By Alex Nunez on June 8, 2010 in
Are you a DirecTV customer? Do you have their HD Plus DVR? If so, you likely had (or currently have) issues today, thanks to an upgrade that the satellite provider pushed out to the devices overnight. I'm a subscriber and my primary TV has one of the aforementioned DVRs connected to it, and yes, I had problems. Here's what went wrong, and how to fix it if you're having trouble today.
The issue:
DirecTV HD DVR users are finding that their devices no longer respond to inputs, whether the remote control or the buttons on the face of the unit are being used. You can't change channels, bring up the grid, browse your recordings -- nothing.
The solution:
You need to reset your receiver -- twice. While the knee-jerk fix for most receiver-related issues with DirecTV can be solved by resetting the receiver just once, doing so this time around had no effect. That's because in this case, users need to reset their receivers, wait for the screen to come back up, and then immediately reset them again.
This advice is being communicated by DirecTV via its Twitter page and a recording that you'll hear if you call into the customer service phone lines. (Note, the customer service phone lines were getting hammered as of a short time ago -- I got a couple of hard busy signals before getting through to the usual menu on the third try.)
Once you perform the double reset and wait for the box to come back online, everything should work again.
What happened:
In advance of the World Cup soccer tournament, which gets underway this coming weekend, DirecTV pushed out a software update to make the HD DVRs 3D-compatible. (DirecTV will carry games in 3D HD via the new ESPN3D network.) Once their set-top boxes begin working properly again, users will get an on-screen message informing them that the 3D update has been installed.
Apparently, something in this particular update wreaked havoc on HD DVRs.
How is the problem being communicated?
- DirecTV.com now has a link to the fix right under the company logo on the homepage.
- DirecTV's Twitter page is clearly helpful, and there's two-way communication happening there. Unfortunately, customers who don't use Twitter likely won't think to look there.
- As of this writing, DirecTV's Facebook page has zero information about the problem posted to its wall, even though over 72,000 people follow it. This is a missed opportunity. DirecTV customers, however, are posting plenty of comments -- many of them hostile.
- When I called DirecTV, the telephone recording advising customers of the problem and solution didn't play until I was a couple of layers into the voice response system. For a problem that is seemingly as wide-ranging as this, it may have been more helpful to have it right at the top of the menu structure, so that existing customers could hear it immediately instead of wasting time with voice prompts. The phone lines, as of around 3PM Eastern, continue to be jammed.
- To our knowledge, DirecTV's email newsletter mechanism wasn't used to communicate the problem and the related fix. Doing so might have saved many customers some unnecessary aggravation.
Bottom line:
If you follow the double-reset instructions described above, chances are you shouldn't miss any of your Tuesday-night shows, but the upgrade clearly created an annoyance that continues to impact a lot of DirecTV subscribers.
UPDATE: DirecTV says that the problem is now resolved, and that it has automatically reset customers' receivers. No further action should be necessary on the part of customers.