When Charlie used to contact me personally

rvvaquero

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Mar 3, 2012
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I was going through and old file cabinet today, looking at old bills and such. Cell service is cheaper now, electricity about the same, and satellite TV...................well, you know.

I came across this letter from DISH actually advising me of a price increase in the mail. Thought some of you Charlie haters might enjoy it.

dishdea3l.jpg
 
Charlie chats were fun.
I remember watching one not long after the 501 replaced the original Dishplayer, in which a caller asked a question that began something like, "OK, so I like the way I can record something live while watching something I had already recorded...." and watching the shock that came to Charlie and Jim. Thought they tried to act cool, it was obvious that they had no idea you could do something like this. I bet as soon as the show was over, they rushed to a 501 to see if it really could do that. Then it became a feature, not a bug.
 
I was going through and old file cabinet today, looking at old bills and such. Cell service is cheaper now, electricity about the same, and satellite TV...................well, you know.

I came across this letter from DISH actually advising me of a price increase in the mail. Thought some of you Charlie haters might enjoy it.

View attachment 137508

That was only when we had AT150 and the programmers were not ripping off the public. Ah, the good ol' days where $50 a month would get you a lot of programming.
 
$50 buys you the Flex Pack and an add on. Add in an OTA antenna and you have a lot of quality programming.

Flex Pack lacks a lot of the channels I like. Not as good as the old AT150 either. Plus in those days locals were not $12. They were free then, or at least included as Dish did not have to pay the stations. Many get little OTA in rural areas too, if they even can get OTA locals. Digital messed that up with the lack of signal strength. In the old days with analog the weaker signal could be received. Once they went digital, moved to UHF, in the NW, if you are over 50 miles, you are lucky to get the signal to lock.
 
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Charlie chats were fun.
I remember looking forward to them when they were still adding locals back in the 2000s. Charlie and Jim DeFranco would sit there and Charlie was pretty straight faced and Jim would laugh and smile like a goon through out the chats. Then the Tech Chats , that discussed latest tech ,would hit every other month and the Charlie Chats would take off for the month. But once the price hikes came every year like clockwork , the chats dropped off. Now you're lucky to see Charlie at Christmas time in the: "We DISH you a Merry Christmas" video.
 
Flex Pack lacks a lot of the channels I like. Not as good as the old AT150 either. Plus in those days locals were not $12. They were free then, or at least included as Dish did not have to pay the stations. Many get little OTA in rural areas too, if they even can get OTA locals. Digital messed that up with the lack of signal strength. In the old days with analog the weaker signal could be received. Once they went digital, moved to UHF, in the NW, if you are over 50 miles, you are lucky to get the signal to lock.
Not to mention distant locals

Sent from my SM-G950U using the SatelliteGuys app!
 
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Not to mention distant locals

Sent from my SM-G950U using the SatelliteGuys app!
I used to have distant locals. New York and Los Angeles in addition to my actual San Francisco locals. I especially like the NY locals because I used to get up very early in the morning to go to work, 3:30 AM. I could watch the prime time programming from NY 3 hours earlier than the west coast. That worked well until this thing called a DVR came about. Once I had one of those, I didn't really require NY for that purpose. The other good thing was that I could watch different sporting events than was available to me. I am watching less of those events today so that's not a big deal either.
 
When we had the Webtv/DISHplayer back in 99 and 2000 , we would take the distant locals and the super stations. I could record one of the east coast networks and watch another east coast network at the same time then record one of the west coast networks and watch the other west coast network at the same time. It was a primitive way of getting to watch all 4 networks and we kept it till we got our own locals on the satellite. Now I don't have any sat delivered locals. Dropped because of costs.
 
I remember looking forward to them when they were still adding locals back in the 2000s. Charlie and Jim DeFranco would sit there and Charlie was pretty straight faced and Jim would laugh and smile like a goon through out the chats. Then the Tech Chats , that discussed latest tech ,would hit every other month and the Charlie Chats would take off for the month. But once the price hikes came every year like clockwork , the chats dropped off. Now you're lucky to see Charlie at Christmas time in the: "We DISH you a Merry Christmas" video.

Yeah we Dish you a merry Christmas because rates are going up next month.

I remember the everything pack used to be $69.99
 
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