DirecTV 12 on its way to the launch site

No doubt DirecTV has spent a pretty penny on the great HD content race that we love so much, so of course it's no surprise that DirecTV's third new satellite in three years is on its way to the site of its December launch. According to Boeing, DirecTV 12 features both national and spot-beam Ka-band transmitters which will help boost DirecTV's HD offerings by 50 percent; and when combined with DirecTV 10 and 11, will allow DirecTV to offer a total of 200 national HD channels and 1500 HD locals. As for how long you'll have to wait for the additional HD goodness, DirecTV 11 took about four months after launch to get into service -- assuming nothing goes wrong that is.

[Zach S Posted Dec 3rd 2009 12:55PM]

Should be: "No doubt DirecTV has spent a pretty penny..."

[funkyp56 Posted Dec 3rd 2009 1:08PM]

Suck it Dish!

[RLJSlick Posted Dec 3rd 2009 3:21PM]

Excellent! I can't wait to see what D* is planning to do with that baby!

[IanKen Posted Dec 3rd 2009 5:14PM]

Nice. 200 channels of second generation re-compressed low bitrate H.264 content.

[Meekermoloko Posted Dec 3rd 2009 6:32PM]

Okay ... that's good.

But ... when is the TiVo HD unit coming to DirecTV?
We're all still waiting....

[groberts1980 Posted Dec 29th 2009 9:26AM]

@Meekermoloko No kidding. I can't wait to throw my DirecTV DVR piece of trash in the garbage. I want TiVo again!

[ggore Posted Dec 4th 2009 7:13AM]

I would gladly give up some of the 100+ shopping channels and pay a little extra to have Turner Classics HD, Travel HD, and others right now.

[mdntcallr Posted Dec 5th 2009 4:53AM]

great so this satellite will have missed the entire 2009-2010 regular tv season. and Directv will not introduce any "real" national Networks for at least 4 months. Ack. its frustrating when there are so many more quality HD versions of networks which would be better than what we get already from them.

At least Directv is getting more HD, but it is taking way too long.