More Thoughts From the Big Head
I am asked all the by readers of “The Satellite Dish” and by members of my online forum which is the best satellite provider. It’s a question I can’t honestly answer, as there is no correct answer. No matter which company you go with there will always be a few services that another service has that you will want.
There is no perfect satellite company (or for that matter cable company) so if you are deciding on a new television entertainment provider you really need to look for the company that gets you what you want to watch.
Another question I hear all the time lately is, “I am thinking of dropping Dish Network and getting because I notice that DirecTV carries Comedy Central in HD, is this a wise move?”
My answer of course is a big fat “NO!”
DirecTV offers a number of “HD” channels, which show no actual high definition content. Some of the channels which are advertised as being HD yet have not shown a single bit of true HD content include Cartoon Network HD, Comedy Central HD, Nick HD, MTV HD, CMT HD, VH1 HD, among others.
While all of these channels are up-converted to give a clearer picture none of them offer any true HD content. Personally I believe that there should be a law that you can not advertise a cable channel as an HD channel unless its schedule has at least 20% true HD content. These channels, which I call HD placeholders, are confusing customers because they are buying services thinking they are getting all these HD channels when what they are getting in a lot of up-converted content.
Again when choosing a provider do your homework before opening your wallet. You don’t want to be stuck with a provider for 18 – 24 months because you didn’t do you homework. Remember an educated consumer makes better decisions.
Dish Network Renews Racing Sponsorship
Yesterday afternoon a press release came out from Dish Network letting the world know that they are sponsoring the Roush Racing Team for a second year. The Dish Network / Roush Racing team had a great year last year with a number of early season victories.
Of course if you want to watch the Dish Network Race Team win again this year in High Definition, you will need to get DirecTV since Dish Network does not currently carry Speed HD.
Kyle Luna commented:
The shopping channels will never go as many of them are actually paying dish to be on the lineup either directly or via commission on purchases made by their customers. One of the reasons why on both sat providers and cable the shopping channels are almost always part of the lowest tier of channels.
DishSub commented:
Well lets forget the fight over HD for a moment and talk about SD pic quality. Today on dish, many of the sports and locals are feeling the ill affects of over compression. Perhaps dish should dump a bunch of those countless shopping channels and give us some quality on SD part of the service until they catch up with Direct on the HD front.
Miggity commented:
I completely agree with the law for false advertising HD. I've been saying this for a while too. In addition can we please work in a part of law that makes it illegal for networks to alter the aspect ratio of their shows? I am okay with the zoom and crop but TNT, TBS, History Channel and A&E "HD" need to knock it off right now. I don't care if your "research shows customers prefer it that way." It is because they're oblivious. The people that KNOW what's up want OAR!
RAD commented:
Of course you don't want to switch to DirecTV for Comedy Central HD, DirecTV doesn't carry that channel in HD.
Cyclone commented:
I hate to say it, but nearly all of the Nascar races are shown in HD on Dish Network. The only Speed HD race is the All-Star race in May.
Otherwise the HD races are on TNT, ESPN2, ABC, ESPN, and FOX.