If you’ve ever been bored and looked at the system info screens on a DIRECTV receiver, you’ll see that there are about 900 channels, and depending on your package you might get 500, 600, 700 or even 800 of them. That does seem like a lot (especially if you’re only watching 18 of them) but with DIRECTV Cinema, sports channels, music channels, that sort of thing, well, they do add up.
Here’s the problem though: Go to each receiver in your house, press {MENU}, Settings, Favorites… and you’ll see a different number of “Channels I Get” for every receiver! That really makes you wonder, right?
For better or worse, this has been something that’s been a part of DIRECTV for over a decade. The number of channels you get, as it’s reported on that screen, can vary by 50! So do you get those channels or don’t you?
Some channels are used for interactive content on different model receivers, that accounts for some, while other channels are test channels. But try as hard as you can, you’ll find that the number of “channels I get” reported by the receiver is nowhere near reality. Even if you count every channel from top to bottom you’ll never get close to it.
There aren’t a lot of things over at The Solid Signal Blog that just cause us to throw our hands up and shake our heads, but this is one of them. It’s just some weird quirk of DIRECTV-land that hasn’t gotten enough complaints to make them fix it. So, in then end, just don’t worry about it.
