Gizmodo Australia » directv

DirecTV Uses A Few Other Dead Celebrity Spokesmen

Adam Frucci — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:27:11 +0000

Man, if you thought it was tacky and gross when DirecTV used Chris Farley in their ads, you probably won’t like the Heath Ledger, JFK or Jesus Christ spots.

[LandlineTV]

Inappropriate DirecTV Commericals Won’t Help Win Any Customers

Adam Frucci — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:00:00 +0000

CollegeHumor looked at those DirecTV ads where they reenact a famous scene from a movie and asked “what if we used horribly inappropriate movies?” Hilarity ensues.

[CollegeHumor]

DirecTV PC Tuner Officially Canceled

Sean Fallon — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:40:00 +0000

DirecTV has officially canned their efforts to bring the HDPC-20 tuner to market. The device would have allowed subscribers to integrate their service with Windows Media Centre.

A company spokesperson noted that the decision was made after “assessing the impact of missing the August 2008 release of Windows Media Centre update and considering timing of the next release.” How disappointing. If it is any consolation, DirecTV knows that we want Windows integration and they have expressed a commitment to making it happen. Nah, that doesn’t make me feel better. [Gearlog]

AT&T to Dump Dish Network, Start Selling DirecTV

Matt Buchanan — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 21:10:36 +0000

After punting their agreement with Dish Network to sell satellite as part of a triple play package, AT&T has decided to settle down with DirecTV. They’ll keep hawking Dish through Jan. 31, after which they’ll offer DirecTV anywhere they can’t give you U-Verse as a TV option. Multichannel notes that this leaves second-place Dish without a major reseller partner, so not great news for them. [Multichannel]

TiVo HD Coming to DirecTV Next Year

Mark Wilson — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:15:00 +0000

TiVo and DirecTV have a chaotic history, but now that it’s all straightened out, the two companies can move forward to release new hardware. Now they’re planning a follow up to the HD DirecTiVo, the aging, discontinued HD TiVo platform for DirecTV that used inefficient MPEG2 encoding. Expected in the second half of 2009, the new TiVo HD will support MPEG4 recording and newer TiVo features like Swivel Search. As a former TiVo user who’s now running an HR21 with a less than optimal interface, I can only see more DVR options as a good thing. [Zatz Not Funny]

DirecTV Adding 30 HD Channels on August 14th, 1080p Movies Later This Year

Sean Fallon — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:00:00 +0000

DirecTV is poised to take the lead in the HD battle by adding 30 extra channels starting on August 14th. That would give them 130 channels of HD in total–putting them well on their way to the 150 mark they floated around early this year. By the end of this month they also plan to be the first company to transmit all of their HD programming in the MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding standard with Dolby Digital Audio. And the icing on the cake will come later this year in the form of 1080p movies.

Some of these new HD offerings include: Showtime Extreme HD, Showtime Showcase HD, Planet Green HD, ABC Family HD, additional DIRECTV HD pay per view channels and an additional 23 Regional Sports Networks. DirecTV is also planning to launch satellite #12 next year, which will push the national HD content to 200 channels. Sure, there are compression issues and those 23 RSNs are all filler, but hey–its better than watching standard crap. [WSJ Marketwatch via Electronic House]

Windows Media Centre Update Might Get Partner Later In the Year

Matt Hickey — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:00:00 +0000

Windows Media Centre still isn’t what Microsoft wants it to be, but it has its fans, and its getting an update this month that they’ve been waiting for. Word is coming down, though, that this update isn’t the one the users are lusting after, the one with H.264 and DirectTV tuner support. Instead it’s a minor upgrade that adds things like international support. But fret not, users, as now it seems like there’s another rumour flying around about another update later in the year which will add many requested features. Patience, my fellow home theatre nerds, we’ll get our updates. [EngadgetHD]

News Corp. Hires Hacker to Break Into Dish Satellite Network, Steal Security Codes for Pirate Cards

Matt Buchanan — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:30:00 +0000

This is classic corporate espionage/sabotage at its finest. Dish Network is accusing News Corp.—which used to have a 39 percent stake in DirecTV and still provides its security tech—of hiring hacker Christopher Tarnovsky to break into Dish’s network, steal the security codes, and use them to make pirated cards to flood the black market. It sounds insane, but Tarnovsky admitted in court he was paid James Bond villain style, with US$20,000 cash payments mailed from Canada hidden inside “electronic devices.”

He says that he was just hired to write pirate programs to make DirecTV’s own network more secure, but one of his projects for News Corp., the “stinger,” can talk to any smart card in the world. Another hacker claims that he bragged about using the stinger with News Corps.’s people to reprogram a bunch of Dish’s cards, but Tarnovsky claims he’s being set up to take the fall.

Dish says the hack attack has cost them over US$900 million. Either way, this whole thing is some serious material for a TNT movie of the week. [Reuters via Valleywag]

Is CBS Blocking Survivor From Your DVR?

Benny Goldman — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:10:00 +0000

John Sciacca at Sound & Vision says his DVR no longer lets him record his favourite show, Survivor. Sciacca claims that despite setting his Time Warner box to record every episode of the reality show, when the time comes, it acts as if there is nothing to record. Sometimes, he says, the record light even goes on during the show, but it isn’t saved to the hard drive. Apparently he’s not the only one stuck without Survivor.

Following Sciacca’s advice, I ran a Google search for “‘Survivor’ ‘dvr’ ‘didn’t record’“, and found several message board posts detailing similar problems. The issue is present in other DVR types as well, including DirecTV and standalone TiVo. However, some other users say that they haven’t experienced any problems with their time-shifted Survivor eps at all. To make sure this problem was confined to Survivor, I checked other popular shows like Lost and American Idol, and came up empty-handed.

We’ve put in a call to CBS to explain this paranormal activity, and the folks there are looking into the problem. Sciacca suggests that this may be a case of altering show metadata to instruct DVRs to stop recording—in the past, networks have been known to alter their programming to stop DVR users from getting content (and skipping ads)—but we will reserve judgment until we hear more. In the meantime, if you’ve been experiencing similar problems, please share. [Sound & Vision]

New DirecTV Satellite Capable of 150 HD and 1,500 Local Channels

Sean Fallon — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:20:04 +0000

The latest DirecTV 11 satellite just built by Boeing has the capacity to offer 150 national HD channels and 1,500 local channels sometime in the future. So get ready to fire up those HDTVs—the satellite is expected to launch in March. [Boeing]