It has been said many times, YES MANY TIMES, that these are temporary channels.Seems like a waste of space to make 18, yes EIGHTEEN, pay per view channels, when there are channels like Hbo that could be added. Who watches all those pay per view channels anyway. At least DISH has the right idea and puts the pay per views on your hard drive and you can access them when you want. That way you can use your valuable satellite bandwith for more REAL hd channels.
This is the proper way the rollout should occur.
First, they are early in in their roll out. Remember, they originally announce that D11 would not be functional until September?
Second, they took care of all of the formatting and cleanup. The MPEG4 translation of existing channels and balancing the loads between D10 and D11. In order to balance they had to fill the space with something until other channels come along. They are using profit making PPV to fill these empty spaces. This has been confirmed by reliable sourcse. They also decided to expand their profit-generating sports. As much as many of you don't care about sports and PPV, the truth of the matter is, both are a huge source of revenue fo Direct.
Third, the next step would be to add more national HD, which they announced they would do and it is also what our very reliable insiders tell us as well.
It has been said by many that lighting up PPV channels is the easiest way to make sure that the broadcast pipeline will be ready when new channels come on line for them.
It is a fact that more HD is coming, this is just the beginning and it came a month ahead of what was originally planned.