Dish to expand HD

[drdroo]

Actually my area is nearly perfect, but we won't be seeing HD locals for quite a while. Took until Dec 2005 to get them in SD...

[skottey]

Knoxville serves a large area, including south east Ky (which is where I live). They also have alot of subs in the Knoxville viewing area. They may be going by how many subs they have in an area. Why put up hd locals in a area where you don't have as many subs?

I think when a non subscriber considering Dish goes to their website and searches for their address for locals and sees they don't get their HD, they turn away and go elsewhere.

I have cable too with HD locals and a $50 Radio Shack HD antenna on both my television setups that picks up all the digital channels in one room and all but NBC in the other, and that is my backup.

I understand people in the country, especially in a mountainous region, not being able top pick up digital OTA, but Dish has to start somewhere and you'd think they would offer locals by top markets first.

I guess you are right that they are going in their order of current subscribers. I don't know too many fellow citizens in my city with Dish. We have a 2-3 cable companies (including FIOS for some and Knology for some) and BHN for all available, as well as DirecTV. So I can see why Dish consideration would be way down on somebody's list. As I have said before, I got Dish last spring because they had the most HD at the time available to me.

I wanted Dish to do well but got sick of not hearing anything. I haven't canceled them yet. If they gave me a little more information on new HD that was a little more accurate than them saying they have 76 nationals now (when they clearly don't), I might hang on longer. As i stands I am getting ready to cancel.

[skottey]

Once again, what is Dish supposed to do, negotiate with the top "x" markets until a deal is made with all of them ? What if other markets are willing to make deals with Dish *now*, ignore them ? It's clearly obvious that Dish works with the stations in a market and if it's going nowhere, they move on to another one.

fair enough.... one would think though that since they have negotiated deals with analog locals, the process of negotiating HD locals would be easier. It is to the benefit of the locals to by available by all providers. Most people don't have OTA these days.

[tsduke]

fair enough.... one would think though that since they have negotiated deals with analog locals, the process of negotiating HD locals would be easier. It is to the benefit of the locals to by available by all providers. Most people don't have OTA these days.

You would think it would be that easy, but the station owners are getting greedy and the days of free or cheap retrans is pretty much gone.

[Hall]

Dish is NOT alone in this. My local Time Warner doesn't carry NBC or WB/CW in digital/HD yet. They do carry CBS, ABC, and FOX though. TW says the stations want too much; the stations say TW wants it for free. Blah, blah, blah.... Who knows what the truth is.

Do a search for LIN Broadcasting or Sinclair Broadcast and see how "eager" they are to have their digital channels carried by cable and satellite providers.

IMO, the stations are going to "lose". So few people get television via antenna only nowadays that when the analog shutoff comes along these stations will lose 75-85% of their viewers if they're not available on cable or satellite. I say that the cable and satellite companies hold their ground and wait for the stations to ask them to be carried !

[ggw2000]

Dish is NOT alone in this. My local Time Warner doesn't carry NBC or WB/CW in digital/HD yet. They do carry CBS, ABC, and FOX though. TW says the stations want too much; the stations say TW wants it for free. Blah, blah, blah.... Who knows what the truth is.

Do a search for LIN Broadcasting or Sinclair Broadcast and see how "eager" they are to have their digital channels carried by cable and satellite providers.

IMO, the stations are going to "lose". So few people get television via antenna only nowadays that when the analog shutoff comes along these stations will lose 75-85% of their viewers if they're not available on cable or satellite. I say that the cable and satellite companies hold their ground and wait for the stations to ask them to be carried !

Our local TWC has ABC, NBC, FOX but no CBS. Local morons won't deal and this has been going on for over a year! There was alot of unhappy folks in the area with the super bowl being on CBS last year for sure. Absolute BS as far as i'm concerned..
Gerry

[drdroo]

Our local TWC also doesn't have CBS in HD. In their case it has to do with an ongoing dispute with the local CBS station.

[darrencp22]

Our local TWC also doesn't have CBS in HD. In their case it has to do with an ongoing dispute with the local CBS station.

I think these stations want satellite and cable companies to pay for their equipment and costs for converting to HD.

[drdroo]

I do think it has to do with money ultimately, but our CBS station is already in HD here in the city and was one of the first to do so years ago. I believe CBS was also in HD on cable when they were Adelphia, but when Time Warner took over the market it became a dispute.

Unfortunately, our FOX station is a subchannel off the ABC station (because the local ABC station owns the FOX station too). So of course, that means we don't get a majority of sports in HD. On Cable, FOX is in HD here.

It took E* until Dec 2005 to get our locals in SD here, even though this market is the majority of the dish users in the state and they cover Southern Maine where 90% are cable. I don't have high hopes that they're going to offer HD locals here anytime soon. D* is probably going to have them before then, even though D* doesn't even have SD locals here yet.

E* getting the locals in this market caused a massive subscription surge, to the point that they had to send additional installers into the region. Unfortunately, they don't pay attention.

[Hall]

I think these stations want satellite and cable companies to pay for their equipment and costs for converting to HD.

There's nothing "HD" about it, it's digital. The TV stations have to convert to digital on their own by Feb 2009 regardless if they're carried by any cable or satellite company.