Dish is umm... dishing out free equipment! That means they are taking a risk in giving it to a customer who hasn't paid them a dime yet. Based on one's credit, they choose to dole out equipment and what not they feel comfortable with being able to see that money back. This isn't some sort of conspiracy, rather it is an unfortunate reality of life.
In a perfect world, I'd love there to be a law that these companies have to make the same offer to everyone. They'd probably meet somewhere in the middle of what they offer their "best" and "worst customers". It'd be something like $99 install for everyone, but everyone gets HD equipment and free HD for life for that price. Short of that, at least make them advertise their "minimum" offer in the big letters in their advertisements (i.e. the pay $99 for install, no HD unless you pay a couple hundred extra, etc..) and put their offer for their favored few in the small print that no one reads.
Seems like bait and switch in spirit, even though it's technically not, when you advertise a big deal upfront and the fine print rules people out once they actually get on the phone.
But, let's say, for the sake of discussion, that Dish and companies like it are going to be continued to be allowed to do exactly what they do now in terms of price discrimination and advertising practices. At the very minimum, shouldn't folks like me get $5-$10 off a month for not having HD? After the initial costs are covered or not covered based on credit, it seems odd that going forward folks like me pay the exact same monthly programming rate for SD as others pay for HD. At least with cable, if you don't get the HD, you save a few bucks. I feel like I'm actually subsidizing the better off here.
You shouldn't have started your post off with the tirade then.
True. Probably a character flaw on my part. Things kind of irritate me and I ramble about them.
(I know I barely could get an HD signal at my home, the Dish installer had to bring a bloodhound to find a spot that'd get through the trees. I was so grateful to the bloodhound.)
A bloodhound being special equipment to find a satellite signal? I have this mental picture of an actual dog sniffing around and pointing it's snout in the right direction through the trees, but I'm sure that's not the way it works.
That'd be a neat trick if it did, though!
I had a co-worker whose father-in-law had an HD screen and HD service, but still watched the SD channels despite repeated attempts to have him use the visually superior stations.
My parents are kind of like that. I think once you get passed a certain age, you just kind of get into your routine and don't really process what people are talking about or think it matters when they talk about SD versus HD or distinctions between different computers or phones or whatever. There's a crowd that's kind of like "What? I can watch the game on my television. There's no snow or visual artifacts. It's on my giant (relative to the average size of old SD sets) HD television. It's HD, right?". You can flip the channel for them and they can't tell the difference. In a way, those folks are probably happier- less likely to want things that cost them more money or that they can't afford. I kind of wish I could learn to be more content with what I have in general, honestly, though I do value the ability to tell the difference between SD and HD in particular.
Also, Dish is still sending out SD receivers to customers. Dish has to quit issuing SD equipment before the changeover can start.
Exactly.
Ya'll act like nobody has SD TVs anymore.
People do have them, but they're legacy devices. A year or two back, my store-brand 32 inch HD television broke. I thought, well, I don't have HD television service (inputs are SD Dish and a DVD player) and I'm short on money, maybe I can get a really cheap SD replacement. As best as I can determine, no one manufactures or sells SD televisions anymore. Anyone buying a new TV after a certain point (I'm going to ball park 2010) has an HD TV, even if they don't have a source of HD programming. Fortunately, prices are dropping on the low end- a relative needed a new TV this fall and stood in line for $100 32 inch HD TV on Thanksgiving night (Well, he got there and they had handed out all the tickets for them, so he left, but he almost got one anyway), $200-$250 is something you can pull off simply by looking around for a good price most of the time if you don't mind 720p and a store or low-end brand.
So, wrapping around to the point, right now the folks using SD televisions are people who bought their televisions at some point prior to a few years ago (And even then most new television purchases were probably HD), waiting for them to break. Every new or replacement TV from a certain point forward is HD. Give it another, what? 5-10 years? And 95% or more of households will have HD TVs, simply by attrition. If Dish had been smart, they'd have stopped selling or repairing equipment that couldn't at least support HD capabilities a few years back when HD TVs stopped being manufactured. That way, non-HD compable dishes and receivers would gradually fade away as non-HD televisions fade away. Then, you'd hit a point where pentration was enough that you could just switch over to HD and only have to replace a few people's equipment, and only lose a few SD die hards who somehow have a 10-20 year old TV still operating that they won't replace.
The way Dish is doing it now, they're going to never be able to move to all-HD without either taking the major financial hit of replacing all the SD receivers in use that they keep handing out, or take the major financial hit of losing all those subs.
