You have GOT to be kidding!!!!
First of all, the "lost money" argument holds no water - period. DON'T compare it to Tivo or cable providers, as they actually provide interactive and updated information which is truly a "service". Dish provides absolutely nothing that is not built into the hardware - period. It is unethical, and frankly should be considered criminal. No argument and no discussion at all.
Second, I'm not ticked off because of MPE4. I'm ticked off because my 921 was/is a piece of crap. It is absolutely the most unreliable, worst supported consumer electronics product I've seen in the past five years at a minimum. It CONSTANTLY requires reboots, and frequently does not record what it's supposed to record. It's a great idea with deplorable execution and delivery. A year is far more than enough time to at least make it reliable. NBR would be great, but not necessary for me. Reliability is necessary without question.
Third, saying people are lazy is equally ridiculous. They are a company who provides a service, and must provide adequate customer service. People are not all lazy. It's not an excuse. Their support has declined remarkably over the past 18 months to the point that it has been completely worthless to me. Every single call has to be escalated, and is often not resolved. I have to make reps read back to me what they are entering into the system because they so frequently don't enter any remarks. LAZINESS DOESN'T EXPALAIN THE RIDICULOUS HOLD TIMES!
Fourth, I could care less about the rate increases, so long as they are competitive, providing good quality service and growing. To me, they are providing none of the above.
Finally, and the one remark you've made that really gets me hot is your premise that the lack of quality in their receivers is OK because "they are computers". Bullcrap - pure and simple. They are NOT personal computers. You have NO ability to add applications, modify the operating system, change operating parameters, use it in a mobile or "hostile" environment, physically add new/different components, etc, etc, etc. They have COMPLETE control of ALL variables in their system. Frankly, you are making the uneducated correlation that all computers should have the same problems as all "personal computers". Would you accept it if your car only ran correctly 90% of the time? How about if it randomly shut down when you drove down the interstate? Or, maybe if the air bags randomly activated every week or two? Or, maybe it would be OK if your microwave operated correctly 90% of the time. How about your thermostat in your home furnace? Those are operated by computers too. The difference is that Dish has AT LEAST as much control over their entire system as any of the previous examples - except personal computers.
As for the follow-on comment that BFG made, he is clearly in the minority. Most of us DO care about HD networks and premiums. If there are only two more channels that are important to HD, then why the heck does E* or anyone else have the multitude of other channels? To be clear - I want EVERYTHING it HD at some point. Not today, certainly, or even this year. But, I want the Networks in HD NOW! Just like with cable.
Just so you know, I voted with my wallet. I've got 2 508's and a 510 that I own outright that are now sitting idle, have a 921 that I bought outright and am waiting for the return shipping boxes to arrive from Dish, and installed Adelphia cable last week. Though there are things about the SA8300HD that I don't like, it works right every time, never requires a reboot, gives me a LOT more HD content including major local networks, is cheaper, requires no contract, does not make my $500+ new receiver obsolete in a year, allows me to have more TVs, dual tuners in everything, better customer service and support, and frankly even the analog channels from Adelphia look pretty much as good as the SD channels from Dish because they are not being excessively compressed. Dish, on the other hand provided me with higher costs, VOD fees that provide no value, no HD Locals, no new HD content scheduled for the upcoming year of any value, a receiver that was declared end of life before it was delivered, extremely long hold times for customer service that ultimately can't fix the problems, a completely unreliable receiver that hasn't been able to be fixed over the past year, single tuners in my other 3 DVRs.
Now, what part of that diatribe is hard to understand?
ClarusWorks said:
Dish Network really is trying to keep quality products and services. I agree that the $5 DVR fee is ridiculous. Originally, with the 501/508 they didn't charge the DVR fee, but they brought it in with the 510 because everyone else had DVR fees, so they saw it as 'lost money.'
As for the 921 (or any other DISH receiver) being software-upgradeable to MPEG 4, it's not happening. It can't happen. The MPEG decoder is a hardware chip, and IIRC it's soldered on. An MPEG 4 upgrade would involve 3 elements: A.) Hoping that Broadcom uses the same pinout on the MPEG 4 decoder. B.) Changing the chip, requiring the box to be sent in. C.) New Software. I know most of the people here know this, but for the people who author whiny posts without studying up on their subject material, here ya go.
Tech support's not perfect, I'll admit that, but the problem is, it's hard to get good employees. People are generally lazy.
Rate Increases: Most Programmers demand more $ every chance they get, DISH can't just eat all those losses, some of it has to be passed on, or the company loses $, and if you lose $, you lose stockholders, causing more loss of $, putting you on the road to bankruptcy.
Yeah, I know the software has bugs, but my old RCA DirecTV hardware was just as obnoxious, and the receivers are, after all, computers, and we all know how computers can be.
Just my 2 cents worth.
