HD service incompatible with SD receivers?

[DishSubLA]

Let's see: TiVo Premiere at $19.99 per month. Add another TiVo and pay the "Discounted" fee of $14.95 per month for each additional TiVo Premiere on your account. No first box FREE of "lease fee" or owners "access charge" offered like at Dish. So, Dish already has TiVo beat on the monthly fee thing, especially if you choose the least expensive monthly fee'd HD DVR's. TiVo and Cable and FiOS and AT&T Uverse offer no such options. They offer pretty much the same flavor of HD DVR and high fees (I think FiOS has a "home media" DVR, but those are even MORE expensive per month, likewise DirecTV's Whole Home Solution.)

Oh, and since you mentioned CableCard, don't forget to add the additional monthly charge for a small piece of plastic with NO OPTION to buy that can cost anywhere from $3-$10 per month. Yeah, that's a bargain, and such a better value than satellite (feel the sarcasm). Oh, a CableCard per EACH BOX. Add that to the TiVo monthly charges. Not bad if one is rich.

Those are just a few examples, but Cable monthly box charges (especially Verizon FiOS) is rather HIGH, as well. They are ALL outrageous. You aren't going to get much better anywhere else, and you certainly wont get a TV2 experience at a low monthly charge either.

Unfortunately, Dish is now charging the industry norm. Before they made the fee increases, Dish was easily the lowest on monthly fees per box, even the DVR's. However, when the fees were raised, Charles Ergan said, "Our customers were getting a great deal; they just didn't know it." I think he was referring to people such as you, OP, certainly not any of the regulars on this forum.

However, I encourage you to shop around comparing other providers: cable, FiOS, IPTV, DirecTV, and go with who you think has the best value for your needs/desires. Then tell Dish why you are leaving. If companies lose customers because people don't like the fees, the companies will respond. This is the ONLY thing companies understand. It makes no difference how upset and loudly we complain. Hit them in the pocket-book. That is the free economic system. BofA just DUMPED their stupid planned fee for Debit Card use only because they were gonna lose customers.

And yes, it is always best to get additional boxes at the time of FIRST becoming a customer as Dish will offer then at a HUGE discount (sometimes for FREE) and set you up pretty well with the system to support multiple boxes. But if you wait until later, it is gonna cost you, and could cost you BIG-Time. Let's hope you don't need to upgrade your system because that is gonna cost, too.

If you wait until you qualify for a subsidized upgrade, you may get everything you need for $100, or more for a fancier box.

Please let us know what your final decision is, and let us know of any better deals out there so that others in your position can evaluate that option.

 

[whatchel1]

If you have been with E* for less than 2 yrs then there will be an Early Termination Fee charged to you upon leaving.

 

[rocket69]

Technically you could install a dish 500 for 110/119 and connect a 311/322 receiver to it but how long will it work. DISH is going to eventually eliminate all MPEG2 broadcasts and switch to MPEG4 because it makes better use of available bandwidth. First step has alreagy been taken by discontinuing older receivers such as the 301 or 501/508/510 DVRs. How long before the 311/522/625 etc receivers are upgraded to VIP receivers 1 year or less?

The smart thing and longterm idea is buy VIP receivers that are compatible with Eastern Arc.

yes the 10/119 is a waste of time and money 211 or 222 can be found cheap .

But dish is not in a full mpeg 4 swap just a 8psk only. At the start of the new year only hd gear on new accounts for western customers but now they will only give hd gear to those who are going for the free hd programing. so if you order and get installed sd gear then buy a new tv your sol for hd unless you bend over.

 

[rocket69]

True dish sub la dish is a cheap provider if one only needs 2 tvs.

But the argument of companies loosing customers and try and fix it is not what dish is about. -1mil plus since the price change is a 8% loss of customers. netflix/quickster saw a drop of 20% of its customers and flipped back to the old way and only pulls in small profits for each customer but makes up the low funds in quantity and zombie subs who keep the service as its "only $10" even if they dont use it 6 months out of the year. BOA $$ ATM fee also showed them how to loose customers as they only charged minnow customers and not the whale accounts now has come to an end.

What will it take for dish to see what its doing could be killing its market share? $9.1M + in new fees every month might make it hard to ever see the lite. Or could they just be getting us all ready for the issues soon to show on most TV2's when local white waves will jam the analog runs.

 

[tempVAdish]

Anyway, my final feeling on my original quest is :rant: It really seems like they have way too much freedom on what they can charge. Isn't it enough I am paying for their service once? Essentially, just because I have multiple TVs/rooms in my house, they can add surcharges until the cows come home, effectively increasing the service fee for the exact same service if I only had one TV.

All services do this, cable, direct, fios, etc... It's called licensing fees. The signal is no longer going to one tuner, but 2 or more. You don't have the same copy of Windows running on 2 machines simultaneously do you? If you had 2 computers, you need 2 copies of Windows, at full price, not $7 for the 2nd computer.

You can't tell me it costs them any more money to have additional receivers on their system when all they have to do is "activate" them with the push of a button or click of the mouse.

No, it doesn't cost that much to click a mouse, but see licensing fees above.

That'd be like a store that sells a TV (or any other example you like) but saying there is an additional charge for you to turn it, to access certain channels, or to connect external components, etc.

Bad analogy. The power company charges you to turn it on, so we won't discuss that. Now, to access certain channels there's a need for an antenna, store's not giving them away. You also can't buy external components and just sit them near the TV, there's cables that have to be purchased to connect everything.

If Obama is back for another term maybe we can convince him these guys need some more oversight...I'll be first in line for that job!

There's an "ism" for that, but a satellite forum is no place for politics.


All in all, we should be glad that the additional outlet costs are what they are. Back in the C-Band days, and there should be many here that remember this, if you were "rich" enough to have 2 receivers on one dish, you paid FULL price for both! And then your 2nd TV was limited to what channels you could watch because of what satellite your main unit had the dish pointing at.

"That's all I'm going to say about that"