bein Sport HD channel request
- Thread starter LaLigaFan
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I'll wait to "complain" once we know where the channel is going and how much it may or may not cost to get.
It do believe that the official launch of the channel itself is on August 15th. But don't know when it launches on DISH.
Aug 15 is Wednesday also...& a day of uplinks. Maybe we will know soon. Again...hoping that a HD version is uplinked. Will be interesting to see which package this channel gets included in.
rajmarie said:
Since its paying Dish for carriage, I'd imagine it would go into one of the lowest packages so that Dish can maximize revenue from the channel.
Exactly. If it's $15/mo (and is SD) I will reserve my right to complain and not just be thankful DISH carries it.
For those in the know, what exactly is the cost/down-side for dish running the HD feed?
Since they are getting the content for free (or maybe even being paid to carry it), isn't it free money for every person who tunes into GOLTV on TW or Comcast or Fios next week and finds that La Liga, etc. are missing and goes looking to find out what happened? It's not a huge number of potential new subscribers, but I would think it would be in the low 5 figures once people who haven't been paying attention actually realize their favorite teams are gone. It will take them about five minutes to find out who has it now, and another minute to find out one of them has it in HD.
If the cost to DISH is nothing, or next to nothing, wouldn't a few hundred to a few thousand new subscribers be worth running an HD feed?
Also, it would logically seem that this is a one-time opportunity with most of the churn happening in the next two weeks, so starting SD-only and then later converting would miss most of the switchers, no?
Since they are getting the content for free (or maybe even being paid to carry it), isn't it free money for every person who tunes into GOLTV on TW or Comcast or Fios next week and finds that La Liga, etc. are missing and goes looking to find out what happened? It's not a huge number of potential new subscribers, but I would think it would be in the low 5 figures once people who haven't been paying attention actually realize their favorite teams are gone. It will take them about five minutes to find out who has it now, and another minute to find out one of them has it in HD.
If the cost to DISH is nothing, or next to nothing, wouldn't a few hundred to a few thousand new subscribers be worth running an HD feed?
Also, it would logically seem that this is a one-time opportunity with most of the churn happening in the next two weeks, so starting SD-only and then later converting would miss most of the switchers, no?
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Especially since one of Dish's main focal points is International Programming. You can't get much more international than soccer. (OTOH, it's a sport. And, we know how Dish feels about sports.)
Assuming that Dish is getting this (or these) channels for free... how could they pass this up?
Yeah, but there might still be some hidden cost to Dish to carry the HD version. Maybe someone here knows. Are they, like, out of room for another HD channel? Is there some downside to giving one up for a pay-for-carriage channel?
Maybe one of the people who actually knows about this stuff has an answer.
There is certainly some cost incurred to carry a channel. And, bandwidth is finite. So, they do have to carefully weigh how it is allocated.
GaryPen said:
Would the cost be different for an HD channel versus an SD channel? (I mean aside from bandwidth.) is HD inherently more expensive a signal to get to an uplink facility, encode, and uplink?
I wouldn't think so. But, the "cost" in bandwidth is probably more than they wish to spend.
However, if the Surf Channel turns out to be HD, then soccer fans will certainly have a legitimate complaint about BeIn being in SD only. I guarantee there are more soccer fans than surf fans, especially with Dish's high number of International subscribers.
I can stand an SD signal, as long as it is competent. Trying to watch MLS games in SD on Fox Sports Ohio is painful. And I don't say that as some sort of videophile. The picture is very blotchy, and more like streaming over a slow internet connection.
I agree, the FSC+ SD video is also extremely poor. But it is not SD in general. I get my locals in SD and they are much better.
GaryPen said:
That's what I thought, but since I lack the technical knowledge, I thought I'd throw it out there to be addressed.
We all already made requests for Dish to carry this channel, and not it appears as if they will. Can we make requests to a DIRT member that they carry it in HD? I know we can't argue with Dish about a cost/benefit analysis and try to convince them that it's good for the company. The best we can do is, as customers, make a strong request that we would really really like to have these two channels in HD and we will be very very disappointed if Dish does not carry them in HD. We are glad that Dish has decided to carry the channels, but we would very much like to request that they be in HD.
It is certainly worth a shot. Dish recently added TV Japan HD, which I presume was at least partly due to subscriber requests. (OTOH, they added it to the 118 "international" sat, which probably has more available bandwidth than the main birds.)
