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This is getting very irritating, and I wanna rep my DMA (which is in the top 100, albeit late 90's) because I was told by Dish a few months back that we would at least be on the HD local list, if not have them, by football season.

That said, I wouldn't be nearly as irritated had DirectTV not added HD locals last month for our DMA. A few weeks have passed, and us dish users still aren't even on the list for 2008, which apparently means sometime in 2009? Its pretty damn annoying when I have dozens of DTV neighbors watching the Steelers on Sundays in georgous HD in week 1, while us dish users are getting laughed at about how we should of went with DTV.

And all I can do is agree as I watch the steelers or eagles games on sd locals, which just happen to be the most compressed, pixelated, and worst looking SD channels we have.
Thanks, dish, for not even having us on a list for 2008. And as dish subscriptions run out, you just might see a higher % of people switching to DTV than you have seen in any other DMA (which I will explain).

Normally, I would assume that most DMA's (and I know there are exceptions) get their HD locals from DTV and Dish at roughly the same time for obvious reasons. Such as either dish or dtv not wanting to lose nearly an entire DMA due to them not having HD locals while the competitor does.

Furthermore, and this should tick off all dish users, is that DTV has opened a pretty big lead with the Local HD market, I believe covering nearly 80% of the US, and 88% by the end of the year. Dish is falling behind. Where are they? Still under 70% I'm sure.

I do realize there are a few other higher DMA's still not getting HD locals, but I don't really care (respectfully). I don't live there! I want to get people talking for my DMA to make something happen faster.
Also, while our DMA by population may be 98 or 99, our DMA covers an enormous area.
Point is, the VAST majority of this DMA can't pick up squat OTA because so much of the population lives so far away from the damn towers.

Thus it is irritating when people who can at least get HD OTA still complain even if they don't get HD locals from dish. What is even more irritating is how the larger DMA's get local HD first, but so many of these DMA's are highly populated and smaller land-wise and thus DO live near towers and CAN pick up HD OTA.

What makes DMA99 more important for dish to take care of before others, from a business perspective? Easy answer. Football.
This DMA is all about football, this is western, central, and northern PA where people live, sleep, eat, and breathe football.
This alone is why I said that you could see so many people switching to DTV that it will make dish's head spin!

Yeah, out DMA covers a very large portion of "Steeler Country", and the Steelers have more fans than any other NFL team. And oh by the way, did I mention that our DMA also goes into eastern PA where the philly fans are. I don't need to say how popular the Eagles are in PA, even the Sixers. Yeah, every week we got both Eagles and Steelers broadcasts, presented in the most awful SD imaginable as DTV probably just had 10,000 new users from our DMA in the last month now watching high def!

DMA99, while 99th, clearly isn't your typical DMA and beleive me it is a big mistake to not even have us on the 2008 list.
Then aside from sports, people watch a lot of other TV here (pretty rough and long winters). We pay a lot for dish, pay a lot for an HDTV, and we've been very patient as every DMA around us, as well as DTV users within our DMA, enjoy their HD.
And as easy Sunday passes, word will continue to spread to all dish users that DTV users are watching Steelers in HD, and I'm going to help spread it. When that happens dish better man the phones and expand their email bandwidth!

I am considering starting a petition, to at least get us on the damn list at some point. I just need to look into how to go about doing that.
And dish better get caught up on their other HD local markets in general since they are really starting to fall behind. I love my vip722, DVR, and HD programming. I do. But nothing is more important to our DMA than getting HD locals for football season.

And I fear that if Dish doesn't pick up their game (don't care how many more fishing and stretch-o-vision HD channels we get) that they won't even be in business by the time our contract runs out (which would actually be great and I could switch to DTV!).
People from DMA99, Altoona-Johnstown, please speak up, let the local stations and Dish hear about this and tell them they better speed up some contract talks. I know dish can do HD here, now it must be all about $$ and contracts.

Anyone got ideas on how to petition dish?