2015 Dish Price Increase

[Yespage]

AT&T won't stop sending me emails about why I should switch to Uverse TV. Starting at just $20 or $30 a month. Oh, you want to watch channels? That'll be extra... so will HD... and a DVR... but you want to be able to watch two televisions... oh goody! That's also a big extra. We'll give you a gift card... err... maybe.

Do I save because I have internet and phone as well. *laughs* Here, have another gift card... if we mail it.

 

[ChadT41]

AT&T won't stop sending me emails about why I should switch to Uverse TV. Starting at just $20 or $30 a month. Oh, you want to watch channels? That'll be extra... so will HD... and a DVR... but you want to be able to watch two televisions... oh goody! That's also a big extra. We'll give you a gift card... err... maybe.

Do I save because I have internet and phone as well. *laughs* Here, have another gift card... if we mail it.

This one made me chuckle

 

[Scherrman]

I don't know if it was just U-Verse in the Houston area but when I saw my brother's and his brother-in-law's U-Verse I thought the picture quality was terrible. Everything was so grainy and looked very compressed. If it was a still picture it was fantastic but anything with motion was terrible.

 

[king3pj]

If I ever added back pay TV at this point it would be Charter. One of the main reasons is because I refuse to ever sign a TV contract again unless things drastically change. They are too one sided with providers being able to raise prices or remove channels at any time without letting you leave.

The other big reason is that I would no longer have equipment fees outside of the $2 cable card. I built a nice 4 tuner PC to use as an OTA DVR and I"m perfectly happy with it. The Windows Media Center UI is nice, I still get 14 days of guide data, and there are no fees involved.

I don't miss pay TV but I have considered taking advantage of Charter's promo pricing for a year. I currently pay $45 per month for 60Mbps internet only. Their current promo offer I was just offered over the phone a couple days ago said they would knock my internet back down to $29.99 and add TV for $29.99 for a total of $60.

For $15 I don't really care how great the package is as long as it includes Fox Sports Detroit. Everything else will be gravy. If that offer is still available around March I might subscribe for baseball season to get my RSN instead of paying for MLB.tv again this year. When the season is over I will cancel long before the promo pricing runs out.

 

[Yespage]

I don't know if it was just U-Verse in the Houston area but when I saw my brother's and his brother-in-law's U-Verse I thought the picture quality was terrible. Everything was so grainy and looked very compressed. If it was a still picture it was fantastic but anything with motion was terrible.

Sounds like that'd work in Cleveland. The Browns aren't going anywhere!

 

[Scherrman]

Sounds like that'd work in Cleveland. The Browns aren't going anywhere!

But they have Johnny Football now. He's the greatest player ever and the answer to everyone's problems.

 

[mitchflorida]

AT&T won't stop sending me emails about why I should switch to Uverse TV. Starting at just $20 or $30 a month. Oh, you want to watch channels? That'll be extra... so will HD... and a DVR... but you want to be able to watch two televisions... oh goody! That's also a big extra. We'll give you a gift card... err... maybe.

Do I save because I have internet and phone as well. *laughs* Here, have another gift card... if we mail it.

I am going to have U-verse installed on Monday. Only $56 a month including HD and one DVR receiver and U200. They will also give me a big Visa Gift Card. I do have to purchase a Slingbox M100 at my own expense, but will still have more than $100 left over. I am an existing Uverse Internet customer so there is no two-year contract. U-verse has got to be loving this Dish-Fox News dispute! lol

 

[ChadT41]

Charlie is a genius. Leaving his company, and you still are willing to give him money Mitch

 

[Scherrman]

I am going to have U-verse installed on Monday. Only $56 a month including HD and one DVR receiver and U200. They will also give me a big Visa Gift Card. I do have to purchase a Slingbox M100 at my own expense, but will still have more than $100 left over. I am an existing Uverse Internet customer so there is no two-year contract. U-verse has got to be loving this Dish-Fox News dispute! lol

Haven't heard one of my customers say anything about the Fox News dispute. I never would have known there was a dispute unless I saw it here myself. This has just as much importance as the Turner dispute, which was none.

 

[Yespage]

I am going to have U-verse installed on Monday. Only $56 a month including HD and one DVR receiver and U200. They will also give me a big Visa Gift Card. I do have to purchase a Slingbox M100 at my own expense, but will still have more than $100 left over. I am an existing Uverse Internet customer so there is no two-year contract.

Hope you enjoy your Uverse experience. I have been happy with their Internet for a while. Though the escalating price for the same download speed is a bit flustering.

U-verse has got to be loving this Dish-Fox News dispute!

Got to wonder if they even know about it.

lol

Indeed.

 

[harshness]

Yes, but their price blows Dish out of the water.

It has been quite amusing to watch the carriers shift their pricing models back and forth between programming and hardware. I think DISH has reached sort of an equilibrium but DIRECTV may still be subsidizing the hardware in their programming costs and that's where cable is landing the most punches these days.

 

[Michael Nixon]

They key will be if the cable operator and TiVo can get together on a replacement for CableCard that could become a much bigger issue after the sunset of the integration ban. If that can't be worked out, you have some research to do. TiVo talks a lot today about engaging the various carriers on the next generation schemes.

If I were playing devil's advocate, I would suggest that cable is raising their prices now in anticipation of offing CableCard and TiVo users having to revert to using the leased technology.

Or you could tell cable companies to get lost and go 100% OTA and streaming ;-) and save a hole lot of money

 

[Michael Nixon]

I know this isn't directly tied to the price increase, but I agree. It may be 5 years, 10 years...but at some point, people will look back and say "Wait, you mean broadcasters used to put shows on at a certain time, and people used to have to tune in on that schedule to see the shows? How odd!" We're probably more than halfway to that now. Excluded, of course, will be live broadcasts of things like sports, and breaking news.

Or, wait, you mean you only had one cable TV supplier in your town? Isn't that a monopoly?

 

[TheForce]

My favorite part about Dish is the 722K with sling and ext HD plus 2 OTA tuners.

The programming is OK, but I generally only watch Science, Discovery, History channels and CNBC. Never watch CNN so I didn't miss it when it went black. I tune into FoxB at times but since Dish took it down, I fell they should give me a refund. Instead, they want to charge me an increase for taking programming away.

Then I see this CEO, Joe Clayton, come on and over and over tell me FOX hacked into Dish and took the channel down? Is he serious? How insulting! Fox never took that channel down, Dish took their own channel down that carried Fox News and Fox Business. If Fox somehow did break into Dish's uplink center and sabotage the channels, taking their programming off without Dish's permission, then let Dish complain to the FCC and FBI. The truth is, and Clayton knows this, Dish pulled the channel off to coerce Fox into negotiating a lower cost deal for their programming. I recall Charlie never lied about these negotiations. He always told us like it was, that there was a dispute on price and Dish and he wanted the better fees to keep a lower subscription rate.

I suspect Joe Clayton can't say the truth, because the timing of the Fox negotiation is right when he wants to raise our rates. Therefore he lies to use claiming Fox came in and shut the channels down.
This way, regardless of how the dispute is settled, and I'm sure it will be settled, Joe Clayton can have his big fat rate increase and when people say anything he can blame Fox, CNN and the other provider networks for the increase.

Fact is, Dish Network is doing very well as a profitable company. In the last 1.5 years the company's stock is up 110% Does Dish really need the rate increase? I don't think so. They will impose it only because the competition is just a bit more expensive and they know it.

A good sign that a company is considerate of it's customers and it's share holders is, the company doesn't lie to it's customers, and returns some of it's earnings to it's shareholders.

When Charlie was CEO, Dish paid a quarterly dividend and had an annual special dividend as well. When this CEO, Joe Clayton took over, we see the dividend cut to zero! Rate increases on customers backed by outright lies such as this one on TV running right now, frequent popular channel blackouts and then blaming the cause on the vendor. Yet, profits were up despite a loss of 12,000 subscribers per month as reported by one news service during the last quarter.

 

[TheForce]

Or, wait, you mean you only had one cable TV supplier in your town? Isn't that a monopoly?

Local laws can define a cable TV company as a Utility and therefore it not be considered a monopoly, same as the power company, water and sewer. Here in Florida it is done both ways. SDome communities have several competing cable companies but our county is just Comcast by city contract.

 

[MikeD-C05]

Or, wait, you mean you only had one cable TV supplier in your town? Isn't that a monopoly?

Most small towns and small communities only have one cable company . In my area it is Time Warner Cable. Years ago we did have a second cable company called Tele Media ,but TWC bought them out . If it weren't for satellite tv ,cable would have had no competition for the last 20 years.

 

[harshness]

Local laws can define a cable TV company as a Utility and therefore it not be considered a monopoly, same as the power company, water and sewer.

It is considered a "regulated monopoly". Monopoly is an ugly word so they use "franchise" instead.

 

[empiretc]

Local laws can define a cable TV company as a Utility and therefore it not be considered a monopoly, same as the power company, water and sewer. Here in Florida it is done both ways. SDome communities have several competing cable companies but our county is just Comcast by city contract.

Correct, which is why a lot of people get it free these days.

 

[Hall]

In the case of these type of "monopolies", they have good and bad points. I know the agreement that the city of Dayton has with Time Warner requires them to, among other things, not deny service to anyone within the city limits (you know how you hear about people who live where there are no cable lines and the cableco wants tens of thousands to extend the line ?), free service is provided to all schools inside the city, they must offer a low-cost package (it was called "Lifeline" here and was $10/mo - before the days of set-tops too, so it really was $10 plus taxes), etc. Plus, it still did not prohibit other companies to come in and offer service. The problem is, they'd have to invest a lot of money and hope people signed up. First thing the "incumbent" cableco would do is drop their rates though and most people would end up staying....

 

[harshness]

Or you could tell cable companies to get lost and go 100% OTA and streaming ;-) and save a hole lot of money

It is one thing to talk about going OTA and saving money but it can cost much more than you might imagine if you have to start adding OTT providers to find more than a handful of hours of content.

Ask anyone with younger children whether or not their local ION or PBS carries enough children's programming to "keep the little bastards happy".