Recent content by Mike McGann

Actually, as I live in the Philadelphia DMA, I have two service options for Comcast Sport Net — Comcast and FIOS. And Comcast has used Sunday Ticket as the justification for keeping CSN-Philly off the dish. And nothing whatsoever prevents me from signing up with either of those services, as...

The question is how much money are they going to be willing to lose? To break even, not counting overhead or promotion, they need 500,000 subscribers paying $200 a year. Including cable, there are only 750,000 EI subs now, so D* would need an insane conversion rate. And then there's the...

As reported in the NY Times today, although the buzz has been around the industry for a couple weeks: DirecTV is in the process of finalizing a deal to get exclusive use of the "Extra Innings" out of town package as well as an all-baseball channel set to launch in 2009...

The problem with that premise is this: AT&T or Verizon would gain entry into more homes with D* ownership. I personally think it makes more sense for Verizon, because it could be offered in lieu of FIOS in areas where the build out isn't ready, but offer the same basic programming and...

Sorry, but the press release announcing this was hilarious. I wrote about it on my tech site (I'll not link it here, so as not to annoy the webmaster here) but: The basic hardware concept is OK, although regular dishes have enough issues these days, so I wonder how well a single, flat...

Evidently, baseball is willing to risk its antitrust protection by allowing EI to be taken off cable/E*/FIOS for an exclusive deal with D* Since there are already pending legal challenges to the NFL deal's legality, baseball would be basically kissing its antitrust exemption good bye, because...

I would be cautious. I suspect Sirius is going to have some churn issues — as their older equipment begins to fail in the field. Unlike XM, which has been very aggressive in replacing/handing out recievers in exchange for sub contracts, Sirius seems to be trying to cut retention costs. While...

Satellite based-broadband is never going to go beyond a niche product. Why? Latency is a big problem — it makes gaming impossible and often can be an issue with streaming. For straight downloads, it's not horrible, but it's not great. If you can't any other service, it beats dialup. But that's...

Actually, I think Verizon (if any telco) is a better suitor for DTV. But that having been said, I don't think Liberty is selling anytime soon...it's a lot less expensive to let DTV whither than to have to compete with it until IPTV actually works a decade or so from now.

Not that I'd want to bash another Webmaster....but: It seems kind of wrong to grade yourself. Either you're right and people know it — without having to pull your skirt over your head — or your not right. I called the death of CRT in 2000 (by 2007 or 2008), in print. So? I lost a writing...

While there probably won't be a ton of changes right off (not until Liberty has control, mid-year), I suspect that there will be a number of changes down the road, including the management team. Unfortunately, the lease model doesn't seem likely to be one of them, as Liberty is quite...

I don't have CI (have to draw the line somewhere with NFL, MLB and NBA already) but noticed that non-csn feeds of Philly teams can now be seen – which means I've been able to catch Mets-Phils or Nets-Sixers without much grief. I remain amazed that the FCC hasn't stepped in here and done...

If Swann has read about the compression arguments — why not mention, oh by the way, a lot of these receivers have had reliability issues? Man, it's like reading an electronics enthusiast magazine these days: Thankfully, there would also be three Fujinista ads — maybe one with a special...

Murdoch has been bad for D* — HNS did a better job running the company — but Liberty might be worse — looking to bleed off the company to keep it from competing with cable. Hard to say is this is good news or bad.

It's nice to see people have a complete understanding of the D* business model. (Not that D* does, based on how they're bleeding with Sunday Ticket). So, the argument is that the DVR must be vastly more costly than $299 to $399 and we should all be very thankful for D* for being kind enough...