Wow, this is long, and turned out to be kind of rant-like!
I'm sorry DKS (and others),
and no offence to any of you, but I'm going to have to
disagree with your analogies.
Here’s a better one:
In October of 2002, Telus Mobility released a new flip phone, the
Samsung a540.
Much like Star Choice, Telus primarily uses
proprietary phones created especially for them, which only work on their network. The a540 was one such phone.
It was anxiously anticipated in the forum community, and fairly well received as being a modern, good-looking flip phone (with blue backlighting, which was very “in” at the time.)
Right around the time of the release,
a fairly major bug was discovered – whenever you tried to divide by a single digit with the calculator,
the entire phone would freeze. The battery would have to be removed to reboot the phone.
While the phone was effectively sold by Telus and could only be used with Telus’s service,
the ball was in Samsung’s court to fix the problem. There was nothing wrong with the network, so nothing Telus could do.
The problem was eventually solved in further firmware updates, but unlike satellite receivers, cell phones need to be physically connected to something to upgrade the firmware. This was often at a cost to the user.
I guess my point here is that
problems with a unit working as advertised aren’t unique to Star Choice. Nor is the type of relationship Star Choice and Motorola have. There are plenty of cell phones that haven’t worked as advertised, haven’t worked well with the network, been of poor quality, etc, and quite frankly there has been no mass uproar or uprising from the people against the provider.
Sometimes the phone gets good after a few software revisions (the Nokia 6185 comes to mind), other times the phone is just recognized as crap and gradually phased out, shunned by the public. (Motorola v2267 and countless others). None of the cell providers have ever done anything more than in-warranty repair, if necessary. For known issues, nothing is done, as the replacement will do the exact same thing.
DKS, your 1998 Honda works with no problems because there has been
over 100 years of automotive development behind that car. Do you think the first cars worked as well as yours does today?
Windows XP works great with no freezing for me too. Did Windows 98? Heck no. Windows 95? Even worse. Windows 3.1? HORRIBLY unstable. Windows 1.0 was released in 1985. Windows XP was released in 2001.
It took 16 years to develop a stable product, and they’re still having to improve it. Service Pack 1 and 2, countless security patches and fixes.
No, the DVR530 doesn’t work as well as it’s supposed to. No one is denying that. Unfortunately, when it comes down to it, Star Choice provides a service –
television signals – for which you pay them on a monthly basis. There are no issues with that service. The problem is with a product, developed by Motorola, which does not have stable software.
It’s a problem which has been acknowledged and is supposed to be fixed. I don’t know what everyone wants Star Choice to do in the meantime – you’ll get the update,
you’ll get a working product when it’s available. I don't think that Star Choice's response thus far has been outside of industry norms!