They do not modify the FTA for Glorystar only! They pre-load the Glorstar channels - you can add any other FTA channels you want!
Bob
What will you do when Sky Angel DBS ends?
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Bob
We subscribed to Sky Angel in 1997 with a “lifetime” subscription of $195.00 and I purchased and installed the model 3000 IRD and 18” dish for $199.00. If I recall correctly, the “lifetime” subscription went to $295.00 in 1998? I realized that my little $195.00 payment would not help Sky Angel pay their bills and grow their service for very long so we began to give regular contributions to their foundation. I also promoted Sky Angel to our church family and other Christian friends and gave a one year gift to three families with only one family that continued the service. I found Christian Television and even radio to be a hard sell. Should I be bitter and upset? NO; disappointed yes, but angry and bitter NO!
I will NOT sue and demand that my “lifetime” (satellite) subscription be transferred to my new IPTV service.
By the way, I am not a "sucker" and the folks at Sky Angel are not "con artists". I knew exactly what I was getting and the risks involved.
JeffH
I will NOT sue and demand that my “lifetime” (satellite) subscription be transferred to my new IPTV service.
By the way, I am not a "sucker" and the folks at Sky Angel are not "con artists". I knew exactly what I was getting and the risks involved.
JeffH
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My thought exactly. I believe I got in as a lifetimer at the point when it was $299. I have also replaced my receiver twice and paid for service calls at least 3-4 times along the way.
Thanks for that correction Bob. That is not what I was told when I called. I guess that just shows that their CSRs are in the same "class" as other companies' CSRs. You get different answers depending on who you talk to. Maybe it was the way I asked the question. I asked "Can the receiver be used for other services?" I was told "No". Maybe the person that I talked to thought that I meant DISH or DirecTV.
This is a false analogy. If Sky Angel had gone belly-up through lack of funds, everybody concerned would be sad to see them go, and your analogy would be correct. As it is, they took your money and spent it on something other than satellite service! Plus they are still in business.
I'm no lawyer; maybe this behavior is legal. But it sure shouldn't be. I think we are right to be outraged. IMHO Sky Angel has invited litigation. The right thing to do is go out of business. If the principals think IPTV is so wonderful, then let them start up a new Earth Angel service ex nihilo.
Again I repeat that I am no lawyer. But it appears that Sky Angel is quietly stealing from satellite subscribers to affect thier IPTV service startup. How can you sit there and defend this behavior?
Glorystar only provides technical support for their system as supplied. So the CSR answer is an automatic no. In other words, if you are a hobbyist do what ever you want - but don't call with troubles trying to dial in Galaxy 10. They want to support what they sell - but understandably it can be difficult for a CSR to be up to speed on all of the combinations of motors, switches, and LNBs that can be used and aren't even supplied by them.
Bob
Again I repeat that I am no lawyer. But it appears that Sky Angel is quietly stealing from satellite subscribers to affect thier IPTV service startup. How can you sit there and defend this behavior?
I really don't understand why others can't see that. This sort of reminds me of the days of the Jim and Tammy (Bakker) scandal. The "church ladies" (and men too) defended them right up to the day that Jim went to jail. It looks that the same "type" of people are doing the same thing with Sky Angel. You have to wonder what is wrong with them.
Lifetime complaints
Why be so angry if you have a lifetime sub and paid much less then $15 a month by dividing the number of months of service in comparison to your total investment for SA. This would include any additional donations you made to Sky Angel.
I'm wondering how many people who are complaining have paid much less then $15 a month for the service over the life of the contract. If you paid more then $15 a month I could see how you should be quite upset. My guess is though that the bulk of complaints are coming from those who thought it would be free SA for life after their initial investment.
SA was locked into a Pay Television service model because they were a piggyback service for the for a profit centered, non-ministry, commercial, encrypted sattelite service "Echostar - Dish Network". If they could do it over again A Glorystar type set up might have been better. But the network was not set up that way and they can't grow without A paying monthly subscriber base and a cost effective distribution network.
Why be so angry if you have a lifetime sub and paid much less then $15 a month by dividing the number of months of service in comparison to your total investment for SA. This would include any additional donations you made to Sky Angel.
I'm wondering how many people who are complaining have paid much less then $15 a month for the service over the life of the contract. If you paid more then $15 a month I could see how you should be quite upset. My guess is though that the bulk of complaints are coming from those who thought it would be free SA for life after their initial investment.
SA was locked into a Pay Television service model because they were a piggyback service for the for a profit centered, non-ministry, commercial, encrypted sattelite service "Echostar - Dish Network". If they could do it over again A Glorystar type set up might have been better. But the network was not set up that way and they can't grow without A paying monthly subscriber base and a cost effective distribution network.
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It doesn't matter if it amounted to $1 a month. Many of us contracted for lifetime service and that is what we expected. If it was ANY other vendor and you signed up for a service that you were told was lifetime (no matter what the signup amount was) you would be complaining too. It is just because it IS Sky Angel that some people are defending thier practices. And when we subscribed monthly service wasn't anywhere near $15 a month. Over the years Sky Angel has incresed their monthly (and lifetime) rates several times.
Over the entire life of Sky Angel, Dominion DBS (the parent company) never paid DISH Network any money for them to carry the Sky Angel service so your "model" is all wet. What DISH got out of the deal was the use of six transponder licences. Sky Angel repeately lied to its subscribers saying that they were going to have their own satellite built and launched (and they repeately asked us for more money to do that). Most of us trusted Bob Johnson who started the service and believed in his vision. After he died we started seeing some cracks in the vision.
Since Sky Angel isn't a public company we can't look at the books but IF a class action goes forward we may get some insight on where all the money went. A lot of us would like to believe that it went into running the business but, quite often, in "closed" companies the money does not go where it is suppose (not accusing anyone of anything here; it just that we don't know for sure). Bob should have made Sky Angel a non-profit (501c3) company. If he would have there would at least be some (accounting) records to look at.
If you read back through the boards you will find that skyangel invested in land in both fla and TN. some of which they they couldn't get permits to build on! so now they are trying to sell it.
Lifetime meant just that , lifetime as skyangel also sold "10 yr" subs. many of the lifetimes are turning out to be 10 yr or less subs. No matter how much it works out to per year I agree we got taken by skyangel. They repeatedly promised to launch a new satellite. We are now paying the price when they realized they couldn't afford to!
Has anyone gotten the letter that was supposed to be getting mailed out the beginning of the month?
Lifetime meant just that , lifetime as skyangel also sold "10 yr" subs. many of the lifetimes are turning out to be 10 yr or less subs. No matter how much it works out to per year I agree we got taken by skyangel. They repeatedly promised to launch a new satellite. We are now paying the price when they realized they couldn't afford to!
Has anyone gotten the letter that was supposed to be getting mailed out the beginning of the month?
Another Option
Another option to the Sky Angel dilema: Digital Television (DTV) Multicasting! It allows broadcasters to split their digital television signal into multiple streams where viewers can receive three, four, five, even six channels from each local station – all free of charge from your over-the-air television broadcaster. TBN broadcasts JC-TV, Church Channel, TBN Enlace and Smile of a Child as their multicasted channels. Also, ION muticasts The Worship Network.
Check it out here: TBN - Trinity Broadcasting Network
Multicasting info: Home
DTV Stations: DTV Stations in Operation
Worship Network info: DTV Stations
Another option to the Sky Angel dilema: Digital Television (DTV) Multicasting! It allows broadcasters to split their digital television signal into multiple streams where viewers can receive three, four, five, even six channels from each local station – all free of charge from your over-the-air television broadcaster. TBN broadcasts JC-TV, Church Channel, TBN Enlace and Smile of a Child as their multicasted channels. Also, ION muticasts The Worship Network.
Check it out here: TBN - Trinity Broadcasting Network
Multicasting info: Home
DTV Stations: DTV Stations in Operation
Worship Network info: DTV Stations
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If only we had Multi-Cast Must Carry. Then broadcasters would have a real incentive to offer more channels in this way.
Of course - I would also like to see the religious independent stations, who may not be broadcasting in HDTV anytime soon, open up their digital channel to multicast various other Christian networks, besides the TBN package and Worship.
Of course - I would also like to see the religious independent stations, who may not be broadcasting in HDTV anytime soon, open up their digital channel to multicast various other Christian networks, besides the TBN package and Worship.
I will leave Sky Angel
I will leave because I am mostly unhappy with how they are handling their customers. I am a monthly sub and I just learned (because I inquired about the IPTV) that they won't offer the satellite option at all and I didn't know because they never informed me. I just thought it was a new option available. I didn't realize that that was going to be the only option. They should have told all their customers this was the plan when they started advertising the IPTV. The CSR wasn't even apologetic...just acted like "oh well" when I shared my surprise and disappointment about not being notified. That is not the way a christian business should run. That was very disappointing to me that they would handle it that way. So, no I won't subscribe to the IPTV, I'll get dish family package and maybe even get glorystar...I'm just learning about that here and will tell others about it now.
I will leave because I am mostly unhappy with how they are handling their customers. I am a monthly sub and I just learned (because I inquired about the IPTV) that they won't offer the satellite option at all and I didn't know because they never informed me. I just thought it was a new option available. I didn't realize that that was going to be the only option. They should have told all their customers this was the plan when they started advertising the IPTV. The CSR wasn't even apologetic...just acted like "oh well" when I shared my surprise and disappointment about not being notified. That is not the way a christian business should run. That was very disappointing to me that they would handle it that way. So, no I won't subscribe to the IPTV, I'll get dish family package and maybe even get glorystar...I'm just learning about that here and will tell others about it now.
Bye Bye SkyAngel
After the way they have treated their subscribers, lifetime and otherwise, I would not do business with this outfit again. However, I went to their website and ran their connection test. Although I pay for a 1.5Mbps connection it was running at about 1.3MBps when I performed their test and thus did not meet their minimum requirement. So I couldn't get their IPTV service even if I was willing to pay for it. I know that my inlaws and several other families at their church do not have a fast enough internet connection for SkyAngel. Many rural internet users rely on satellite or EVDO for their internet provider and will not be able to use the IPTV service.
I have switched myself and one other household over to AMC-4 and may add the IA-5 bird in the future. We miss the EPG, but the programming content is good.
After the way they have treated their subscribers, lifetime and otherwise, I would not do business with this outfit again. However, I went to their website and ran their connection test. Although I pay for a 1.5Mbps connection it was running at about 1.3MBps when I performed their test and thus did not meet their minimum requirement. So I couldn't get their IPTV service even if I was willing to pay for it. I know that my inlaws and several other families at their church do not have a fast enough internet connection for SkyAngel. Many rural internet users rely on satellite or EVDO for their internet provider and will not be able to use the IPTV service.
I have switched myself and one other household over to AMC-4 and may add the IA-5 bird in the future. We miss the EPG, but the programming content is good.
whatever it is it will NOT be skyangel
I would not pay skyangel for a tshirt at this point , never mind IPTV. They are being deliberately misleading, if not outright dishonest. I am sorely disappointed with the lack of Christian behavior from this company. Take a good , LOOONG look at how they are treating not only Lifetime members, but Canadian IPTV subs BEFORE you make a decision.
My choices at this point would be dish family (as I already own the equipment) and Glorystar, (one time purchase, no monthly fee).
Programming as well as cost will be a final factor. I will pray that DISH will put together an acceptable Christian/family package.
Quite honestly DISH could add the FTA Christian channels to the DISH FAMILY package, keep the price at $19.99 and win over quite a few skyangel dbs customers! Hope DISH is monitoring these boards
I would not pay skyangel for a tshirt at this point , never mind IPTV. They are being deliberately misleading, if not outright dishonest. I am sorely disappointed with the lack of Christian behavior from this company. Take a good , LOOONG look at how they are treating not only Lifetime members, but Canadian IPTV subs BEFORE you make a decision.
My choices at this point would be dish family (as I already own the equipment) and Glorystar, (one time purchase, no monthly fee).
Programming as well as cost will be a final factor. I will pray that DISH will put together an acceptable Christian/family package.
Quite honestly DISH could add the FTA Christian channels to the DISH FAMILY package, keep the price at $19.99 and win over quite a few skyangel dbs customers! Hope DISH is monitoring these boards
At this point I am waiting to see what options unfold. Dish will get several channel slots out of the deal. They may try to put together some sort of package to attract those SkyAngel leaves behind. After all, empty channels will not help their bottom line. At the present Glorystar doesn't have the channels I watch--Liberty, Spirit, CTN (Angel 2). I don't have high-speed Internet so I will not be going to SkyAngel IPTV.
Although it will be sad to see SkyAngel satellite go dark, I have no interest in suing them. At the present time my lifetime subscription would translate into $2.80 per month for their service ($295 sub bought April 1, 1999). I think I got a good deal from them.
Although it will be sad to see SkyAngel satellite go dark, I have no interest in suing them. At the present time my lifetime subscription would translate into $2.80 per month for their service ($295 sub bought April 1, 1999). I think I got a good deal from them.
Personally, I Can't wait for Dish to get back the transponders from Dominion. This will allow Dish to use more of the Spotbeam capabilities of Rainbow1 as well as allow for more HD on the 61.5
John
John
It looks as if there are some misconseptions about sueing and being awarded judgements for lawsuits. My best friend, that I grew up with, a lawyer, I've told all about SA and what is happening says this: If SA goes bellyup, Out Of Business, gone.....whatever you want to call it, you can sue but the chance of recovering anything is moot. If there is no OOB, just same company with different product but same owners, there can be judgements. My way of looking at this is I've loved SA ever since 1997 when I paid my $195 for my Lifetime SA, and if through bad business decisions or whatever they went OOB then so-be-it, I wouldn't even think of joining a suit. A company that changes direction with it's product has no problem with a month-to-month lease or purchase. Here they just say, we aren't offering this product anymore, but the Lifetimers purchase is different, we have already bought/purchased the product and the company isn't going out of business. They are changing their service.....hence, changing their product, something that might be good business sense, but not good ethical/moral sense. If I joined a lawsuit(and it would hurt my heart to join), I wouldn't want monetary judgement because that's not what it's all about. I would to send a message that future companies wouldn't/couldn't/shouldn't get away with claiming to be Christian run and operated and doing basically a bait-and-switch. I really don't think that back before Bob Johnson died, none of what is happening would have flied past him.....he'd squashed it like a bug, just the new owners aren't continueing his vision in the manner that he envisioned.
I agree its not about getting a financial judgement, all I want is the TV service I paid in advance for. We may have to go no tv for a while. However I am still waiting for skyangel to actually inform me/us that DBS is ending and with it they are tossing the lifetime members out . Would be nice to get "official" notice instead of "rumors"
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