The Oregon Herald is investigated reports that the satellite content provider, Direct TV may be incapable of delivering a usable HD format DVD box. The issues we are investigating include:

• Direct TV has major problems
• Customers leaving Direct TV
• Direct TV ignores customers
• Overcharging, fake charges
• HD DVR not working
• Limited auto series recording to 100 episodes
• Recorded series blank or not recorded
• Direct TV unable or unwilling to deliver acceptable service
• Major technical problems with high definition DVR's and receivers
• Direct TV technical support not trained correctly
• Customer abuse, lying to customers, cover-ups

After months of investigation, we found that Direct TV has problems with their HD service and that they are knowingly overcharging customers for services NOT rendered. They are either hiding or ignoring important problems. Many of the complaints are related to their new HR21 high definition (HD) DVR receiver/recorder.

The Oregon Herald has been able to document that their flagship HD HR21 receiver/dvr indeed does not work in significant and very important ways. We tested multiple HR21 boxes. The HR21 Category Search feature does not work correctly. After a Search is made in a highly populated category with thousands of results, Search crashes then reloads to the beginning of the Search, making it impossible to search further than a few hours for events, programs, moves,etc, even on the same Search Day. For practical purposes, a comprehensive Direct TV search is nearly useless. It wouldn't be so important except that searching for programs is one of the most important features of any DVR. We can blame this on the Direct TV engineering and programming department. It's a mess. There are so many bugs that it appears search programming code as well as other code must have been written by sloppy poorly trained individuals who have no idea what they're doing.

The same can be said for Direct TV's officers and operating managers. It may be that these people are so near-sighted one wonders how their stockholders are holding up. This is rather unfortunate for Direct TV, a company that has lost so much since refusing to retain TIVO and in favor of a third-rate interface. And that interface demonstrates there is either no desire to consider the customer or sheer incompetence.

In addition to the Search problems, Series Program recordings, when played back, are all too often found to be blank. They may not be apparent if you're not in the habit of recording lots of TV series programs. The magic number of recordable events seems to be around 100. After that magic number, all too often attempts to record further programs is met with disaster.

Any attempt to record a series such as Hardball with Chris Matthews, or even any network news program, or any series program, fails. Only the first program in the series is recorded. You'll miss all the other programs. If you want to record the series, you'll have to do so manually.

This is a very bad situation for those who like to record lots of content. That magic number of 100 episodes may not, at first, seem important. But when you realize that for a two week period of recordings, the evening news broadcast represents 10 possible hits out of 100. So that's just one series (TIVO does this correctly, calls it Season's Pass). If you decide to auto record all showings of Hardball, (as an example) be warned that it takes up about 30 of the 100 limit. You can easily see that it may take only a few Series or Season's Passes to to reach the 100 hit limit, if indeed that is the limit. Direct TV refuses to say. You'll soon have your system not working at all and you'll feel you've traveled 15 years into the past. It won't work.

But even the first episode of your favorite series may not be recorded, end up blank or not recorded at all. In the examples we investigated, Direct TV was not able to fix the problems; technical support admits to some of the problems but continue to charge the customer. After weeks or months of complaints, Direct TV does a slight-of-hand in a pretense at help but the effort is all too often imaginary. Is Direct TV having financial problems? Could that account for this kind of behavior? Or do customers just accept this sort of service?

After many complaints and empty promises from Direct TV, the customer has a choice but to either live with the problem or cancel service. If the customer cancels, Direct TV charges the customer hundreds of dollars for what they call "Early Cancellation Fees". It's a neat trick. It's also theft and fraud. If the customer refuses to pay, Direct TV simply wins in the long run by charging the unpaid amount as tax deductions or bad-debt write-off. The customer pays or their credit history suffers.

Direct TV is involved in a sickening, despicable game. It's a massive problem in the US and it would appear that Direct TV is one of the major players. We welcome court action against us from Direct TV so we can shed additional light on the ugly this ugly practice.

TIVO TO THE RESCUE
If you're looking for a great combination of HD programs and a great HD interface, I seriously suggest you do what I and Roy hare at The Oregon Herald did. GO TIVO. This requires that you get Digital Cable instead of Direct TV. In my case the local cable provider is Comcast. Their interface is horrible but using TIVO's SERIES 3 DVR with Comcast Cable, you get the best of all digital worlds. You don't need the Cable DVR or cable receiver, just the Series 3 (or even Series 2), and their CardSlots. Tivo gets the content from your cable provider. The difference is DRAMATIC. It all works very well and the people at TIVO are generally much more competent and friendlier that at Direct TV.

With the combination of TIVO and Cable, the world is bright and rosy as I had always imagined it. Trust me on this combination. I'm hard to please. It works. TIVO Series 3 does not work with Direct TV. Dah. No surprise. You'll have to buy their TIVO's Series 2 or Series 3 DVR. It is a bit expensive. But if you want quality, pay for itt. Roy was with Direct TV for over ten years and I for two years. And we've both investigated this report for many months and have lots of evidence. Direct TV lost us and many others because of greed and stupidity. Many people have experienced the same problems with Direct TV. It may be an epidemic. TIVO has problems with incompetent or nasty tech support staff but otherwise we find no problems.

We can only hope that Direct TV will learn from their horrible mistakes and reverse their policy and get ready for the HD revolution, because my friends, they're not living in the future. They're heads are too far up their greed hole to see what's on the way. And for Christ sakes, hire some decent senior programmers!

Update: January 28, 2008
We contacted Direct TV Media Director Robert Mercer at Direct TV who read this story. He seems a decent sort and promised he'd get back to us. We hope Direct TV will correct these problems and change their cancellation practices. If they do or if they point out how we are wrong, we'll publish a retraction and remove this story.