Sick of waiting for DISH to deliver more HD...

[Soycrema]

I'm about ready to drop DISH and just stick to my cable company for HD. For 8 bucks a month I'm getting Discovery HD, ABC-HD, CBS-HD, NBC-HD, plus yesterday the added PBS-HD and received an email saying HDNet and ESPN-HD and on the way.
What do I get from DISH after I spent money on the 6000 and the "module"?? just the stupid demo loop and a ppv channel showing the same movie over and over again............I can get HBO-HD from cable too..........DISH.....what happened to being the leaders of HD??
Charlie keeps promising that and still nothing, we all thought ESPN-HD was coming at launch, but still no word.............it's ridiculous, now there are rummors that when more HD does come for DISH we might need to install another satellite dish?????? give me a break.............the way i see it, I'll go with cable for HD and keep DISH only for the international channels they offer....

[Scott Greczkowski]

Dish Networks Marketing Department is not the Brightest Bulbs in the socket.

Here they are selling this module to get more HD and you really dont get any more HD with it (well unless you SUBSCRIBE to Discovery)

They should have something up there in 8PSK mode for FREE to make the module worth it. The NBA does not cut it.

Their Marketing Department is so dumb that they changed the HD Demo loop to include a PPV commercial for My Bog Fat Greek Wedding (partial good idea) however no where in the ad do they mention that its available this month in HD!

Cable can kick both DBS providers butts in regards to HD, the question is will they even try? There are some areas which cable is pushing HD and others when you call and ask for HDTV tell you HGTV is on Channel 25. (You get my point) :)

[gcutler]

Originally posted by Scott Greczkowski
Cable can kick both DBS providers butts in regards to HD, the question is will they even try? There are some areas which cable is pushing HD and others when you call and ask for HDTV tell you HGTV is on Channel 25. (You get my point) :)

The only honest Comcast commercial I've heard was about HD, where they say (at least in Atlanta) you can't get CBS-HD and any other HD locals via Sat, where as you can get those via Comcast.

[Phil T]

I got my 8PSK module in anticipation of HD net and have yet to see anything with it. I am not an NBA fan!

KUSA-DT (NBC) Denver signed on the air in December and has yet to televise any HD programming.

I am considering trying trade/sell my 6000 8VSB/8PSK and get a 721. :(

[Mark Lamutt]

Phil, after all that work you went through to get KMGH?!? :eek2: :D

I hear ya...I keep hoping that Don's not lying to us and KUSA starts testing next week...

[Martyva]

Scott---i liked that "brightest bulbs" quote. i wonder if they even know where the socket is?

[angiodan]

I hear what you are saying Soy, if by summer, Dish doesn't get their act together, and my local Time Warner has HD available (which they are stating they will), I may switch back to cable.

I can't believe what I'm saying; that annoying demo loop I see everytime I cycle through channels is really starting to get to me!
:)

[Cyclone]

According to Schwimmer there won't be any HD additions until Late Summer/ Fall.

I too wonder if Dish is now an Amatur operation. Its funny how often we hear about programming that won't be available recently. I picked up Dish because of its extensive channel line up. It appears that they have either changed course, or else the providers have upped the costs too high.

Luckily for Dish my local Cable (comcast) is only provided HDTV in a halfassed fashion. Only 4 HD channels out of 11 OTA (some are duplicates balt/wash). They don't have Discovery, HDNet, ESPN-HD. They do have Comcast Sport Net HD, but I don't watch much sports.

I'll stick it out until the 921/211/811/9000vr are released and when the 121 sat is up there. But once was looked forward too as an HDTV fun fest summer has now been subdued.

I can't say that I'm really looking forward to Bravo or Halmark all that much. I don't really know of another other HD announcements that are upcoming. Letterman and O'Brien aren't due until Fall also.

[Richard King]

How about giving me a clue where Dish is going to put all this HD programming that "everyone" seems to want? I bet half of the "everyone" who wants more HD was even against the merger, the quickest way to get more HD.

[boba]

NO HD till late Summer but we can talk about ETHNIC PROGRAMMING must be the power of the $$$$$$$$$$.

[Mike123abc]

Dish has room actually for a lot of HDTV. They currently have on 110 enough room for about 21 HDTV channels. Since they are talking about a mix of HDTV and EDTV they could fit even more.

I understand Soycrema's pain. I get 3 OTA digital channels (which is all the locals that are currently transmitting). I also get everything Dish has to offer in HDTV. And, quite frankly it is not anything special. But, my local cable company has a total of 0 (zero) HDTV and costs more. So, for now I stay with Dish. Maybe one day the local cable company will get HDTV and I will reconsider subscribing to them.

DBS is not right for everyone. Some people get a much better or just plain better deal on cable. They should go with cable then. Some like Dish some like Direct better. Staying with a service that costs you more and you do not like is not the solution. If you have a choice pick what is best for your situation.

[Jeff_R]

This weekend, I will be getting cable TV installed from the new cable co in town. They are 100% fiber and 100% dgital, no analog stations at all. It is my anticipation that the service will be outstanding. They have told me that they hope to offer HD services this summer sometime. I plan on dropping all but locals (I "live" in a white area) and Discovery HD from Dish and will save quite a bit each month.

Add to that, Comcast will begin to offer HD services next month in my area, and I'm in a little bit of a quandry of what service to use.

I don't like Comcast, and have not had them in my home for the 4 years I've owned it. I have a lot of money in my Dish hardware, but like everyone I'm getting tired of the excused and lack of what HD content is available.

If this new company does stick to "this summer" for HD material, I'll add a D-VHS to my equipment rack, or wait until the HD TiVo is out this fall/winter for recording. I really like the idea of the 921, but what good is it with only one station? There are three or four HD networks available via satellite right now, which aren't being carried by Dish. If I can get them elsewhere, all Dish equipment goes bye-bye. I figure I can sell my Dishplayer, 6000/8VSB/8PSK, and 4700 for a little cash, definately enough to offset the purchase of a DVHS, maybe even enough for the TiVo when it's released...

Jeff

[Ken_F]

Jeff,

What good would the D-VHS do you? None of the HDTV STBs used by Comcast feature a working Firewire output. A HDTV Tivo will only work for the HDTV locals from Comcast. The 921 is the only upcoming satellite receiver with Firewire output to support a HDTV D-VHS.

really like the idea of the 921, but what good is it with only one station?Well, there's HBO, Showtime, Discovery, CBS (if you can get it); obviously, they will be adding Hdnet and ESPN-HD at some point. I wouldn't expect Comcast to add ESPN-HD or Hdnet before Dish Network.

[motjes2]

I am also sick of waiting for those wonderful "promises" that dish makes. I do not have much a choice. First D* is not adding any HD either, cablevision, my cable provider, stinks. The only hope I have is that TWC buys cablevision but that will not happen soon.

[Eyedox]

Originally posted by Ken_F
The 921 is the only upcoming satellite receiver with Firewire output to support a HDTV D-VHS.Don't forget about the 211 coming out which has HD and firewire. It is for Mitsubishi HDTV's. No PVR of course.

[Jeff_R]

Originally posted by Ken_F
Jeff,

What good would the D-VHS do you? None of the HDTV STBs used by Comcast feature a working Firewire output. A HDTV Tivo will only work for the HDTV locals from Comcast. The 921 is the only upcoming satellite receiver with Firewire output to support a HDTV D-VHS.


Hi Ken -

Actually, Comcast is my last choice. I don't imagine they will launch anything but local channels when they begin their service. As I mentioned, I am having a relatively new broadband company, Surewest Broadband (forermly WINFirst) install their slate of services this weekend.

My set is a Mitsubishi integrated unit, with built-in HD tuner. The tuner also decodes QAM cable signals. With any luck, Surewest will provide their forthcoming HD package using QAM, so I will not need any box on the main TV. Then run firewire between the TV and DVHS. I realize there's some assumptions there, and I'm not planning to completely abandon my Dish equipment until I see what this company has to offer. I will, however, downgrade my service for a while and give the new guy a chance.

Comcast would only be a very last option, if by some miracle they are able to come up with a more impressive HD package than either Surewest or Dish.

[Ken_F]

Jeff R,

You'll only get unencrypted HDTV channels with your QAM tuner; that means the locals, and maybe some non-premium HD channels (when available). But you won't get HBO HDTV, etc.

[jerryez]

Cox is adding HD next month in my area. Whoever gets the best HD offerings, first, gets my business. I can always sell my 6000 on eBay.

[Richard King]

Dish has room actually for a lot of HDTV. They currently have on 110 enough room for about 21 HDTV channels.
http://www.lyngsat.com/dig/dish110.shtml
Looking at the 110 location:
TP 1 has 5 channels on it now. They might be able to put one HD channel in the remaining space.
TP 2 = Spot beams - No national HD possible
TP 3 = 8 PPV. No room for HD
TP 4 = Spot beams - No national HD possible
TP 5 = Sports packages. No room for HD
TP 6 = Spot beams - No national HD possible
TP 7 = Sports Packages. No room for HD
TP 8 = Spot beams - No national HD possible
TP 9 = 7 channels - Might be able to fit ONE HD.
TP 10 = Spot beams - No national HD possible
TP 11 = 6 Channels - Might be able to fit ONE HD
TP 12 = 6 Channels - Might be able to fit ONE HD
TP 13 = 8 Channels - No HD Possible
TP 14 = 6 Channels - Might be able to fit ONE HD
TP 15 = 8 Channels - No HD Possible
TP 16 = 11 Channels - No HD Possible
TP 17 = 5 Channels - Might be able to fit 1-2 HD
TP 19 = 11 Channels - No HD Possible
TP 20 = 5 Channels - Might be able to fit 1-2 HD
TP 21 = 9 Channels - No HD Possible
TP 22 = 7 Channels - Might be able to fit 1 HD
TP 23 = 8 Channels - No HD Possible
TP 24 = 8 Sports channels - NO PPV Possible
TP 25 = 6 Channels - Might be able to fit 1-2 HD
TP 26 = 7 Channels - Might be able to fit 1 HD
TP 27 = 8 Channels - No HD possible
TP 29 = 8 Channels + Data - No HD Possible
TP 31 = 9 Channels - No HD Possible.

So, after a quick look at 110 it appears that if they used every last bit of space they MIGHT be able to do 12-13 HD channels. Of course, if they did this they would have to find 12-13 NATIONAL HD channels to broadcast since they wouldn't want to put any local HD at this location. Additionally, they would have to find some way of shutting up those customers who want the National Knitting Channel (NKC), the Professional badmitten Association Channel (NBAC), and not to forget the International Tiddlywinks PPV Channels, when they become available in 6 months since they no longer have ANY room to add any more channels because they took care of the small fraction of their customer base who wanted HD channels. 221 MIGHT provide a solution to HD broadcasting sometime in the future, but don't expect HD programming to be cheap if they go this route with it and expect to pay for any upgrade in the dish or other hardware required.

The cable industry got just what they wanted with the rejection of the merger. Notice that they didn't start adding HD until the merger was rejected. This gives them a big plus in the future, a plus that they didn't want widely known with the powers that be until after the merger was rejected.

[Chris Freeland]

RKing401, I agree with you, it seam's like many of the people that are now complaining about E* and D* not adding more HD channels, better pq. more SD channels and why have they not added or announced to add my locals yet? Are the same people who were most vocal against the merger which could have brought us those things on one dish not much larger then a Dish500. And now many seam to think that Murdock is the DBS Saviour and that he will bring us those things when D* has less capacity then E*. At least Charlie is putting things in place like E9 at 121, leasing additional capacity at 105 from SES to at least provide us with much of what the merger could have provided much easer and sooner and at a lower cost. :shrug:

[Mike123abc]

If they move 110 to 10 channels per transponder like they do on 119 they could free up 7 transponders. Dish has 29 transponders on 110. 5 are used for LIL spots. That leaves 24 transponders with 173 channels. If they move to 10/transponder like 119 it would go to 17 transponders. This frees up 7 transponders to start with.

Then there is the talk that Dish is planning on discontinuing Dallas, Denver, Atlanta & Chicago from the National beams and moving them to spots. This would free up 2 more transponders. That would eliminate 22 channels so they would have 173-22 or 151 channels over 17 transponders for STD def or an average just under 9 channels per transponders. This would be better than 119.

They moved E6 to 110 to get more power. They should be able to get 53.750Mbit/sec so should be able to get 3 HDTV channels per transponder.

[DarrellP]

Mike, according to LynSat, the Portland locals should have a superb PQ since only 7 channels populate the transponder. I am constantly emailing Dish about the horrible PQ we get. Is it because they don't allocate the bandwidth that the transponder is capable of?

FWIW, I sent Dish a link to the page showing how few channels are on the transponder and asked them to crank up the bandwidth. Pretty soon they are going to put my email address in their filter and start blocking me.

[Mike123abc]

They go up to 13 channels on some of the spot beams for LIL. PQ is hard to sort out on LIL. It has a lot of variables. Ideally they would get a pristine fiber feed from the local affliate to the PoP (but sometimes they use plain antennas).

Then it would be ideal to lightly compress the image and ship to Dish uplink center. But, it is expensive to have large bandwith to the uplink, so they are compressed down fairly far. Then once at the uplink, it gets decompresed, mixed with the other channels coming from other cities, then recompressed using a variable satmux.

National channels look a lot better because they are only compressed once at the uplink center.

[Richard King]

If they move 110 to 10 channels per transponder like they do on 119 they could free up 7 transponders. So the same people could start complaining about picture quality on those pay sports channels and PPV Channels?

[wmayo]

As I said elsewhere ... A year or more ago, Dish laid claim to being "the leaders in HDTV". After seeing numerous cable systems offering 8-15 HD channels, they must take down that claim. I mean, let's get honest. (Unless they are only talking about DBS systems - which would not be a big claim.)
I'm sticking with Dish, mind you, as my cable system (Adelphia) says "oh, I think they are still in the talking stages around here - they tell us sometime by 2005 or later"

[davhol]

One question: where/when did DISH promise more HD programming by a given point in time? If you've been relying on "rumor" about what Dish may or may not do to be the basis of your "sick of waiting for DISH to deliver more HD" then you only have yourself to blame. DISH has only said that it will deliver more HD when they can/when it is available/when it is reasonable to do so. I, too, would like more HD offerings, but we have to remember that HD is still in its infancy and in our current mindset of "give me everything right now -- fastfood" mentality, it can seem EXCRUCIATINGLY slow when a service provider doesn't "give us our money's worth." Let's ENCOURAGE our various service providers (whoever they may be) and not discourage them with invectives about their (lack of) service. I remember the introduction of color TV and I wanted more and more of it. As time passed, color was the norm. Try and be patient and I think we'll all be pleased with the results!

[Cyclone]

I yelled at my 6000 today for 89 seconds to try and get more HD.

it didn't work.

[Cheyenne]

RKing, Do not understand your math as noted in table above.
You seem to indicate that a transponder with 7 channels can add 1 HD channel, yet 8 channels per transponder cannot handle another? Perhaps I mis-read this, but HD channels take much more considerable amount of data bandwidth than SD channels.
Figure something between 15 mb to 19.3 mb (CBR). They may be VBR at this time, but this would have minimal impact to add channel at level you have indicated.

[Frank Z]

Originally posted by Cyclone
I yelled at my 6000 today for 89 seconds to try and get more HD.

it didn't work.

Geez I'm glad I read this before screaming at mine. Now I know that it would have been a waste of time! I'll check in later and report on my attempts to wax my antenna in order to speed up HD delivery in my area! Wish me luck!!

[Cyclone]

I did give up kinda quickly. My throat began to hurt and my wife started to give me that "look" again.

Maybe if I kick it, I'll get HDNet.

[Mike123abc]

Well starting next month I will go month to month with Dish (had been buying the AEP annually, but they no longer offer it).

My local TW cable does not offer any HD yet. The price difference between cable and Dish has narrowed a lot since the AEP is no longer buy 11 months get one free. Plus the cost of cable modem is $10/month more without subscribing to cable.

Right now TWC would be $98.10 (including one extra digital box), and AEP + Supers + PBS + Warrantee + Extra Reciever is $89.96. Put the $10/month cable modem savings and cable is slightly cheaper before taxes. After taxes cable is a bit more expensive.

So, really it is just the HDTV that keeps me on Dish (HBO/Showtime/DHDT). If cable came out with a HD package I would probably switch back since actually cable is easier (77 analog stations available all the time on all TVs).

[tampa8]

Originally posted by Mike123abc
Well starting next month I will go month to month with Dish (had been buying the AEP annually, but they no longer offer it).

My local TW cable does not offer any HD yet. The price difference between cable and Dish has narrowed a lot since the AEP is no longer buy 11 months get one free. Plus the cost of cable modem is $10/month more without subscribing to cable.

Right now TWC would be $98.10 (including one extra digital box), and AEP + Supers + PBS + Warrantee + Extra Reciever is $89.96. Put the $10/month cable modem savings and cable is slightly cheaper before taxes. After taxes cable is a bit more expensive.

So, really it is just the HDTV that keeps me on Dish (HBO/Showtime/DHDT). If cable came out with a HD package I would probably switch back since actually cable is easier (77 analog stations available all the time on all TVs).

Mike123abc - Are you sure you were getting a month free with AEP? When it first came out I looked into that and seem to remember it was never available with a month free. I even think it was discussed in a Charlie Chat that there was no further price break because it was already a price break. Just interested in knowing for sure - not meant to argue!!

[Mike123abc]

Well for 2 years I did one year prepay on it and paid 11 months and got the 12th free. In fact they are being very lame when handling it. They just sent me my renewal, since AEP is not annual, they were trying to push annual AT150 + annual individual subs to each movie package. This comes out to $124 a year more: AEP $899.88/year (74.99/month no free month), AT150+movie packs = 1023 (with annual pricing).

Also gone now is the movie pack where you got all 4 at a reduced price.

Now in the past they may have been building AEP out of the AT150+movie pack.

[abospaum]

Why do you have to pay annually? Why wouldn't they just switch you to a monthly billing for AEP if they don't want to take an annual payment.

Interest rates suck now but if in the past you were able to make 10% on your investments it was better to have the monthly pay plan anyway even if they gave you a month free for paying up front.

[BobMurdoch]

Originally posted by abospaum
.

Interest rates suck now but if in the past you were able to make 10% on your investments it was better to have the monthly pay plan anyway even if they gave you a month free for paying up front.

Do you know ANYONE who has made 10% on their investments in the past year? I would have been better off stuffing money into a mattress the last three years......