The fishwrapper this morning pointed out that with recent Christmas purchases there are now 33 MILLION of us with High Definition televisions. That’s a lot of plasma, LCD, DLP, mirrors and magic going on out there. I confess, I’m one of the mass. I’ve been one for about two years now. I’ve seen high def programming and was amazed. When I first sat in front of the set at home with my cable hookup, I found myself watching Korean sumo wrestling, just because it was in high def. The Koreans are more modest than the Japanese version. They wear white boxer shorts under their sumo thong. And they typically average about 115 pounds. But, hey, it’s in HIGH DEF!
That was then. Now I just passed my one year anniversary in my new digs in North Texas. Cable doesn’t quite meet the standard we had in Colorado. I understand the costs of that “last mile” thing. Stringing cable to small town across America is expensive and maybe Whitesboro isn’t quite as ready for high def as Plano or Denton. So, cable isn’t in my house. I’ve got satellite. Dish Network to be specific. That’s the service that reaches skyward to those orbiting satellite repeaters so that I can theoretically get most any major TV channel that is broadcast. The operative word there is theoretically.
I’ve got the “Platinum” programming package—that’s 180 of the “most popular TV” channels. I’ve got HBO, Showtime and CineMax. I’ve got the High Definition tier and additionally got the “VOOM” channels for more High Definition. What I don’t have to any great degree is High Definition.
I don’t have Fox HD. I don’t have CBS, NBC or ABC HD. I don’t have NFL HD. I get the promos that tell me there is HD broadcast of major network programming, but I don’t receive it. I could get it with the flick of a switch on Dish Network’s vast control room. It’s out there in space waiting to be beamed to my little Dish 1000 dual satellite receiver. But I don’t get it.
What do I get? Well, there’s the Kung Fu HD channel—all Asian violence all the time. I get Monsters HD, with every Godzilla movie ever made running back-to-back. But, broadcasting them in HD still doesn’t get a HD picture. They were grainy movies then and they’re still grainy. Oh, and I’ve got two HD channels in the package that have never been on-the-air all year as well as an HD Pay-per-view channel—but, I thought I was paying for HD already.
Recently, during the middle of the Nebraska—Oklahoma game, Dish shut off my Fox and ABC feeds. Seems that our Congress decreed that I couldn’t see major networks other than those from my local provider. So, despite being 50 miles from Dallas, that ain’t my local provider and I don’t get them—even in standard definition. I get Sherman TX for CBS now. It’s a channel that has a funny quirk of going in and out of focus on about a three-second cycle. It’ll give you vertigo after a while.
Well, it isn’t really that I can’t get out-of-area channels exactly. There is another company that for $2.50 a month decided whether you meet their criteria and then they feed you a San Francisco or Atlanta channel—which is fuzzy, grainy and drops out whole chunks of sound and picture with distressing regularity. But no High Def.
One special feature of Dish is that when it rains or the wind blows, you’ll lose contact with the satellite for half an hour at a time while the little computer gizmo reacquires the satellites and does fifteen or twenty quality checks before restoring service. That means when I’d really like to know if a tornado is bearing down on my domicile, I’ll have to listen for the freight train sound rather than get some weather news on TV.
So, somewhere sun is shining and somewhere children shout, but there is no joy in Whitesboro, mighty Dish Network continues to strike out.
No comments:
Post a Comment