Hmm...
I can buy dtv has increased prices over the years but I don't believe they've raised them every year. In fact, I know they didn't raise them at all for the first many years as that was one of their selling points over cable who DOES raise every year and, btw, a cable company owns Voom and they raised their prices the first year. Hmm...
Either way, if dtv or Dish raise their prices they're raising their prices on a WORKING product. My point about Voom is it's not a 100% functional product. It has limitations and has a LOT of issues. If someone tried to sell me a sports car which could only drive 100mph or faster with the promise of fixing the low speed driving in the future I wouldn't buy it. Hence, a lot of people didn't buy the Voom equipment when they came out with the lease deal.
Now, if someone tried to sell me the same car on a lease with that same promise of fixing the problems I might do that. However, if they kept telling me the fixes were coming and they never came then they RAISED my price, I'd be upset. I'm upset about Voom now. I was upset with the price increase when it was announced.
We can all rationalize the whole situation anyway we want but the bottom line is Voom was a cool idea which never worked 100% as advertised and might have been a bit ahead of its time. If Voom were working the way it's supposed to be working I'd gladly pay a little extra for it. I have no problem paying for something I feel is better. Voom offers more HD than anyone but that doesn't really mean their better. They had the POTENTIAL to be better but with all of the pq issues (I complain mainly about the SD pq issues), the reboot problems, the pg taking FOREVER to download and the OTA issues they just aren't a better product...period.
I really wish they could have made it work. I'm not even saying it's Voom's fault so much (read my other posts). It's more a function of the market than it is of Voom's problems. Most people just don't give a darn about HDTV. It's cool but they want their locals and they want to have 3 million channels no matter how bad the pic looks. Oh, btw, most people don't HAVE big tvs like most of us around here. I have a 27" set in my dining room. dtv doesn't look as bad there because of how they set up their compression. dtv knows what their target audience is and have hit it on the money. I can't tell you how Voom looks on that same 27" set since I was NEVER able to get the box working! I can tell you I've NEVER had a box from dtv which didn't work. I had an LNB about 8 years ago poop out but the stbs have always worked. You can't afford these kinds of problems when you're trying to make a service like Voom work...
The Rickster