New Subscriber: Central Control of OTA Mapping???

[Westbender]

I'm a new VOOM subscriber and I have to say I think the brain trust at VOOM must have been smoking something when they decided to manage the OTA mappings centrally. I read a listing of messages, in this forum, to and from VOOM regarding subscribers who do not have their OTA channels setup correctly. WOW! It just boggles my mind why they chose to do things this way. Why not have the receiver act like a normal STB (auto scan) for locals? It's so much easier and VOOM wouldn't have to manage the OTA channel lists for every single market. I would think that would have some effect on their operating expense not to mention subscriber satsifaction. I currently can't get everything OTA than I can get with my other STB. I sure hope the next software update will allow me to manage the OTA channels myself!

So far, I'm very dissatisfied with the reciever. Hopefully the programming will keep me happy enough to stay with VOOM. The jury is still out on that though. I just got hooked up yesterday. We'll see.

 

[DarrellP]

I'm sure it's so they can give you the channel info in the Guide. They can't deliver every single channel that is available in your area since they don't know what to send you, so they only map the channels for your DMA.

It will be interesting to see how much people bitch once they can get all of their local channels, in and out of their DMA, and not having any Guide Info for the channels not in their DMA. You can't win for losing.

 

[Westbender]

I can live without the guide data. I'd rather not live without the stations however. I realize the PSIP data from the local stations are sporadic at best and it's nice that they're trying to give us complete OTA guide data. But at what cost? I was fine living with incomplete PSIP data with my STB. I can use other sources for finding out what's on locals (or just surf). I would forget the locals from the VOOM receiver if I had another HD input on my TV. I only have two and they're used by DVD and VOOM. Don't really want to use a switch if I don't have to. I'll just bide my time and hope the new software update gives us the ability to scan for OTA stations ourselves. That would take care of my biggest complaint. This nasty receiver has to go too. Hopefully the new one that's coming won't look and act as antiquated as this one.