OTA HD Antenna Install

[Celestial]

If I upgrade my 921 w/the Dish Network Upgrade for a 622 I thought you could get a HD OTA Antenna installed for $50.00? Is that true?

It seems everytime I call DN the CSR has no idea what I am talking about? I tried to call that special SatelliteGuys number for DN 888-825-2569 but it rings then gets a busy signal

 

[richmondr]

well i am a csr and i have been working there for a while, i have run into this question before, and my answer from sups and managers are that the ant we provide are only for sd channels you will have to get a hd ant, i would contact radio shack thats what i always tell my customers, or you can go to there website or http://www.antennasdirect.com, i just searched on google and found that, hope this helps, oh you can also ask to speak with the tech department they should know, i'm not in tech department sorry or i could give you a straight forward answer

 

[mike123abc]

There is no such thing as a standard definition OTA antenna or a HD one. They are the same. The only issue is that in many areas the stations are doing their digital feeds in low power, so you need a larger antenna to get the HD. I can get the local standard definition channels here with rabbit ears, but the HD ones require a huge antenna. They have 300k watts on the standard definition channel but only 2k on the HD one...

Also another issue is that in most areas the HD channels are in UHF range which can require a larger antenna.

My current antenna I got at Lowes.

 

[Celestial]

Finally got a CSR who understood but....

I found a CSR who knew what I was talking about and mentioned that the prices start at 49.99 and go up. They went to www.antennaweb.org and told me I needed a medium directional antenna. They went to some internal website to find that out.

Then they transferred me to Advanced Tech Support. They could not process my credit card because the system was down. By the time I called back I got a different call center entirely and they had no idea what I was talking about.

I live in NY and I have an indoor antenna which gets HD BUT I have to mess with it all the time (the wife moves it). I am just trying to upgrade my 921 and get an antenna installed

HELP

 

[AlaJoe]

Celestial
You are not imagining things and you are not crazy. I thought the same thing you thought and went threw the same thing you did and got no satisfaction. Where this came from was the February (I may be a month off here) episode of Charlie Chat where the CEO of E* was talking about and introducing the new mpeg4 receivers and new HD offerings. Charlie clearly said when talking about local HD markets that they would be offerring an OTA antenna for $50 to markets that could not get them via satellite.

Richmondr
Ask one of your supervisors to watch the Charlie Chat I reference. This offer was clearly about HD. There have even been pictures of the antenna that was to be offered posted here. The antenna was a Winegard Squareshooter that had been branded for dish. Molded into the plastic cover was a Dish logo where the Winegard W logo normally is.

I am not sure what happened to this offer but it was made.

Perhaps Charlie jumped the gun and mentioned an offer that was only a concept that was later decided not to be made.

Perhaps this offer was for a very limited number of markets that would never get HD locals over the satelite and Charlie left this out of his statement.

Perhaps after figuring what this would cost them E* decided to renege on the offer

Perhaps E* decided they did not want the responsibility of putting up OTA antennas only to have people get bad reception and complain to them about it.

What ever the reason behind it the offer of an OTA antenna for $50 from E* to pick up your locals in HD was made by the CEO of the company and this offer has not been followed threw on.

 

[richmondr]

i will definitely research that, they never let us watch the charlie chats and not only that but like i have std on so many posts, dishnetwork has no internal communication system. but will research in the company intranet and will get back to ya

 

[Celestial]

Bless you AlaJoe

AlaJoe: Thank you for confirming what I saw. You are right, I did think I was crazy. There is some sort of information on the internal Dish Network web or something because the CSR I spoke to found it but I have not had the time or patience to start this whole conversation up again with a new CSR.

Richmondr
If you could PLEASE verify this information I would appreciate it. The only thing that is stopping me from leasing is the desire to get a HD local antenna up there on the cheap.