Permanent HD for RSNs?

[silvanthalas]

Is there any hope for Dish getting HD permanently for all RSNs? Or is it a lost cause?

My wife is an avid Avalanche fan, and she's getting pissed with the fact that she's constantly having to watch the first half hour to hour of a game in SD, because it's JIP for the HD.

Altitude doesn't seem to be at fault, as in scrolling through the listings, this is happening to other games on other RSNs. We don't recall this being an issue last season.

 

[king3pj]

I find that to be really annoying too. We recently switched from directv which had full time HD for fox sports detroit. Now we have to watch a lot of post game shows and things like that in SD.

My dad is old and isn't very tech savy but he is getting used to the dish network interface. The problem he has is that he just likes to type the number in on the remote like he used to with cable. Dish automatically goes to the HD channel number which is a feature he really likes because remembering 2 channel numbers for each channel is annoying. However, this feature becomes a problem for him when he tries to type 430 to get to fox sports detroit to watch a college basketball game or pregame show and all he gets is a dish logo.

I even find my self accidentally doing this before I realize I have to go to a HD alternate to find the game, but its not that big of a deal. For my dad it is though. He can never understand why the game he wants to watch on fox sports detroit doesn't come on when he puts the number in for fox sports detroit.

 

[redelephants]

The whole JIP is pretty dang ridiculous if you ask me. Any other providers doing this crap with JIP hd games?

 

[king3pj]

I can tell you for sure that for at least FSN Detroit that the JIP thing has never happened to me on directv, charter cable, or comcast cable. They all carry the HD channel 24 hours a day. So far I really like my new dish service. This has really been the only problem we have had with it.

 

[Joe The Dragon]

Get Directv I was able to see the blackhawks kick you ass in HD on CSN Chicago hd

D* has Altitude HD and just about all other RSN in HD 24/7 most of part time ones are the FSN sub feeds and they show the games in HD for the full game.

 

[mike123abc]

Dish is hurting for bandwidth on the Western Arc right now, so it is probably going to be a while before they go 24/7. It has been reported that Dish plans to convert the Western Arc to 8PSK (not mpeg4) which will free up bandwidth. Only then do I suspect they will be able to do 24/7 RSNs.

 

[cosmo_kramer]

Dish is hurting for bandwidth on the Western Arc right now, so it is probably going to be a while before they go 24/7. It has been reported that Dish plans to convert the Western Arc to 8PSK (not mpeg4) which will free up bandwidth. Only then do I suspect they will be able to do 24/7 RSNs.

They could always start with the EA ones, for now...

 

[Bobby]

Well, yeah they could. But then we'll have a bitching session here about how the West Coasters are paying the same amount of money and getting less than their eastern counterparts. It's a no win situation.

 

[mike123abc]

They could always start with the EA ones, for now...

That would cause a riot. Think of all the markets that are mixed EA/WA. Dish has to pretty much keep the arcs identical to avoid everyone calling in to get switched back and forth as they add channels. The best thing about EA is that they made it MPEG-4 to start with so at least it has plenty of capacity.

What Dish could do to help relieve some of the RSN pressure is to take the top RSNs (i.e. ones with most subs) and just make them 24/7 on other transponders. Then the other RSNs would at least have less competition fighting over the temp HD slots. They would probably still have JIP issues, just a lot fewer if say 4 went 24/7 and were worked in around the system.

But, that would also mean that 4 fewer national HD slots would be available.

 

[cosmo_kramer]

Jeez, that's why I put the little winking guy there.

But, AK & HI subs had to suffer with less HD for a while, didn't they??

 

[redelephants]

Well, yeah they could. But then we'll have a bitching session here about how the West Coasters are paying the same amount of money and getting less than their eastern counterparts. It's a no win situation.

Didn't that already happen with the last bunch of HD additions?

 

[Bobby]

Well, yeah they could. But then we'll have a bitching session here about how the West Coasters are paying the same amount of money and getting less than their eastern counterparts. It's a no win situation.

Didn't that already happen with the last bunch of HD additions?

Only to those with hybrid dish setups. If you were eastern or western arc everyone got all the HD channels. Except, of course, Alaska and Hawaii who are a whole different breed.

 

[goaliebob99]

Dish has been fully aware of this situation, and that's the only reason why I don't sub to dish. Other suggestions such as putting them on spot beams have been ignored by dish. Unfortunately the only way to get this situation resolved is to move on to a different provider. I said this about 9 months ago that dish could have become the Number 1 DBS provider by simply adding full time HD RSN's as it makes their package attractive, as people are now able to see that local sports programming they love in HD. Sence then, dish has taken 10 steps backwards as they have lost programming instead of gaining programming.

In my area, every provider minus dish (uverse, comcast, directv,) all offer full time HD rsn's without any questions asked. Dish is the only provider to do a JIP. Comcast now has more national HD,and sports programming in HD than what dish has. Its sad to see Dish become a third rate provider, but that's what they have become.

 

[silvanthalas]

Get Directv I was able to see the blackhawks kick you ass in HD on CSN Chicago hd

I'm a Blackhawks fan myself. So, whatever.

And I'm not interested in DirecTV; Dish has a lot of lawsuits against them, but at least they're not coming from the customers.

In the end, if I drop Dish, I'm probably done with TV altogether.

 

[Tampa8]

It is possible the dropping of AAD distant HD's is for this reason ...........just my thoughts, nothing concrete from Dish about it...

 

[DishSubLA]

Dish has never even attempted to be the sports leader and all those premium sports services--NFLST, MLBEI, in particular--are not at the center of its core competitive strategy. Everyone knows, and even Charlie as advised some people to consider DirecTV for the NFLST, that DirecTV is sports king and Dish doing it best to get buy with sports as it is EXTREMELY expensive.

Contrary to K9SAT, the fact that Dish has grown exponentially from its beginnings with its limited sports offerings compared to all its competition and problems with JIP, rising from nothing to what it is today is phenomenal and proves that Dish's strategy not to go bankrupt (Dish hasn't the deep pockets of its competition) ever making a serious bid for NFLST (Dish has referred to it as No Funds Left) or opting to NOT pay the ransom for MLBEI (specifically the MLB network that is required if the MVPD wants MLBEI), and go out of business shows that an MVPD doesn't necessary need the most expensive sports services to be extremely successful. Dish continues to add subscribers and steal them from cable and DirecTV even with Dish's "3rd rate" sports offerings. Dish's biggest problem from competitors isn't the sports offerings, but simply the competitive pricing and savings from bundled services the cable and telcos can provide.

Dish is in no more danger of going out of business tomorrow than any of the other MVPD's because of sports offerings. For some, sports offerings are the deal breaker, but for MOST, it is still price, value, quality of service, technology, and core sports offerings such as ESPN and an RSN. Dish would like to have those most expensive of sports services, but it has proven LONG AGO, that it doesn't need it.

In fact, Dish's biggest threat comes from within in the form of quality of customer service and the loss of subscribers last year was a painful affirmation that it is lousy service that will lose customers not the premium sports offerings, for they had significant gain in customers after fixing their customer service problems, which did not include a single of the often cited premium sports services nor 24/7 RSN's. Your doing fine Charlie as I don't wish to subsidize the premium sports services that I'll never watch just so those who want it can watch.

I would love to see 24/7 RSN's ASAP because it should be done since Dish offers them in SD and a lot of games are in HD. But the extra cash for the premium MLBIE (NFLST is exclusive to one service--DirectTV--but that can change), no thanks.

 

[tomcrown1]

Dish will have full time rsn hd due to the fact that sd feeds will be drying up. Has anyone noticed that on some of the sd channels
the pictures have been cut off due to dish down converting the hd feed to sd. I would guess that like the old black and white days sd will soon be gone.

 

[MikeD-C05]

GOD I hope so. I am so tired of SD channels and black bars on either side of my picture and sometimes all 4 sides of the picture.

 

[Tampa8]

Dish has never even attempted to be the sports leader and all those premium sports services--NFLST, MLBEI, in particular--are not at the center of its core competitive strategy. Everyone knows, and even Charlie as advised some people to consider DirecTV for the NFLST, that DirecTV is sports king and Dish doing it best to get buy with sports as it is EXTREMELY expensive.

Contrary to K9SAT, the fact that Dish has grown exponentially from its beginnings with its limited sports offerings compared to all its competition and problems with JIP, rising from nothing to what it is today is phenomenal and proves that Dish's strategy not to go bankrupt (Dish hasn't the deep pockets of its competition) ever making a serious bid for NFLST (Dish has referred to it as No Funds Left) or opting to NOT pay the ransom for MLBEI (specifically the MLB network that is required if the MVPD wants MLBEI), and go out of business shows that an MVPD doesn't necessary need the most expensive sports services to be extremely successful. Dish continues to add subscribers and steal them from cable and DirecTV even with Dish's "3rd rate" sports offerings. Dish's biggest problem from competitors isn't the sports offerings, but simply the competitive pricing and savings from bundled services the cable and telcos can provide.

Dish is in no more danger of going out of business tomorrow than any of the other MVPD's because of sports offerings. For some, sports offerings are the deal breaker, but for MOST, it is still price, value, quality of service, technology, and core sports offerings such as ESPN and an RSN. Dish would like to have those most expensive of sports services, but it has proven LONG AGO, that it doesn't need it.

In fact, Dish's biggest threat comes from within in the form of quality of customer service and the loss of subscribers last year was a painful affirmation that it is lousy service that will lose customers not the premium sports offerings, for they had significant gain in customers after fixing their customer service problems, which did not include a single of the often cited premium sports services nor 24/7 RSN's. Your doing fine Charlie as I don't wish to subsidize the premium sports services that I'll never watch just so those who want it can watch.

I would love to see 24/7 RSN's ASAP because it should be done since Dish offers them in SD and a lot of games are in HD. But the extra cash for the premium MLBIE (NFLST is exclusive to one service--DirectTV--but that can change), no thanks.

Very well said. I and I AM a sports fan, might subscribe to MLBEI if Dish had it, yet have never considered switching just over the missing premium sports. I do wish every Red Sox game was in HD, by far most are, but again, with all the things I like about Dish I don't find this a major problem.
I also agree Dish really has to work on CS etc... and the rest will be fine. Funny that not only posters here, but Charlie himself has said in the past for those services there are other providers.....

 

[inazsully]

I think that most of the sports fans/Dish subs, would be quite content to just have the RSN's in HD 24/7. The big premium sports packages are one thing but the local RSN's are whole other thing. We've all seen the why no 24/7 question and we all know the stock answer (Not enough bandwidth). We've seen the spot beam suggestion. So here is a more pointed question or two. Why does "D" and Comcast and Cox etc have enough band width and "E" does not? What is a spot beam and why does "E" not want to use this method?