Coming off the heels of another blackout due to a heated dispute with Viacom – DirecTV suffers another outage – this time due to technical reasons. At 9:45 PM PST, DirecTV’s broadcast of the Olympic Closing Ceremonies began to break up intermittently. The hiccups became worse and worse until the signal completely went black. This went on for 20 minutes of the broadcast and was accompanied by elevator jazz and the following message on the screen:
NO NEED TO CALL US.
Service will be restored as soon as technical difficulties are resolved. Please tune to your SD version of this channel to view your program until your HD version is restored. If your SD channels are hidden, please use your menu settings to unhide them.
SORRY FOR THE INTERRUPTION.
Reports indicated that the SD version of the channel was not functioning properly either. Interruption of the broadcast disrupted NBC’s mock Olympic Village in the LA area due to several bars having DTV as their satellite service provider.
Several took to social media and commented on DTV’s postings. One such post that was shared on Facebook and Twitter asked fans:
Tell us your favorite part The Olympic Games Closing Ceremony?
(Watch for spoilers West Coasters!) – DTV Facebook
While news sources have reported that the outage was localized to LA only, I can confirm that the Inland Empire also was affected by the blackout. More SoCal areas could have also suffered a loss of signal, but it is unclear at this time.
DirecTV has yet to comment on what was the culprit of the technical hiccup and has not responded to any tweet, Facebook comment, or message since the situation occurred. For now, SoCal residents can flip to their TVs at 12:35 AM and catch what they missed of the London 2012 Closing Ceremonies.
Were you one of the LA or Inland Empire residents that missed out on the ceremonies?
