Really surprised there isn't more joy and excitement over this
I added the DirecTV skill to my Alexa account yesterday and paired it with my HR44 It was a pretty painless process, but there are a few things I'd like to see added. It appears that you can't turn on or off the receiver using voice commands. Also no matter how clearly I tried to speak I couldn't get some channels to tune. For example, it couldn't understand me when I said 'Tune to AHC on DirecTV'. When I said 'Tune to American Heros Channel on DirecTV', it started to play a Captain America movie from On Demand.
The one downside for me personally is I probably won't be using this much until the Fall. My Echo Plus sits on a table by my window. I do not have central air so I rely on window air conditioners in the summer, the table sits to the side of the window a/c, and even at two feet away the sound from the AC unit completely drowns out my voice rendering it useless most of the time. Ironically enough, the window air conditioner is Alexa enabled
And oddly enough my Invoke Cortana speaker sits on the same table, two inches away from the air conditioner and it picks up everything I say.
Below is the picture with the graphic that gets thrown up when you use an Alexa command to control a DirecTV receiver. Purely coincidental that I took it about a half an hour ago during the intro of a show that shows a Winegard Slimline 5 DirecTV dish for RVs.
Edit - Forgot to add, Alexa also announces the name of the show/movie currently airing on the channel you tune to using voice commands.