Upgrade Letter From Dish

cpdretired

Supporting Founder
Original poster
Supporting Founder
Dec 6, 2003
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Lemont, Il.
I received a letter from Dish today dated 2 Jul. They need to upgrade an existing receiver. I have a 501 that will be replaced with a 612. This will be free of charge. There will not be any additional charges on my monthly statement. So is Dish replacing all of the SD units with HD receivers?

It looks like Dish is starting to replace the old MPEG2 receivers.
 
Hmm that seems like a good deal to me. Do you think they will phase out 322/625? Or are they MPEG4 capable?
 
So if you own your receivers, do you also own the replacement receiver they provide?

Ill bet dish wants to replace your 501 dvr with a 612 so they can collect the dvr fee of $6 a month. or will you be grandfathered into free dvr for life?

Another thing that is funny is dish is still cracking out and actively promoting/installing (in WA) 512, 522, 625, 311, 322 all current MPEG2 only models, albeit 8PSK capable.

Better hold onto that letter and put it in a safety deposit box, because you never know with dish what they will try to pull further down the line!
 
Howdy,

I also received the letter in the Minneapolis, Mn area.

I have a 722, 4900 and 510D receiver.

Would you assume the 4900 and 510D recievers would both be replaced as they are the old MPEG-2 technology?

Are all the receivers being replaced by the same 612?

Thanks!
 
I doubt they will give you a DVR for the 4900, but who knows? There is not a lot of logic involved, it seems. Maybe a ViP211. Maybe. That's a really old receiver. Maybe you'd be happier if they gave you one ViP722 to replace the 4900 & the 510. Then you could use TV2 to feed one of the TVs, and benefit from the better box. Haven't heard a lot of good news about the ViP612.
 
It would be helpful if anyone receiving these letters could post owned/leased and what programming they sub to. Any premiums, internationals, core, local market.
 
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I'm a AEP sub with a 510/622/722. It'll be interesting to see if they are ready to let me pass the 4 tuner rule on leased receivers.

Also, since the 612 is a dual tuner some people are going to need a service call for switch upgrades.
 
I'm sure the main thing Dish is doing is getting rid of all Mpeg2 stuff as MPeg 4 is more bandwidth friendly. More bang for the current bandwidth, less bandwidth for equal quality.
 
It would be helpful if anyone receiving these letters could post owned/leased and what programming they sub to. Any premiums, internationals, core, local market.

America's 250, Platinum, HBO & Showtime. I have been with Dish for eight years.
 
What arc is the OP looking at? I don't want to assume as there are some hybrid arcs out there.

Also, for us in the WA, I think Dish's original plans was to upgrade everyone to 8PSK, not MPEG4--cheaper. The MPEG4 upgrade was to come later. However, I no longer know what Dish's plans are regarding 8PSK or MPEG4. Could Scott chime in with what he knows as of today?
 
The Dish installer arrived this morning to remove my 501. He installed a 612 and a turbo dish with new LNB's. I am on the western arc which is MPEG 2 & 4. The eastern arc is MPEG4. He explained that Dish is starting to replace the SD receivers. Possibly they are replacing the DVRs first The reason is that the old SD TV's are a thing of the past.

From my first post. This is in response to a letter from Dish. There was no charge for todays service or additional charges to the monthly bill.
 
The 501 did not have a dvr fee, the 612 does, unless you got something in writing then, I like to get everything in writng via an online chat, that way if they promised you no dvr fee on a 612 you would have the proof you need to enforce it on the DDDCs!

Also was your 501 owned? If so did you get to keep it to sell, and is the replacement now going to be marked on your account as purchased or leased? All interesting questions to find out. I bet they will pull the old switcharoo and replace everybodies owned with lease, whats funny is you can now own the 612 twin tuner for recording for around $150. I recommend everybody that owned, go ahead and do the replacement with the lease they are offering, then sell your old box while there is still time and use the money toward the purchase of a new MPEG4 box (same model as the lease replacement they just gave you) then turn in your lease and put the owned box on your account.

I think that if you owned they should be forced to replace with a new owned box, if they can't make a cheaper MPEG4 box for SD then that should be dishes problem, basically they could make a 644 which would be a 625 that could do MPEG4 SD downconversion and a 422 a 322 with a MPEG4 tuner, a 401 to replace the millions of 301+311 (or even earlier models) still in use. If a $40 CECB can output HD down to SD then dish should make some cheaper boxes for the onwed conversion issue.
If they made a decent inexpensive box everydody would probably foot the bill themselves just to get a new faster box.
 
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the upgrade makes sense, but why there heck are they still putting non-mpeg4 receivers into people's homes ?

That, my son, is a question we have been asking for years. Doesn't seem to make long run economic sense. :what
 
Makes perfect sense for the bean counters if you can dump a bunch of obsolete hardware into the market place and commit those people you just dumped on into 24 month terms then get them when they contact you for free HD upgrade into a second extended term.

That is why I will not enter a commitment with either provider, I wish both directv and dish would go back to the beginning and just sell the hardware outright and give people 36 month replacement warrenties on the equipment, this business of people gameing the system to get 10 receivers and every possible dish config is ridulous, have you seen the thread in the directv forum? Some dude ordered international, spanish, and HD with 9 receivers just so he could get the latest and greatest 2 dish install with a 16 way switch and 9 tuners, then he admitted that he was going to call in and drop all the extra stuff after one month just to keep the dishes and switcher with 3 tuners, I have been a sub to both companies for 10-15 years now and think that $100 a month for tv is just ridulous, I have to believe that long time steady account subs like myself are paying for all these gamers, If somebody wants all this stuff installed let them pay upfront. This whole lease deal is a racket, the same reason I go with prepaid cell service. People are getting scammed, the biggest scam is service plan $15 a month, in 6 months that equals $90 and for $90 you could just about buy a new 211 or 222 with a 1 year upon activation warrenty. So in a whole year if you save your $15 x 12 months thats a $180 and you could buy a 612 or almost a 722 and get a one year warrenty. Its a racket, I say!
 
I received a letter about a week ago from Dish. Didn't read it, toss it in the round folder. Thought it was a sales pitch but I already have Dish so it was pitched. Maybe Imissed something
 
Makes perfect sense for the bean counters if you can dump a bunch of obsolete hardware into the market place and commit those people you just dumped on into 24 month terms then get them when they contact you for free HD upgrade into a second extended term.

That is why I will not enter a commitment with either provider, I wish both directv and dish would go back to the beginning and just sell the hardware outright and give people 36 month replacement warrenties on the equipment, this business of people gameing the system to get 10 receivers and every possible dish config is ridulous, have you seen the thread in the directv forum? Some dude ordered international, spanish, and HD with 9 receivers just so he could get the latest and greatest 2 dish install with a 16 way switch and 9 tuners, then he admitted that he was going to call in and drop all the extra stuff after one month just to keep the dishes and switcher with 3 tuners, I have been a sub to both companies for 10-15 years now and think that $100 a month for tv is just ridulous, I have to believe that long time steady account subs like myself are paying for all these gamers, If somebody wants all this stuff installed let them pay upfront. This whole lease deal is a racket, the same reason I go with prepaid cell service. People are getting scammed, the biggest scam is service plan $15 a month, in 6 months that equals $90 and for $90 you could just about buy a new 211 or 222 with a 1 year upon activation warrenty. So in a whole year if you save your $15 x 12 months thats a $180 and you could buy a 612 or almost a 722 and get a one year warrenty. Its a racket, I say!

Yada, yada, yada.... The service plan is $6 a month, not $15 as you wrote. Yeah, it's still $72 a year, but it damned sure isn't $180.....
 
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