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Around 12 weeks ago my local stations ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS received through my Dish receivers started receiving center cut video instead of letter boxed video on HD programs. This "center cut" video as it was described by my local Sacramento PBS (KVIE-6) affiliate broadcast engineer is a DISH problem he said. The video Dish is sending of course cuts off on the left and right side of the screen all graphics as well as changes what I can see image wise on my standard 4:3 sets. The engineer told me to contact Dish as he has had hundreds of complaints thinking that KVIE had done something to the video. The station ID bug in the lower right corner shows just the K instead of KVIE-6. It also interferes with captions that producers add to their programs when in post. The CC service runs behind on PBS programs with a lag that did not happen when the letter boxed programs were shown 12 weeks ago.

I have contacted Dish and spoke with level-1 tech support who could not understand me; their level-2 techs/supervisors have me check my software version on my 522 DVR which of course is up to date. Around 6 weeks ago they insisted that a troubleshooter come out to check my equipment; this was an installer and he confirmed the problem and said it is not my DVR or 301 or 311 boxes. So far I have complained four times and the only solution left seems to be asking for a credit on my bill since they are not delivering a proper video feed. I have asked to speak with a broadcast engineer at Dish and so far have been denied. The engineer at KVIE has spoken with a Dish engineer and yet Dish is not correcting the problem.

Does anyone have a suggestion(s) for a resolution? I can not afford an HD set and I have a new 32" SD set that will have to do for the time being. I do not want to go to Direct TV as I do not care for their equipment (remotes and DVR) or programing packages. I did notice that Direct TV does not "center cut" their video on locals as my parents have Direct TV and will be upgrading to an HD DVR next week.