Lots of News from Team Summit

[Scott Greczkowski]

Because of the amount of news I am seperating this from my Team Summit Blog. You may comment in this thread, but please keep it on topic and no HD lite stuff.

Although I should mention for those HD lite folks out there that there was a comment durreing the presentation on how Dish wants to offer true HD and not HD that looks like SD which a lot of cable folks are mentioning.

Anyways lots to cover so here we go!

Charlie comes out and tells us about the new Digital World, he gives a nice presentation and surprisingly does not use a teleprompter for his speach.

Some interesting things Charlie said were Dish wants to swap out all MPEG2 boxes with MPEG4 boxes (a like for like trade) within the next 3 years. With MPEG2 they do about 10 SD channels per transponder, with MPEG4 they can do around 40 SD channels per transponder, and in addition with reusing spot beams they could do 400 channels per transponder on a spot beam satellite.

Charlie talks about how great the PocketDish is and he slips and says some new models are coming which have built in WiFi which we will hear about later this year.

Charlie talks about the AT&T Homezone and shows a video, this is a great product which ties your TV together with the Internet to bring you what you want when you want.

Leslie Harper comes out and talks about the new Dishes, she mentions the Dish 1000.2 has a LNB in port on it so you can hook up a 4th orbital location and you dont need a switch, the Dish 1000.2 is also DishPro Plus.

Mark Jackson comes out and tells us about all the new technology coming out.

First thing he shows us is the VIP612 which is a Dual Tuner / SIngle output MPEG4 HD DVR. The major difference between this and the 622 is that it does not have Dual Output mode which helps bring the cost down on these DVR's. The 612 will become the standard entry line DVR in the future. It does not look like the 922, this unit is a glossy black color.

Next he shows us a new DP PLUS 33 Switch. The DPP33 will look at 3 orbital locations, is non cascadable and has no power supply, this will allow for single cable installations to Dish Pro Plus receivers at much less cost over a Dish Pro Plus 44 switch.

Another new switch is shown the DP Plus 64 Switch. This switch allows for 6 orbital locations and allows you to hook up to 4 receivers.

He then showed the USB Archiving and mentions it will be available later this year for the 942 and 622, When you archive a show it is NOT copied to the hard drive, it is MOVED to the hard drive, this was done to satisfy the programmers.

Some more Software updates were shown (these are all coming in the future with no date announced)

There will be a HD symbol shown in the guide on the HD channels making them easier to find.

In addtion lets say you tune to HBO on Channel 300, your receiver will know you are hooked to a HDTV so when you tune to channel 300 you will actually be tuned to the HD version of HBO instead. (The same goes with Starz)

The Sort Swap Feature... This is when you are looking for something in your DVR timer list you can sort by time or program name, and by pressing SWAP on your remote you can flip back and forth between time and name.

Searching for shows will soon add a Predictive Search Feature, so for example if you were searching for Spongebob Squarepants you would start typing SPON and it would fill out the rest of the word for you. Neat feature!

Native Resolution is coming and will work best on TV's with HDMI where the receiver can detect what formats your TV supports.

IPTV - Yes the VIP name does mean Video of Internet Protocol, and this will open up true Video on Demand if you have a bradband connection. The service will adjust to your internet connection and will work with all speeds of internet service. In some cases it will download video to your receiver to prevent buffering and in addition they are planning on offering HIGH DEFINITION movies via VIP.

The planned offerings for VIP is as follows -
Hollywood Studio Films
HD Content
Interactive Programming
Indie Content

They hope to have this running by the end of the year.

Next up Eric Sahl who is the Sr VP of Programming and Jody Martin the Sr VP of Marketing come out and Eric divs into some programming news.

On the Screen it says that VOOM is a Dish Network Exclusive.
Telemundo Puerto Rico is coming soon and will be available nationally on Dish Network.

He talks about VOD and Interactive TV and they launch the new Games ITV Channel. This will offer all kinds of classic games for $4.95 a month.

They report that Dish Home Channel 100 is the seond most watched channel on Dish Network (I never watch it myself dont know where they got that number)

They talk a bit about NFL and NFL HD and they mention that this fall they will be offering NFL games 6 days a week and say it will be much cheaper then the Sunday Ticket. They say more details about this are coming soon. In addition they gloat the fact that they will have 1 live game a week on the NFL Network and the NFL HD channel (Whos official name is HD NFL)

Some channels launching today are Baby First TV which is available Ala Carte for $9.95 a month and trhe Sleuth Channel.

They announce that they are launching a handfull of new SD locals markets next week, San Juan, Baton Rouge, Corpus Cristi and Lafayette, the also announced they will launch 7 more SD markets by the end of the year.

They go and tell the retatiler to go and sell HD as Dish has the edge now but they dont know how long they will hold on to it for. Eventually the advantage will go away. (I thought that was an interesting statement)

For new customers signing up for Dish they can get a 211 for free (It was a $49 upgrade fee before) or they can get a 622 for $199 (Was $299 before)

They then officially launched the HD channels! Dish now has 29 hd Channels.

AN interesting note starting today with all HD channels added going forward you will only get the HD channel if you have a HD package and get the SD version of that channel, so for National Geographic HD you will only get it if you subscribe to the AT180 equivilant HD package (Gold).

Now some BIG NEWS, this fall Dish Network will carry 11 RSN's in HD and will add the other 10 RSN's in HD by spring! These will be on 61.5 or 129. They did not announce which RSN's would be up first.

An update to the DNS issue, at the moment they are going as business as usual as no injunction has been issued which would force Dish to turn of DNS service to those with Distant Networks.

They announced the next HD LILs to go up will be St Louis, Detroit, Raliegh and Indianopolis, In and Pittsburgh.

Dish will be introducing a customer loyalty program called the Dish All Star Program it is meant to keep good customers from leaving.

For new customers they announced some new promotions starting July 1st.

All below prices are for the customers first 20 months...

Top 60 - $19.99
Top 120 - $29.99
Top 180 - $39.99

Dish Latino $14.99
Lation Plus - 19.99
Latino Dos - $24.99
Latino Max - $34.99

In addition some very special pricing on the HD packs for new Dish Network customers for 10 months (Basically $20 a month off for the first 10 months)

HD Bronze - $29.99
HD Silver - $39.99
HD Gold - $49.99

They then went into dealer sensitive stuff which I wont report here but a few interesting surprises (oh and I didnt mention in the opening video they showed with all the HD channels there was a logo there for NBC HD, not sure what that means)

Thats it for now! Lot of pics coming later!

[Iceberg]

Another new switch is shown the DP Plus 64 Switch. This switch allows for 6 orbital locations and allows you to hook up to 4 receivers.

SWEET!!

[BFG]

Wow!!!

[Mr.Pinkeye]

So much information! I had to read it twice!

[Scott Greczkowski]

I am getting good at taking notes.

[Purogamer]

They can do 40 MPEG-4 channels per transponder when things are working, but how many can they do now?

That Predictive Search Feature could be annoying if it tries to fill in too fast. "Celebrity" and "real" and other words are used in a LOT of shows...

Dish Home is 2nd most watched? Huh? What do they say is #1, Channel 101??

So you can't have a show on the internal HDD and External USB hdd at the same time. Not a problem there. However, once you move it to USB, can you move it back to the internal drive? Any additional info on the external drives is appreciated scott...

[mlb]

So are you saying I'd be smart to wait to sign up for DishHD on July 1st?

[Purogamer]

So are you saying I'd be smart to wait to sign up for DishHD on July 1st?

May want to wait until the 2nd or 3rd unless you get a special number to call from scott, otherwise you'll be playing CSR roulette until you find one who knows what's going on...

[rdinkel]

Scott, Any mention of adding significantly viewed stations any time soon????

[mlb]

May want to wait until the 2nd or 3rd unless you get a special number to call from scott, otherwise you'll be playing CSR roulette until you find one who knows what's going on...

Probably correct... currently I'm not a Dish customer at all, with the new deals I will probably be a customer before the end of the summer.