Charlie Ergen plan with Rainbow-1, his words

[Bruce]

Well, this was said during t-nites Charlie Chat during the Q&A

Steve with question:What HD is coming and Voom?

Charlie’s answer:Acquired Voom Sat, waiting for FCC approval, then will give additional HDTV

From the horses mouth, sounds like there might be a plan of some sort.
Notice he said nothing about Voom's programing, just the hardware.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

He also said he had no pplans to add any HD until they moved to MPEG4, then in another breath said that some HD could come before the move to MPEG4.

Charlie sounds kind of confused to me.

 

[B.Greenway]

"Acquired Voom Sat, waiting for FCC approval, then will give additional HDTV"

Finally! This is what we've all been waiting for! Some concrete evidence of.... Nothing.

 

[Bruce]

"Acquired Voom Sat, waiting for FCC approval, then will give additional HDTV"

Finally! This is what we've all been waiting for! Some concrete evidence of.... Nothing.

True, but except what we heard out of Malone, we have not gotten many quotes about what is going on, the people who need to talk are the Dolans, if Malone can talk about it and he is on the board, at least the Dolans can make a statement.

 

[B.Greenway]

Agreed, but I don’t think anyone could accuse the Dolans of being overly chatty about their intentions. Looks like more wait and see (imo).

 

[James Long]

Charlie's Real Words

From the horses mouth, sounds like there might be a plan of some sort.
Notice he said nothing about Voom's programing, just the hardware.

Actually, he said more than that. He mumbles, but this is reasonably close:
Charles Ergen - CEO Dish Network on Charlie Chat

We did enter into an agreement with Cablevision on the "Voom" satellite to aquire that satellite at the 61 and 1/2 degree location. We already have a satellite there ourselves as well. We also aquired capacity there.

We did not aquire the Voom programing assets, they have about 21 channels of of high definition television - we did not aquire that, and they have indicated that they may continue to broadcast at a different location or something.

We have to wait until we get the FCC approval for the aquisition. That could take anywhere from three to six months, probably. But once we are approved for that it does give us a lot more capacity to do a lot more high definition television. We are looking for every way to be able to do that. That's kinda step number one.

The second thing for high definition television is that we have a new technology called MPEG-4 which is a different form of compression that actually doubles the amount of capacity of high definition television vs our current MPEG-2.

So one of the things that we want to wait on is to add a lot of channels in MPEG-4 so we don't have a lot of people to work with to upgrade to that new service.

So long story short is - (we should probably do this in a show and give more schedule about programming in HDTV but) - It's probably more of a fall type product when you will see more HDTV from Dish Network.

We certainly hope from a HDTV perspective that we have more HDTV than any cable company or any available satellite. We view it as the wave of the future, there are so many things with the DVR and the UHF remote controls and the two tuners in a box we have been a leader, and we will also be a leader in HDTV.

Stand by to more Charlie Chats, and (we won't get into a lot of details here but) we're going to wait on new satellites that we have in process, we have to wait on MPEG-4 technology which is a technology we are testing today - but the product isn't out until late this fall.​

Jim interjects: "And that's how it relates to any real volume of HD programming, is there a chance that we will have anything before the fall?

We may add a few channels before this fall - The industry is still evolving, I saw where Starz! is going to take down their HDTV movie channel "Encore" - I don't believe we put that one up, now they are going to take it down - so we didn't confuse people with that. There are a lot of people who are going to enter the HDTV programming business, a lot of it is going to be late this year - a lot of it next year.

I can only say that if you like HDTV and you are a Dish Network subscriber I think that you are going to like a lot of the things that we do. We put those plans in place to be able to do that. We are just not ready to announce every single thing we are going to do there until we are ready. There will probably be a Charlie Chat several months from now when we do that.​

"Late Fall" fits nicely into the timeline of getting E10 to 110 opening up more transponders for HD there, AMC-15 finally to 105 where HD can go if needed, and Rainbow1 cleared for East Coast HD (E1 and E2 providing West Coast HD).

JL

 

[Mark_AR]

So this means that there is going to be a RUSH this fall on subscribers scarfing up any type of 300/500 dish LNB and pointing it at 61.5 so they can possibly get more HD content other than CBS-HD.

I guess the 'one-dish-solution- was just just upped to a 2 or 3 dish solution.

More psychobabble than at a pshychiatrist convention.

Just 'maybe' we will end up with a 30 to 70 inch motorized dish so we can get all of the DBS channels we want.

What a concept... huh?

 

[Sean Mota]

This is how Charlie string along people... Nothing new here. This is his way of saying "hang on" but when Falls comes, he will change his song and dance and will say late Spring of 2006. He did the same thing with the 921 if you remember correctly.

It still surprises me that E* subs are buying into his bullsh****t.

 

[Bruce]

Yep I remember the hope of the superdish with 50 new HD channels, but then that hope went away when I first heard that because of low power from that AMC and most of Michigan can't get a good signal from it.

I will say this again, with all the f-ups that E* has, I am always amazed at their sub count and gains in those same subs and keeping those subs ( low churn ) and because of that, I believe they break the myth of needing to be in places like Best Buy and Circuit City to sell to subs, who ever does E* marketing, Voom should have hired them away, not just because of past success, but their current success also.

 

[nuts4scuba]

This is how Charlie string along people... Nothing new here. This is his way of saying "hang on" but when Falls comes, he will change his song and dance and will say late Spring of 2006. He did the same thing with the 921 if you remember correctly.

It still surprises me that E* subs are buying into his bullsh****t.

Yep, this is what he does. Dangles carrots. Viacom dispute- "Looking at adding Oxygen and CSTV maybe others". Nothing there. "5xx boxes will get NBR by next chat". Now sometime late summer. By that time I'm sure it will be new boxes coming out, no need to add NBR. "Tell your Senators and Reps you want HDTV network channels so we can give them to you". Where are they? It's the same old line over and over. E* added Nicktoons last year because Viacom made them. To me the last decent SD channel E* added was The National Geographic Channel in 2002. All the other channels have been small niche channels. They won't add anymore HD anytime soon.

 

[jeslevine]

I have been with dish for quite a few years. When Voom came I downgraded my dish service, kept its very basic service, and have been enjoying Voom

Frankly, there is no way that dish will get any significant HD content for at least a year, and that does not even include the delays with receiver bugs. The 921 was a disgrace

If Voom goes under the odds are good that I will go with Comcast. I am tired of paying for expensive receivers with no HD content. At least with comcast I do not have to outlay a lot of bucks for a receiver, and tie myself to a long contract

 

[Jamey K]

I', still wondering why Chuck would kick in 10 M for a service he wasn't absolutely sure wasn't going to be around. Maybe I'm focusing on the wrong point....but they are adding channels like crazy and still taking orders. It just doesn't make sense that this is a business that is closing soon.

 

[jeslevine]

No question about it he is going to try and make it a go

I', still wondering why Chuck would kick in 10 M for a service he wasn't absolutely sure wasn't going to be around. Maybe I'm focusing on the wrong point....but they are adding channels like crazy and still taking orders. It just doesn't make sense that this is a business that is closing soon.

It may just be beyond his control

I do believe that we will know one way or another at the end of the month

 

[vurbano]

What a putz. Lets not confuse people with giving them HD programming because the channel might not last?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

This is how Charlie string along people... Nothing new here. This is his way of saying "hang on" but when Falls comes, he will change his song and dance and will say late Spring of 2006. He did the same thing with the 921 if you remember correctly.

It still surprises me that E* subs are buying into his bullsh****t.

Yup its funny Charlie is saying the same things this year as he said last year. Hes been stringing people along now for a year now in regard to new HD.

People are starting to figure out that Charlie is a liar and its starting to make his business look bad.

 

[vurbano]

I guess he doesnt want to confuse people with starzHD or cinemaxHD or TMCHD either? Or UNiversalHD? LMAO

 

[kelljc]

I guess he doesnt want to confuse people with starzHD or cinemaxHD or TMCHD either? Or UNiversalHD? LMAO

Why to you keep up with the consending remarks, every one has a opion don't they:

 

[James Long]

People are starting to figure out that Charlie is a liar and its starting to make his business look bad.

At least we can be pretty sure that the "liar" will still be operating a satellite system in the Fall.

Charlie's biggest fault is he doesn't know how to say 'no comment' without saying something he will regret. The statement above should have been a quick one or two paragraph response:

Yes, we are buying a satellite from Cablevision, the owners of Voom. We did not buy their content - last we heard they were planning on moving to another satellite or something. This purchase represents capacity to us and we look forward to adding this capacity to the Dish Network system. It will be a key part in plans we have for this Fall.​

Then stop talking - no rambling on about internal problems.

BTW: I'm suprised that nobody picked up on what he said about Voom: "they have indicated that they may continue to broadcast at a different location or something".

JL

 

[Bruce]

At least we can be pretty sure that the "liar" will still be operating a satellite system in the Fall.

Charlie's biggest fault is he doesn't know how to say 'no comment' without saying something he will regret. The statement above should have been a quick one or two paragraph response:

Yes, we are buying a satellite from Cablevision, the owners of Voom. We did not buy their content - last we heard they were planning on moving to another satellite or something. This purchase represents capacity to us and we look forward to adding this capacity to the Dish Network system. It will be a key part in plans we have for this Fall.​

Then stop talking - no rambling on about internal problems.

Charlie biggest problem is he sounds like a CSR, he tries to tell people what he thinks they want to hear, hence the "string along" about HD the last couple of years

BTW: I'm suprised that nobody picked up on what he said about Voom: "they have indicated that they may continue to broadcast at a different location or something".

What that says to me is Dolan went to see Charlie to try and get the bird back and Charlie said no.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

BTW: I'm suprised that nobody picked up on what he said about Voom: "they have indicated that they may continue to broadcast at a different location or something".

JL

The interesting point of that to me is the "or something" part.