I attended the CEDIA Expo in Indianapolis this past weekend and spoke to two Echostar reps at length. One was an engineer, the other a high-level administrator in product development and pricing. Here are my notes from the conversations:
Tentative pricing on the new 811 and 921 HD receivers is $299 and $999
respectively. However, Dish dealers at this conference were lobbying hard to have Echostar raise the prices to $399 and $1199 and thus give them some margin for either profit or being able to offer discounts. The product guy told me that they were going to go back and reconsider the pricing based on this feedback.
The 921 is being subjected to far more rigid testing than was the 721.
Echostar admitted that they rushed the shipment date on the 721 and did not complete a full testing cycle. They are guaranteeing that the 921 will ship with far fewer problems than the 721 did.
The 921 has a "Dish Link" port, that is really a 1394 port, which will be
enabled to copy programs to D-VHS units. It also has a USB port, which will not be supported for any functionality when first shipped. It is there for potential future use. It has an internal expansion slot that could be used to add an Ethernet port, for possible connection to broadband services. But no guarantee that an Ethernet port card will ever be delivered. It will support recording onto the hard disk from the OTA antenna input, but only HD programs, not Standard Definition or cable input.
The 921 will not support recording from it's A/V inputs, those are offered
for pass-through connections, such as camcorders or video games.
Current hopes are that the 921 will ship in November. BTW, the other
Dish-compatible HD receiver that was in development by JVC has encountered even more problems in getting to market than the 921 and they were not sure when it might ever be shipped.
All future Dish receivers will have integrated Smartcards, but for the
present time they will retain external Smartcard slots, for repair and
diagnostic purposes.
Dish is definitely going to ship their funky 40" HD RPTV in an HD package.
No plans at this time to offer other TV sets.
Echostar IX testing is going very well.
Use of 61.5 for HD is expected to be shut down within a year.
The Superdish will ship in October. Expect to see more locals up soon after that.
I spoke at length with the product guy about the implementation of PVR fees. I relayed that there was significant resistance in the on-line forums and he said that Dish was aware of this because they have people monitoring the forums. I told them that not only was there large scale resistance and dissatisfaction, but that some of Dish's most loyal, level-headed defenders on the forums were now either switching or contemplating switching to DirecTV. He was concerned by this, but said that they knew there would be a lot of dissatisfaction. But that this was something that had to be done at some point because the cost of providing PVR support was climbing. He was confident that over the long-term that Dish's PVR fees would be less than what people will pay for DirecTV PVR.
He said that no firm decision has been made, but that there was a
possibility that no fees would ever be levied at the DP, 501, or 508
customers.
Alan