A Dish Network Question

I've got a sort of an oddball question for the Citizens of Clips Nation. Twice this season my brother has called me asking if I had any problem with the Prime Ticket broadcast of the Clippers game. Once the season pass on his DVR just didn't record the game -- then on Wednesday, he noticed that the Knicks game was on the non-HD Prime Ticket, but not on the HD channel.

As it happens, both of these problems occurred when the game was on NBA-TV.

Now, obviously we know that the NBA-TV broadcast is blacked out for the local market, so that even if the cable guide might think the game is on NBA-TV, if it's also on Prime, then there will be dead air on Prime. In this case, my brother seems to be experiencing something similar, but completely illogical -- if the game is supposed to be on NBA-TV, it's not being shown in HD on Prime Ticket, which means that he is not getting any HD version of those games.

This is all on Dish Network -- I guess Prime Ticket is channel 411 for him, if that helps anyone figure this out. My brother has called the Dish folks, and so far their customer service has been less than helpful -- they've essentially said "Oh, that's normal, that game is being blacked out." But of course it's not normal -- it's not blacked out on Charter or on FiOS or anywhere else, and there's no reason it should be blacked out.

Has anyone out there experienced this problem before? Any suggestions for how to address? Any magic words you can suggest to use with Dish customer service that will help explain the problem to them, or help them provide a solution?