(August 16, 2009) -- Mad Men, AMC's brilliant award-winning series on a sex and booze-fueled advertising agency in the 1960s, makes its third season premiere tonight in beautiful, gorgeous High-Definition.
But will DIRECTV, the nation's top satellite TV service, offer Mad Men in high-def?
Nope. The so-called HD Leader has not added AMC HD to its lineup. Not only that, it won't show Mad Men in high-def on its Video on Demand service, either. (It did last year.)
Jon Hamm and January Jones in Mad Men.
And that makes me mad. It also makes me mad that DIRECTV continues to claim it's the leading provider of HD although it has only added a handful of high-def channels over the last 18 months.
And it makes me mad that DIRECTV continues to claim that it has 130 HD channels when it doesn't have anywhere near that number. The total is padded with Pay-Per-View duplicate channels, distant network signals and other bogus entrees.
Most major cable operators added AMC HD months ago -- and they have added several other high-def channels that DIRECTV continues to ignore.
That makes me mad -- and if you're a DIRECTV subscriber, it should make you mad, too.
In fact, it should make you mad enough to switch your TV service until DIRECTV wises up and stops pretending to be the HD Leader.
Final Note: I twice asked DIRECTV's PR department for an explanation on why Mad Men won't be in high-def. The response: zero. No response at all. I guess they don't think they need to respond.