VOOM Goes BOOM - update Dish Drops all 15 VOOM Channels

[davelip75]

Try THIS email for CEO at DISH charlie.ergen@echostar.com

charlie.ergen@echostar.com

I figured anything with ceoofdishnetwork@echostar.com CAN"T be right.

Sent off a nice email to charlie.ergen@echostar.com and it hasn't bounced back!!
Send away and let him know how you feel about the loss of quality, COMMERCIAL FREE Programming!

For people such as myself who signed up for DishHD weeks before VOOM was droopped, we have every right to feel this was a "bait and switch."

 

[lern4483]

charlie.ergen@echostar.com

I figured anything with ceoofdishnetwork@echostar.com CAN"T be right.

Sent off a nice email to charlie.ergen@echostar.com and it hasn't bounced back!!
Send away and let him know how you feel about the loss of quality, COMMERCIAL FREE Programming!

For people such as myself who signed up for DishHD weeks before VOOM was droopped, we have every right to feel this was a "bait and switch."

Way to go!!! Keep TALKING!!!! Im with you..

 

[fz5j2r]

Message from Charlie Ergen

charlie.ergen@echostar.com

I figured anything with ceoofdishnetwork@echostar.com CAN"T be right.

Sent off a nice email to charlie.ergen@echostar.com and it hasn't bounced back!!
Send away and let him know how you feel about the loss of quality, COMMERCIAL FREE Programming!

For people such as myself who signed up for DishHD weeks before VOOM was droopped, we have every right to feel this was a "bait and switch."

I sent an email to Charlie Ergen also and this is the response I got;

"Thank you for your message. I do appreciate hearing from customers. Let me try to address your concerns:


1. Voom did not make the investment in their channels per our contract and thus left us little choice going forward.
2. The 22 channels we added will be adding a lot of HD content over the coming months and more and more of it will become true HD. We do understand they don’t always broadcast in true HD for the entire day yet.
3. We will be adding more HD channels throughout the rest of the year.
4. No other major company carries Voom (except their other owner, cablevision)
5. normally OTA HD is a better picture and if you can get OTA (this is true for all video providers) we do not force customers (as others do) to purchase our local to local HD as we sell it a la carte.

6. your HD channels should not macro block. We do have some signal issues in along the coast in the northwest which we will solve with the launch of a new satellite late this year. It is possible your dish alignment is not quite perfect or you might need a slightly larger antenna.



I take your comments seriously and we will get much better.



Charlie




This is the original message we sent to Charlie which he replied to above:

Mr. Ergen,


My wife and I are deeply disappointed at the loss of VOOM high definition programming. VOOM was high definition, albeit hd-lite.



The 22 channels you added recently in place of VOOM and calling them high definition is a joke. Nearly all are stretchovision or up converted standard definition.



I believe it to be a disgrace how Echostar claims to be the leader in high definition programming.



Most of what you offer in “high definition” is not 1920x1080. It is much less. It is also bit rate starved. This picture degradation began in November 2005 when you degraded the HD signal we were receiving. It gets so bad sometimes that HD signals actually have macro blocking. Quite often we get as good a picture from our over the air antenna on SD digital stations. OTA HD programming is light years better than what you call HD.

We feel you have cheated us. This is the thanks we get for the $1800 annually we pay Dish Network.


We believe you owe us a refund for the loss of this programming and the addition of stretchovision and up converted standard definition which you call high definition.

 

[charlesrshell]

Wow, that is awesome Charlie emailed you back.

 

[Kevinw]

I'm impressed

 

[Grandude]

Enjoy your auto-replys.

Can we make a sticky about how to spell "lose"? Because 90% of this board can't do it.

I second the motion.

 

[KAB]

I think we owe Scott a lot of the credit because he had a "come to Jesus meeting" with Charlie at Team Summit. He said Charlie was very receptive. Guess here's the proof!

 

[Bruuce]

I second the motion.

losers spell it 'looser'

 

[psychicmind]

Sorry - I see a Charlie script in that email...

The complaints about Voom continue. Whomever said there was little complaining at Dish lied or is believing their lies.

Even the rep I spoke to today said, 1) "seems like all the calls we get are complaint calls about Voom" 2) "I have a scripted response" which she started to read and I stopped her; she was even embarrassed of the script, practically admitting it was a lie.

The email response just seems like another canned response; right off the script.

 

[Bradp56]

Well its a more thought out email response at least. Either way I dont think you will get an answer other than what the scourt says.

 

[psychicmind]

Well its a more thought out email response at least. Either way I dont think you will get an answer other than what the scourt says.

I'm not sure how thought out that is.

It took two weeks to start writing people back and the reps have NEW scripts this week.

Well thought out would have been being prepared before removing the channels.

Just seems like Dish's public relations department is doing a lot of writing these days.

 

[Apologist]

Sorry - I see a Charlie script in that email...

The complaints about Voom continue. Whomever said there was little complaining at Dish lied or is believing their lies.

Agreed.

 

[whatchel1]

Sent an email

I have now sent Charlie an email as well. We will see what his reply is. If I get the same thing back as the other poster.

 

[KAB]

I have now sent Charlie an email as well. We will see what his reply is. If I get the same thing back as the other poster.

You really think HE is going to answer each e-mail from scratch? If there are variances, it's being done by someone else.

 

[EmpireState]

6. your HD channels should not macro block.

I'm not a Dish Network or Charlie hater, but that almost certainly has to be a false statement on Charlie's part. I see macro blocking during a lot of fast transitions between scenes, and during some shimmering water and fire on the HD channels. Anything moving fast, very fast, that takes up the entire screen tends to macro-block on my television. I live in the midwest and have very good reception and I see it all the time. It also occurs on some of my OTA HD channels too, so blame whoever you will.

Unless I don't understand what macro-blocking is (I think it is when the clear HD picture becomes blocky with small blocks instead of clearly defined pixels), this is no different than what they started doing to the "pure digital" SD signals back in the late 1990's. Give me a break. I'll live with it, but don't tell me I need a bigger dish. Unless a bigger dish will fix it, someone let me know.

 

[whatchel1]

Actually it doesn't matter

You really think HE is going to answer each e-mail from scratch? If there are variances, it's being done by someone else.

Actually it doesn't matter just as long as he keeps getting a mailbox full of complaints.

 

[whatchel1]

Macro blocking

I'm not a Dish Network or Charlie hater, but that almost certainly has to be a false statement on Charlie's part. I see macro blocking during a lot of fast transitions between scenes, and during some shimmering water and fire on the HD channels. Anything moving fast, very fast, that takes up the entire screen tends to macro-block on my television. I live in the midwest and have very good reception and I see it all the time. It also occurs on some of my OTA HD channels too, so blame whoever you will.

Unless I don't understand what macro-blocking is (I think it is when the clear HD picture becomes blocky with small blocks instead of clearly defined pixels), this is no different than what they started doing to the "pure digital" SD signals back in the late 1990's. Give me a break. I'll live with it, but don't tell me I need a bigger dish. Unless a bigger dish will fix it, someone let me know.

Are you also getting this from your OTA signal?

 

[fz5j2r]

Are you also getting this from your OTA signal?

I do not ever get macro blocking OTA. I occasionally get dropouts but that is just the digital technology.

Prior to November 2005 the picture we received from Dish was awesome. Resolution was high as was the bit rate.

After November 2005 the era of hd-lite began and it continues to get worse.

My big beef is that a standard definition program received OTA will sometimes be as good as a HD picture received from Dish Network.

 

[long_time_DNC]

Can't get anything OTA here, so I can't make any decent comparisons.

I will say this though: I have Open Range on one of my EHDs that I recorded from HDNet Movies before it was down-rezzed from true HD. It looks spectacular. It's also a huge file...18+ gig. The filesizes from HDNet Movies and HBO tend to be about 30% larger than the same runtime movies from Starz or Cinemax. I'm wondering if this is an MPEG2 vs. MPEG4 difference, or just a lower compression % on HDNet Movies and HBO?

Any thoughts on this from anyone?

Back on-topic: I always thought Rave looked terrific. MHD looks almost as good, but I can't stand all the commercial breaks...

 

[fish2222]

I think the issue is MPEG2 vs MPEG4... You have a lot less data to reconstruct the picture with, and with HD, there is a lot more data needed to fill all the pixels. MPEG4 saves a ton of bandwidth, but you will have to live with the loss too. I think fast-motion HD is always going to have issues though.