DISH and 4K

And add to all that Ergen's quote from an earlier quarterly conference call when he sad, "If were building Dish Network [still the old name at the time--not renamed just "Dish" yet] today, I would not be investing in satellites." I think that tells us how Ergen views the internet as a delivery system, and lets face it, people don't really care HOW the programming gets to them, just that it is a positive experience. Dish will be using sats for many years, but I do think Dish will become more of a sat and IP hybrid system. After all, Dish is really pushing to get as many subscribers connected to the internet via their boxes for more than just VOD. It's about how some programming may be delivered by Dish in the future.
the issue with this is unless something changes with net neutrality, no major isp is going to let Dish push programming over their networks with out paying a premium price or Dish has to do some heavy capital investment in terrestrial based networking.
 
Dish could still provide for some 4K content on the sats, but not at the level it does for HD channels for some time, and the internet is a great interim solution and Dish's only competition in rural areas, for the most part, is DircTV, and even they aren't going to be able to provide for more than just a few 4K channels, so both sat companies are in the same boat there.

As to DirecTV's bonding of who transponders for 4K: This is a solution demonstrated earlier this year by the commercial sat companies who provide transmission services for cable TV channels and other clients (experiments and demonstrations still ongoing). The bonding of two transponders is about the ONLY way DBS (and most of the commercial sats) can provide 4K today because DBS (and the commercial video sat services) are still using the H.264 and neither Dish's DBS Ku nor DirecTV's Ka transponders provide enough bandwidth for 4K using the H.264 standard using a single transponder. So, for today, bonding two transponders is the only way Dish and DirecTV can send 4K channels to their customers, assuming they want to maintain full or sufficient (so that it still look like better than HD) 4K resolution and bit rate to the customer. It is a solution that does NOT ADD any bandwidth, and, in fact, will require MORE compression on all the other channels that would have to be moved from the 2 bonded transponders. It was also demonstrated on non-US satellites that transponders with sufficient bandwidth can transmit 4K using just that one transponder, but that is NOT the real world for most satellites in the US currently used to send video to the MVPD's NOR for Sat DBS subscribers.

The real solution is the coming FINAL spec. for H.265. At least the commercial sat companies know they HAVE to change over, and plan on doing so because it would be far more efficient than bonding two transponders for delivery to the MVPD's, and MVPD's who want to RECEIVE 4K channels from commercial sats (there is also the fiber optic option) will also upgrade to H.265 so they can RECEIVE those channels. That is relatively CHEAP (but still a fair cost) for the commercial end of it and for all the MVPD's to change out for RECEIVING ONLY. However, when DBS attempts to turn-around that 4K channel to their DBS customers, they are STUCK with H.264's limitations and are going to LOSE bandwidth doing it. It is far more expensive for Dish and DirecTV to go through another box change-out for when 4K takes off because we already know from MPEG that it will require faster chips and additional hardware that is NOT in ANY MVPD box today. H.265 is pretty more complex than H.264 and really depends upon serious processing power.

Charlie must be having heartburn knowing he is may have to go though another change-out, even if it is years away. But this is why in the short-term, the internet may be the preferred method for Dish to deliver 4K content while 4K takes time to reach the tipping point.
 
Why don't they just put 4k upscalers in their newest sat receivers and let the box upconvert the hd picture to 4k ? They could offer it under the menu with: 480p, 720p, and 1080i/1080p, 4k. They might be able to come out with a new mpeg compression technique, that would give them the best hd picture, that could be easily upconverted to 4k in the box itself. That way they won't need to put any 4k on the sat, just upconvert it to 4k and let the sat receiver do the rest. It would work for the immediate future ,till they actually could offer a real 4k channel on the satellite itself. Considering that DISH still hasn't changed out all the western arc receivers to mpeg 4 , or the sd channels on the western arc to mpeg4, it might be their best bet for now.
 
Whose to say they do not end up doing just that on the next product release, when the hopper becomes old news?
 
Charlie must be having heartburn knowing he is may have to go though another change-out, even if it is years away. But this is why in the short-term, the internet may be the preferred method for Dish to deliver 4K content while 4K takes time to reach the tipping point.
I don't see that change-out ever happening. There will no doubt be an H.265 receiver for 4K content, but I don't see 4K for more than a few premium and specialty linear channels, and the inevitable DirecTV/Dish merger will probably have occurred allowing for more overall bandwidth anyway.
 
I don't know about that. The general concensus this time around, was they were looking good for it. Cable and fiber is in enough markets, that combining satellite would be ideal to survive. Just like Sirius/XM
 
Why don't they just put 4k upscalers in their newest sat receivers and let the box upconvert the hd picture to 4k ?
The TVs will do that already.

The scaler is integrated into the Broadcom SoC. Any sort of add-on scaler would be a relatively large expense.

Broadcom has already announced/demoed 4K capable SoCs, but I think they are ARM, not MIPs, based, which will mean more work for Dish than any recent SoC upgrade.
 
DTV and Dish will never be allowed to merge they are two big niche market providers that would create a monopoly.
Discussion has been had ad nauseam. There are easy ways to price protect the rural markets. As the overall linear TV market compresses, a merger is a certainty, and it will be spun as protecting the rural markets access to TV.

If I had to bet, I'd say five years.
 
Again, you guess 5 years still, with ATT involved? Charlie has said he will never do business with ATT after what they pulled years ago, pulling out from a partnership and jumping to directv the way they did. Centurylink atleast did it the right way.
 
Discussion has been had ad nauseam. There are easy ways to price protect the rural markets. As the overall linear TV market compresses, a merger is a certainty, and it will be spun as protecting the rural markets access to TV.

If I had to bet, I'd say five years.
price protecting a luxury product or service would be a hard sell.
 
Again, you guess 5 years still, with ATT involved? Charlie has said he will never do business with ATT after what they pulled years ago, pulling out from a partnership and jumping to directv the way they did. Centurylink atleast did it the right way.
I doubt Charlie really cares that much. The people in charge change, he'll deal with the new guard, five years - maybe ten. The only way it doesn't happen is if the sat business is highly synergistic with the terrestrial spectrum/OTT business(es), assuming he doesn't sell the spectrum and cash out.
 
I doubt Charlie really cares that much. The people in charge change, he'll deal with the new guard, five years - maybe ten. The only way it doesn't happen is if the sat business is highly synergistic with the terrestrial spectrum/OTT business(es), assuming he doesn't sell the spectrum and cash out.
thing with that spectrum Charlie has to use it or loose it.
at least that is what I have read from various articles.
 
Real time upscaling to UHD would take impressive CPU power. You really think currently deployed STBs can do it?




Posted Via The FREE SatelliteGuys Reader App using an iPhone.
 
that would be dish/direct versus all the cable companies plus many of the major telecoms that have their own video services.
That's sort of the point, FCC/FTC have a history of three providers being "enough" of a market. OTT will add another competitor to the mix. 90% of the population will still have "sufficient" competition. The only real price protection they have to put in is that rural markets will never be charged more than the "competitive" markets, with maybe a little extra short term sweetener.
 

Multisport offer

No Auto-Hop for Gotham this week ?

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Total: 0, Members: 0, Guests: 0)

Who Read This Thread (Total Members: 1)