DirecTV’s mosaic channels
Stephen Warley July 19th, 2006
Today the term “mosaic channel” can up in a roundtable on sat in on at CTAM. I never heard of them before, but DirecTV squeezes multiple channels onto your screen. It’s kind of like your own personal feedroom. They have themed mosaic channels like sports, news, etc. In our discussion, ESPN said they “leased” one of DirecTV’s mosaic channels to provide 6 feeds of the Indy 500. They reported seeing 350,000 unique viewers and 500,000 impressions. OpenTV developed the application. If you have DirecTV, do you ever use these channels? If so, what do you like about them?
9 Comments Add your own
1. Evan Parker | July 19th, 2006 at 12:21 pm
It’s a nice start, but with my 2-year old system, there is no interactivity. I would love it if we could select an audio feed of a particular channel. Instead, if something looks interesting you have to change the channel to the one you want to hear.
I don’t watch the channels very often. Usually I tune in after a major news story has played out after a few hours so I can compare and contrast the time-filling done by the channels since they don’t want to be first to bail out of breaking news.
2. Mark | July 19th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
I’d like to see them stop wasting bandwith on this junk and give us new channels like Sky News etc.
3. Anonymous | July 19th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
On all the mosaics, the channels are listed in order of their position on the channel lineup. All the mosaics except for the news mosaic. On the news mosaic, a change was made so that Murdoch sibling Fox News appears first on the grid, when in fact CNN is first on the channel lineup. There are other examples DirecTV favoring Murdoch properties. With hope, net neutrality will prevent this sort of distributor bias on content online.
4. Steve | July 19th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
I watched those mosiac channels when the first appeared on Directv. It was like a new toy that you use at first, then it collects dust. Those mosaic channels are a waste, do we really need to watch six cable news channels at once? I would rather Directv allow me pick my own channels for a mosiac, such as watch six games at once.
On the Murdoch comment- it makes no sense. CNN is channel 202 (right before the ESPNs), while Fox news is somewhere around 360 (near MSNBC and CNBC). On the other mosiacs, ESPN and Disney come first, too. I guess that means Directv has an ABC bias?
5. Anonymous | July 19th, 2006 at 10:41 pm
I know CNN is 202 (first), while Fox is way out at 360. Yet the channels are shown in order of their position on the lineup with the exception of Fox, which gets to skip to the head of the line. On the other mosaics, everything is on the up-and-up. Which prompts me to wonder why the special treatment for Fox? The obvious answer is that Murdoch’s stake in DirecTV is responsible for the favoritism toward Murdoch sibling FNC.
6. Joe D | July 20th, 2006 at 6:37 am
I have watched hte mosaics a few times, mostly when they first came out, however, if you don’t have Directv’s interactive receivers, they are a waste since you cannot change the audio feeds or flip to each of the small windows.
I agree with the poster Mark, drop this waste and give us Sky News and even better, Sky Sports. In England, they have ESPN, CNN, etc. on some of their birds, so why not give us their versions?
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