Dish on ATT Home Entertainment sucks...

[schumy]

Anybody else out here on ATT Home Entertainment's Dish service?
I live in an apartment complex (in the Bay Area) and we've got ATT/Dish MDU service. Apartments are pre-wired and we dont have a choice of provider (well i guess if you had a balcony facing in the right direction you could install your own dish).
Even though the service is termed Dish service, it's far from what regular dish subscribers get.
1. They only offer 5 HD channels (something called the "legacy HD package"). No NFL HD, no ESPN2 HD etc.
2. You dont get HD-DVRs. You either get an HD receiver or you get a SD DVR.
Apparantly a lot of this has to do with the contract ATT and Dish signed because of which programming and equiment is highly limited. I see no reason why they can't let paying subscribers access to the same content Dish provides all of its regular subscribers.
Any idea if any of this is going to change?

 

[zelig2]

Must be something weird with where you live. I'm in Ohio and have all my services through AT&T. After the next billing cycle I should have my wireless, DSL, home phone and Dish services all on one document. I've got the ViP622 HD-DVD from Dish with no restrictions on what programming I can sign up for. The reason you may be on some "legacy package" could be due to the satellite dish they have installed on the roof. It probably doesn't hit the three main satellites you need for full HD.

 

[schumy]

After speaking to the folk at AT&T I was told that this problem is specific to AT&T Home Entertainment. The receivers/DVRs etc are all controlled and a small subset of what regular Dish users get. Are you on AT&T Home Entertainment. This is different from normal AT&T Dish. AT&T Home Entertainment/Dish service is designed for MDUs (Multi-dwelling units) - typically large apartment complexes where several apartments share a single dish.
The lack of programming and subscriber receiver/dvr choice all seems to the result of some archaic agreement signed between ATT Home Entertainment and Dish.

 

[Claude Greiner]

If you have a standard satellite feed entering your apartment, then just go and buy a DISH receiver from Dishstore and activate whatever package you want!