DirecTV Q1 2019 Results - 627,000 Net Loss Subs (DirecTV & Directv Now)

[navychop]

Don’t hold back, tell us what you really think.


I used to work with a guy who refused to read his text messages. Said if they wanted to communicate with him, they should call him.

His friends and some business contacts got together and held an intervention for him. “On” him?

He got the message and came around. They saw it that he thought he was too important to bother with texting. And they were right.


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[EarDemon]

Can't say I disagree with him.

Texting is pretty stupid and honestly I can't make sense of most text messages. Between the lame emoticons that include everything under the sun, and the laziness of using R, U, Y, 2, 4 instead of real words and the leet speak, I have a hard time deciphering them. Just call me and instead of trading text messages back and forth for half a day we can get the conversation over in a minute or less and then we can both move on with our lives. If you send me a text message and anything other then a yes or no response is required from me, I'll call you back at my convenience to provide a real answer. Don't like it? Tough!

This is a real problem in society and we see the impacts every day of kids who were raised on technology. That is why I am so passionate about it. Next time you are at a restaurant take a look at how many people are glued to their phones or other devices instead of having real conversations. Next time you are at at event do the same. Watch a sporting event on TV, when the camera pans the stands, take a look at how many are on their phones. If am paying the outrageous ticket prices to go to a sporting event, I am sure going to pay attention to it not look at a screen I can look at anytime. I took a co-worker of mine to a Sabres game because my buddy who was going with me was sick. She spent half the night on her phone. If she didn't want to go she could have told me that and I would have found someone else who was actually interested to give the ticket to.

 

[Jillian2]

Really?...how many 100g a year engineers to maintain a satellite fleet vs streaming...streaming us a lot less labor intesive...you don't need the expensive uplink facilities or multimillion dollar replacement satellites every 10 years...the costs have been weighed and satellite loses...it just past its prime and time to move on to more profitable types of delivery systems

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Not everyone has the bandwidth for streaming. I tried Amazon Prime and tried to watch several different movies and couldn’t watch it. Finally it told me I didn’t have the bandwidth. So no, not everyone can stream and this goes for a lot of people.

 

[navychop]

Texting does not interrupt the recipient’s day as much as a phone call. The text can be read at leisure. Time is available for research. And there is a written record.

To really blow your mind, try Viber.
: devilish


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[EarDemon]

No one says you have to answer the phone when it rings or vibrates. If the matter is urgent or important enough the originating party will leave a voicemail which can be checked at your leisure as well. And both most phone transcribe voicemails into text anyway? I've had that capability for 4 or 5 years now.

Viber looks like a Whatsapp clone. I work for a smaller company that is a division of a European conglomerate and Whatsapp is a pretty popular over there. I believe it’s because of high text messaging rates. I was strongly encouraged to sign up and use it to communicate with their IT people. I refused. Didn’t realize it was owned by Facebook until recently, now I’m even more glad I refused to use it. I would rather lose my job then lose my principles. These messaging apps are nothing but modern day replacements for AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Instant Messenger.

 

[Soccernut]

Yes, because everything is all IP now, it's all monitored over the network. There are probes in place at various points in the network that monitor the IP flows of channels assigned to the probe and when something isn't right an alarm is generated alerting whoever (hopefully a human) at the technical operations center to the issue. Encoders and other gear are also monitored for alarms. Anything that's on a monitor now is primarily used for confidence and troubleshooting issues. (At least from where I'm at.) You dont need human eyes on it really any more other than to troubleshoot issues and once issues do pop up, the alarms will alert you so you can respond and correct any issues. It's actually more efficient this way, and I'm sure saves AT&T a ton of cash. A human is still involved because issues can pop up at any time, but can troubleshoot from anywhere in the network. While I cant get into too many details by nature of the beast, a lot of it is moving to a cloud-based infrastructure as the video is no longer HDSDI or ASI like it was 5-10 years ago, but is now strictly multicast video over the network for both monitoring and production.

Simply put the way we do video now is far more efficient than how we did it 5 years ago, and even now we're moving to an even more efficient platform. All of these separate platforms from mergers are now being merged into a single platform that will allow AT&T to use the same feed for everything. Uverse, DirecTV NOW, Osprey, DirecTV Satellite. I dont see AT&T spinning off DirecTV because of this and the benefits to this is ATT is now more efficient as they are only maintaining a single piece of encoding gear, versus multiple ones at every point of presence they need video. While this is great for the company and investors, I'm not sure how it will fair for me in the future and has been the big question mark over the past 2 years with the ongoing reduction in forces that have happened. Either way, the best thing I can do is keep a positive attitude and hope for the best. AT&T is a good company overall even with its quirks.

That's good info, thanks.

 

[Inclined Orbit]

5 yrs ago when I worked there the automated monitoring at that time could not detect intermittent problems like brief but ongoing audio or video glitches, that could go on for hours until a human actually saw it on a monitor. These might be problems in the audio/video before compression. What does DTV/ATT have now that is different and can it can catch those brief but ongoing issues? I and most of my friends see much more freezing, artifacting and lip sync issues on DTV than we did 5yrs ago, so something has changed.

The IP probes we used back then were used to find IP or router related problems and they could not detect audio/video problems within the stream.

Yes, because everything is all IP now, it's all monitored over the network. There are probes in place at various points in the network that monitor the IP flows of channels assigned to the probe and when something isn't right an alarm is generated alerting whoever (hopefully a human) at the technical operations center to the issue. Encoders and other gear are also monitored for alarms. Anything that's on a monitor now is primarily used for confidence and troubleshooting issues. (At least from where I'm at.) You dont need human eyes on it really any more other than to troubleshoot issues and once issues do pop up, the alarms will alert you so you can respond and correct any issues. It's actually more efficient this way, and I'm sure saves AT&T a ton of cash. A human is still involved because issues can pop up at any time, but can troubleshoot from anywhere in the network. While I cant get into too many details by nature of the beast, a lot of it is moving to a cloud-based infrastructure as the video is no longer HDSDI or ASI like it was 5-10 years ago, but is now strictly multicast video over the network for both monitoring and production.

Simply put the way we do video now is far more efficient than how we did it 5 years ago, and even now we're moving to an even more efficient platform. All of these separate platforms from mergers are now being merged into a single platform that will allow AT&T to use the same feed for everything. Uverse, DirecTV NOW, Osprey, DirecTV Satellite. I dont see AT&T spinning off DirecTV because of this and the benefits to this is ATT is now more efficient as they are only maintaining a single piece of encoding gear, versus multiple ones at every point of presence they need video. While this is great for the company and investors, I'm not sure how it will fair for me in the future and has been the big question mark over the past 2 years with the ongoing reduction in forces that have happened. Either way, the best thing I can do is keep a positive attitude and hope for the best. AT&T is a good company overall even with its quirks.

 

[goaliebob99]

5 yrs ago when I worked there the automated monitoring at that time could not detect intermittent problems like brief but ongoing audio or video glitches, that could go on for hours until a human actually saw it on a monitor. These might be problems in the audio/video before compression. What does DTV/ATT have now that is different and can it can catch those brief but ongoing issues? I and most of my friends see much more freezing, artifacting and lip sync issues on DTV than we did 5yrs ago, so something has changed.

The IP probes we used back then were used to find IP or router related problems and they could not detect audio/video problems within the stream.

The video is gathered is more efficient now because the issues are now seen in realtime, and video is no longer being encoded across the network but locally. Instead, full ATSC streams are sent to centralized points where they are encoded, muxed and the video is processed before uplinked. In the future, the regional uplinks won't have any encoding gear at all. Everything is now about metrics and all that data is gathered. The blips you see are not issues with the uplink but are mostly IRD issues, especially with the HS17. (No secret)

The entire monitoring system was overhauled in the past few years and is now exclusively IP monitoring over the network, and the capabilities are now much better even though it had growing pains. This allows us to see PAT, PMT, PCR, Transport errors in real time. Including any network errors. We can see all of those errors at every point in the entire uplink chain from the incoming, to our encoder, to our mux's, ect and can track down if it's an incoming issue or something else in real time. The tools we have are much better than what we had 5 years ago, by far. AI is a great thing when used correctly.

If you want to learn more about probes and what they can do today, you should check out this link.It's only one tool of many that we now have and it is much more than IP and router-related problems. Everything can be detected in real time and the metrics of it is being gathered. It's pretty crazy but when you can find trends to help save money, it tends to push what gets implemented.

https://www.telestream.net/pdfs/iq/productsheets/cVOC_Datasheet_0416-1.pdf

 

[Juan]

How about party lines?

I have several friends that don't have internet, get their TV ota, and don't even have a cell phone. They are all in their 60s.

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[Juan]

Sounds like you were born a decade too late lol

I'm in my mid-30s, only have Netflix since I'm a T-Mobile subscriber, haven't logged on to it since December though. Have a landline since since there's poor cell phone reception where I live, plus I find talking on smartphones uncomfortable. Two years ago I was without a cell phone for almost a week while I sold my Nexus 6P to eBay and was awaiting my Pixel XL to arrive. Awesome week! I forgot how free you are without having that damn digital dog chain around. Most of the time my phone stays in my car or on my desk at work. If I forget my phone at work, no big deal, it will be there in the morning. I feel incredibly lucky to have grown up in the 80s and 90s, being one of the last ones to have a real childhood and to have all of this technology pushed on us and poison us.

If having mobile email and RDP capability wasn't a requirement for work, I don't think I'd even have a smartphone anymore. Might not have a cell phone period.

My aunt and uncle who are in their late 60s don't have cell phones, never have, never will. They don't even allow them in their house. We'll they don't allow use of them. If they see you with one, they'll either tell you to put it away or leave. Their school of thought is if you come over to visit, you visit with them. If you are bored and need something else to entertain you, or are having a conversation with someone else, then you are welcome to leave. And I 100% agree. A couple of my friends would come over and spend most of their time on Facebook or Twitter. After three times of this happening I blocked those sites and a few others on my home network. Again, if I bore you, you are free to leave, but I will not allow that trash in my home.

How many stories are reported every summer of so called parents forgetting about their young kids in a locked car? Or the so called mom that forgot her newborn at the airport a couple of months ago. You know what these people probably didn't forget? Their smartphone.

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[DS0816]

My aunt and uncle who are in their late 60s don't have cell phones, never have, never will.

You should not assume that.

My father, at age 82, got his first cell phone, a basic phone, in 2014.

My aunt, at age 72, got her first cell phone, an iPhone, in 2015.

Why (with both) did that happen?

It is because the monthly costs of the landline—that is, the basic level (before long-distance calls and other miscellaneous charges)—made it no longer worth maintaining.

They both needed to make the change, as well, because of being out anywhere and having a phone on them. An elderly person driving somewhere, and the car breaking down, appreciates not having to be stranded without being able to communicate.

You can’t make an assumption that your aunt and uncle—even if they tell you so—would “never” get cell phones.

 

[nelson61]

Texting does not interrupt the recipient’s day as much as a phone call. The text can be read at leisure. Time is available for research. And there is a written record.

To really blow your mind, try Viber.
: devilish

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I like texting. I shut off all my voice mail systems and if someone wants to contact me, they can text me. gets rid of a lot of trash calls.

Telegram is my go to text and phone app with it's seamless and simultaneous cross networking between/phone/desktop/tablet.

 

[Inclined Orbit]

I will still say that myself and all of my friends with DTV, one who is a dealer with lots of IRDs running all the time have seen a big increase in glitches, freezing and lip sync issues over the last 3 to 5 yrs. I'm real familiar with how things work as part of my job was finding and fixing these problems at the uplink. The most reliable times I remember were way back when there were human eyeballs on monitors 24/7 and no automation. The first wave of automated monitoring maybe around 2012 let lots of glitches through and problems could go for hours before finally being discovered by humans looking at a monitor.

Going back 10yrs or so the availability to customers was around 99.97% including provider problems, equipment problems, rain fade and human error. Any idea what the average availability is today? Its a closely guarded number, but you can tell me....

The video is gathered is more efficient now because the issues are now seen in realtime, and video is no longer being encoded across the network but locally. Instead, full ATSC streams are sent to centralized points where they are encoded, muxed and the video is processed before uplinked. In the future, the regional uplinks won't have any encoding gear at all. Everything is now about metrics and all that data is gathered. The blips you see are not issues with the uplink but are mostly IRD issues, especially with the HS17. (No secret)

The entire monitoring system was overhauled in the past few years and is now exclusively IP monitoring over the network, and the capabilities are now much better even though it had growing pains. This allows us to see PAT, PMT, PCR, Transport errors in real time. Including any network errors. We can see all of those errors at every point in the entire uplink chain from the incoming, to our encoder, to our mux's, ect and can track down if it's an incoming issue or something else in real time. The tools we have are much better than what we had 5 years ago, by far. AI is a great thing when used correctly.

If you want to learn more about probes and what they can do today, you should check out this link.It's only one tool of many that we now have and it is much more than IP and router-related problems. Everything can be detected in real time and the metrics of it is being gathered. It's pretty crazy but when you can find trends to help save money, it tends to push what gets implemented.

https://www.telestream.net/pdfs/iq/productsheets/cVOC_Datasheet_0416-1.pdf