Since Friday my email box has been filling up with Dish Network customers worried about an injunction that was put into place for certain models of Dish Network DVR receivers.

This permanent injunction was handed down on Friday and has gone into effect.  Dish Network is prohibited from selling and activating certain models of their DVR’s.   All of these DVR models found to be infringing on Tivos patents have not been sold by Dish Network in a long time.

Those folks who have one of the models which was found to be infringing on Tivos patents need not worry about the DVR service being shut off.

In other words is if you have a Dish Network DVR, no matter what model you have the way it works today is the way it will work tomorrow. 

The model numbers in question are the Dish 721, 921 and 942.  Be aware that you might see many of these old receivers appear on places like Ebay soon at very good prices.  No matter how good the price is DON’T BUY ONE as you will not be able to activate it.  Do not buy yourself a boat anchor.

Dish Network Announces Smart Card Swap

On today’s Dish Network “Retailer Chat” it was announced that Dish Network would begin a total swap out of smart cards starting in June.

It is good to see Dish Network cracking down on piracy the past few months,  over the past week Dish Network has nabbed some major hackers.  By doing a smart card swap will help cut down on the piracy issue that Dish Network has been having over the past few years.

The same card swap effort has started earlier this year in Canada on the Bell ExpressVu DBS service.  ExpressVu uses the same equipment and security technology as Dish Network does here in the United States.

DirecTV to Cut Some Customer Service Hours

DirecTV customers are seeing the following notice on their bills, which are being sent out currently:

"Beginning 5/11/08, customer service representatives for general care will be available 8am-10pm local time. For self-service, directv.com is available 24 hours a day."

No word of what “general care” is but it’s a major chance for the satellite company which until now has had customer support open 24 hours a day 7 day a week.

If you a DirecTV customer and have not been to DirecTV.COM lately, I invite you to go login and check it out.  I personally consider DirecTV’s website the best customer support website of any company I deal with.