Written by Chris Albrecht
Posted Thursday, March 27, 2008 at 11:38 AM PT

 

DirecTV VOD Already Available; Now with Screenshots

Though the DirecTV VOD service doesn’t officially launch until the second quarter, it’s been available for beta testing for some time already. As we’ve written before, because of satellite’s one-way-only transmission, DirecTV will be using a combination of pre-selected movies beamed directly to set-top box hard drives and downloading them through a viewer’s existing broadband connection (to learn how to set it up, visit the DirecTV on Demand page).

So how is it working so far?

An NTV reader told us that setting it up was a snap; he also said he can start watching non-HD content as soon as it starts downloading using his 6Mbps connection. A perusal of the forums on DirecTV indicates there have been a bunch setup/connection issues, as well as a few complaints about download speeds. The real test will come when this thing goes live and more than early adopters start using it. As Om pointed out:

Imagine how ticked off you’ll be when your home email access slows to a crawl because someone’s watching “America’s Next Top Model.”

Check out pics from the service. If you’ve been using it, drop us a line in our comments section and let us know how it’s working for you.

 

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Topic: Carriers
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Comments & Trackbacks

  1. “Imagine how ticked off you’ll be when your home email access slows to a crawl because someone’s watching “America’s Next Top Model.””

    That’s life in an internet home (Especially with kids).

    And you call it “downloading a torrent of America’s Next Top Model.”
    Yes you can throttle it (If you have one person over seeing all traffic on your home network. Umm. Unlikely)

    We need better QoS implementations. QoS never seems to work that well when I have used it.

    James

    James Gardiner on March 27th, 2008 at 2:33 pm - Permalink

  2. That’s funny. A satellite company making money over a cable!

    rsslivetv on March 28th, 2008 at 7:41 am - Permalink

  3. CANNOT SEE PROGRAMS IN ADVANCE - NETWORK PROGRAMS NOT AVAILABLE

    JOHN ALLEN on March 28th, 2008 at 8:09 am - Permalink

  4. [...] to get driven by set-top box technologies we’ve developed that are at the core of the — as we launch VOD and whole home solutions and broadband connectivity and all these things, they are all tied into [...]

    Status Quo for DirecTV & TiVo on May 9th, 2008 at 7:15 am - Permalink

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