Ever since its inception people have been saying Dish is "ripe for a buy-out". The first in line was Rupert Murdoch back in 1997. Thanks to his fumbling the deal Dish ended up with his satellite location at 110 along with two satellites and 29 transponder licenses!
In early 1997 when I first started looking at satellite services and Dish's top tier was $25 a month with a whopping 50 channels there were people constantly posting "tic-toc" on a.d.e. (usenet- before any of the discussion boards) as a timer when Dish was going to go under or be sold out for exactly the same reasons listed above. Over a decade later, I am still waiting.
In the mean time DirecTV, the big conglomerate that has deep pockets has changed hands TWICE! (Okay 1 and a half)
Like a bad Dragnet episode, the names have changed but the story is the same. So instead of NewsCorp, it's now AT&T (for the third time in 5 years).
As to the HD channel count, it is being disputed in many other threads and there are pretty difinitive lists available there. NEITHER Dish nor DirecTV have a monopoly on all the HD channels. Yes DirecTV launched a ton of HD channels recently. Dish launced a ton of HD channel BEFORE DirecTV did. Now, they have about the same number. DirecTV has CNBC HD which has zero HD content, just 16x9sd with the 4x3 pix of the regular CNBC channel on one side and some ticker info on the "extra" space. Dish has Voom!
See ya
Tony
