Paradox-SJ said:
No disrespect intened...and maybe a bit of jealously as the HD LIL here is the SF Bay Area are still unwatchable especiall NBC and none of them even come close to OTA...
None taken.
I reviewed your posts throughout this entire forum and I empathize with you and your frustration.
Prior to the aforementioned events, given my limited knowledge of encoding/decoding, I would've ventured to say that a DBS provider's ability to achieve a quality equal to that of OTA would be virtually impossible. That said, given my relative remote distance from the towers and resultant unreliable OTA signal of some stations, my hopes were that quality of sat-provided HD locals would at least be
near that of OTA. When E* initially uploaded the HD locals, my hopes were all but dashed. However, I was encouraged by others on this very forum to be patient and to provide specific, time/channel/content-based feedback to the engineers by way of email:
dishquality@echostar.com.
I did just that beginning early May, I believe. My emails were met with informative reassuring responses, the content of which were not sugar-coated form letters, but rather had tones of mildly frustrated engineers striving to resolve a well-known issue. They even asked for more detail and feedback which I was happy to provide.
When I noted the dramatic improvement last night, I fired off a quick email indicating that all quality issues appeared to be resolved and that whatever they did, it worked. And I quite simply, thanked them.
Here's the kicker. Not 24 hours after that last email, I received a call on my mobile phone from Jeff McSchooler, VP of Echostar Broadcasting. He said he just wanted to personally thank me for my patience and feedback. He also mentioned something to the effect of having a long road ahead with regards to other markets.
Being on the 'bleeding edge' of technology does not come without its nicks. But down-to-earth customer service such as this makes it much more tolerable.
So to you, Paradox, I can only provide the same sage advise once given to me, which is that you be patient and provide as much constructive feedback as possible.