Thomas actually does know a lot - as does Greg Bismon and a few others here. The big difference with Thomas's is his delivery (by his own admission too). I for one would miss his posts but damn, I wish he'd change his attitude.
Distant Network Information
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Thanks for the input. I asked him that and he said it was the only way to get Dish in Mexico. He said he was just doing what everyone else in the area was doing. He thought it was the only way to get English language TV there. He said the local police had the same system. Go figure.
If you think thomasrz has a bad attitude, read a few of t2k's sterling posts. Thomas will look REAL GOOD after that.
But yes, we should respect each others opinions, no matter what we may think of them.
But yes, we should respect each others opinions, no matter what we may think of them.
Oh I have. I went a few rounds with him in the Pit. He's the only poster that ever received the dubious distinction of being on my ignore list......and you're right - there's absolutely no comparison - not even close. Hear that Tom - we all love ya here.
When possible, yes and there are hundreds of opinions expressed here that although I disagree with, I still respect. However there are also occasionally a few that I can not respect. Every man maintains a line beyond which no one is allowed to cross unchallenged. Without that line and challenge, he has no honor.navychop said:
It's obvious. People here use the term HD to refer to DTV whereas in reality it is only a subset (potentially). If you attempt to correct usage to indicate it's "digital" replacing "analog" signals, people go berserk and call you a pedantic SOB (well not actually since most don't know what "pedantic" means). E* and D* abuse the distinction for marketing purposes, adding to the problem.
Well, thank you (I think). Bimson and I do have different styles. (Ever hear of "Good Cop, Bad Cop"). I tend to be a bit earthier and direct because I have found that is the only way to get some people's attention. I have never, repeat, never intentionally attempted to hurt an individual. I am concerned with a person's arguments and how well they are (or are not) supported. Take yourself and Iceberg for instance. I don't think that we would ever be bestest buddies but generally you guys provide well reasoned and provable support for your positions. I may still disagree but it happens in the best of families.
What I cannot abide are posters who -
(1) make arguments using talking points of some advocacy organization
(2) keep raising the same issue over and over again even after it has been demonstrated (not necessarily by me) to be invalid such as the "receiving DNS is just like getting an out of town newspaper" theory
(3) claim that the shortcomings of satellite TV are due to a conspiracy involving one or more of the following - NAB, Rupert Murdoch, Congress, space aliens, Council for Foreign Relations
(4) have no respect for private property because it is intangible and/or is owned by an evil corporation
(5) think that their desires are the most important criteria for public policy
(6) have no clue as to how the U.S. government is structured and functions
(7) have no respect for English usage - everybody makes typos or grammar errors but repeated confusion of such pairs as "lose/loose" reflects a total indifference on the part of the writer to how he is perceived
I have other "pet peeves" that provoke me to being harsher than I otherwise might but that's enough for now.
qaulity of new network feeds??
I was happy to learn that another provider was going to be able to get me the networks, even east and west coast. we live in remote rural Maine, and have no other options.
But, today, when i actualy got to see those new channels i was disgusted with at least half of them!! I don't mind sifting through local-yocal programming and news from a different town, but the picture and sound was horrible!!
Why does this junk come through a digital sat. system?! I am now paying $10 a month ($4 more than what i had to pay with Dish, and now I get absolute junk and cr*p channel quality. It is a real sham for this American Direct company to come to the "rescue" of those of us Dish folks who got shfted by the courts, and offer this alternative that is awful.
PLEASE PLEASE, somebody tell me WHY these channels are junk quality; if it will EVER change; how i may go about getting better network qaulity elsewhere?
Don E.
Fort Kent, Maine
I was happy to learn that another provider was going to be able to get me the networks, even east and west coast. we live in remote rural Maine, and have no other options.
But, today, when i actualy got to see those new channels i was disgusted with at least half of them!! I don't mind sifting through local-yocal programming and news from a different town, but the picture and sound was horrible!!
Why does this junk come through a digital sat. system?! I am now paying $10 a month ($4 more than what i had to pay with Dish, and now I get absolute junk and cr*p channel quality. It is a real sham for this American Direct company to come to the "rescue" of those of us Dish folks who got shfted by the courts, and offer this alternative that is awful.
PLEASE PLEASE, somebody tell me WHY these channels are junk quality; if it will EVER change; how i may go about getting better network qaulity elsewhere?
Don E.
Fort Kent, Maine
I plan to wait a couple of days to give them the benefit of the doubt as this whole thing was done at the 23rd hour and maybe they need some more time to get PQ up to what I would consider an acceptable standard. You could call them and tell them your complaint and then if nothing improves, you could go to directv if you live in a white area and be assured of decent looking DNS channels.
On edit, taking some of my own advice, I just shot off an email to customer service expressing my PQ concerns.
On edit, taking some of my own advice, I just shot off an email to customer service expressing my PQ concerns.
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DirecTV's picut4e quality is as good as Dish Netowrks on those channels. Dont have a clue what the picture quality problem is. Maybe NPS needs a better roof top antenna to get the signals
I was happy to learn that another provider was going to be able to get me the networks, even east and west coast. we live in remote rural Maine, and have no other options.
But, today, when i actualy got to see those new channels i was disgusted with at least half of them!! I don't mind sifting through local-yocal programming and news from a different town, but the picture and sound was horrible!!
Why does this junk come through a digital sat. system?! I am now paying $10 a month ($4 more than what i had to pay with Dish, and now I get absolute junk and cr*p channel quality. It is a real sham for this American Direct company to come to the "rescue" of those of us Dish folks who got shfted by the courts, and offer this alternative that is awful.
PLEASE PLEASE, somebody tell me WHY these channels are junk quality; if it will EVER change; how i may go about getting better network qaulity elsewhere?
Don E.
Fort Kent, Maine
Don't worry, you'll have a credit on your account LONG before your credit card bill is due.
Except that the company that owns X (such as an NFL franchise), expects local folks to pony up to give them a stadium for a $1 billion where they get to keep the bulk of the new revenue generated at the new digs. If you want the taxpayers to pony up since a local pro team is indispensable, then you have to act like your product is indispensable and make it available to everyone. The metaphor carries over to broadcasting. IF you want the federal government to GIVE you digital spectrum for FREE (which they did), THEN you have to stop treating that same frequency as your own personal sandbox.
Here's a plan. You either make the programming available to whomever wants it, OR you give it back to the government and let them auction it off. Who knows, the winner of the bid would probably jump into the vacuum and sign an affiliate agreement to boot....
I'm just sayin'....
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I have X (be it a house or a tv signal).
You want to buy X.
I don't want to sell you X.
Therefore the solution is to get the government to force me to sell you X.
The fact is, it (being distants) was for sale, how else to do explain the $800 K (not sure on the figure) settlement between the networks and E* ? Bottom line, for a price they were for sale and the courts wouldn't have stepped in if an agreement had been reached. It was a few holdouts that eventually caused the shut-off to occur.
You want to buy X.
I don't want to sell you X.
Therefore the solution is to get the government to force me to sell you X.
The fact is, it (being distants) was for sale, how else to do explain the $800 K (not sure on the figure) settlement between the networks and E* ? Bottom line, for a price they were for sale and the courts wouldn't have stepped in if an agreement had been reached. It was a few holdouts that eventually caused the shut-off to occur.
I haven't really been following this much since this doesn't affect me. But can someone recap why DirecTV can transmit distants while Dish was forced to shut them off?
Dish broke the law, got caught and years ago Charlie made a decision he did not want to go to the expense of requalifying everyone.
Just like the bad guys in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade who chose the wrong Chalice, "he chose poorly".
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...and these legal blunders are why we don't have more national HD, more VOOMHD, no external USB Storage, no Significantly Viewed (SV), DishHD-Lite, etc. The first half of the year was pretty darn good for E* (minus the ongoing VOOM-Lite fiber problem
), but the second half has been quite woeful. Oh, and let's not forget about the Tivo lawsuit where E* almost had many of their DVRs turned off. I'm sure the payrolled EchoNazis and E*pologists lurking on this site will tell you the NAB, ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, DirecTV, Congress, the FCC, Tivo, Lifetime Networks, and now HBO/Cinemax (and others) are all out to get them. But we all know better...much, much better.
Pretty much straight out of the E* press releases. Not true, but bought by you and a lot of the pundits/bloggers/opinionists around the net.
A couple of separate issues. You use the $100 million settlement to indicate that distants were for sale. In fact, with a few exceptions like CBS HD into O&O markets, very little in the way of distants are, or were, for sale. The only reason that anyone could get them at all was that The 1999 and 2004 laws specifically provide an exception to copyright infringement, whether the networks want it or not. It has tough standards that have to be met, and E* failed to meet them in the eyes of both the networks and the courts.
The law has two remedies. The first one is $5 per month for each subscriber that is unlawfully given distants. If you use the publicly-bandied number of 200,000 subscribers that have been getting distants illegally, multiply by $5 and the number of months that the suit has been in process (roughly 100) you get $100 million. I do not know if that is the connection between the numbers, but it seems fairly likely.
The second remedy, directly written into the law, says that if there is a finding of "pattern and practice" of violations, the "court shall order a permanent injunction" barring distants from that provider. Note the wording. Not may, but shall.
In May, the 11th circuit issued a finding with that wording and instructed the lower-court judge to cut E* off permanently. E* appealed to the Supremes, and they refused to hear it. The judge gave them E* until late September to show cause why he should not follow the appellate instruction. Perhaps knowing they couldn't, they didn't try. Instead they finally tried to negotiate a settlement.
In October the judge said they had shown him nothing to make it possible for him to ignore the appellate instruction. He specifically said no settlement was possible. It is true that this decision matches what the FOX stations were arguing, but it is also pretty clear that they had the law down pat. He did not have discretion, and the holdouts did not matter.
The judge followed the law. It can easily be argued that the law is flawed, with only the death sentence available in a case like this, and that is what the new Senate Bill is designed to change.
E* would like nothing better than to have everybody believe they are victims of a Murdoch conspiracy, but the suit itself goes back far before Murdoch had any ownership of DirecTV, and E* lost at every turn from the beginning.
An aside, if you call Dish and tell them you are thinking about switching to DirecTV because of DNS, 99 out of 100 customer service agents will tell you that the court order also applies to DirecTV!
One of your posts actually made me laugh! My sister-in-law used to use "pedantic" as her online user name because she was always good at correcting people's spelling and grammar. But then, what do you expect from a school teacher?So, was there any further developments in the legal proceedings Monday?
"United States District Judge William Dimitrouleas has issued an order referring this motion to United States Magistrate Judge Barry S. Seltzer for appropriate disposition or report and recommendation." - from Transmitter News Online.
