They're definitely not coming out en masse. In our shop, you can only get them if you have a work order for them (I have my first one tomorrow), and even then sparingly.
Oh sorry, I forgot to come back and report.
considering what a Nightmare and a king's Ransom it is to upgrade millons of customres to a new codec for current content on Dish, and considering the continued loss of subscribers quarter after quarter, I can't see another grand equipment switch out migration occurring on Dish quite possibly ever again while also taking into account how heavily dish is pushing sling TV in ubiquitous advertisements and not so much it's Dish sat service, adding to that Ergen's latest remark that the satellite business side of Dish is still a "pretty good business." That statement contrasts with satellites earlier years of being hot, growing, and even disruptive back when spending mountains of money for Mass change out of hardware for migration was an investment that could provide a good return. FWIW, HEVC, IMHO, will be for UHD content exclusively because that makes the most economic sense in this changing world of how we access our entertainment content.
Good point, considering that there are still purple G3 Smart Cards out in the field, and white G4 Smart Cards have been around for how many years now? And the Smart Card is probably the cheapest piece of equipment to replace.
Well, Dish used to replace them every time a new generation of smart card came out. (Is anyone still using the old blue or yellow smart cards? No? There is a reason for that, because Dish stopped supporting them, even though they still worked at the time.)
And they obviously stopped doing that. These cards are still out there, in use.
Which was exactly my point, and DishSubLA's point before that. Dish is not going to do a mass migration to force everyone to new equipment. They have chosen to use a gradual approach instead.
