Dish Network Launches More National HD Channels (1 Viewer)

[Goko]

Read the good news boys:
DISH Network Corporation - DISH Network Charges Forward With Another Round of National HD Channel Launches

 

[Brent M]

Thank you for the heads up. I didn't even know we were getting all these new channels until you posted this. Thanks again!!!

 

[Robert Crawford]

Dish had to do something as DirecTV has up the ante when it came to HD channels.






Crawdaddy

 

[Brent M]

Even though it took a little longer to get these channels, now the line-ups from Dish and DirecTV are pretty comparable.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Not for long, DirecTV has a new satallite in orbit that will be coming on line sometime in the next couple of months.

 

[Joe Bernardi]

... and the following day, removes 10 of the 15 Voom channels.

They removed Filmfest and Voom Movies, but kept Kung Fu. Go figure.

 

[Brent M]

Well, to be fair, most of those Voom channels were a waste of bandwidth anyway. I'm just glad they kept Rave and Equator as those were the only ones I ever watched anyway.

 

[Joe Bernardi]

Dish removed the last five Voom channels.
This may be a ploy by Dish to get Voom to spend money on new programming instead of the constant repeats, and perhaps to compress the best of the 15 channels into ffewer channels.

 

[RAF]

I was not aware, until I read this, that the VOOM channels are no longer on Dish. That's a shame, because I really enjoyed several of these channels. They were repetitive, of course, but there was enough content to pique my interest.

And to me this constant numbers game between Dish and DirecTV for King of the Hill status in the number of stations is really a non-issue. Once you get over 50 or so HD channels you are probably saturating the marketplace (unless a particular channel is not available on one service). Both companies have a larger number of true HD offerings (I don't count "on-demand" individual offerings as real channels as cable does when inflating their HD channel numbers in a rather shady move in my opinion). What really counts for me to differentiate the two Satellite services (I've had them both) is the quality of their signal, the capability of their HD DVR boxes and the customer support. In that regard I rate Dish light years ahead of DirecTV on all counts based on personal experience.

Of course, if you must have the NFL package, then you are limited to DirecTV. Otherwise - no contest in my eyes.

 

[Goko]

I sure hope your right. As it stands now and strickly speaking as an HD movie fan, I think the subscribers lost on this go round. Sure, we gained MGM but lost the VOOM channels Monster and FilmFest. Not a good exhange IMO.

 

[RolandL]

They don't have YES either.

 

[Stephen PI]

Here's a link to a petition to bring MonstersHD / VOOM back.
Dish Network: Bring Back MonstersHD! Petition

 

[RAF]

Yes, that's a fact that I am painfully aware of. I actually added a single DirecTV installation to my system for quite a few years just to get YES. It was costing me over $500 a year for what was essentially one channel of (quite poor) service. Not only did I find DirecTV support and equipment inferior to Dish in this regard but I couldn't even get DirecTV in HD (even though I have a clear path for all the Dish channels, HD and SD.) When I speak about the great difference in Dish and DirecTV I do so from personal experience.

As a followup - when Verizon FIOS-TV came to my neighborhood a few months ago I jumped on the chance to drop DirecTV and add a basic FIOS-TV installation. Not only does it work out to about $10 per month less than I was paying for a bare bones SD DirecTV offering (just to get YES) but the FIOS TV also comes with an HD PVR and, of course, YES is in HD. I still have no intention of dropping Dish for FIOS-TV entirely because (1) At this point FIOS-TV can't compete with HD offerings from either satellite service and (2) The FIOS-TV HD PVR (a Motorola box that I hear is comparable to some cable HD PVRs) is absolutely no match for the Dish ViP 622 and 722 in terms of convenience, flexibility, storage, performance, etc, etc, etc.

Charlie Ergen is making some programming decisions recently that open him up to a lot of criticism. At this point his strong suit is technology and overall user experience (if you are in a position to receive Dish signals). If he continues to push things, however, eventually other services will catch up in the technological areas and he might lose some of us long timer "power" users.

My 2 cents.