I refuse to pay DTV $10.00 more a month for HD programming.
And the programming is still lost when it rains heavily.
When I first subscribed and purchased my equipment back in the mid 90’s it cost me nearly $500. for the recieving equipment, but about $29. a month.
Now it cost me $80. a month. Yeah I have a few more channels, and own my updated reciever, but not everything available by any means.. And no I will not pay more for HDTV.
With an HDTV, one can get the broadcast channels in digital and most in HD at no extra cost.
Cox offers their full range of HD for $10.00.
The problem with their HD offerings is that I don’t watch them in regular-def, so I see little reason to pay an additional $10.00 to pick up the shopping channel in HD.
The area Cox Cable offers about 25 HD channels, in addition to the broadcast channels. Of those 25, I watch some programs maybe 3 or 4.
I can’t justify paying another $10 to get a few programs in HD.
Even the digital cable is the same way. The box costs $10 and has the Discovery tier as mandatory. Three additional tiers are available — at about $8 each. One shows old movies, one is all kinds of sports [yeh, old golf games — doesn’t every one watch golf reruns?], and other other is a hodge-podge of cartoons, old game shows, BBC America, etc. Out of those, I don’t see more than 3 or 4 channels that I would watch more than a couple of times a week. I can’t justify that extra $10 box + $8/tier.
I have 70 analog with 21 of those now digital. I would gladly drop 40 of the 70 just so I didn’t have to click through them to get to the 30 I do watch occasionally.
I certainly don’t see paying for an additional 40 channels of junk to get 5 or 6 that I might watch occasionally.
And, the cable company jumps the charges about every six month. A couple of bucks here, a couple of bucks there. What was $84 (tv and highspeed internet) three years ago is at $95 now.