Deal with NPS to "save" distants on DISH!

[rrhelm]

What is NPS?

This thread was started in early November, and now it is late December. My distant network channels are gone, and I see no hope for "NPS' to save our distant networks. All American Direct is flooded with requests to qualify for locals out of Atlanta and SanFrancisco but asks for my SmartCard number...the VIP622DVR has no smart card...go figure. Can anyone tell me who might qualify for for distant networks from All American Direct.

Thanks, Ron

 

[tsc]

This thread was started in early November, and now it is late December. My distant network channels are gone, and I see no hope for "NPS' to save our distant networks. All American Direct is flooded with requests to qualify for locals out of Atlanta and SanFrancisco but asks for my SmartCard number...the VIP622DVR has no smart card...go figure. Can anyone tell me who might qualify for for distant networks from All American Direct.

Thanks, Ron

Call NPS (All American Direct), don't use their website -- it hasn't been updated yet. Call NPS and they will qualify you via DecisionMark's database.

 

[ThomasRz]

Then it will become like Napster. People will steal what they can't obtain easily through legal channels.

If you haven't noticed Napster has changed its "business model." It's amazing what an adverse court ruling and slapping bracelets on a few recalcitrant thieves can do. Is there a lesson here?

Once the networks realize the scope of the problem, they will have to embrace the problem and meet the demands of the market. Itunes and their ilk are making a ton of money for the music companies. The studios see this and will embrace it, one way or the other.

Perhaps or in Napster deja vu putting a few small fry in orange jumpsuits will send the message that violating the law is not a good idea.

How much longer until we see CBS selling "all you can eat" access to their programming like Major League Baseball does now. The affilates get first run rights, and then the website will sell you the program via streaming HD over a broadband connection any time after that.... The trick is to find a way to easily port the picture over to our TVs instead of our PCs. Once this happens the floodgates will open...

There is nothing wrong with the content owners developing new and better ways of delivering their product. This is substantially different than shoplifting.

 

[johnnytuinals]

This thread was started in early November, and now it is late December. My distant network channels are gone, and I see no hope for "NPS' to save our distant networks. All American Direct is flooded with requests to qualify for locals out of Atlanta and SanFrancisco but asks for my SmartCard number...the VIP622DVR has no smart card...go figure. Can anyone tell me who might qualify for for distant networks from All American Direct.

Thanks, Ron

The only way to get the Stations from San Francisco and Atlanta.....
If you live in a area that cannot pickup any stations at alllllll on a VHF/UHF antenna,,,,You can see if you have any stations from Antennaweb.org....
If It says that you have stations in your area then your out of luck...
Unless you do what I do
Find a Ghost town in the desert and get the Zip code,Check it with Antennaweb.org...
And if antennaweb.org says that there is noooo programing in your area then you are able to get the stations from SF and Atlanta from NPS...
Now Find a Street in the Ghost town and give that info to NPS and say its a vacation house along with the Zip code....
Once the waver gets approved then you give NPS your receiver number along with a credit card and let them charge your credit card every month or 6 months...
Remember its a vacation house only and you don't have a phone at the house....
Hope this helps......I did mine 2 days ago and there is nooooo programing at alllllll at the spot that I found for hundreds of milessssss...I feel your not ripping anyone offff because you will be paying for your programing....JT:

 

[dmmedina]

This thread was started in early November, and now it is late December. My distant network channels are gone, and I see no hope for "NPS' to save our distant networks. All American Direct is flooded with requests to qualify for locals out of Atlanta and SanFrancisco but asks for my SmartCard number...the VIP622DVR has no smart card...go figure. Can anyone tell me who might qualify for for distant networks from All American Direct.

Thanks, Ron

Hi Ron,

Your reciever DOES have a smart card, it is built in, you can pull out the number when you do a system diagnostic. I can't tell you how to do a diagnostic because I don't have a VIP622 (I want one so BAD....) but I'm sure you can find that info in some other site.

Good luck, :

 

[gdarwin]

System Info shows it.

 

[Hall]

I feel your not ripping anyone offff because you will be paying for your programing

Using that logic, that is "you will be paying for your programming", why can't Dish keep offering distant networks ?? Just because you feel you're not ripping anyone off doesn't change the law and it says you can't receive stations from outside of your market. Lying about where you live doesn't make it okay... I could lie to the IRS about how much money I make too so I pay less taxes...

 

[johnnytuinals]

You are right
The law says you cannot get the distant stations anymore....
Since you talk about taxes
The Law says the speed limit is 55mph but most go 60-65 on the highways...
I am only saying that if you want to pay for a service thats out of your area I really don't think its a really big dealllll.....
Once you have had the West Coast Distants its hard to go back to your localllls....JT

 

[waltinvt]

I'm sorry. I wasn't clear about which loophold I was discussing:

The loophole is that if your provider offers local channels, then you cannot receive distants. This deal with NPS circumvents that scenario. And I can bet anyone that the networks nor their affiliates are very happy about that.

Mark my words. If significantly-viewed is going to be addressed by Congress to correct the issue that Dish Network cannot offer SV anymore, this will also be addressed.

Maybe this so-called "loophole" actually benefited the NAB and affilliates by shutting off "unserved" viewers than congress never intended be shut off.

I don't think it was ever the intent of congress to prevent white area people from getting distants just because their satellite provider carried LiLs for their DMA but even if it was, that contingency has never really sounded like it would stand up to legal arguments (as someone else pointed out). The whole definition of "unserved" was always about OTA signal reception.

Plus, why would the FCC publicly state that "whether your satellite company offers analog LiLs or not has no bearing on whether you can qualify for distant digitals. I think it was to make sure the loophole (congressional screw-up) currently messing things up for analog DNS didn't carry over to digital DNS and slow down the digital transition, which is exactly what it has done.

If digital DNS could have easily been offered to ALL white area viewers, you can bet a lot more affiliates would have worked a lot harder to get their signals out there these last few years.

 

[Chris Walker]

I'm running out of patience with NPS to fix these channels. Fox Atlanta doesn't look bad but it's still got ghosting and SF Fox still looks like bad analog cable. I complained a week ago and got "will be fixed ASAP" and people were told "48 hours" 2 weeks ago, what gives? They've got until the end of the month, this is unacceptable.

 

[cj9788]

The whole addition to SHVERA of the no distant if local rule was added to benefit the broadcaster and not the consumer. An unserved area has ALWAYS been based on OTA reception. The rule definitly did not help joe consumer. If joe consumer was in an area that was unserved he could get LIL and DNS. IMO there was no other reason to change the defenition of an unserved house hold other than to further restrict acsess to DNS.

 

[Brussam]

I'm running out of patience with NPS to fix these channels. Fox Atlanta doesn't look bad but it's still got ghosting and SF Fox still looks like bad analog cable. I complained a week ago and got "will be fixed ASAP" and people were told "48 hours" 2 weeks ago, what gives? They've got until the end of the month, this is unacceptable.

I would be happy with ghosting on CBS Atlanta. I get a repeated loss of video/audio for a moment every 4-10 seconds.

 

[Chris Walker]

I would be happy with ghosting on CBS Atlanta. I get a repeated loss of video/audio for a moment every 4-10 seconds.

I don't have anything but FOX, and according to reports FOX Atlanta is the best of the bunch so that doesn't say much for the rest. I mean these have been up for 3 weeks now, how hard is it to fix this stuff? They should have had fiber in within a week. This is the ONLY thing they are selling, get it right. I am picky with Dish over my locals for compression issues; if my locals looked ANYTHING like these NPS channels, I would cancel Dish altogether.

 

[Tampa8]

I don't think it was ever the intent of congress to prevent white area people from getting distants just because their satellite provider carried LiLs for their DMA but even if it was, that contingency has never really sounded like it would stand up to legal arguments (as someone else pointed out). The whole definition of "unserved" was always about OTA signal reception.

Yes, yes yes! You and cj9788 get it 100%. This was my reply to Greg and others in earlier posts. The whole concept of distants was definately based on networks providing a free signal OTA Period. If they did not, you could get distants from whoever would provide it. When Dish first added locals, you could legally get distants also if you were in a white area. (Thus those that were grandfathered) And why was grandfathering even needed? Because the rules were changed making you pay for locals if you were in a white area, and then not be able to get distants. This in my opinion is when Charlie felt it was directed at satellite providers to help cable interests and the NAB, and not serve the consumer. As long as the networks were providing a free signal they were being "protected." But they then wanted to be "protected" even when not providing a free OTA signal.

 

[tsc]

I don't have anything but FOX, and according to reports FOX Atlanta is the best of the bunch so that doesn't say much for the rest. I mean these have been up for 3 weeks now, how hard is it to fix this stuff? They should have had fiber in within a week. This is the ONLY thing they are selling, get it right. I am picky with Dish over my locals for compression issues; if my locals looked ANYTHING like these NPS channels, I would cancel Dish altogether.

The only thing they are selling for DBS, yes.. they provide programming to C-Band customers as well. They've been involved with C-Band for many years, DBS is still new to them. I'm sure they have plenty of technical issues on top of the continuing floods of calls for distant network customers.

Fiber runs don't happen overnight, or even in a week in a lot of cases, as much as you may think. Give them time, at this point, if you are truely unserved, something is better than nothing -- although the reported dropped signals DO give reason to really complain.

 

[pattib]

Got automated call from Dish regarding AllAmericanDirect?

As of today, I have a waiver in for distant CBS through Allamericandirect. I paid the three dollars a couple of days ago.

Last night I received a phone call and it was from Dish Network..(automated) telling me that I should call AAD/NPS to get the distant networks. They gave me a phone number.

I called the number and it was a recorded message asking me to enter my phone number, the one I use for my dishnetwork account. I did. It said, We see you are missing some channels, would you like to activate these channels? Then asked me to enter CC or would I prefer an invoice?

I was a bit confused. Maybe Dish is getting scared that people who are missing channels are going to bolt. Just thought it was odd that Dish calls telling me to call NPS. This was at 7:00P.M. last night and I don't have the channels yet. AAD/NPS did say it could take 24 hours though.

 

[vodad]

As of today, I have a waiver in for distant CBS through Allamericandirect. I paid the three dollars a couple of days ago.

Last night I received a phone call and it was from Dish Network..(automated) telling me that I should call AAD/NPS to get the distant networks. They gave me a phone number.

I called the number and it was a recorded message asking me to enter my phone number, the one I use for my dishnetwork account. I did. It said, We see you are missing some channels, would you like to activate these channels? Then asked me to enter CC or would I prefer an invoice?

I was a bit confused. Maybe Dish is getting scared that people who are missing channels are going to bolt. Just thought it was odd that Dish calls telling me to call NPS. This was at 7:00P.M. last night and I don't have the channels yet. AAD/NPS did say it could take 24 hours though.

I got that same call last night around 9:00 pm. I have no intention of getting my missing network. If ABC does not want me to watch them through Dish, I will gladly not watch them.

 

[Hall]

I was a bit confused. Maybe Dish is getting scared that people who are missing channels are going to bolt. Just thought it was odd that Dish calls telling me to call NPS.

Seems that now that the court has ruled the Dish/NPS 'deal' to be okay, Dish is pushing much harder now. One could argue that Dish shouldn't know, nor care, what network channels you have or don't have now. They know you lost the distants from them, but shouldn't be involved in what you're receiving from NPS.

I wonder if one were to not sign up with NPS and call Dish and threaten to cancel because of the loss of networks. Play dumb about NPS, tell them you don't want to deal with a 3rd party, etc, etc. Who thinks after the Dish rep explains things you can talk them into a full or partial credit to cover the NPS cost ?? You know, to keep you as a Dish customer ??

 

[BobMurdoch]

E* can sell a marketing list of all those subscribers turned off in white areas and/or those with waivers....

Charge 'em $1 for the list. E* gets to help insure disgruntled subscribers don't bolt, NPS gets to increase their subscriber rolls. They are still separate companies... perfectly legal....

American Express sells my contact info to companies all the time. It looks the same deal here (just in case some NAB hacks decide they want to try and cry foul about this)

 

[Greg Bimson]

I don't think it was ever the intent of congress to prevent white area people from getting distants just because their satellite provider carried LiLs for their DMA but even if it was, that contingency has never really sounded like it would stand up to legal arguments (as someone else pointed out). The whole definition of "unserved" was always about OTA signal reception.

Yes, yes yes! You and cj9788 get it 100%. This was my reply to Greg and others in earlier posts. The whole concept of distants was definately based on networks providing a free signal OTA Period. If they did not, you could get distants from whoever would provide it.

But what you are all missing is the concept of offering distants. Distant networks were created in 1988 to allow those who had no means of receiving a network channel to receive one. Because the networks were about to start scrambling their satellite feeds, Congress stepped in and created this government-approved handout for the limited few that could not receive networks.

Fast-forward to 1999, and satellite finally was in the local market game. That certainly changes the need for distants, especially when both DirecTV and Dish Network offer local channels to over 94 percent of the nation's households.

And whether or not based upon the intent of Congress, the law states if a subscriber can receive local stations from their carrier of choice, then the distant networks are unavailable to them.

When Dish first added locals, you could legally get distants also if you were in a white area. (Thus those that were grandfathered) And why was grandfathering even needed? Because the rules were changed making you pay for locals if you were in a white area, and then not be able to get distants.

One hundred percent incorrect.

The "grandfathering" part of the law was added to allow customers that were in Grade B areas and cut-off during 1999 to keep their distant networks. It had nothing to do with the availability of local channels.

Then, in 2004, the law was changed again. New customers that could get their local channels could no longer get distant networks. Those customers that had distant networks can keep them provided they do not subscribe to local channels.

Yes, the laws have been changed. And the laws have been changed because it is the preference of all parties involved (except the customer and possibly Dish Network) to have everyone receive local channels.

So, like I said before, in order for Dish Network to be able to retransmit significantly-viewed channels, the law will need to be changed. And if there are people going to work on changing the law for Dish Network's benefit, the NAB and the networks will probably be standing right there to change the law to their benefit, as well.

Arguing any of the above points is moot.