Crasymaker

Thank God It’s Basketball Season, ya’ll.

Is anyone else pumped about hoops? I know I am. It’s gettin’ chilly outside and the Hogs are starting to play some b-ball. I love this time of year.

The only bummer is that nobody but ESPN seems to be living in the ‘now’ as far as broadcasting goes. There’s nothing worse than watching a non-HD basketball broadcast on a big-screen HDTV. Ugh.

I’m sure it’s easier said than done, but I, for one, cannot wait for the folks at ARSN and LFS to pony up and deliver us some Hog Ball in high definition.

Do any of you guys work in broadcasting? Any ideas on when these games might finally be broadcast in HD? I’m guessing the answer is either a) A long, long time or b) A long, long time.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about our 2-day affair with Dish Network and how it left us a) a lot more educated about Dish Network and b) $199 poorer.

Despite numerous phone calls and arguments with customer service representatives, there was nothing I could do to talk them into refunding the $199 equipment fee for the HD DVR that we had for almost 2 days.

I felt helpless and thought that the least I could do was educate anyone who reads my blog about the fine print details of signing up with Dish Network.

After doing so I felt a lot better and actually forgot all about it until a couple of days ago when I noticed that despite their refusal to refund my money, they went ahead and refunded it anyway! Yup, I was checking my bank account online and noticed a credit for $199 from Dish Network.

So why did they refund my money after repeatedly refusing to do so? I guess they either 1) made a mistake, 2) were lying about not refunding it in hopes of keeping my business or 3) read my blog and got scared to death that the millions of Crasymaker.com readers would spread the word about their hidden traps. As much as I’d love to believe that #3 was the reason, I’m sure it was just an accident.

Back at the beginning of the new TV season, I had my eye on a few new shows: The Class, Six Degrees, Studio 60, 30 Rock and Heroes.

I watched the first episode of The Class and it was pretty awful…not exactly Laguna Beach-style awful but definitely not something I’d ever watch again and Six Degrees got really boring really fast.

Studio 60 and 30 Rock are both fantastic and I’ve watched every episode so far.

For some reason, however, I never even started watching Heroes. Some friends of mine are always talking about how good it is so I used an iTunes gift card to buy the first episode and it was friggin’ great. I’ve since watched the next 5 episodes and I can’t wait to catch up and watch them on our new TV in HD.

Anyway, are any of ya’ll watching Heroes?

After a few months of our internet working great, things started getting back to normal at our house (and if you recall, normal ain’t so good).

Anyway, our first step in getting rid of Cox was to switch to satellite TV and then we’d get DSL and be done with our “friend in the digital age” for good. After shopping around and getting some advice from friends, we decided to try Dish Network.

We discovered that there are three things you need to know if you’re considering Dish Network that we didn’t find out about until after we were signed up, installed and ready to go.

1. If you want a true HD DVR, you must demand model #622
When I called and asked for an HD DVR in the main room and a regular receiver for the bedroom, the woman happily set up my account and even repeated my order back to me. However, when the guy showed up to install our system, he had no HD DVR with him. Instead, he had an HD receiver and a non-HD DVR that he was going to put next to our TV (that’s TWO boxes) and when I asked him if I’d be able to record in HD, he said, “No, but you don’t want to do that anyway because HD takes up too much hard drive space.” Wrong answer, dude. If I’m gonna live with two boxes instead of one, I’d better be able to do MORE than I was with Cox, not LESS. So I called customer service and they said I’d have to pay a $199 non-refundable fee for model #622 if I wanted a true HD DVR. I argued for a while and got the fee credited to my account and scheduled a new installation date a few days later.

So far, so good okay.

2. Although Dish Network does provide your local channels for $5/month, they do not provide them in HD in all cities
I found this out the hard way after the guy left and nothing on ABC, NBC, CBS or FOX was in HD. This isn’t a terrible thing since not everything that comes on those channels is broadcasted in HD but there are a few things that are such as Lost and NFL Football. For us, those are pretty important pieces of programming that Cox already provides in HD so we weren’t willing to downgrade those channels.

At this point, we started to regret signing up.

3. You must have an active (land) phone line or you will be charged an extra $4.99/month
We woke up the morning after our install only to discover an error message stating that we needed to connect an active phone line to our satellite box in order to continue watching television. Well, that wouldn’t necessarily be such a problem if we had an active phone line but since we don’t, I figured I’d better call customer service again. Wanna guess what they told me? Sure enough, you must have a phone line connected to the boxes at all times or else you will be charged an extra $4.99/month and you won’t be able to order any of the tons upon tons of Pay-Per-View programs that Dish Network offers. Somehow, I had talked to 3 customer service representatives and two different installation technicians without any of them saying anything at all about a phone line. I even told the woman that I placed the order with that I only had a cell phone after she asked for my home phone number. That would’ve been the perfect time to tell me that I’d be facing extra charges, now wouldn’t it?

By now, we’d had enough so we cancelled our service completely…but not without Dish Network keeping our $199 non-refundable HD-DVR fee that they were going to credit to my account if we had stayed with them.

The moral of the story is this: Dish Network might not be right for you so you’d better make sure it is before you sign up for an 18-month contract. If recording shows in HD is important to you, it’s gonna cost you $199. If having ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX in HD is important to you, then you better make sure you ask if those channels are provided in HD in your city. And finally, if you don’t have a phone line, they’re gonna charge you a fee and you won’t be ordering any Pay-Per-View shows.

If none of those things are a problem for you, then go for it. They’ve got a ton of standard definition channels, a ton of HD channels (some really cool ones, too) and it’s way cheaper than Cox.

I’m sorry for such a long post but I feel like I owe it to everyone who I told Dish Network about. I know some of you were actually considering switching after I talked to you about our new setup. Choose wisely, ya’ll. Consider us your guinnea pigs.

UPDATE: A few weeks after posting this, I noticed a $199 refund credit to my bank account from Dish Network. Read more about it here.

OK check it out. I’ve been watching a ton of TV lately. Seriously, I haven’t watched this much TV since I was a kid and The Cosby Show, Roseanne and America’s Funniest Home Videos were in their prime.

This time last year, I was super pumped about my Netflix account. I even upgraded my account from 3 movies at a time to 5. I was watching all sorts of movies that I’d missed in the theater as well as discovering a crapload of great documentaries that I’d never heard of. Since then, however, things have changed quite a bit and now I’m down to 2 movies at a time and I even caught myself sending a couple back last week that I hadn’t even watched. Wtf?

Now that I’m caught up on Deadwood, Entourage and Curb Your Enthusiasm, I can’t seem to find much that interests me on Netflix anymore. And looking at my queue, I’m not really all that pumped about what’s coming up soon.

So what shows have I been watching lately that have drastically increased my time in front of the tube? Let see, on Mondays, it’s Monday Night Football and Studio 60.On Wednesday, there’s 30 Rock, Lost and Inside the NFL. Thursdays have The Office, Six Degrees, The Fantasy Show and the occasional episode of My Name Is Earl. Add all of those to the normal SportsCenter-in-the-morning, Conan/Daily Show-at-night and random channel surfing I already did and that’s one hell of a load. Phew.

So now I have to ask myself whether or not to keep Netflix. Especially since I could save a few bucks by dropping it and adding Showtime which would give me access to Weeds and Dexter.

What do you guys think? I’d better decide quick, though, because I obviously don’t already have enough shows to watch…right?

TV Squad is reporting that apparently, A&E has recently ordered eight episodes of a new show called The Coreys: Return of the Lost Boys which will be a half hour show about what Corey Haim and Corey Feldman have been doing for the last 20 years.

Although they were total badasses back in the 80s, to be honest, I haven’t really been wondering about them. However, it might be pretty sweet if you’re at all interested in what Edgar and Sam (from The Lost Boys) have been up to lately.

Super-sweet sidenote : My best friend Seth shares a birthday with Corey Feldman and I share one with Corey Haim. No shit.

I’ve been real curious about all of those HBO Original Series shows that everyone keeps talking about. The only one I’ve checked out so far is Six Feet Under so I finally subscribed to Netflix a few days ago and ordered the entire first season of Carnivale. So far, it is really good and by really good, I mean I watched 4 hours of it last night.

Black Heart Procession “A Sign On The Road”