Has DirecTV Firmware Watcher gone away?

I don't have any information but I will say this.

The gentleman who runs that site has kept it up for 18 years and never asked for a cent. He and his team of data collectors, none of whom have ever asked for a dime, have kept it running using hardware that was obsolete in 2007 and a mix of custom software.

It's been viewed millions, if not tens of millions of times over the years and thousands of DIRECTV employees used it daily without ever wondering where it came from.

If it has a day of downtime, or if it's down for good, it's still been an amazing thing.
 
I don't have any information but I will say this.

The gentleman who runs that site has kept it up for 18 years and never asked for a cent. He and his team of data collectors, none of whom have ever asked for a dime, have kept it running using hardware that was obsolete in 2007 and a mix of custom software.

It's been viewed millions, if not tens of millions of times over the years and thousands of DIRECTV employees used it daily without ever wondering where it came from.

If it has a day of downtime, or if it's down for good, it's still been an amazing thing.
As one of the "team of data collectors", I appreciate those comments. The owner of the site was able to promptly restore it when notified of the outage. All of these collaborative computer systems are running unattended. And we all have other interests in life, (or jobs, for those not in retirement). We are not monitoring the site, or our data feeds on a continuous basis. The feeds are redundant, so one monitoring site going down is not usually a noticeable problem. A server failure at RedH.com requires intervention by the owner of the site, who has valid reasons for remaining anonymous.
 

DIRECTV Transponder Map ~ Data 8/13/2025