Here is the HD part that everyone is looking for.
Chase Carey
Thanks, Mike. In the coming months, we have a number of major initiatives as we look out over 2007. At the top of the list is clearly our planned launch of a new satellite, a satellite we are calling DirecTV-10 in late June. This satellite will greatly increase our HD capacity beginning in September; that's about the target when we hope the satellite should be operational if everything stays on target. With that satellite, we'll move forward to later this year, towards the end of the year bringing 100 channels of HD to the marketplace.
This satellite will also provide us with capacity to continue to deliver local HD channels, looking to target about 75 markets that we would be at towards the end of the year, that would represent about 75% of US households to be up from 59 -60 markets we're in today. The second satellite, DirecTV-11, is scheduled to be in service the first half of next year. That satellite is delayed a bit as we said before due to the C launch problems. That delay really only has an impact on probably pushback some of our local HD launches but it's not material because we're really, at this point, moving down to smaller markets that on an individual basis are not as big a part of our plans.
But once we get that satellite up, DirecTV-11 with DirecTV-10 we will have the capacity for over 150 national channels and 1,500 plus local channels. Really again, I think a position that is going to put us in a unique position competitively for a real period of time.