Re: the volume of commercials: On Wednesday President Obama signed into law the "Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation" or "CALM Act." A press release from the White House states the law "requires the Federal Communications Commission to prescribe a regulation limiting the volume of audio on commercials transmitted by television broadcast stations, cable operators, and other multichannel video programming distributors."

Basically, I don't think they'll allow commercials to be any louder than the show.

Mike - There's a question I can't answer. I knew when we were going to be in TV abour 3 weeks ago - that's when I called them and asked for a 12/20 appointment date. Sorry I couldn't be of more help on that one!

Best bet is just call them and hope the local subcontractor(s) that does the install isn't overly busy.

Bill

What about phone and internet service?
 

For all you satisfied DirecTV customers, what are you doing for phone and internet service? What are the options?

asilver, For phone we use our cell phones. For internet we use a Virgin Mobil mifi ( $150 for the device and $40 per month , but we don't pay when we're not here). The downside of this combination is that you can't get video on demand from DirecTV without the phone or a wired internet...no problem for us. The Virgin Mobil connection is about as fast as the slower speed Comcast internet.

We have DirecTV in Connecticut and use Comcast for internet and phone.

I went to Best Buy to get my questions answered. Then I went to the DirecTV web site and signed up. Their web site offered me an extra $5 off per month for a year in addition to the advertised promotion and what Best Buy was offering. The dealer at Best Buy also wanted to charge $20 for delivery. This was free on the web site. After I placed the order, they gave me open dates for installation. When I ordered, the first date was the next business day. I picked an afternoon later that week when it was more convenient. An installer called me on my date, asked if he could come over an hour early and did his thing. All installation was free. No hidden charges.

It was signed into law Wednesday but stations have one year to implement.

I lost my signal from Dish on Friday. Total loss of signal. Did every thing the guy on the phone said to do, no help. The tech scheduled the earliest time to visit for Monday. He came and after trying every thing in his bag told me the box was bad. I figured he would go to his truck and get me a new one. WRONG. Dish is shipping me one and then I have to ship the old one back or be charged the price of a receiver. Dish said it should be here Wednesday but with Christmas delivery times may be longer. One more thing, I have a service contract at $6.00 / mo. so the tech visit was only $15.00. If I did not have the contract the visit would have been $85.00. This was the second time Dish charged me to fix their equipment. I am going to switch to Direct TV as soon as I don't have to pay a cancellation fee. (5 mos left @$12.50 / mo.)

From the FWIW department:

DirecTV install guy came to the house today to set up the antenna. I brought our two receivers down from OH - we're going to flip service back and forth between the two places. I wasn't elated with HOW he did what he did (not the slickest job running the coax from the antenna to the house entrance box, kept tromping in and out of the house dragging dirt etc. in each time.....across the carpet, much to Sandy's dismay.....with no concern about wiping his feet, didn't have any conduit with him to protect the coax from weedwhackers, and so on) but WHAT he did at least has the set up working. His initial quote for mounting the antenna on a pole rather than on the roof or the side of the house (which is DirecTV's free install) was $75 which I figured would be about the price. But by the time he was done, he was all apologies for how things went (I didn't voice any concerns other than disappointment about the conduit but told him I'd take care of that myself) and told me to just make the check out for $25. The installers are independent contractors and it's up to the consumer to cut whatever deal they can/want re: extra charges that might occur as part of the install. You're pretty much on your own with the installer who shows up!

Bill
Bill

Update: The new box arrived and worked fine for about a week. Then it started to freeze the picture. Call Dish and they said turn off and turn back on. This corrected the problem for about an hour. After a few days of resetting every few hours I called Dish back. They are sending another reconditioned box. This is box #3, maybe I will get the same box back I had before. The person also said maybe since I am having all these problems it may be wiring in my home. I told her that maybe the people who recondition the boxes should test them before sending them back out, rather then sending me someone elses problems.:blahblahblah::blahblahblah:

An idea: If you're keeping detailed records of all your problems and issues with Dish, maybe presenting all that to their Customer Service folks would get you a green light to bail out with no penalty fees. Might not hurt to try if you're about at the end of your rope with them.

Bill