Urgent Info message

DirecTV has been pushing through a message to inform people with outdated MPEG-2 equipment that it needs replacing. To be sure if this affects you, or is an error sending message to the wrong setup, what are the exact models of each box?

After about an hour of accumulated time waiting on the phone, I got to a technical rep who had me do the predictable things, then sent the tuner some signals, and did another reset and I got my local channels back without the Urgent Info message - and it no longer screen times-out.  But when I change channels it takes up to 10 seconds, during which the screen flashes black, just the channel title banner, back to black, then settles on the selected channel.  They are going to send me a replacement tuner.

Two notes:  The first level tech said she "sent a signal" to my receiver - after which my local channels disappeared.  The second-level tech was able to get it back to mostly working, but neither of them had heard of the Urgent Info message.

I get the sense that ATT is trying to kill DirecTV in favor of their ATTNOW offering.  I can imagine that the satellite infrastructure is getting expensive - oh well.  We'll see.

AT&T is not trying to kill DirecTV in favor of their other services. They are for different markets, though a long term dream for them is one service with multiple delivery methods, but that will not be anytime soon.

What is happening is that DirecTV has started a complete shutdown of MPEG-2/SD-only service. This is something they had scheduled years ago for the end-of-life of the older satellites, plus non-HD TVs haven't been made in a decade. So a lot of affected customers are getting that urgent message, supposedly because many missed the email/bill insert notice. But there may be a few who have gotten the on screen notice in error, which is why was wondering what exact models you have. That would determine if they are completely MPEG-2, a mixed setup, or fully MPEG-4 (in which case msg would be in error).