I think DIRECTV’s mix channels are awesome. They do special ones for most major events as well as dedicated channels for NFL, MLB and others. Over the years they’ve turned into very solidly performing ways to watch several games as once without having several TVs.
You’ll find DIRECTV’s Sports Mix on channel 205. Here you will see up to six channels at one time, and you can use the arrows on the remote to change audio from one to another. Press the {SELECT} button and the channel you’re on goes full screen.
When Sports Mix launched, it wasn’t very useful because it was in standard definition and it showed eight tiny windows. This image I found on the internet is actually pretty accurate when it comes to showing the quality:
I’d say it was just good enough for you to see what you were looking for and select it. It was a glorified visual guide, nothing else.
Over the nearly ten years since DIRECTV first rolled out the nix channels, they’ve just gotten better. Moving to HD in 2013 was a big step in the evolution of the channel, but I think it really got a lot better when they moved to six channels instead of the previous eight. It makes it easier to actually watch the channels, and that’s the whole point here. You can have a pretty-superior “man cave” with just one or two TVs as long as one of them is running the Sports Mix channel.
About now someone is going to want to mention DISH’s “Sports Bar Mode” which builds a custom grid of any four channels you want. That’s great, but of course you need to have the sports channels to populate it, right? DIRECTV is the undisputed leader in sports and they do the hard work of creating the best mix channel possible with six video feeds, not just four. To me, DIRECTV still has the advantage.
As we roll into football season, I think this is the time to get ready for some serious watching. I know people who are going to run one game by itself on the big TV, the Sports Mix channel on another TV, the NFL Game Mix channel on a third, and the Red Zone channel on a fourth. Sounds like sports heaven, right?
