Saturday, April 08, 2006

STO and DirecTV - A Bumpy Ride

We're hearing numerous reports from DirecTV subscribers within the immediate Cleveland/Akron/Canton area that this afternoon's Cleveland Indians game wasn't available to them on the team's SportsTime Ohio channel (DirecTV channel 657). The folks we're hearing from are well within the "zone 1/2" local footprint for STO.

As far as we know, there should be no reason other than a technical/operations problem with DirecTV that the game wasn't available. We'd strongly advise folks to call or E-Mail both DirecTV and STO to get the scoop, if at all possible...and we'll ask around as well. If we hear anything, we'll let you know...

UPDATE: 4/9/06 12:15 AM - Marc over at Moohead Radio says he's heard from STO that "it appears DirecTV blacked out the entire (Cleveland) region (for STO) by accident". Yipes! Well, it's not the ENTIRE region, as you can see in the comments below...at least some folks are telling us that they did get the Indians game on STO via DirecTV channel 657. But it seems from the reports we've received here that most folks did not.

Our advice? Hang in there. This whole thing is new for everyone, from STO to DirecTV to the cable companies. If it lasts more than a week or so, we'll be surprised. (But do call 'em and tell 'em you're not happy, even if this only lasts a while longer.)

We've had no problem with Adelphia's carriage of STO, even though their program guide doesn't show the STO HD games on "HD Bonus" 798, the games are run. Imagine, saying something nice about Adelphia! Porcine creatures must be airborne somewhere...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had to call DTV and have a tech remove my authorization and re-input it to get it working today.

Anonymous said...

I'm in North Ridgeville and had zero problems getting the game on DirecTV.

Anonymous said...

I'm in Canton. Had to call in, but had it on within 5 minutes of getting a live person on the phone.

Anonymous said...

I was on the phone with DTV for over an hour trying to get the problem solved. It took 5 restarts of the receiver and 3 downloads of the data by the tech in Nevada to get it to work. By then it was the bottom of the 6th. I know of 2 others very nearby me (I live in the Old Brooklyn neighborhood of Cleveland) who had exact problems--the receiver would say "call customer service ext. 721", which meant that the receiver thought you weren't authorized to receive the programming. It took a while but DTV got it working. The tech I was talking to said they were having similar problems this week with customers trying to get the Mets new regional channel.

Anonymous said...

Called customer service, they got it resolved in 5 minutes without a reboot or anything else. Problems like this can almost always be resolved w/o a reboot, all they have to do is authorize your receiver...