Dish has the dwindling Sat internet market, which goes the way of the dinosaurs whenever DSL or cable broadband comes to town (like w/ me, but that starband dish on the house sure looks purdy, except to my wife) & the HD PVR market for folks that dont care about local guides or recording (anymore), another cable one up.
The pressure on Voom is ONLY on the DVR front. HD Locals will kill DBS as fast as SD locals killed the satelityte PQ advantage. I would love an HD Tivo with all the Voom primary HD content (Max, TMC, Encore, Starz) and would reup in a heartbeat, so I hope DirecTV uses the spaceway sats (despite an a pseudo Superdish LNB kludge potential, but they are smarter than Dish in preventing that kind of fiasco). The DBS services can't hope to capitalize on consumer disatisfaction with cable monopolies but deliver effectively the same content or even less (less in the case of HD in my local area) and worse quality & higher equipment costs and expect to not get the same churn against them. "lock in" plans only encourage resentment and immediate switches as those arrangements expire.
Don't know why I'm soapboxing, but I hope DirecTV is smart enough to deliver on HD. I know Echostar (based on CEO statements & customer repeated double crosses) is not smart enough to leverage an advantage like spaceway presents.
What Voom could do with this capacity & a DVR....