Dish Drops HD Enabling Fee

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This is great news! I would upgrade to a HD box just to have the external hard drive feature.

But you do realize that the external hard drive feature still has the $40 one time fee right? I think you do I just wanted to make sure you weren't confused.
 
It's a sign that maybe they are going to start doing all installs with MPEG-4 equipment in the near future. Eventually I can see them refusing to activate MPEG-2 equipment. I can also see them forcing people that own their equipment to lease the new MPEG-4 equipment during the swapout which will piss off a lot of people.
 
Dish can barely seem to manage a card swap, I hate to see how they manage a complete MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 box switch. But, at least I hope they immediately discontinue the MPEG-2 equipment.
 
Dish can barely seem to manage a card swap, I hate to see how they manage a complete MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 box switch. But, at least I hope they immediately discontinue the MPEG-2 equipment.

Now that's funny, but oh so true. :haha
 
Its nice to post some good news about Dish Network!

Just got word that as of April 7th Dish Network has dropped the $5 a month HD Enabling fee down to $0!

Customers who had ViP MPEG4 receivers but did not subscribe to HD packages had to pay this $5 a month fee to watch HD locals and HD premium channels.

Its great to see this fee go away... Now only if they got rid of the Per DVR fee... :D
They had to pay $5 even if they did not sub to a HD package? :confused: What kind of stupid fee was that?
 
They had to pay $5 even if they did not sub to a HD package? :confused: What kind of stupid fee was that?
It was for customers who have have HD equipment but don't subscribe to HD programming. But paying this HD enabling fee allows your HD premium channels , If you subscibe, Plus your HD locals, Where as D* makes you subscribe to HD for $10 nomatter what if you have any leased HD equipment. So call it a stupid fee, But for $5 with Dish you could still have you prmiums and locals in HD if you chose not to spend $10 on the HD package.
 
It was for customers who have have HD equipment but don't subscribe to HD programming. But paying this HD enabling fee allows your HD premium channels , If you subscibe, Plus your HD locals, Where as D* makes you subscribe to HD for $10 nomatter what if you have any leased HD equipment. So call it a stupid fee, But for $5 with Dish you could still have you prmiums and locals in HD if you chose not to spend $10 on the HD package.
It is stupid, as many Dish subs themselves have stated. If you don't sub to premiums you are still paying $5 for a fee to get some locals in HD even if you don't want it. The fact that they do not sub to HD means that they do not care to have it, but yet Dish is forcing them to pay $5.

I will say this. Now that they have dropped this fee, they are now allowing others to view some HD channels for free. This too me is a good idea to an extent. It is great for many subs and may help Dish retain more subs.
 
It's a sign that maybe they are going to start doing all installs with MPEG-4 equipment in the near future. Eventually I can see them refusing to activate MPEG-2 equipment. I can also see them forcing people that own their equipment to lease the new MPEG-4 equipment during the swapout which will piss off a lot of people.

We as a retailer can not install anything but MPEG-4 except if it is a free for all. A big pain installing HD equipment on non HD TV's that does not have RCA jacks. and out here in the farm land these farmers hold on to their old tvs and are technology illiterate. Try to explain why their tvs can not connect easy to their VCRs and that their tv must be on say channel 65 and their other tv (tv2) is on channel 60..If only dishnetwork would put a coaxial out for tv1 on their duo HD receivers.
 
I said it before, if they would end the offensive $5.98 dvr fee PER DVR RECEIVER that they would be able to compete with DIRECTV and more subs would add more Echostar dvr receivers to existing accounts. Let the dvr advantage pack stand for a real advantage and cover ALL dvrs on that account and keep AEP as well for covering all dvrs on the account. Then DISH would have the same level playing ground as DIRECTV, PLUS they would also award subs with AEP. Even DIRECTv doesn't do that with their AEP equivalent programming pack. So high end subs would be rewarded and so would the dvr advantage customers. Echostar would sell more dvrs and they would grow and DISH subs would be more satisfied as well.

I recently had two 722 dvrs and a 622 as well on my account and I traded them in to get ONE 722k and a 211k receiver -that was turned into a dvr for the $39.99 fee. So I have dvr advantage pack and don't pay any dvr fees on either receiver. But that dvr fee made me get rid of my extra dvrs. I might of kept them all , if they had did a move to eliminate the dvr fee before. The only other thing I see giving DIRECTV the edge against DISH is the varying additional receiver /lease fees. DIRECTV has one 4.99 per extra receiver and DISH still is charging 5.00 for sd and 7.00 for hd receivers. One extra dvr receiver would run you 12.00 to keep and operate on my account. DISH is actually being penny wise and pound foolish with this approach and it is hurting both DISH and Echostar who sells the dvrs in the first place.

DIRECTV has the better approach and is very simplified in their operation. ONE dvr fee PER ACCOUNT- no matter how many you have. DVR Plus pack or hd DVR plus pack and you have NO dvr fees at all. One price for additional receivers /lease fees no matter if they are sd or hd. ONE HD tech fee for 9.99 and you get all the hd in what ever programming pack you choose from Family pack through Premeir pack. Simple and no confusion. Now eliminating the hd enabling fee is a good start , but DISH still has miles to go to compete with the easier customer friendly programming packs and fees of DIRECTV.
 
All this fee really was is a way to recoup the expense of the HD receivers over SD receivers. You either had to pay $10 to see the channels that pretty much cost Dish nothing to see the HD channels in your package, or pay a $5 fee to help cover the costs of the box. The box must be getting cheap enough for Dish to manufacture that the $5 fee is not worth having to keep SD boxes around. Now they can ditch the SD boxes and just use HD boxes.

Dish will probably start getting antsy about getting rid of older receivers. Next card update they will probably drop a few older models again like they did last update.