SimpleSimon said:
OK, it's halfway through June (the month we were told E* would have their act to.gether for HD distant net authorization), and rumor has it that there's little to no more HD Lil going in for the rest of 2006.
SO - anybody hear anything about getting auth'd for distant HD nets (besides CBS that I already have).
I really don't want to "move" back to Park County just to get the Denver nets - I'm likely to lose my existing distants, and only having two MPEG-4 HD DVR tuners just doesn't cut it.
Yea, we've been "told" a lot of things by "E" that never seem to correlate with what actually happens.
Obviously "June" must have meant something to Charles or he wouldn't have mentioned it but what that something is / was may never be known. Maybe he figured that court ruling that came down recently on distants was due about then and thinking it would go in his favor, figured he'd be safe enough in whatever qualification method he planned to use for HD DNS. If so, then he's probably rethinking his stratagies.
I figured his "June" remark had something to do with the availability of digital signal testing that was supposed to happen for the first 100 DMAs but there hasn't been squat mentioned anywhere (that I've seen) about that. In fact, I find the silence on that issue quite curious. Obviously a conspiracy of some sort
.
Maybe he's decided the only way he'll go HD DNS is if he can get similar deals to what he has with CBS and therefore circumvent SHVERA (and any court rulings thereof). There are differing opinions (see debate between Greg Bimson & TNGTony in another thread) as to whether the CBS contract fully escapes any SHVERA regulations though.
Shortly before he left Dish, Marc Lumpkin told me that they were "very close to launching ABC HD" and that "FOX & NBC were still in negoiations". Now that was many months ago, so obviously something has happened. Scott did mention something in one of the team summit threads about, and I'm paraphrasing, "that Dish having NBC-HD listed was not a mistake" - whatever that means.
That's all I know right now. There could be others that know more but for some reason, they're not talking.