Stupid design (bug) with Dish Home

[Hall]

After the recent addition of new HD channels, I went and locked out all of the SD simulcast channels, i.e. TNT in lieu of TNT-HD, USA in lieu of USA-HD, and so on. Yesterday, I loaded up Dish Home looking for the application that tells you what movies are playing in theaters near you.... I thought there was such a thing but maybe not. Anyway, the (6) mini-windows that show various channels showed a "slate" that said "TNT, Locked Out" or something similar.

I think Dish should change the "lock" feature so it doesn't carry over to Dish Home.

 

[Jim S.]

Why not make a favorites list to get rid of the channels you don't want to bother with seeing in the guide, rather than locking them out? It isn't like you don't have this board to let you know when new channels come online The point of locking out channels is to keep someone else from seeing them at all.

 

[Agonizing Fury]

I use locks fairly regularly, just for all the channels I don't get. There are a few good reasons to do this. If you ever use the search function (especially if you are just looking for any comedy movie, not a specific show, it've very irritating to get a list back that includes all the channels you don't get (and well over half the results in the list are PPV) with locks turned on, If I search for "Movie, Comedy" I get a list of comedy movies on the channels I get only. Same with HD, searches return two results for every match (even with favorites, very irritating) so locks fix that as well.

 

[DishSubLA]

Well, I do agree. I don't like the lock-out at Dish Home either. Dish really needs to have a feature that is specifically designed to display the HD channel only if a customer so desires. The current use of locks to achieve this also results in the annoying password feature poping-up when a DVR event is attempting to be erased. I have to enter the stupid password a lot. WHAT A TIME WASTER THAT MAKES WHAT USED TO BE A SIMPLE PROCEDURE A PAIN IN THE NECK! It is annoying. It is not a bug. Just poor planning on the part of the designers who probably didn't count on subs locking out the SD equivalent of the HD's and all the subsequent consequences when using various features of the STB. Software needs to fix this.

 

[Pepper]

Solution: on an HD box, DishHome should check availability of both SD and HD channel before deciding whether it's displayable. Because a person might have another reason for having locked out a channel and legitimately don't want it displayed on DishHome either.

There should be the "HD Only" preference though that could be done without locking anything out as y'all have suggested.

 

[UGAChance]

DishHome is a special channel that has 6 SD audio/video streams, an app stream, and maybe a few others muxed into one stream. It is not possible to decide whether you have HD or not.

 

[Pepper]

You misunderstand my suggestion.

Right now what happens is if you have one of the six SD channels blocked, or you don't subscribe to it, the recever blocks the display of that part of the grid. I'm just suggesting that it check both the SD and HD versions of the particular channel, and only block it if both of them are blocked or not authorized.

 

[Hall]

Well, I do agree. I don't like the lock-out at Dish Home either. Dish really needs to have a feature that is specifically designed to display the HD channel only if a customer so desires. The current use of locks to achieve this also results in the annoying password feature poping-up when a DVR event is attempting to be erased. I have to enter the stupid password a lot. WHAT A TIME WASTER THAT MAKES WHAT USED TO BE A SIMPLE PROCEDURE A PAIN IN THE NECK! It is annoying. It is not a bug. Just poor planning on the part of the designers who probably didn't count on subs locking out the SD equivalent of the HD's and all the subsequent consequences when using various features of the STB. Software needs to fix this.

I agree it's really not a bug, hence why I put "bug" in parentheses. Just to continue what you said, Dish's implementation of their locks sucks. The way the channel locks carry over to Dish Home, the way you unlock channels one-by-one vs "per session" (if I unlock a channel, consider that I want to unlock the system and honor that 'til I turn the receiver "off" or it goes into standby). Problem is, these issues probably are "standard" across ALL of Dish's receivers and would be a huge undertaking to revise their design.

 

[DishSubLA]

I agree it's really not a bug, hence why I put "bug" in parentheses. Just to continue what you said, Dish's implementation of their locks sucks. The way the channel locks carry over to Dish Home, the way you unlock channels one-by-one vs "per session" (if I unlock a channel, consider that I want to unlock the system and honor that 'til I turn the receiver "off" or it goes into standby). Problem is, these issues probably are "standard" across ALL of Dish's receivers and would be a huge undertaking to revise their design.

Let's not let Dish off the hook yet . Agreed with your sentiments. However, Dish has made software changes across all or vast numbers of STB's before. They should get to work on the "Display HD version only on guide" feature right now. I can't believe they are going to let both SD and HD continue to be displayed in the long run as NON-power users are gonna get really upset, confused, annoyed at having the channels displayed twice in the guide. And, NO, non-power users don't use the Favorites feature, nor the locks feature nor the "ALL HD" list. It is my belief, based upon experience, that something like 90% of Dish users always use the "All Channels" EPG displayed because they are not power-users. My mom insists on using "All Channels" as she likes to see ALL the channels for fear that in the Favorites mode she will miss a listing. She doesn't like the "ALL HD" list either. It is "All Chan" all the way for her and just about all the other non-power users I know. That's the way people are, and Dish should start realizing that