It Could Be an Interesting Week

This week should be an interesting week for Dish Network as they have lots of things going on which we will be keeping a close eye on here in The Satellite Dish.

The things start tonight as Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen takes to the skies again hosting his famous “Charlie Chat” television show. Tonight’s agenda is unknown but I am hearing Charlie will have championship boxer Floyd May weather, Jr. and Hootie and the Blowfish front man Darius Rucker as guest on his show.

The Charlie Chat will air live tonight at 9PM on Dish Network channel 101.

On Tuesday Dish Network will be holding a retailer chat, which is a live broadcast for its independent Dish Network retailers around the country.

It will be interesting to see what changes if any will be made to the current promotions as I have been hearing from retailers around the country that the exciting announcements and changes announced at last months Team Summit event in Denver have not been making the phones ring like most expected.

From there will be quiet until Friday when the long awaited Digital Conversion happens. On the DirecTV front it appears that things should be smooth sailing, however it appears Dish Network will have some rough seas to face because of the conversion.

It appears that broadcaster Freedom Corp is getting ready to yank its network affiliates off of Dish Network due to the fact that Dish Network does not carry their channels in high definition. This is unfortunate for those Dish customers whose locals include Freedom Corp local channels, as Dish is not one to back down from a fight. Freedom Corp should take a look at the dispute between Dish and Fisher Communications. Both companies have been a legal headlock and no resolution is in sight.

So that’s a look ahead to this week, and looking at some of the things it could be a very interesting week.

Where’s TurboHD?

Last year Dish Network introduced an exciting new programming package and brand called TurboHD. TurboHD was the industries first and only all high definition only programming package.

It appears that TurboHD, which while was a good idea, might have been launched to early. Is this HD only package going away or just being put on the back burner? Today Dish Network removed the TurboHD tab from the DishNetwork.COM website.

TurboHD customers have been upset as of late as a number of HD channels added to Dish Network recently have not been made available to Turbo HD customers. Customers wanting these new HD channels have been told by Dish that they would need to move to one of the more expensive classic programming packages in order to get those new HD channels.

I think TurboHD was a good idea but I also feel it was rushed to the market. I know Dish wanted to be the first company offering an all HD package. In creating this all HD package they made a lot of HD fans happy with the new HD only package, however now many of those same customers feel used and upset that they are missing out on all the great HD that Dish Network offers.

Damn You AT&T!

I don’t know about you, but I woke up today all excited as today was the big WWDC keynote address from Apple.

As keynote time was getting started I had the live blogs from Engadget.COM and Gizmodo.COM up on my dual monitor setup. I was really excited to hear all the announcements that were going to be made today.

And for the most part Apple did not disappoint. The new Macbook Pro’s sound amazing. I have a Macbook Pro that is about 2 years old and with today’s announcements I am considering upgrading mine.

I was also excited about hearing about Apples new Snow Leopard operating system, and was shocked when they announced that the new OS would be available for upgraders for only $29.

I was also excited to hear that the iPhones new 3.0 software is going to be released next week on the 17th. The new software adds a lot of features missing from the iPhone including cut and paste and MMS support.

Of course the MMS announcement is where I got disappointed. MMS allows you to send picture messages from your iPhone to other phones. Apple has been really excited that they can finally support MMS, which most basic cell phones have been able to do for years. And I was excited to hear that we were finally getting MMS until it was announced that the United States only phone company providing iPhones would not have MMS working until the end of the summer.

WHAT I gasped! How could AT&T not be ready for MMS?

I am already mad at AT&T for banning the amazing Slingplayer application from its network, but how could AT&T screw up something so simple such as MMS support?

It didn’t end there Apple talked about the new tethering feature which will allow you to use your iPhone as a data modem when hooked to your laptop. Then Apple announced that tethering will only be supported by select phone companies and place a graphic on the screen showing all the companies that will support the tethering feature. As you might have guessed AT&T is one of the companies not listed on the slide. This means that American AT&T customers will be barred from using this built in feature of the phone.

Is the AT&T network that bad here in the US that it can’t support the features on the phone that it helped to create?

I have said it before and will say it again, I am charged on my bill for unlimited data on my iPhone (and I understand that unlimited means up to 5 gigabytes which I have no problem with) it should be up to me how I use that data.

With the announcement of the new iPhone 3GS today and the ads that state it can support cell speeds of up to 7.2 mbps I am starting to wonder if us AT&T customers will ever see these speeds.

Shame on you AT&T for selling a service that your network can’t handle! Instead of stopping sales and improving your network you keep adding new customers to pack them in to an already oversold network.

I can’t wait until the iPhone is available from another carrier here in the USA, as when that time comes I was drop AT&T in a heartbeat.