Journal

DirecTV in the House

So the installer came, saw, and kicked some ass...

Well he called and said his first job was running long and that he'd be a little late, and I said that was fine. When he got here, he looked around, I explained why the last installer had said that he didn't have the ladder to get up on the roof. The installer said that was silly and that it would be fine. He ended up deciding to put it on the deck. Am I one to question his installation, no, however, it does seem to me that when the leaves come in, it may be problematic...but...who knows. I guess we'll have to see. Getting the signal into the house proved to be the most difficult problem.

My house is brick. The base of the house is concrete block. Neither are very easy to get through. So he decided to follow the same path that the cable gets into the house (which is fine by me, since I really didn't want to have a hole drilled through my wall). He ended up having to fish the wire through the wall. I helped...this was not an easy thing to do, because of the corners and all that, but eventually it came through and he was able to finish up the job.

Joseph was also up and he helped as well. He cleaned snow off the deck for the installer.

I helped hook up the DVR and got it all wired and hooked up.

So, after using another DVR so long it just seems a bit odd how things are organized. So it has been an adjustment. Not that it is overly complicated, but not knowing what things do, or trying to figure out what channels are this and that.

Things for the most part are labeled well. Usually with the company logo. Some of the HD channels do not have logos yet, so they have their little code + HD and it doesn't always make sense as to what they all are. There are also new channels, that we didn't get with Mediacom, that have proved to be interesting.

All said and done, we have around 50 channels of HD content that we will actually watch (ESPN and etc are not included in this number). Some of which I was very excited, until I figured out that the HD content channel didn't match the regular channel (food network). I suppose this will change over time.

The drawbacks.

The Guide is still getting up to date, and where it goes out a ways for some channels (I think it actually does it programs at a time and it says X program with X description with show and A,B,C,D,E,F times). So it's still filling things in. You would think it could do this faster since it is hooked up to the internet.

Our local content is not in HD. It is a good thing the writers strike is on, because it would kinda tick me off if I had to watch the shows on ABC, CBS, NBC in standard definition. There are HD feeds, but apparently you have to get a waiver from the local channels to see them (which I applied for). I may end up getting an HD antenna, but the drawback on that is that it's not on the DVR so no recording them...

We do not have on Demand...yet. Brandon has the HR20 model of the HD DVR, I (and my co-worker Keith) have the HR21 (my exact model is HR21-200). While there is a menu for it, it does not let us access the content yet... Brandon read something that it would be coming in February...or at least I think i heard him say that.

The Qwest DSL is noticeably slower then Mediacom cable internet...only at certain times. When I update the podcasts and the downloads happen...sometimes it can take a while...it can be quite a bit of content though. Especially the HD video ones...Hopefully we'll be able get the 8 megabit DSL soon.

After the installer finished, Shannon, Joseph and I headed down to Uncle Wendell's to get dinner....mmm...bbq....