Team Summit General Assembly Notes

[Neutron]

After what I saw yesterday on the show floor, and our meeting with Charlie, I'd have to agree with you on that Scott.

[rockymtnhigh]

I see switching over to mpeg-4 a win-win for customers. Better PQ and room for more channels.

This is totally just a guess, but I'd be really surprised if Cinemax was the last national HD channel we get this year.

[Jason Whiddon]

I don't see hd quality going down the tubes. In fact I believe we may see the PQ improve in the future.

The future seems bright for BOTH satellite companies, and guess who wins?? Us the consumers!

Yepp, the HD competition is finally heating up and all major providers will be adding them the best they can to keep up. It's a buyers market! Good thing is E* is already a leg up and it appears they aim to try and keep it.

[Tom Bombadil]

Have to admit while all of this news appears to be progressive and exciting, that evaluating it as it pertains to my needs, it is disappointing.

What I want are more and better PQ HD channels.

The overview of what the new satellites are intended to do does nothing for me. I could care less about more LiLs, more SD channels, more international channels.

Moving to all MPEG4 is what E* needs to do. I've been saying that for months.

But if, say, all of the above does happen and they have new birds at 86.5 & 97. If there are no additional national HD channels on those birds, then I would have no reason to repoint. Whether or not my SD channels are in MPEG2 or MPEG4 is meaningless.

Now what could bring meaning is if they took advantage of MPEG4 to improve SD quality. Bring SD quality closer to DVD. That would be GOOD! They wouldn't get quite as much savings in bandwidth that way (although it would still save them a lot). I'm not holding my breath on this.

Another plus would be if some of the national HD channels would be placed on the new birds and offer great PQ, full native resolution with high bandwidth under MPEG4.

But if it is the case that E* would be simply taking advantage of the more efficient compression of MPEG4 to squeeze more channels than ever onto the new birds, primarily for more LiLs and more international, leaving us continuing to get most of our HD channels from 61.5 & 129, then this is much ado about nothing as far as I'm concerned.

Hopefully there will be some HD improvements in this that Charlie neglected to mention.

[JAG72]

I see switching over to mpeg-4 a win-win for customers. Better PQ and room for more channels.

I agree with you 100% on this one. I said the exact same thing in another thread and for some reason people just dont get it.

[RVD420]

Will mpeg4 SD improve PQ any? I don't know enough about the technology, just that it is a better compression format.

PQ will stay about the same. Dish is more concerned about number of channels than PQ.

[riffjim4069]

She also tells us that DishCOMM has been turned on in the 622's and will soon be turned on in the 211, this will allow all the boxes to talk to each other. He then talks about DishONLINE and how simple it is to wire using DishCOMM / Homeplug technology.

...except DishCOMM still doesn't recognize other DishCOMM devices, just as many have pointed out.

External Storage will be available this summer and currently it will support hard drives up to 750 GB...He then showed us that we can turn a Dish 211 into a DVR by hooking up an external hard drive. He said it would act like a Dish 510 reciver and would do trick play (pause rewind fast forward) and also do a 9 day EPG. Again he said it would be like a Dish 510 receiver but in high definition.

Nice, but summer means September, which is only a stones throw into becomming October -->the December --> then 1st quarter 2008. Disappointed there were no hard-and-fast dates, along with device and pricing information, now that we're into May 2007.

Dish DVR Advantage is changing on June 1st.

Credit Card Auto Pay will no longer be required
No 18 Month commitment is requires

In addition AT 250 will be available with Dish DVR Advantage for $59.99

In addition they are simplifying the premium packages with Dish DVR Advantage.

So if you have Dish DVR advantage with AT 200 for $49 a month you can get premiums at
2 Premium Service for $20 more
3 Premium Services for $30 more
4 Premium Service for $40 more

And in a way to upsell you to AT250 for $59 a month you can get premiums for...
1 for $10
2 for $20
3 for $30
4 for $40

And plus you can add HD to any of the above for only $20 more a month.

Other than getting rid of auto-pay and/or 18-month commitment, is this really a change or merely clarification of the DVR Advantage program?

[RVD420]

RedSavina:

I doubt there are enough frequencies at 110/119 to do all that. If there were more available frequencies there, I imagine they would have put up more/bigger satellites already.

The switch from mpeg2 to mpeg4 will free up quite a bit of space. A QPSK TP can hold 12-13 mpeg2 SD channels. The same TP can hold 20 mpeg4 SD channels. Now if the TP is switched from QPSK to 8PSK you can fit about 30-32 mpeg4 SD channels.

[gbjbany]

I would agree with Tom, maybe i missed all the good news, but was a bit disappointed. The new satellites I dont think will affect me much, but of course I could be wrong.

Cinemax was good, but we had been expecting that so not a real wow, although i've already dvr'd 3 films off it, so it is a good thing !

The most exciting, although im not holding my breath for when the software will be delivered, was the Media server. As i feel that is something that has huge potential. Sharing dvr'd programs across my house and if they add some sort of pc client another option than a sling box. Yes this one excites me!

Did i miss something ?

[rockymtnhigh]

PQ will stay about the same. Dish is more concerned about number of channels than PQ.

I disagree. PQ has already improved on UHD since going from MPEG2 to MPEG4.