New Receiver DISH 311K

Scott Greczkowski

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Sep 7, 2003
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DISH Network is coming out with a new Receiver that you might hear about over the next few months, it is the DISH 311K.

What is a 311K?

It's a 322 with only one tuner... much like a DISH 512 is a single tuner 522.

Just thought I would pass that along. :)
 
I think the point of the 311k is to replace the 311 which is 8PSK but only MPEG2 capable, the 311k will be MPEG4 capable. About time!
 
Why in the world do you guys keep pushing out MPEG2 receivers. That is ridiculous.

MPEG4 is still too expensive to hand out to everyone, but 8PSK is cheap and most customer already have a number of 8PSK compatible receivers already.

8PSK will be very important for DISH shortly. :)
 
Educated guess (not official answer) as to why we made the 311k:

With all of the QPSK receivers out there that will need to be replaced, we may not have had enough 311's to replace them all, where we had plenty of 322's, so we converted the 322 to do the same thing. Switching everything to 8PSK will free up a lot of bandwidth.
 
The 311s were already 8PSK , so I guess if a 311k is not MPEG4 capable the "K" must stand for crappy 322 refurbs with the TV2 port covered over. Another wasted 36 months.
 
The 311s were already 8PSK , so I guess if a 311k is not MPEG4 capable the "K" must stand for crappy 322 refurbs with the TV2 port covered over. Another wasted 36 months.
THese are not for everyone, but for people with 501's and 508's these receivers make cents... (dollars and cents) :D
 
Why go through all these swaps and truck rolls to only install hardware for an intermediate step? What a waste.
 
Because the costs for MPEG4 are still to high. Another 3 to 5 years from now the MPEG2 equipment (whats left of it) will then be upgraded to MPEG4.
 
It really seems like dish makes every effort (stock holders delight) to pettle old hardware on unsuspecting customers in the WA. What dish needed in development about 24 months ago was a new build model SD only output MPEG4 HD downconversion capable box that costs the same as a CECB used for OTA. That is not even on their radar, instead they keep rolling out the same ole, same ole and keep delaying a full conversion to MPEG4 and elimination of SD duplicates. They haven't even removed MPEG4 SD duplicates from the EA and all the boxes there are VIP series MPEG4 HD capable.
 
It really seems like dish makes every effort (stock holders delight) to pettle old hardware on unsuspecting customers in the WA. What dish needed in development about 24 months ago was a new build model SD only output MPEG4 HD downconversion capable box that costs the same as a CECB used for OTA. That is not even on their radar, instead they keep rolling out the same ole, same ole and keep delaying a full conversion to MPEG4 and elimination of SD duplicates. They haven't even removed MPEG4 SD duplicates from the EA and all the boxes there are VIP series MPEG4 HD capable.

They can't remove SD duplicates because the programmers won't let them. They could just hand out VIP's to everybody. Because all of them have SD outputs. But I'm sure that they still have plenty MPEG-2 receivers in their warehouses that they need to get rid of. It's not as simple as you think.
 
As has been discussed previously, contractually the SD versions are still up in the WA so there should be no reason they are obligated to waste bandwidth to any extent in the EA where all receivers are HD downconversion capable.
 
As has been discussed previously, contractually the SD versions are still up in the WA so there should be no reason they are obligated to waste bandwidth to any extent in the EA where all receivers are HD downconversion capable.

As I said, The programmers won't let Dish carry the HD version without carrying the SD one. So that is not possible right now.
 
I don't get this either a single tuner 322 is a 311. A mpeg4 311 is a 211k. I believe a 211k sells for $99. why wouldn't they just use 211k. I think there are far more 8psk capable pro series receivers out there than people realize. Most of the older pre 8psk receivers have worked themselves out so a 8psk transition at this point is a quicker, more affordable transition that could take place within a couple months not couple years. That being said I agree that all upgrades or new installs should just use mpeg4 receivers. As far as the costs of mpeg4 over mpeg2 there are economies of scale. If they continue to shrink the boxes (look at the h25) the can offset the higher cost with lower material, shipping, packaging costs and then negotiating with chip suppliers with more volume because they would be using more 211's where they were using 311's. If there is still small cost difference after those changes I'm sure the amount is still less than the cost to send out a technician at a later date to do an upgrade and put in another new receiver. I'm sure a more expensive receiver is still cheaper than two receivers, one now and one later. The bandwidth benefit switching mpeg4 is greater than the switch to 8psk and not because of the the higher/better/more efficient compression, But because they can eliminate duplication. They would no longer need SD versions of channels that are available in HD when the receiver can just down convert the HD channel. Just a recommendation for dish once they start a transition to all mpeg4 do what the cable companies did when switching to digital. Upgrade the customers subscribing to the premiums (HBO, Showtime, etc) first and then switch those channels to only mpeg4 then work thier way down or by local market channels.
 
Also regarding programmers not allowing them to drop the SD channels. Something to keep in mind is that there are hd channels that are different than their SD counterparts and others that are identical. The ones that are identical should't matter. Secondly I believe the issue was in regard to Hd only packages. The programmers didn't want customers to not get the other channels they offered that were not available in hd yet. Also there was competitive reasons, say fox news had their hd channel available but CNN didn't yet. In a hd only package CNN wouldn't be very happy. The last thing to consider is that at some point it will not be economically feasible for the program providers to offer their channels in Hd and SD nor for dish to down convert and duplicate channels if it falls on their lap. It's just a matter of time.
 
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