fellow resident (thanks, Andreas.)
Some of the channels showed a black screen with a DirecTV logo jumping around, like a screensaver.
On at least one channel, the screen showed a text message "Good box gone bad. Can't complete boot process. Please contact customer service."
I haven't had time to check this morning if the problems are resolved yet.
Update: Resnet says the problem is resolved.
I haven't had to post about outages for quite some time, but this weekend, I found that Channel 11 (Fox) has been out since at least Saturday.
I hope this is an isolated event, and doesn't indicate a fundamental problem with the DirecTV receivers (the outages of last year were caused by receivers from Dish that weren't designed for 24/7 operation...)
Update: it got fixed on Monday morning, after I alerted Resnet to it.
I am happy to report that in the month since UCI Housing switched us over to DirecTV, I haven't seen any serious outages.
I have seen occasional receiver errors, though, but the DirecTV receivers seem to have a better error recovery mechanism that the receivers from Dish. They were up and running within minutes.
I am still waiting for HBO to be available. The housing website continues to say
HBO will be installed soon and will require a separate subscription to activate. Service will be provided on Channel 18. Subscription information is forth-coming.
Finally, we still need to push for more channels, in particular ESPN.
I'm back in town, and the outages continue...
So I had to start the list of outages for November 2004. As always I update it throughout the month as I notice outages. The list of outages in October is here.
One entry deserves a special entry: Since at least Nov. 6, channels 63 to 65, i.e., TV 5, TV Asia, and Phoenix, are black. There is no picture whatsoever, just a black screen. I have no idea what's up with that...