VOOM Opening Day - Press Release, Press Conference Link, Sears, etc. - Page 2  

This is the biggest farce I've ever seen. They have a grand total of ONE HD channel other than their own 21 HD channels - Discovery HD. They count the CiNEMA 10 as 10 separate channels.

Pathetic...

Well, the Cinema 10 are in fact 10 seperate channels. Granted they just loop the same film over and over, so you are really complaining about content then. If they all showed different movies throughout the day, you wouldn't have a complaint, would you?

They have stated all along that the film on each channel would loop all day long. Do we have a schedule for future showings on the channels? If they just keep looking, I could see your point, but if it is a different movie, then you have 10 movies per day available all the time.

Which one is it?different movies or the same movie looped

Unless they get Food Network and Bravo, forget it.

Raven,

Each of the 10 HD channels will be showing a different movie looped, from what I understand. As posted above, some examples listed on their web site for these ten channels:

Clockwork Orange
The Bounty
Hair
High Society
Long Goodbye
Rocky 5
Russia House
The Song Remains the Same
State of Grace
Usual Suspects

What I want to know is how frequently these loops will change: Several times a week? Twice a week? Once a week?

It is the same movie looped for a day. Then they are supposed to be different movies the next day. I saw that they will be showing The Fantastiks, so that is 11 movies on Cinema 10, implying that they will be changing the films.

I also saw this:

Experience the largest selection of high definition movies anywhere, all in their original wide screen format.

I read that as exclusively OAR!!! Top that!

Hmm, the Eden Prairie, MN Sears had it but right next to Discovery HD it looked inferior, the mitsubishi TV said 480p for the input, I asked the Sears rep to change it on the back, (i could not without standing on the display) Sears guy said he had to have the setup guys change it since he could not get to the back of the receiver either.

Even though i really need VOOm since i will be losing HDTV because of DISH sat change..i can't subscribe to this,without HBO-SHOWTIME..i will be cancelling before next weds.unless they add some more

Monster channel has Halloween 3 but it shows Michael Myers.........


Sorry but Halloween 3 didnt have Michael Myers.

Innova,

I kind of feel the same way. They had the Motion video channel 129 on. It was a very good representation of HD content. It was in 1080i but I suspect that the content was not shot in HD. It was mostly color pulses and flashes. Very little real content. The tried to change the channel and it lost the sat signal .

One thing I noticed is even with all the fast moving action, I saw less motion artifacts than on the Dish HDnet. It was being shown on a mits 55313.
It was a very convincing demo that made me go WOW over HDnet. I need to return in a few days after they work out some bugs for further consideration.

Look people, i'm sure this is a case of thinking all would be ready by the 15th and it wasn't. If they don't have things like INHD, HBO, SHO etc. up and running by installation time, then by all means, call them up and say no way !

I think the voom is connected to Mits in all sears.

I kind of feel the same way. They had the Motion video channel 129 on. It was a very good representation of HD content. It was in 1080i but I suspect that the content was not shot in HD. It was mostly color pulses and flashes. Very little real content. The tried to change the channel and it lost the sat signal .

One thing I noticed is even with all the fast moving action, I saw less motion artifacts than on the Dish HDnet. It was being shown on a mits 55313.
It was a very convincing demo that made me go WOW over HDnet. I need to return in a few days after they work out some bugs for further consideration.

First Impression:

Ok so I went to sears just now to check it out, and wasn't impressed at all. Currently they only had maybe 5-6 channels working out of all of them. No movie channels or SD channels were working so I can't comment on them.

Granted the setup at sears wasn't good at all, but I don't think the setup had anythign to do with what I was seeing. IT seemed like every station that was working had a problem. One or 2 of them had sound dropouts, and the ones that didn't seemed to have some compression artififacts (nothing major, but noticeable especially since they had Dish's preview channel playing right next to it).

The only channels I think that were working was I thihnk Rave, Rush, Animania, Moov, World Sports, and maybe Ultra, but I'm not sure.

Moov was complete garbage. I would equate it too a visual that you see when playing with windows media player.

World Sport, had a soccer game on, and I noticed some funky compression artifact that I can't quite explain, other then it looked kind of like EE.

The other channels had a few things on, but nothing I would sit down and watch. One of them was a runway model walk, which looked ok, but had audio dropouts.

All in all this service has quite a ways to go before I would consider purchasing it. Not being able to see the movie channels was a big letdown as well. Also I would have liked to have seen the SD stations quality as well.

Edit: Oh and the box locked up on me as I was chaning channels and needed to be rebooted. As it was coming up I tried to get into the guide which took several minutes to load the information which to me is mind boggling since they have such few stations actually doing anything.

Oh, it was being displayed on 2 different tv's. One was a large Mitsubishi, that was probably 60+ inches. The other was a small 4x3 tv. The 4x3 tv had black bars and proper aspect ratio for displaying the content.

Yes, it was a Mits at the Sears I was at also.

I went in to Our sear in Medford Oregon also connected to the MITS.. PQ At times like said in post before was better then Dish and other times a bit worse.. Over all so far i am pretty excited.. Even if i dont get Voom the other sat company's have to see this and say we need to keep up!!! {I HOPE}. The installer didnot know much about the packages but they are at the website and booklet you can pick up right in the display!!.. The sales person lol was a joke. He said there was only 17 SEARS stores in the nation set up for Voom.. He said it started in NY last month and is hot like wildfire!! (YES HE SAID WILDFIRE!!).. I told him he should come to this forum it would help him out selling the service.. Over all I am VERY PLEASED with this new company just what i have seen so fare.. I expect there will be bugs in the system and they will take a bit of time to work out.. I also changed channels but no lockups for me.. Lucky i dont know.. Time will tell but i am really thinking about Telling D* bye bye..

Speaking to a rep


10 hd movie channels are different movies on each channel. Not the same movie looped.

Plus Showtime will be on right now.As of today, Starz and Showtime will be on.

i told him about our feedback.

Workorders are nothing. Actually performing a QC that 'all stores' were up and running is a completely different matter. Chris just pointed out a fact, not a fiction. Did you inspect all workorders to verify all Sears in the USA had been issued workorders? :)

I went to Sears in Birmingham, AL. Only 3 channels worked and the STB only outputted the signal to 480p. There is no switch or settings for output other than holding down a reset button and hoping it switches to 1080i or waiting for a second bar to appear. Waited 10 mins and nothing. The STB would suddenly change channels without anyone touching the remote and locked up while I was there. The sales staff says it has been doing that several times.

I saw compression artifacts in the few channels that were live. This STB is horrible - no options and the interface sucks - I went to Sears ready to buy - came back a bigger Directv fan. Its bad enough that before I left my house I knew they didn't even deliver HBO, MAX, STARZ YET then to see that it really looks like vaporware and hype.

Dolans: Stick to cable.

ROFLMAO!!!! :p

Can we get confirmation that EVERY SEARS STORE had an installer be visited by a VOOM installer?

My point is that unless you did the checks to make sure EVERY SEARS STORE was visited then its wise to play it safe and be open to the possibility that maybe a store wasn't visited. Absolutes are best left to the vodka company.

I was at the local Sears in Waldorf, Md (St. Charles Town Center at 10:30 am today. All tvs turned to Dish. No brochures Nada Zip. They did have a packet that they sell for the $49.95 in a sealed envelope and it took 15 minutes to find that. When they tried to scan the packet in the computer it would not ring up. No Hardware, No display NoSat dish installed at Sears.

What I just highlighted in red sure sounds like an absolute. How do you 'know' every Sears store had an installer visited AND finish the receiver installation? You may have been told this, but that is about it.

Unless you inspected all of the Sears stores then you would be wise to play safe bet that there 'might be a chance' that some condition promoted itself so that one or more stores 'may not' have been ready for the launch. Chris' experience today is the evidence to your stated contrary.

Personally, I would have said Every Sears store should have been visited by the October 15th premiere to finish any remaining installations. But, the is always a possibility that one or more stores were either missed, or simply not targeted for the VOOM premiere.

Just got back from Sears, he is what I found:

First, All I can say is what a joke! Whoever installed the receiver and set it up knew absolutely nothing! The receiver had composite video feeding the TV (The salesperson got a component cable for me and I hooked it up-HOW SAD IS THAT?).

When I walked up to the demo I could not get any channels working. All the channels had the standard no signal is available. Sometimes the error message would say something like "an error has occurred on this channel"

After messing for a while I found my way into the setup. Not much there to speak of, there is no way to see what transponder you are checking the signal on. I got a signal of about 60. I don't know this system well enough to say whether or not 60 is good enough, in many cases it could have to do with the power they are transmitting on the bird.

Finally a salesperson walked up to see what I was doing. Luckily he at least was interested to figure out how to get it working. We ended up calling the installer tech line (888-443-2306 for those of you who want to pester them :)) They were absolutely worthless. The tech person kept putting the salesperson on hold while she talked to a real tech person. Eventually, nothing worked and the salesperson got cut off.

After talking with the salesperson for a while about the service I decided to unplug the receiver. NEVER FAILS. Booted back up, turned it back on and it worked-- well all 2 channels :( The first channel (100) was a weather channel that was totally computer automated. The second channel (101) is the demo channel. When I went on the rest of the channels, all I got was the same demo channel.

Disappointing to say the least. I'm not sure what the problem is, if I had to guess I would say they are having some issues at the uplink. I suppose there could have been a problem with the installation since I am reading that other people say other channels are working, but maybe not, I thought I was seeing other channels also but it was actually just the demo channel that showed clips from other channels and the logo was on the screen so it looked like the actual channel.

Looks like they have a lot more to do before they are ready for prime time. Here are some other notes I made:

-On the guide there were 18 HD channels listed
-The off air receiver is ATSC only
-There is a strange card slot on the right side, looks kind of like a PCMCIA slot but I don’t think it is.
-Basic cost is 39.90 for their exclusive HD channels, the SD basic cable channels, 18 Music choice channels, and choice of one of the following add on packs:
-HD Marquee (Starz and HD Starz I think, iNDemand 1&2 and Discovery HD Theater
-HBO and the E&W HD feeds)
Showtime and the HD feed
-Cinemax and the HD feed
You get one of these packs and each additional is 14.90
-The promo is you get EVERYTHING free until Jan 31 2004
-I asked the salesperson what happens if I cancel, he did not know
-I looked at the Conditional Access Card. All I could do is laugh! CableVision (VOOM) is using NDS -- those of you who keep up with DirecTV, know that NDS is the same company that does DirecTV's pathetic security, so that will be interesting to see what the hackers do!

Basically, I think maybe, if VOOM is lucky, this will take off. After they get over the technical problems the main issue I see is SEARS!! Why they chose Sears to launch the service I have no clue, someone does not know the HD market. Sears does not have the sales support to explain and sell the service nor does it have the clientele that are going to be the early adopters of the service. I hope they quickly get their act together, independent custom installers such as myself would love to sell VOOM.

That’s it from here, let me know what you find out.

a cohort gave me this: SEARS:
"SORRY, EVERYONE AROUND here's REALLY STUPID"

I guess a sales droid is a sales droid is a sales droid..

Peter,

Surprise, surprise. There are basically no Plus Packs available now. All they have is Discovery and the Tennis Channel. The brochure they have at Sears is a lie. All of the channels listed in the Plus packs except for the aforementioned two are available.

Take from a long time Cablevision customer, you will wait a long time before they add all those channels. They will constantly say they are in negotiations, and nothing will happen.

Scott

I was there. The Q&A -- off line -- was the most interesting part.

http://www.cablevision.com/index.jht...eType=investor

Voom PDF guide
http://www.voom.com/images0/pdf/VOOM_Viewers_Guide.pdf