lawsuits against providers

[Dannymcenrow]

I,ve started reading this forum again this morning after a really long time and found only bad news. But I don't understand why nobody is thinking the obvious to sue thes edamn providers. Because I know one thing. Motorola can't shut this thing down with like 4 providers still operating because they will send these providers completely out of business and they may sue Motorola. But they're completely agreeing with Motorola to shut this business down so I think they might have gotten a CHUNK OF MONEY already. The first one of them is NPS I left them and when with programmming center that at first told me that what NPS was telling people was not true. As a matter of fact they still haven't notified me as a subscriber that my equipment may not work after dec 31 but on their webside they changed there programing to only 3 months yes they went to change that but they don't even change the channel names that has been changed from over a year ago or channels that has left C BAND. That's the reason c band is gonna die this end of this year. Because of all these stupid providers. All of them NPS skyvision,srl and programming center. WHY? Because first of all they let all the channels go the channels are on c band but they don't let us subscribe and the providers don't even try to make a deal with the channels they say ok well go then. This year alone we lost cartoon network showtime and all the D.M.X channels. OH and I forgot altitude. ESPN,ESPN2 and the DISNEY channel are still on vc2 plus mode but no all the providers are to lazy to make a contract with them so we can subscribe. SO now what's next? Well these 3 providers can finally buy a yacht and sail around the world with the boatload of money they got from MOtorola and DISH network and yes I know DIsh network has something to do with this and we stuck with our dead equipment? NO Listen This is the law. WE OWN our 4dtv receivers we don't lease them. So if they want to stop supporting them they need to do the following. 1tify us 1 year in advance that the system we're using will no longer be useless. 2:Help us get a replacement for the product that we;re using so they will have to get us Dishnetwork and even give us a few months free for the inconvinience and pay for the removel of the big C band dish. I got my dish for free. But I still had to pay over $600 to rent tools to dig it out of the ground,to rent a truck,to put it in my backyard and pay 3 guys to help me with it all. And I still haven't even got AN OFFICIAL notice from my provider saying my equipment will be useless soon. IF I"M not on this forum I won't know that they're about to shut down C band. That's a factor 2. Because in court when the judge asks where is your official statement I have none so I can even say that I didn't know that they're gonna shut down C band till I turn my tv on and find it not working. And that's against the law. When something like this happens the providers ABSOLUTELY Have to give us an official statement saying that our equipment is gonna be useless so we have time. And about skyvision. They are another lazy bum. They want to turn our 4dtv into the dsr 410 so they don't have to make deals with the other channels to get us master feeds. Yes they will continue the same way they are doing it now like yeah just give them W5 and if they want the rest tell them to get dishnetwork. I prefer they would just go away completely kill the thing and leave it dead until somebody with real business sense pick up this business and get it going again. They're just TERRIBLE. WE have so much great equipment our receivers may be old but THEY ARE HD COMPATIBLE but these providers we're to lazy to make a deal for us and get us anything in HD. ANYHOW. One last thing. I wish we could get in contact with apple computer because I think they're the ones that should take this 4dtv thing over. Because they are a big company and are experts in both hardware and software so they will figure out this Digicipher 2 technology faster then Motorola could in years and since you all want something so modern and high tech they could integrate a dc 2 receiver into their apple tv box and that way everybody would like that. And to the folks from NPS,SKYVISION,SRL,And programming center:THank you all for ruining something this great like c band dish. I never saw a business that terrible in my whole life. YOU guys are the worse business suicide people I've seen in my entire life. YOu killed this business so you could get money from dishnetwork. Thank you all for ruining everything and making people spending more money again to buy small dish stuff!!!!!!! I hope u all have a nice unemployed life!!!

 

[turbosat]

Hard to comment on a rant, but I am curious about which 'law' it's against for satellite providers to shut down home-dish owner-access? You have to remember that none of the pay-tv programming was originally intended for us anyway, we were lucky to gain access and be allowed to subscribe to the amount of channels that we once had. There were channels that never opened up to home-dish owners (though there once was MANY that did). Technology has changed, and if these companies no longer see it profitable to serve us small-timers, they won't. Subcribers in huge numbers appeal to them. Money, in other words.

 

[ikki]

Your not going to get Motorola on violating traditional laws. The entire industry would have to be reviewed by the Department of Justice for anti competitive behavior and then an administrative law judge could order changes.

The strongest argument they (The industry) have is DTV and Dish plus the local cable and telephone companies that now provide video.

In fact for the average home user you now have far more options for video delivery then you did in 1979. Its too bad the video look like s~1.

 

[harshness]

If Motorola hadn't been entirely forthcoming about the impending shutdown, you might have an argument. Unless the packagers have a contract with Motorola that promises continued service, they have no grounds to complain. If they need it bad enough, they can take it over.

It seems to me that the packagers have been misleading the subscribers by assuring them that the foretold shutdown was not going to happen.

 

[wildbill47]

The plan is to force us to a pizza dish. I like the quality of 4DTV as Dish borders on just watchable. That is the trend pay more and get less. I WILL NOT PAY FOR SERVICES I CAN GET FREE IN THE BUD.
Try to organize people for a class action will be difficult.

 

[navychop]

Your post is very difficult to read. Please break up large posts into paragraphs.

No one is required to continue a business they do not wish to engage in. Nor are they required to indemnify or even notify you or renew your subscription. You bought into this hobby at your own risk.

 

[guapoharry]

Litigate against who for what? What is the claim?

What are the damages? Who is responsible for them?

If there's any money involved, Class Action means the lawyers consume it. Then if everything went well, you might get a coupon for a discount on Pizza TV.

 

[Newbie_McNoob]

If anyone needs to get sued it's the cable and pizza dish providers. One of the things I enjoyed the most about C-band in addition to the picture quality was the ability to pick and choose the channels I wanted.
I don't want to pay for a package of 100 channels when I watch less than 15. The technology is there with pizza and digital cable to have a la catre channel authorizing, but they use the excuse "if we don't bundle the channels then nobody will buy the ones nobody wants to watch."!!! That makes no sense. If nobody wants/is watching those channels, then maybe we're better off without them.

As for the 4DTV: time has passed it by, sadly.
Newer and better compression technologies have been developed and unfortunately we never got a new consumer C-band receiver to keep up with them. You don't see anyone wanting to suit Pioneer for not still making LaserDisc discs do you?

Another part of the problem is Motorola/GI isn't the only game in town anymore. Back in the analog days just about everything was VideoCipher II. Now you have multiple encryption formats like DigiCipher II and PowerVu. No single receiver can decode both and I doubt we'll be seeing one any time soon.

 

[freezy]

The skies are still open to competition. There just isn't anybody playing the BUD market.

Problems are on the Ku side. Dish and DrcTV have been buying everything. Sat-space is becoming a monopoly also.

Now if it could be proven that there was some collusion going on...

(enter dark, cloak and dagger, under the table atmosphere)..cough..if you guys quit providing retail TV we'll ..cough cough... make it worth your effort ... cough

Then you would have something.

There just isn't a huge market of BUD folks with 4dtv boxes. Somebody would need to tend to those customers. I'm guessing there are 2000 subscribers or so in the Western Hemisphere. How much do they charge per channel? How much does the programmer charge them for reselling it? (I don't know how it works...I'm guessing again) They could sell more boxes to increase their business but only us goofballs are putting up BUDs. This hobby is way too hard to learn and cumbersome to be widely accessible.


If they would switch to Ku maybe, but then they would have issues with the big providers.

 

[Dannymcenrow]

The lawsuit is against the providers because they agree to make an equipment I own completely useless.If you sell people something that needs your support to keep it working and you stop supporting it then you render its useless so you have to provide the costumers with an alterative.If the company is going bankrupt that's another story but they are not so they chose to render our equipment useless so they're the ones who have to pay us to get something to replace our system.Like when the government decided that all OTA sttions had to switch to digital they had to give a 2 year notice and a coupon to every one who has an analog tv to go and get a converter box to watch the digital channels.If they want to stop C bad they should have notified us AT LEAST 1 year ago and maybe at least give us a coupon or something for the small dish so we at least get something not just stop it and let everybody go to hell.That has never happened before till today in the UNited states of America.So I don't care if I get a coupon or what but they have to give me something because I bought a receiver from them they they voluntarely decided to render useless.And I have to sue the provider first and maybe they can inturn sue MOtoroola but the providers must have received a lot of money already because they are so in a hurry to shut it down too.Because if the law states that we can't sue than we have a really big problem in our hands.Because that means that small dish companies can say like we only let people subscribe that has the vip 922 so everyone ith a 722 will lose it's sub and we weon't let them subscribe and everybody is gonna end up with useless equipment.Or a cable company will just say he's not gonna provide cable to anyone who has dark skin color and nobody can do anything to them.I mean it's that how it's gonna be

 

[jaray]

Face it, the 4dtv stuff is old technology and it been just limped along for awhile. Did you sign a contract when you fired up that subscription with NPS or SRL? I don't think so.

I think we're all lucky we may have some kind of c-band sub option come December 31st and that may just mean the end of using the 4dtv equipment like it used to be used.
Things change...the world must go on.

 

[truckracer]

I don't think any laws were violated and they know that a great many of us subcribers communicate on forum since there us little support in most towns for big dish maintenance and installation.

They can shut down although we don't want them to.

I do love 4dtv but time have changed. 4dtv is like a legendary entertainer...it will always be viewed back upon as legendary but new things have arrived.

I don't care for pizza dishes or their prices. Cable pretty much sucks too. I will if they let us go with w5 subs. If not-then I will be fta and ota only.

It's up to them if they want my money. I can live with it or without it. When I was a kid we had three analog snowy local channels with an elaborate stacke antenna setup. We lived in the sticks! We got along fine.

 

[freezy]

My folks had a Microsoft WebTV box. I don't recall them being compensated when they M$ decided to make that service useless? Same goes for ending support for old operating systems. If a hackers decided to continue writing malware for Windows 98, 2000 etc... that would render them useless.

I can't get film for my Kodak Colorburst instant camera nor did I get paid by anybody when Polaroid sued them for infringement.

 

[eurosport]

The argument about the equipment becoming useless is not going anywhere.
A while back, I bought a Toshiba HD-DVD player. Suddenly it was decided that the visually inferior "blue-ray" player was to become the standard, rendering the machine I had nearly useless other than a regular DVD player.
Luckily Wal-Mart had a buy-back program so I lost nothing, but 4DTV has been around nearly 20 years now... I'd like to see it continue, but if not, it was a good run. There's really no argument about anybody rendering it useless.
As for the (slightly off-topic) HD-DVD situation, I still have my Pioneer 5-disc DVD changer. There will never be a "blue-ray" in this house. Period.

 

[ZetaMale]

There are always alternatives.

 

[navychop]

.... A while back, I bought a Toshiba HD-DVD player. Suddenly it was decided that the visually inferior "blue-ray" player was to become the standard, rendering the machine I had nearly useless other than a regular DVD player.
Luckily Wal-Mart had a buy-back program so I lost nothing,...... There will never be a "blue-ray" in this house. Period.

Since we're OT, I'll respond, in case someone takes your statement at face value. Blu-ray specs were higher. What HD-DVD had going for it was that it was cheaper to manufacture. Both produced stunning pictures and greatly improved AQ. BD had greater capacity and greater potential growth. People looked ahead to improvements in 3D, etc.

I suspect you WILL have a Blu-ray player in your house one day. They're becoming so cheap, I can foresee the day that all DVD players above bargain basement will also be BD capable.

BUDs have been dying for years. Better is not always "good enough" nor is "better" well defined. Different tradeoffs will lead people to see "better" in different ways. How many active BUD owners today?

 

[wallyhts]

I bought an open box HD-DVD player from bestbuy for $70 then a few months later got a $100 gift card.

I never was a fan of cable companies but if comcast keeps 4dtv alive until all the DSR410/470 die I will be happy.

 

[navychop]

There are still a few titles coming out in HD DVD, oddly enough. Isn't it nice to be paid $30 to haul it off?

 

[wallyhts]

There are still a few titles coming out in HD DVD, oddly enough. Isn't it nice to be paid $30 to haul it off?

Yes

Plus on can pick up titles for $3-$5 bucks

 

[truckracer]

Reminds me of the beta vs VHS days.
We all thought beta tapes were better LOL