I am a former, and disgruntled, dish network dealer....dish has systematically forced the very people who deliver satisfaction, local independent satellite dealers, out of business with their rapacious policies.....good luck today getting someone whom you can trust for years of service excellence....dish has also been rated 'the worst company in America to work for'(businessweek)....thank heavens I never worked for them directly, but as subject to their boundless greed, and the lack of any alternative service providers other than the equally-dubious directv, I am currently out of a 25-yr self-directed business and into an entry-level factory position.....
'hopper' is a piece of crap....i'd long derided them for not doing a 'whole house' dvr unit, but this thing is not any answer I would have done.....and as far as the automatic ad-skipping, it doesn't add up lawfully....it's beyond the bounds of the Betamax decision which allowed for home recording....dish's previous dvr's required the user to specify each show or series of shows to be recorded, and they were then recorded in real time....what they're doing with 'hopper' is to THEMSELVES record only CERTAIN content (broadcast nets in prime time) and then REBROADCAST it hours later for download to the hoppers, with their own inserted 'cues' as to when to skip forward and how far....yes, they sit there during those meantime, manually flagging the ads....completely illegal under the copyright act, and I don't see how the courts did not seem to get that, but then the courts are pretty sketchy anymore.....even w/o the alterations to the content, you can't rebroadcast w/o permission......
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dish is anticonsumer
'hopper' is a piece of crap....i'd long derided them for not doing a 'whole house' dvr unit, but this thing is not any answer I would have done.....and as far as the automatic ad-skipping, it doesn't add up lawfully....it's beyond the bounds of the Betamax decision which allowed for home recording....dish's previous dvr's required the user to specify each show or series of shows to be recorded, and they were then recorded in real time....what they're doing with 'hopper' is to THEMSELVES record only CERTAIN content (broadcast nets in prime time) and then REBROADCAST it hours later for download to the hoppers, with their own inserted 'cues' as to when to skip forward and how far....yes, they sit there during those meantime, manually flagging the ads....completely illegal under the copyright act, and I don't see how the courts did not seem to get that, but then the courts are pretty sketchy anymore.....even w/o the alterations to the content, you can't rebroadcast w/o permission......
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by bernie barton.
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