I have had Dish Network for over 5 years and can pretty much say TVLand, FeTV and ION have never been in HD. As dishrich pointed out, they are available in HD via Dish Anywhere.
Futhermore, I have not noticed any HD channels reverting back to SD. What you are probably seeing is that in the past few days, Dish Network has made changes to their SD channel aspect formats. They have changed a lot of their SD letter-box channels from letter-box to full 16:9 format. Although still in SD, they are now viewed in native full screen 16:9 even if your STB aspect is set to "Normal". ION was one of the channels changed, but FeTV and TVLand were not changed.
The channels that were changed now fill the screen, (no letter-box). As a result, they may appear to be a little soft to some viewers only because they are now zoomed a little more to fill the screen. Personally, I love the fact they have done this and hope they will continue to convert more channels. It is nice to view everything in full 16:9, even SD channels, as there is no need now to make aspect changes at the user end.
However, one caveat, TVLand and FeTV are two channels that need to be left alone so the their 4:3 progam material displays correctly in 4:3 and are not "stretched" to 16:9.
Also there may be one channel (that I am aware of) that did (or has reverted) from HD back to SD and that is HSN2 (Ch. 286). Both the SD satellite feed (Ch.226) and the HD streaming feed (ch. 286) are currently in SD. Not sure why.
Personally, I wish Dish Network would make more SD channels streaming on the Hopper in HD, especially, Hallmark Family, and Oxygen. Both are currently in HD on DA, but are only available in SD on satellite. Why can't they do what they are doing with Grio, QVC2, QVC3, and maybe others I missed, in that duplicate BOTH the SD feeds on satellite and their HD streaming feeds and have them embedded into the Hopper Guide? For example, Grio is in SD on ch. 360 and is in HD via streaming on ch. 361. Thus give us the choice to watch it off via streaming in HD, or if we don't want to use internet data, then watch it in SD off satellite.