Help! Who to put the blame on?

[Dodge Ram Nut]

I use the closed captioning feature on all of my tvs exclusively for everything. Well..Lately my local Channel 5 station (CBS) tv channel...I've been having captioning problems. At most..I will not have captions for as long as 5 days total. I called the local station and asked them to "fix" it and they asked me if I was using DN. I of course said yes...they asked me to switch to Antennae and whaddaya know...captioning works. The local station said it was Dish with the problem. I belived that and called Dish.
Well tech support submitted a Uncommon Error report...and within an hour after submitting it to their NETENG...the captioning was fixed. That proved to me it was obviously their problem. Well...throughout a couple of months...the captioning thing started again...I went through all over again what I previously stated. Fixed. Now..the 3rd time I called Dish...now they're saying its the local station whose at fault. I talked to level 3 tech..talked with Supervisor..talked with NETENG 1,2,3 and NETENG supvervisor. All say the same thing...its NOW the local provider's fault. Oh Brother!! They keep saying the local providers signal stinks and they have no control over it...keeping in mind every time they submit an Uncommon Error Report..the captioning gets fixed. Keep in mind...I have my relatives check and my friends check who all live locally..all have the exact same problem..so the problem is not isolated just to me.

What gives!!??!! What can I do? Im not payin money for this lil dicker game.

 

[jokeworm]

If you have captioning on your Over The Air signal - then Dish is at fault.

They can play the blame game with your CBS affiliate .. but that is not your problem - they should be speaking with your local CBS guys and working to improve the signal - not sitting in a glass house throwing stones.

I would get in touch with your local CBS guy - give him/her the number for the Dish people and tell them to figure it out and let you know when they have it working.

If your OTA signal is also lacking the captioning ... then Dish are correct - your CBS guys need to pull their finger out and get it working.

I have no idea if Dish advertises the fact that closed captioning is a "feature" that they provide .. but if they do - and if you can find the bit of the website or contract that says it is a standard feature i would ask them who you speak to about getting compensation for paying for a service that they are unable to provide.

I suspect they will have a "get-out" written in there somewhere though and you may have to walk to an alternative provider to get what you want.

One question though - if you are able to get Over-The-Air signal ... why not just hook that up and cut-out the middleman anyways ?

 

[Dodge Ram Nut]

Yah...I've been with dish almost 10 years now. I've seen it all...heard it all. Everybody loves to play the blame game and loves to sit their asses on their thumbs. Frankly..Im sick and tired of this stuff.

As far as the OTA...I can read captions just GREAT..but my signal strength is not all that good since I sorta live down in the valley you might say when measuring up where the Towers are. I use the Dish's local channels for GREAT picture..501 pvr recordings..and of course closed captioning. When I use the OTA...the picture is good, but can always be better. When the OTA has good to great picture..captioning works. When the OTA doesnt have a good picture or barely snowy picture..caption sucks. Understand where Im going with this?? Cool

Another situation that I'm steaming about is the 522. (I still have the 522..but I took it out of service due to captioning issues) I have a open thread somewhere in the far back registry of this forum about closed captioning issues that Dish refuses to resolve. My Father in law has a 522 and Im still waitin for the day Dish fixes the captioning issues. I check almost monthly with my FIL and caption issues still is the same.

Anyway..back on topic - I tried talking to the Station Manager of my local provider only to be stopped by the executive producer in which he kept repeatedly telling me that their signal is 1 and the same that they broadcast to all subscribers (satellite...cable...antennae). Im sure you know thats HOGWASH! I just wish either Dish or my local provider would CARE enough to work together and try to absolve this situation not just for me...but for everybody involved. Guess you cant have your cake and eat it some times eh? Im still relying on my trusty ol 501's (2 of em) and my 301. Both havent let me down once in all my years of owning them (8 plus years?)

 

[Claude Greiner]

It depends on how dish gets the signal from the local affiliate. Are they picking it up Analog OTA, or Digital OTA and then converting it to fiber and then sending it off the Cheyenne. Or are they getting it Via Fiber directly from the station Via Fiber?

There are plenty of things that will do it, however I wouldn't be so fast to blame Dish.

It could very well be a digital transcoder at the pop in your city that converts the signal to fiber to send to Cheyenne

 

[Jared Twomey]

i'd say almost certainly it is a problem with dish... i didnt know they were having issues with standard channel closed captioning.... i do know that in st louis though that a few of the HD locals don't have captioning working