HD Reality

Finally! After three tries, several crabby phonecalls, and quite a bit of work on the part of the Adorable Husband, we have HD cable in the theater.

The first attempt, they gave us a window of four hours (8-12), called at 11:30 to tell us they were running about two hours late. We had a ton fo things to do, so we rescheduled. Not knowing at the time, of course, that we'd wait 3-4 weeks for an appointment.

Second appointment comes around and the two guys who come are supremely puzzled by the fact that the current cables are buried in the walls and unable to grasp that we want them to run four NEW wires into the basement. HD requires that each box have it's own home-run wire to the new dish, no switching, so the wiring we have is not adequate). They talk about using the existing wiring for the two downstairs tvs and then running wire all the way around the house, in two directions, to reach the other two. Um...no. We have a centralized cable "box" downstairs that we want all the tvs to run from. They paced around the house, hemming and hawing, and when they realized they'd have to actually pull new wire down through the porch....they told us to reschedule and left.

The Adorable Husband was FURIOUS. They basically decided that it was too hard to pull the wires and told him on the phone that he'd have to do the pulling through the deck, since they wouldn't pull up any boards to do it. Apparenlty they didn't even LOOK at the porch, since it took the husband about fifteen minutes to get the cable through. I didn't hear his conversation with the DirecTV people, but they rescheduled the appointment to be back in two days.

So a new guy shows up, having been briefed in detail about the goat-rodeo that is our installation, and he does it -- perfectly. Two hours, and he pulled four new cables, put up a new dish, hid all the wires, tested everything. Voila! HD picture on the big screen.

Only three months after we asked for it the first time. I've been incredibly happy with DirecTV on a day-to-day basis, but the intalls and upgrades have been painful. We did make sure to call and compliment them on the final appointment. I think they ought to be giving us stuff for free, but at this point, I'm just glad everything works.

No HD tv for months, what a stupid first-world kind of problem, eh?