Some Interesting Dish Info

[jsanders]

If Dish did not consitantly update the receivers with new features, customers would potentialy leave for the compitition.

And if the competition does the same thing for less cost, or free, the customer will migrate as well.

Nobody has said we are asking for a free lunch. We are paying for DVR service, many of us paid for our DVRs, we pay subscription fees, access fees, HD enabling fees, hard drive access rental fees, dish wants to charge us for accessing reserved space on our hard drives, and now they are charging us to access external hard drive space. Give me a brake!

 

[jsanders]

They are not in the business in giving away things for free.

Microsoft is not in the business of giving away things for free, and they don't charge for adding a hard drive to a computer.

 

[Jim S.]

At the risk of getting the thread shut down (which would probably be the best thing for it, as it obviously hasn't been going anywhere since the beginning):

What about "free market economy" or "capitalism" do you people not understand? When has profit become a crime?

and later

While you have the right to own the equipment, the service provider owns the transmission. You choose to pay to receive their service.

True freedom, not the revival of feudalism which unchecked capitalism has become, would include the right of people to do what they wish with signals which fall on their property.

 

[SpenceJT]

True freedom, not the revival of feudalism which unchecked capitalism has become, would include the right of people to do what they wish with signals which fall on their property.

True enough for FTA signals, but we are speaking of a subscription service, which is encrypted.

While it may "fall on their property", accessing said transmission would be considered "Pirating" or "Stealing".

 

[wase4711]

well, the beautiful thing about capitalism, is that we ALL get to vote with our pocketbooks;
If you feel that 40 bucks to enable an external HD port is ridiculous, then DON'T PAY FOR IT!

Personally, I think it sucks to charge to enable something like that, but, hey, I will vote with my pocketbook and NOT pay for that. Based on the posts here and on other boards, it seems like more than 50% of people CAN"T WAIT to spend their hard earned money on it...

America is a wonderful country, isn't it??:

 

[Stargazer]

There will be a monthly fee on the 211 is you turn it into a DVR as there is for any DVR on Dish Network.

If they charge a DVR fee on the 211 if an external hard drive is added then they should NOT charge the $40 fee and should PROVIDE the hard drive. That is no different than upgrading to a DVR and would be cheaper for Dish to do than to swap it for an HD DVR.

I have been saying for at least the last few years that all receivers should be the same model and should have add on's for memory, hard drives for DVR capability, and tuner cards as well. Looks like they are finally going to do the hard drive for DVR capability.

I think the $39 is worth it for this added feature. It is cheaper than having to buy another DVR and paying additional monthly fees for the DVR and additional outlet fee for additional storage and the flexibility and ability to backup your shows. In a way though I feel like they are nickeling and diming us to death even more and being greedy. There is cost and support involved getting this software released though and they didn't have to put that time and effort into doing this. They need to pay for that somehow and should get a return on that investment. At least it is not $99 or more. $39 is affordable and I see it as acceptable only if they allow you to do this on additional receivers you add to your account in the future or if you swap receivers around or if you take one off your account and add one back on later or if you shut your account off and then reactivate it again later on. One time fee should be just that, one time, attached to your account, not charged each time a swap is done or account shut off then back on.

 

[JAG72]

And if the competition does the same thing for less cost, or free, the customer will migrate as well.

Nobody has said we are asking for a free lunch. We are paying for DVR service, many of us paid for our DVRs, we pay subscription fees, access fees, HD enabling fees, hard drive access rental fees, dish wants to charge us for accessing reserved space on our hard drives, and now they are charging us to access external hard drive space. Give me a brake!

WOW!! All this anger by me just saying that these types of fees are not 100% profit. I never once said I was for or against the fee. So you give me a break!!!

 

[JAG72]

Microsoft is not in the business of giving away things for free, and they don't charge for adding a hard drive to a computer.

Microsoft does charge a fee for adding drives to their equipment. Look at the cost of the 360 drives. Much more expensive than a regular drive. I guess you would be happy if Dish charges $180 (Best Buy pricing) to add a 120GB drive to your receiver.

 

[SpenceJT]

Microsoft is not in the business of giving away things for free, and they don't charge for adding a hard drive to a computer.

This no doubt due to the fact that Microsoft is not in the business of saving copyrighted material being legally streamed onto the drive (requiring encryption, and DRM), at least not where Dish Network/Echostar DVR's are concerned.

Microsoft does however, provide increasingly hardware intensive (not to mention increasingly expensive, and increasingly buggy) operating systems to those willing to fork over hundreds of dollars to "lease" them (I say "lease" as even though the installation media is purchased, the content of the media remains the property of Microsoft) for use on each and every device that they touch.

On the other hand, Microsoft has a hand in licensing compression codecs, so they may be getting a piece of that $40 hard drive "enabling fee" after all.

 

[John Kotches]

I didn't think that Microsoft was in the h.264 patent pool.

Cheers,

 

[John Kotches]

And to answer myself; this is the current patent pool...

• Canon Inc.
• CIF Licensing, LLC
• Competitive Technologies, Inc.
• DAEWOO Electronics Corporation
• France Télécom, société anonyme
• Fujitsu Limited
• GE Technology Development, Inc.
• Hitachi, Ltd.
• Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
• LG Electronics Inc.
• Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
• Microsoft Corporation
• Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
• Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation
• Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.
• Pantech&Curitel Communications, Inc.
• Robert Bosch GmbH
• Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
• SANYO Electric Co., Ltd.
• Sedna Patent Services, LLC
• Sharp Corporation
• Siemens AG
• Sony Corporation
• Telenor ASA
• Toshiba Corporation
• Victor Company of Japan, Limited (aka JVC)

KDDI Corporation had a patent in the pool; but it expired last year.

 

[SpenceJT]

I didn't think that Microsoft was in the h.264 patent pool.

Cheers,

You are correct, Microsoft isn't part of the h.264 patent, but they do have the VC-1 codec, which I (and I may be wrong here) thought was going to be integrated into the ViP622-1 (which later became the ViP722?).

Found one of the original press releases at; DISH Network Goes Mobile - CES 2007 Coverage by PC Magazine

DISH unveiled its ViP622 HD DVR at the 2006 CES, and this year the company announced an updated version dubbed the ViP622-1, which will increase the DVR storage capacity to 500GB and add support for the VC-1 codec—the official video codec of the Microsoft Xbox 360 game console and one of the mandatory standards of both the HD DVD and Blu-ray video formats. If 500GB of storage is still not enough, a software update scheduled for delivery mid-year will allow the owners of any ViP-series DVR to attach any external USB 2.0 hard disk drive (HDD) to the appropriate ports located on the rear of the DVR. Utilizing a drive this way locks the recorded content to that particular DVR, making it non-transferable except under specific circumstances such as a DVR failure or a hardware upgrade.

...of course it also stated that any programming archived to the external drive would be locked to that particular DVR, so obviously policies may have changed since then.

 

[John Kotches]

You are correct, Microsoft isn't part of the h.264 patent,

They are indeed part of the H.264 patent pool; see my previous post

but they do have the VC-1 codec, which I (and I may be wrong here) thought was going to be integrated into the ViP622-1 (which later became the ViP722?).

You're right and wrong. The 622 / 211 / 411 / 222 / 722 all use a Broadcom ASIC which can handle MPEG-2 / MPEG-4 (aka H.264) / VC-1. The 722 and 222 might use a newer generation of the decoder but all of the ViPs + the 411 are capable of decoding VC-1.

Cheers,

 

[John Kotches]

As an aside; the Broadcom ASIC is also used in a number of HD-DVD and Blu-ray players.

Cheers,

 

[SpenceJT]

Thanks John!

See my updated post (found an old press release).

 

[Smith P.]

No one reported which BCM7411 or 7412 used in ViP222, we don't know what will be in 722, BUT AT&T 622HZ have the newest (7412) now.

 

[John Kotches]

Smith, P:

The 7411 supports VC-1 -- as evidenced by this product brief.

Cheers,

 

[Smith P.]

I knew that from first mention of it when Scott posted internal pictures.
If you can search by '7411' you'll find my old posts, same as for 722 and VC-1.

My point was about chips not VC-1 support.

 

[Neutron]

So external drive support and networking are coming to the 722 as well?

Wife and I are looking to replace our 625 with either a second 622 or move our 622 in the living room to the bedroom and get a 722 for it.

 

[harshness]

I thought it was an interesting proposition that DIRECTV was trying to come up with an all Access pack and ELIMINATE all additional receiver fees, dvr fees, and hd access fees for 119.99.

I can't see hanging my hat on something that a handful of people saw on the DIRECTV website that was soon after removed and never mentioned again.

The story from ebononvic's source(s) was that it was never available. Sounds a lot like a weather balloon to me.

Does anyone have a clip of what the package included, or is this all WAG? Pricewise, it could have easily been Premier with HD and no DVR fees (or maybe even just Premiere with no DVR fees). I can't see them doing away with mirroring fees as everyone would load up on extra receivers.