Greeting everyone from the Mile High City, Denver, Colorado which is the home of Dish Networks Team Summit 2009!
This morning opened up with the Dish Network General Assembly.
The assembly opened up with an AMAZING 3 screen video presentation and some of the most AMAZING BASS I have ever heard, it shook the entire room.
First out on stage was Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen, Charlie talked for a few moments then told us he was goiing to do things differently this year, instead of giving a powerpoint presentation he had a special guest.
Out came the host of MSNBC's Morning Joe Show - Joe Scarborough who sat down and interviewed Charlie.
We got to hear how Charlie got his start in the satellite business. His story is one of true American push to make it. I would love to sit down with Charlie and get him telling his story on video.
Joe asked Charlie what he thought about the economy and Charlie said that because of the economy more people are staying home to watch TV. Charlie said he believes this recession will last for about 2 more years.
Charlie stated his goal is to marry satellite television with the internet and online movies services.
Charlie admitted that Dish fell behind with the HD roll out but that was about to change. He said that HD will drive the company this year.
Charlie believes that the battle of merging the TV and computers together will end with the TV winning. He feels people would rather watch video on their TV then on a smaller cmputer screen. He feels that for most people their television is the centerpeace of their home.
He said that soon people will want to watch their television anywhere and that Dish is leading that charge and has all the technology already. He says soon people will be able to watch TV in their homes, when traveling and even moibilly.
Joe mentions that he recently got a slingbox and the sling software on his blackberry and ow much he loves it.
Charlie commented that Dish needs to make some changes, Dish is currently not a world class product and he wants it to be world class.
The interview then wraps up and Mark Jackson from Echostar comes out to let us know whats going on with Dish Network technology.
He starts by jumping in with the 922. He talks about the new remote which is UHF and uses 2G technlogy. After he goes over all the features of the new remote the one that gets the loudest roar from the crowd is the "Lost remote finder" feature.
Mark invites Leslie Harper out on stage, and Leslie does her best Vanna White to show off Sling Technology running on a Blackberry and an iPhone. Leslie then leaves and Mark shows off homeplug technology which seems to impress a lot of folks in the crowd. The new 922 has Homeplug Turbo which can go up to 7 MB/s.
Then Mark officially anounces the launch of Dish Remote Access which launcched today at DishNetwork.COM. He gives a demo of it including showing how you can watch shows from your home 922 using the Dish Remote Access portal.
He then shows us a new iPhone application they are working on that will turn your iPhone in a remote. (its like the dish.sling.com remote, but built into an actual iPhone application.) This remote application is expected to be released in June.
Mark then makes a huge announcement for all the retailers in attendance and that is that they will allow retailers who are in attendance that they can help beta test the 922 starting in June. The crowd goes NUTS!
Mark announces that the MSRP on the 922 will be $699.
Mark then talks about the TV2 IR Converter which allows a non Dish Network IR remote to operate TV2 on the dual tuner receivers. In addition it can be used to so that Slingbox users can finally hook their Slingbox's up to the TV2 output and contol the receiver. (YES!)
He shows off a new Dish 500+ intergrated LNB, it picks up 129, 119, 118.7 and 110 on one unit. It has a built in Dish Pro Plus Switch and will make life easy for a number of dealers.
Mark gets a nice round of applause as he finishes up.
Out next is Dave Shull from Programming.
Dave comes out and talks programming and tells us he has some exciting news for us. He talks about the push VOD service and mentions that soon all the movies pushed to the 622's will be in HD (the 722 has all the movies in HD already)
Dish Network currently has over 5000 movies available via Dish Online.
They will be changing the DishOnline feature to make it easier to find what you want to watch, including organizing things by genere. (Still looks like crap to me, Dish needs to look at DirecTV's VOD setup for how its done best.)
He talks about 1080p and tells us we will be seeing more 1080p.
The show a video of some of the 1080p movies they already aired on Dish Network.
He goes on to talk about internationals, Dish Network now has 168 international channels serving 28 languages.
Great News for our friends in Puerto Rico, soon the folks in
PR will have more then 30 HD channels, plus they will be launching 10 regional channels which will only be available in
PR on Dish Network.
Dish will be getting rid of the dual dish setup in
PR and will have a single dish colution using a 30 inch Dish in 2010!
He then moves on to talk about HD locals and announces that Dish Network will launch 14 more HD locals markets by the end of the year.
By the end of the year Dish will have HD locals in 152 markets serving 93% of the population.
He then goes on to talk about the launch of Speed HD, FX HD, Logo HD, MAV HD & Fashion TV HD.
He then tells us that MSNBC in HD will be coming on June 29th.
Then he shows a video from CMT announcing that CMT Front Row will be presenting EXCLUSIVE concerts in HD once a month on Dish Network channel 101.
He recaps the announcements and gets a lot of applause as he exits and Ira Bahr from Marketing takes the stage.
Ira starts about talking the recession and how great this is for Dish. He says Dish Networks marketing was bad and needs to change (Yippie someone finally admits it!)
He then tells us that Dish will start pushing itself better to brand itself. He talks about how Dish is the HD leader. He then pulls up DirecTV's website and it shows that Dish has more then 130 HD channels, he laughs that even DirecTV's website shows that they are the HD leader. (This was funny... bet DirecTV takes that page down soon)
Then Ira shows a filing from DirecTV that mentions that DirecTV customers pay $20 more a month for their television then they would have paid if they got it from Dish.
He does on and talks about DirecTV's recent NFL Sunday Ticket deal and asked "Whos paying for this?" and makes a point that all DirecTV's customer are paying for the NFL package no matter if they subscribe to it or not.
With that he shows a commercial that asks why pay more for the same thing. Its a good ad, but still not good. While the ad sends a good message, I still think Beyonce dancing around half naked sells more satellite for DirecTV.
With that Ira wraps up and out come Jim Defranco and Steve McElroy. And in it Jim and Steve go over retailer things. They fixed many of the things that have been hurting dish sign up new subscribers.
Without giving away any dealer sensative information I will say that next Wednesday EVERYBODY who wants Dish Network will qualify.
It was an impressive show with some exciting news.
Now before anyone asks... nothing was mentioned at all about TurboHD (the word was never uttered) in addition no word on 24/7 RSN's.
I plan to hit the floor in a bit and get those questions answered.
Thanks everyone for being SatelliteGuys and thanks to everyone who signed up to be a supporting Pub Member this week. We want to continue to be able to do special events like this, but need your support to make it happy. For more details on becoming a supporting pub member please
CLICK HERE.
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