equipment shortage?

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mdram

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Aug 24, 2005
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Md
been reading posts on the directv forums where new customers are being delayed installs
they are told by CS/installers/ect that there is an equipment shortage.

anyone heard about this?
 
been reading posts on the directv forums where new customers are being delayed installs
they are told by CS/installers/ect that there is an equipment shortage.

anyone heard about this?

That makes no sense, given that Directv is slowly losing customers and should have more equipment coming back than going out. Even accounting for the fact that some of the stuff coming back is obsolete, most of the churn is people who switch every couple years to get a deal so it would be Genies coming back. I suppose it could be LNBs or the like.

If true, whoever is in charge of their operations and should be planning inventory etc. really screwed the pooch!
 
i did a search and i see people stating this since at least june

just curious
 
just had a thought. wonder if its anything to do with shutting down mpeg2, and people needing new equipment
 
just had a thought. wonder if its anything to do with shutting down mpeg2, and people needing new equipment

Still would be an operational failure on Directv's part. They knew the MPEG2 transition was coming, and how many MPEG2 boxes there were out in the field, so it should have been easy to plan for.
 
There has been a shortage for several months of genies and clients. There is actually some limited ability to install genie 2s in place of a genie on new installs to account for the shortage which may eventually cause a shortage of the genie 2. They recently released 2 new sub-models of the genie and genie 2 but the genies are still in limited supply.
 
Whoever is in charge of operations who let this happen should be fired. Hard to believe such a mistake could ever happen in 2018 to a company with predictable business flows like Directv, given all the technology tools available these days to make this task simple.

Unless Directv reports in their next quarterly report that they suddenly gained a bunch of satellite customers against expectations, or a warehouse full of Genies and clients was destroyed in a fire, I just don't understand it.
 
Which new models are those? Are they the new streaming models?

I think he's talking about the revisions of the HR54 and HS17. There were FCC filings for those earlier this year, for a "class II permissive change". If you look at the link you can see a document for the class II permissive change that lays out what changed - basically changing stuff like chips and shielding means they need to show the FCC it has been re-tested and still meets the certification the previous one did (versus more extensive changes that change test results and usually result in a new model number)

Looks like they are removing the eSATA port from the HS17 which some might not like, but they upgraded the USB port to USB3 so maybe they dropped eSATA because they will support USB3 external drives instead?

FCC ID O6ZHS17 Digital Satellite Receiver(Headless DVR Server) by Humax Co., Ltd.
 
I think he's talking about the revisions of the HR54 and HS17. There were FCC filings for those earlier this year, for a "class II permissive change". If you look at the link you can see a document for the class II permissive change that lays out what changed - basically changing stuff like chips and shielding means they need to show the FCC it has been re-tested and still meets the certification the previous one did (versus more extensive changes that change test results and usually result in a new model number)

Looks like they are removing the eSATA port from the HS17 which some might not like, but they upgraded the USB port to USB3 so maybe they dropped eSATA because they will support USB3 external drives instead?

FCC ID O6ZHS17 Digital Satellite Receiver(Headless DVR Server) by Humax Co., Ltd.
Interesting they did that to an older model. Wouldn’t they just make these changes to an all new model instead?
 
Because they are still actively manufacturing HR54s. Maybe they aren't quite ready to go all-in on the HS17, but want to wait until the HS27 which probably fixes some first gen issues with the HS17. That they won't let you use other hardware with the HS17 may figure into that as well.

One thing I found interesting in that permissive change doc is the swap of BCM45208 for BCM45308 tuner chips. Maybe they switched because Broadcom said they were discontinuing the 45208 (I don't know if they are, just guessing that could be a reason - FWIW Broadcom's web site lists it as "active") but the 45308 adds DVB-S2X capability which could also be the reason. I've long wondered how (and WHY) Directv would implement bonded transponders without DVB-S2X which natively supports it - they'd have to handle that part in software, which seems like an unnecessary burden. Given when the HR54 was designed they may not have had any choice but software bonding for early (but limited) 4K support. Which makes me wonder if perhaps the reason why the HS17 is limited to only supporting two 4K "tuners"/TVs has to do with limitations of handling transponder bonding in software.

If so, an HS27 (and theoretically a 'rev 2' HS17 if it is easy to tell them apart via part numbers) using BCM45308 chips might support 4K on all 7 "tuners"/TVs. While some have claimed Directv will be bonding three transponders because of the goofy way they appear to be assigned, I still believe they will stick with their original plan of two. That makes a future HS27 supporting 7 4K TVs fit perfectly with the DSWM30. While I don't know for certain, I'm willing to bet the DSWM30 relied on Maxlinear's second gen DSWM chip, which went from supporting 24 tuners to 32 - that way the DSWM30 only needs one DSWM chip to support the 30 tuners across its two outputs, and explains why when we have 21 tuner LNBs we didn't get a DSWM42 instead. They wouldn't have done that if a Genie supporting 7 4K tuners would need 21 SWM channels.
 
That makes no sense, given that Directv is slowly losing customers and should have more equipment coming back than going out. Even accounting for the fact that some of the stuff coming back is obsolete, most of the churn is people who switch every couple years to get a deal so it would be Genies coming back. I suppose it could be LNBs or the like.

They're ALSO having equipment shortages even on Uverse TV installs; they even tell you this on their website if you attempt to order it online...& with the amount of Uverse subs they've LOST, you'd think they'd have LOTS of that equipment ready to use!

If true, whoever is in charge of their operations and should be planning inventory etc. really screwed the pooch!

Sounds EXACTLY the way AT&T is running things now... :eek:
 
They should be getting equipment back as subs cancel.

I know for a while, Dish was putting out a ton of recycled equipment.

It was so bad with Dish, we actually got back a piece of equipment on a referb we had sold several years before.

Then they didn’t want to pay us for the piece of equipment claiming they already paid us on it.
 
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I recently received an HR54-500 from Directv. It was a used unit.

This is the new 54 some shops have received
IMG_5459.JPG



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