May 4 - Live Retailer Chat Recap!

[HokieEngineer]

What is/was Superdish, and what was wrong with it?

Dish made a big deal about this new satellite they leased, and were gonna offer "up to 50 hdtv channels" on it. Then it turns out the leased satellite is weak and has interferance issues along the US northern border, so people who live up there can't get any signal.

So, they killed the plans to move the HD to the 105, and made it into a local channel sat, even though it has no spotbeams. So they are broadcasting a bunch of locals on CONUS beams (big waste of bandwidth).

Sorry, thats probably more than you wanted to know.

 

[Stargazer]

I have a feeling that they will not pay much and will give customers some type of incentive if they install it themselves (or perhaps give them the option to have someone come out and install it for a fee). Maybe they will pay $25. They already will have a huge cost in the swapout so they will probably not be willing to pay much to have someone go out and swap out the recievers.

 

[jergenf]

Charlie says that those with a superdish should wait for MPEG4 before getting VOOM.

I think he's going to change the Voom package to MPEG4 by year end. Meaning all 21 will be MPEG4 including the 10 now available. The subscribers that already have Voom will need to upgrade. The question is will it be free?
It's entirely possible that they might offer a free deal to those that already subscribed (before the announcement of the new MPEG4 models) while those that waited may end up paying more. If this possibility is true, they would prefer to keep the "free offers" as low as possible to reduce their obligation expenses.

As a general rule DN would pay if they change the requirement else face loss of subscriptions.

PS: There's a quote that the reason was because of the need a DPP44 but that's included in the $100 install fee for adding a wing dish.

 

[jbphoenix]

They are now talking about changes to the Retailer Web site...

I should note they were really trying to get the message across theat they would rather not upgrade folks to get VOOM, since they will need to swap all equipment out again when MPEG4 comes out.

Well I for one will heed Charlie's advise. I will sign up for E* once they get the MPEG-4 receivers available along with the MPEG-4 DVR. I really miss V* but I don't want to put up another dish just to get V* for 6 - 8 months and then not need it anymore (along with the extra set of holes in the house).

I will just leave my V* dish up till that time and hopefully they can use the same holes to mount the E* dish which has LOS to 119 and 110 as well as anywhere else in the S, SW and SE horizon.