New HD customer dissatisfied

[infospecs]

I have had HD for 1 week and the locals in SD look awful on my HD TV. Of course local HD isnt offered yet. I called to cancel, after 1 week, and they said their is a $250 cancellation fee plus I loose the $$ I paid for the Vip722.. Any thought>?

[skyviewmark]

The majority of HDTV's I see look awful when used to watch SD Programming.. I have only seen a couple of TV's that actually handle the SD well enough to be really watchable. That being said.. All SD Locals seem to be so bit starved that they don't even look good on an SD Set. I can't watch them at all.. If there is any way you can hook up an OTA antenna and get your locals that way you will be more than satisfied..

[steve4810]

I have had HD for 1 week and the locals in SD look awful on my HD TV. Of course local HD isnt offered yet. I called to cancel, after 1 week, and they said their is a $250 cancellation fee plus I loose the $$ I paid for the Vip722.. Any thought>?

Not that you would actually do this but I bet if you went to the thrift store and bought two 20 inch regular old TVs and looked at your locals provided by cable on one and locals by dish on the other, you couldn't see any difference. And I'd even bet there's a better than even chance that you wouldn't see much difference on a pair of 27 inch tube TVs either.

Locals converted that many times between the station and your HDTV will always look like crap after you've seen a good HD picture in your own living room.

I think Dish is right to charge you $250 if you cancel. Were you under the impression they offered you a "satisfaction guaranteed" deal?

I'd put up an antenna or just hold on till Dish makes your locals HD.

Sorry for the cold water.

[edpkp81]

Did you just buy the HDTV? If not, what was it hooked up to before?

[RandallA]

An antenna for OTA might be your only solution if you don't want to pay the cancellation fees. You signed a contract for 18 months when you got it installed.

[bhelms]

Echo that as far as OTA HD quality! OTA HD (in most markets) is far superior to what you will receive by either DBS provider. I use my local PBS channel received OTA as my overall HD benchmark for b'cst programming. The only thing that beats it is HD from disk. The quality of OTA HD will vary with how the b'cstr decides to allocate his BW. In the case of our local PBS, it is evident that they want to showcase the HD program. Their SD program (not necessarily the same) is only adequate. They also have a second SD program which is apparently BBC, and the PQ of that really $uck$! I don't need either so I'm glad they're allocating the right amount of resource to the HD content!

How long will it be until your LiLs are available as HD? If you know your DMA you can check the list available in this forum and elsewhere in terms of E*'s priority. If you're in the top 5 or so of those pending, you might have HD LiL from E* within a year or so. I'm somewhere near 85 overall, so I don't expect anything in my lifetime!

Another hint: I live in a marginal area for OTA signals, thus I need all the help I can get. It turns out that the tuners in either of my Sony TVs are superior to that in my 622. So for some programs I get better performance if I just connect directly to the TV. Of course I lose my DVR functions, but most of the time I'll have a better overall viewing experience.

Welcome to the forum, BTW...

[Poke]

Yeah most SD Channels do not look that good on a HDTV mainly locals does not matter who your service provider is Dish or your local cable company.

[tigerfan33]

Yeah most SD Channels do not look that good on a HDTV mainly locals does not matter who your service provider is Dish or your local cable company.

This is the reason I am with Dish. HD. I have been with Dish for over a year and I have found myself not watching programs I use to watch simply because it is not in hd. Call an hd Snob.

[Poke]

Yeah some SD Channels are not too bad locals seem to look the worse. But yeah its nice getting more HD Channels up and running and just think one day we will be back to one format all HD no more SD.

[infospecs]

Can you tell us where the priority list published byE* is?