Team Summit: General Assembly Thoughts and Pics

[Scott Greczkowski]

I just returned from the Team Summit General Assembly, this is the place where all the announcements are made.

DISH Network surprised us by having a special guest host for today's assembly, that being Jason Alexander who played George Costanza on the hit tv show Seinfeld. Jason was a great host and had us laughing the entire time he was on stage.

For consumers you might not say it was an exciting event, but if you a retailer DISH has laid the foundation of something huge!

DISH has owned Blockbuster for about a week now so there are many ideas they shared some idea of how it can benefit the retailers, including the possibily of retailers have their showrooms in Blockbuster Stores, having Blockbuster DVD rental kiosks in front of their stores to bring dealers more foot traffic and more.

DISH is taking my advice from something I wrote in one of my MultiChannel News articles a few years ago and that is taking the reins and making DISH Network into THE company known for Movies. Indeed with the aquisition of Blockbuster, Dish has more movies then anyone else PERIOD.

DIRECTV can be the company known for sports and DISH is the company known for movies.

As a consumer looking in this is just the start of something big, you are going to see over the next year or two DISH Network taking all of its acquisitions and making something big, something that no other company will be able to do.

DISH understands that the way of watching television is changing and they want to be on the forefront of it. And in many ways they are leading the way.

Tom Cullen the Executive Vice President of Corporate Development for DISH told us DISH is in this for the long haul.

Ira Bahr, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer for DISH Network told us about the excitment of Blockbuster and how they can beat Netflix as they can deliver movies 28 days earlier then Netflix and Redbox.

Ira also announced the two new programs for new DISH Customers which is effecive May 18th, those being new customers get 3 months free of Blockbuster service. In addition new customer can get a free Sling Adapter when they sign up as well.

Dave Schull the Sr VP of Programming for DISH Network and talked to us and showed us all the HD that has launched this year on DISH Network, GSN HD was listed as was Viera HD (which has not launched yet).

Dave told us by this summer DISH Network customers will be able to enjoy movies from Blockbuster on their receivers.

He said that 3D Linear channels are coming to DISH this summer but did not give any details. He also mentioned that 722's will support 3D shortly.

A video was shown and it said that HBO on Demand was coming soon to DISH Network.

They showed retailers the DISH World IPTV Box and announced a new WIFI enabled DISH World IPTV was coming soon.

Vivek Khemka, Vice President of Consumer Technology came out and talked technology. He went into talking about GoogleTV a little bit and said that Google will announce next week the support for Google Apps on the Google TV platform. That should be kind of exciting, Google TV has so much potential, this will give it the kick in the pants it needs.

He then showed a new DISH Product they are calling The Tailgater. Which is a rebranded Vucube from King Controls. The price is attractive at $349, and it requires a DISH 211 to operate it.

For me as a consumer the MOST exciting announcement was the new Multiroom Viewing equipment. This new equipment allows full HD viewing in all rooms of your house with full trick play and the ability to share all recordings in any room.

The boxes we saw photos of were the XiP 813 and the XiP 110.

The XiP 813 is the heart of the system, it contains 3 satellite tuners and the hard drive for storage of your recorded shows. The XiP 110 is the box that hooks to your TV and is connected to the XiP 813 via a thin client. You need one XiP 110 on each TV.

The beauty of this system is its expandable, want more satellite tuners just add another XiP 813. Everything is automatically shared and expanded. And you can hook it up to as many TV's as you want. This is a lot more advanced then DIRECTV's MultiRoom Viewing in all ways.

The rest of the assembly was on retailers and DISH was giving them all the tool they needed to make sales easier including releasing a new DISH Sales App. DISH is even going so far as giving away Motorola Xoom's so that retailers can take advantage of the app.

So there you have it... from the consumer end not to much to report other then we see the stepping stones to something big... Rome was not built in a day... But for retailers selling DISH Network just got a bit easier and in many cases a lot more profitable.

[lakebum431]

I think the XiP 813 and 110 are huge news. This is exactly what I want. Depending on cost, my perfect setup will be two 813s and 4 110s.

[whitewolf8214]

I just returned from the Team Summit General Assembly, this is the place where all the announcements are made.

DISH Network surprised us by having a special guest host for today's assembly, that being Jason Alexander who played George Costanza on the hit tv show Seinfeld. Jason was a great host and had us laughing the entire time he was on stage.

For consumers you might not say it was an exciting event, but if you a retailer DISH has laid the foundation of something huge!

DISH has owned Blockbuster for about a week now so there are many ideas they shared some idea of how it can benefit the retailers, including the possibily of retailers have their showrooms in Blockbuster Stores, having Blockbuster DVD rental kiosks in front of their stores to bring dealers more foot traffic and more.

DISH is taking my advice from something I wrote in one of my MultiChannel News articles a few years ago and that is taking the reigns and making DISH Network into THE company known for Movies. Indeed with the aquisition of Blockbuster, Dish has more movies then anyone else PERIOD.

DIRECTV can be the company known for sports and DISH is the company known for movies.

As a consumer looking in this is just the start of something big, you are going to see over the next year or two DISH Network taking all of its acquisitions and making something big, something that no other company will be able to do.

DISH understands that the way of watching television is changing and they want to be on the forefront of it. And in many ways they are leading the way.

Tom Cullen the Executive Vice President of Corporate Development for DISH told us DISH is in this for the long haul.

Ira Bahr, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer for DISH Network told us about the excitment of Blockbuster and how they can beat Netflix as they can deliver movies 28 days earlier then Netflix and Redbox.

Ira also announced the two new programs for new DISH Customers which is effecive May 18th, those being new customers get 3 months free of Blockbuster service. In addition new customer can get a free Sling Adapter when they sign up as well.

Dave Schull the Sr VP of Programming for DISH Network and talked to us and showed us all the HD that has launched this year on DISH Network, GSN HD was listed as was Viera HD (which has not launched yet).

Dave told us by this summer DISH Network customers will be able to enjoy movies from Blockbuster on their receivers.

He said that 3D Linear channels are coming to DISH this summer but did not give any details. He also mentioned that 722's will support 3D shortly.

A video was shown and it said that HBO on Demand was coming soon to DISH Network.

They showed retailers the DISH World IPTV Box and announced a new WIFI enabled DISH World IPTV was coming soon.

Vivek Khemka, Vice President of Consumer Technology came out and talked technology. He went into talking about GoogleTV a little bit and said that Google will announce next week the support for Google Apps on the Google TV platform. That should be kind of exciting, Google TV has so much potential, this will give it the kick in the pants it needs.

He then showed a new DISH Product they are calling The Tailgater. Which is a rebranded Vucube from King Controls. The price is attractive at $349, and it requires a DISH 211 to operate it.

For me as a consumer the MOST exciting announcement was the new Multiroom Viewing equipment. This new equipment allows full HD viewing in all rooms of your house with full trick play and the ability to share all recordings in any room.

The boxes we saw photos of were the XiP 813 and the XiP 110.

The XiP 813 is the heard of the system, it contains 3 satellite tuners and the hard drive for storage of your recorded shows. The XiP 110 is the box that hooks to your TV and is connected to the XiP 813 via a thin client. You need one XiP 110 on each TV.

The beauty of this system is its expandable, want more satellite tuners just add another XiP 813. Everything is automatically shared and expanded. And you can hook it up to as many TV's as you want. This is a lot more advanced then DIRECTV's MultiRoom Viewing in all ways.

The rest of the assembly was on retailers and DISH was giving them all the tool they needed to make sales easier including releasing a new DISH Sales App. DISH is even going so far as giving away Motorola Xoom's so that retailers can take advantage of the app.

So there you have it... from the consumer end not to much to report other then we see the stepping stones to something big... Rome was not built in a day... But for retailers selling DISH Network just got a bit easier and in many cases a lot more profitable.

what about prcing for the 813 and 110 ? what about current customers for blockbuster for this ? Ira also announced the two new programs for new DISH Customers which is effecive May 18th, those being new customers get 3 months free of Blockbuster service. In addition new customer can get a free Sling Adapter when they sign up as well.......thanks scott appreciate all you did and help

[RandallA]

That picture of Costanza is disgusting!

[cosmo_kramer]

That picture of Costanza is disgusting!

He must have got paid lots of money.

[Scherrman]

He was pretty hilarious. Couldn't believe when he came out it that body suit.

[Bradtothebone]

Looking forward to more info from the show floor on the 813/110. Hopefully, if they're planning on a fall release, they will have an actual working prototype to see. Would like more details on networking architecture, OTA capability, hard drive size, sling capability, etc. Scott, thanks for all your hard work!

Brad

[ckhalil18]

Yeah I was a little surprised Constanza was there. I didn't know he was a Dish fan. Anyway I'm looking forward to the release of the XIP recivers although I don't see why they changed it to "XIP." To make it stand out more? Hmmm...I still think VIP sounds better.

[Scherrman]

Im assuming the new receiver will be very similar to the 922 and still have room for the OTA module.

[lakebum431]

That would be something that would be great to follow-up on Scherrman. If it could do 2 OTA and 3 satellite then I could probably get by with one instead of two.