Team Summit General Assembly Notes

After what I saw yesterday on the show floor, and our meeting with Charlie, I'd have to agree with you on that Scott. :)
 
I see switching over to mpeg-4 a win-win for customers. Better PQ and room for more channels.

This is totally just a guess, but I'd be really surprised if Cinemax was the last national HD channel we get this year.
 
I don't see hd quality going down the tubes. In fact I believe we may see the PQ improve in the future.

The future seems bright for BOTH satellite companies, and guess who wins?? Us the consumers!

Yepp, the HD competition is finally heating up and all major providers will be adding them the best they can to keep up. It's a buyers market! Good thing is E* is already a leg up and it appears they aim to try and keep it.
 
Have to admit while all of this news appears to be progressive and exciting, that evaluating it as it pertains to my needs, it is disappointing.

What I want are more and better PQ HD channels.

The overview of what the new satellites are intended to do does nothing for me. I could care less about more LiLs, more SD channels, more international channels.

Moving to all MPEG4 is what E* needs to do. I've been saying that for months.

But if, say, all of the above does happen and they have new birds at 86.5 & 97. If there are no additional national HD channels on those birds, then I would have no reason to repoint. Whether or not my SD channels are in MPEG2 or MPEG4 is meaningless.

Now what could bring meaning is if they took advantage of MPEG4 to improve SD quality. Bring SD quality closer to DVD. That would be GOOD! They wouldn't get quite as much savings in bandwidth that way (although it would still save them a lot). I'm not holding my breath on this.

Another plus would be if some of the national HD channels would be placed on the new birds and offer great PQ, full native resolution with high bandwidth under MPEG4.

But if it is the case that E* would be simply taking advantage of the more efficient compression of MPEG4 to squeeze more channels than ever onto the new birds, primarily for more LiLs and more international, leaving us continuing to get most of our HD channels from 61.5 & 129, then this is much ado about nothing as far as I'm concerned.

Hopefully there will be some HD improvements in this that Charlie neglected to mention.
 
She also tells us that DishCOMM has been turned on in the 622's and will soon be turned on in the 211, this will allow all the boxes to talk to each other. He then talks about DishONLINE and how simple it is to wire using DishCOMM / Homeplug technology.
...except DishCOMM still doesn't recognize other DishCOMM devices, just as many have pointed out.

External Storage will be available this summer and currently it will support hard drives up to 750 GB...He then showed us that we can turn a Dish 211 into a DVR by hooking up an external hard drive. He said it would act like a Dish 510 reciver and would do trick play (pause rewind fast forward) and also do a 9 day EPG. Again he said it would be like a Dish 510 receiver but in high definition.
Nice, but summer means September, which is only a stones throw into becomming October -->the December --> then 1st quarter 2008. Disappointed there were no hard-and-fast dates, along with device and pricing information, now that we're into May 2007.

Dish DVR Advantage is changing on June 1st.

Credit Card Auto Pay will no longer be required
No 18 Month commitment is requires

In addition AT 250 will be available with Dish DVR Advantage for $59.99

In addition they are simplifying the premium packages with Dish DVR Advantage.

So if you have Dish DVR advantage with AT 200 for $49 a month you can get premiums at
2 Premium Service for $20 more
3 Premium Services for $30 more
4 Premium Service for $40 more

And in a way to upsell you to AT250 for $59 a month you can get premiums for...
1 for $10
2 for $20
3 for $30
4 for $40

And plus you can add HD to any of the above for only $20 more a month.
Other than getting rid of auto-pay and/or 18-month commitment, is this really a change or merely clarification of the DVR Advantage program?
 
RedSavina:

I doubt there are enough frequencies at 110/119 to do all that. If there were more available frequencies there, I imagine they would have put up more/bigger satellites already.
The switch from mpeg2 to mpeg4 will free up quite a bit of space. A QPSK TP can hold 12-13 mpeg2 SD channels. The same TP can hold 20 mpeg4 SD channels. Now if the TP is switched from QPSK to 8PSK you can fit about 30-32 mpeg4 SD channels.
 
I would agree with Tom, maybe i missed all the good news, but was a bit disappointed. The new satellites I dont think will affect me much, but of course I could be wrong.

Cinemax was good, but we had been expecting that so not a real wow, although i've already dvr'd 3 films off it, so it is a good thing !

The most exciting, although im not holding my breath for when the software will be delivered, was the Media server. As i feel that is something that has huge potential. Sharing dvr'd programs across my house and if they add some sort of pc client another option than a sling box. Yes this one excites me!

Did i miss something ?
 
I would agree with Tom, maybe i missed all the good news, but was a bit disappointed. The new satellites I dont think will affect me much, but of course I could be wrong.

Other than adding ability to give us as much HD as is out there, there new sats really wont offer anything :rolleyes:
 
Other than adding ability to give us as much HD as is out there, there new sats really wont offer anything :rolleyes:
They will offer the customers a choice between a small 18 inch dish on their roof (e*) or a mamoth almost 1 meter dish (d*) The WAF (wife acceptance factor) comes into play with decisions like these
 
Last Years Promises

Well some of that would fall in getting all the contracts done in some of those local markets. Some local markets might be quicker than others on getting things done to get their HD channels setup for Dish than others. So really that depends on both parties getting things done to offer the HD feed of the local market. So it might not always be Dish or Direct fault on how fast things get done. It would be nice if all they had to do was to just turn things on when its available but does not always work that way. Either way I think Direct and Dish do what they can when they can other times its out of their control.

If they are having contract issues with HD locals, then tell us so we the customer can put some pressure on the local stations.

If we were informed about why they didn't get last years HD local list done, it sure would temper any hard feelings customers might have.

Direct TV has already added at least one city, that I know of, that was on the 2006 Dish List.
 
If they are having contract issues with HD locals, then tell us so we the customer can put some pressure on the local stations.

If we were informed about why they didn't get last years HD local list done, it sure would temper any hard feelings customers might have.

Direct TV has already added at least one city, that I know of, that was on the 2006 Dish List.


Its MORE than 1, lots MORE.
 
I hope that the pq will definately improve on sd channels to dvd quality. I also hope that the sd locals will improve also since they will be moving those to the new sat as well. As to hd channels, I remember talking to someone at Dish last year who called me to ask me if I had any questions about hd . She told me that Dish wants to be the first company to broadcast in 1080p. NOw I don't know if that means that a new receiver will come out and it will have a setting for 1080p for all those who have those new 1080p tvs, or if they really want to broadcast in 1080p. I would love to see a return of all hd to 1920 x 1080i like it is supposed to- except the 720p channels.

The other question I had was Charlie saying that all this can be received by a small 18 " dish with ONE Coax running into your house. Now is he saying one coax for the whole house and from there you can run more lines to other receivers ? OR is he saying that one coax can be split like today into two runs with the dpp seperator? IT seems to me that a dish 500 would prevent rain fade better than a dish 300 dish. OF course I don't even know if they are using lnbs for dbs as they are today or some new fangled ones like the dish 500plus dish does for 118 sat. I sure wish some of this could be nailed down for my curiosity anyway.
 
This "97" has to be a typo or other miscommunication. There is no slot in the sky with more channels currently than 97. Certainly not enough room for 1000's of E* channels to be added.

It is also not licensed for DBS, which is necessary due to the 18-inch dish part of the statement.
 
Other than adding ability to give us as much HD as is out there, there new sats really wont offer anything :rolleyes:

We don't know this for sure.

It sounds like E* is going to run two parallel DBS systems ... one in MPEG2 and one in MPEG4. E* will eat up many of the new transponders with duplicate SD, locals, and international channels. They could eat up all of the rest with HD LiLs, of which there are hundreds upon hundreds of them.

As Charlie didn't mention using the new birds for new national HD channels, that may be a low priority for them. If so, then we end up with 61.5 & 129 for most of our HD, which is where we are now.

One would think that E* could set aside a transponder or two on the new birds for new national HD, even two would enable them to carry at least 12 more HD channels.

Now, if E* eventually ditches the MPEG2 system, there will be more transponders available than anyone would what to do with. But that might not happen for years. Dish would have to replace a lot of receivers to do this. A first step would be to do it on HD first, where there are much fewer non-MPEG4 receivers installed. Doing this would enable E* to use MPEG4 on all of their 61.5 & 129 transponders, which would increase HD capacity.
 
Using MPEG4 for everything will allow them to carry everything they currently offer on ALL of their satellites using just two satellites and having enough room for another 400 or so SD channels, and another 150 HD channels.

I hear that the bandwidth savings on the SD channels is amazing, plus the PQ is as good or better then what we have now.

To me this is a great thing and I cant wait to see it. Although I am sure it could be up to a year before we fully see it in all its glory. I never count on Dish Network to do anything on time. :D
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Total: 0, Members: 0, Guests: 0)

Who Read This Thread (Total Members: 1)

Latest posts