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DirecTV HDTV

DirecTV sent me a letter.  It looks like they finally figured out the legal issues and now can broadcast local channels in HD.  This has been a big competitive pitch by the cable companies.  So the letter said, 'Call us and we will hook you up with a new satellite and a new receiver'.  This kind of annoys me because I just (last year) bought (out of pocket) a new HDTV receiver.  It cost several hundred dollars.  The one with HD and DVR costs $900 at the time.  Now they give away the receiver for free ($100 retail) and the DVR one costs $400.  The new satellite dish has 5 nubbins.  Katie doesn't like the term nubbins, but I don't have another word for the things on the end of the dish.  This worries me too.  How many nubbins are they planning on having?  Doesn't this architecture have severe limitations?

And they snuck in a 2-year commitment requirement for this deal.  This annoys me too because I like to call them up every once in a while, threaten to quit and get free HBO.  Now I have to wait 2 years to do that.

Anyway, the bottom line is this:  This year, I will be able to watch the Jets national games in HD.  I will also get FOX and NBC in HD finally.  This is a good thing and the reason I agreed to the other annoyances.  One day, I hope DirecTV will annoy me less and wow me more. 

Comments

One response to “DirecTV HDTV”

  1. dan Avatar
    dan

    Cable companies are all awful. Why you could have been getting HD on all available channels for years with regular cable, except you cant get Sunday Package with regular cable. the whole cable industry needs to change, cable should be a channel by channel basis. This is how I envision the future. TVs all come with an internal cable box and DVR(or your computer has one and your TV is connected to it.) Than you pay a fee to each cable channel for the right to get thier channel. HBO is $10/month, EPSN is $5, Discovery is $4, and I don’t have to pay for the channels I don’t want. No more cable utilities just direct access. Its only a matter of time before TV shows are online, in real time, anyway. Dish and DirectTV will be useless. The old cable companies will still owns the cable wires so they might get a cut. (satallites would be much better, but i don’t want to deal with a company who operates them, maybe google or the government will operate them. maybe the googlement will be in charge. I think phone companies, like Verizon, are going to start transmitting cable TV, so that might help.

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