DIRECTV Could Team With EchoStar On HDTV

[Poke]

http://www.tvpredictions.com/malonehd123006.htm

boss John Malone says he would like a relationship with the rival satcaster.

By Phillip Swann
Washington, D.C. (December 30, 2006) -- Liberty Media Chairman John Malone says DIRECTV could team with EchoStar on several High-Definition TV projects.

That's according to a new article published by Broadcasting & Cable Magazine.

Liberty Media this month took control of DIRECTV in a stock swap with former parent News Corp. While the deal is not expected to close until mid-2007 or later, Malone is already reviewing the satcaster's plans for high-def.

He told B&C that he's excited about DIRECTV's upcoming launch of two satellites that will give the satcaster capacity to offer up to 150 national HD channels.

"DIRECT specifically is about to be able to offer an explosion of High-Definition services that cable is going to have a hard time matching," Malone said.

David Hill, DIRECTV's entertainment president, told TVPredictions.com recently that the satcaster will have at least 40 national high-def channels by mid-2007. (It now has fewer than 10.)

Malone also commented on speculation that he will seek a merger with EchoStar, DIRECTV's chief rival. He noted that many observers believe that the federal government would not approve the deal. But if a merger was not possible, he said the two companies could still work together on various projects, particularly high-def.

"You know, if the government wouldn't let us put the businesses together today, we can at least save a lot of cost and capital by cooperating in certain areas," Malone told B&C.

He added: "We could form an alliance with EchoStar and share a High-Definition platform, which would either double the capacity or cut the costs in half or some combination. We could develop content jointly with EchoStar for that High-Definition platform, which would be very interesting."

 

[Poke]

Plus the 150 HD Channels they keep throwing around will most likely be local channels in HD not "national channels". Which there is a difference!

 

[JAG72]

They have always said that the 150 national HD channels is the capacity that they will have not how many will be available day one. The local channels numbers were in the 1500 channels.

 

[John Kotches]

Hmmm....

Co-opetition in the satellite business? Possible but there are some technical hurdles to resolve.

As I understand it, there are different encryption schemes which is the big hurdle. So you'd have to (realistically) add a "neutral" encryption for the shared channels. This would prevent someone that hacked the "neutral" encryption from accessing the rest of the D* or E* content assuming said content became hacked.

Intriguing, but I do wonder if it's going to get regulatory approval.

Best,

 

[JAG72]

Why would they need to get regulatory approval to share satellites? I could see the approval for a merger but not sharing bandwidth.

 

[Drone35]

The NEW leader in HD LITE; DIESTAR TV, sucks for everyone! Don't think so, even if they shared, I really don't know that would work!

 

[rad]

The NEW leader in HD LITE; DIESTAR TV, sucks for everyone! Don't think so, even if they shared, I really don't know that would work!

Since both D* and E* downrez (E* less then D* but they do) what's the difference?

If they could come to terms with sharing the available bandwidth we'd win since the lack of bandwidth is what caused both providers to start downrezing. D* and E* could remain seperate companies and if each could make a STB that could receive this common stream what difference would it make to anyone? IMHO it's a big waste to duplicate all the same programming that both providers are beaming down to us now.

 

[LonghornXP]

Wow oh wow my contacts are now talking to me again now that Murdock is for the most part out of the loop. This is of course rumor but this will be for the most part the longer term plan. First DirecTV wants to work with Dish to develop a universal dish that can pick up all DirecTV and Dish Network satellites along with the dish being a two-way dish. Now I'm told that Dish or DirecTV would have to switch to a common format (8PSK type format) along with using a common protection system for the access cards and such. Again keep in mind I don't know much about the tech side of these systems so I'm just giving you all the basic overview. Now again this whole plan will start with just sharing HD content as the rest will take more time so you will see a little here and there type of transition. The plan is to share all the satellite space available between both companies. In the future all HDTV channels including HD locals will be moved off the four new satellites (the two spaceway sats and DirecTV 10 and 11 I think) and all satellites will be reconfigured for internet (aka data) usage. Once this is done both companies will share bandwidth for true two-way VOD, internet and phone service offerings. I'm hearing that DirecTV 10 & 11 will be used for all VOD and HD VOD services while the two spaceway sats will be used for high speed internet and digital phone service offerings. The digital voice service will work as VoIP service. Both companies can offer all available and future SD and HD channels with existing satellite bandwidth not counting the spaceway sats and DirecTV 10 & 11.

It seems that both companies feel this is the only way they can survive in future years if the telco companies can get a national franchise based system.

Now IMO this seems a little hard to swallow but at the sametime I know this can be done over a period of a few years and I can see why it really needs to be done. Also if a merger was done this would most likely be done the same exact way. The great thing is that even though everything is shared both companies can still develop their own hardware along with offer their own pricing and services. So for example Dish could have a contract for Starz HD and even though DirecTV has access to this channel as long as DirecTV doesn't have a contract with Starz HD they still cannot enable it for DirecTV customers. This just saves bandwidth so that if both companies have a contract for the same channel its only being carried once on just one satellite while being offered to both companies customers.

 

[navychop]

Sorry, not believable. IIRC, there would be between a quarter and a half second delay in phone conversations, something people would not find acceptable. Gamers would not find the latency acceptable. Something like thirty million dishes would have to be replaced, along with their LNBs- and the receivers. Millions of satellite dishes transmitting UP to the satellites introduces some "interesting" problems. Reconfigure current satellites for that? I don't think so.

For all practical purposes, such a sharing of satellites and programming would be a merger. I doubt it'll "fly."

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Actually not that many Dishes would need to be changed.

Remember, remember most Dish Network and DirecTV 3LNB Dishes already point at 110 and 119.

Also remember that Charlie is close to John Malone which is why Starz is always a featured channel on Dish Network.

From my understand DirecTV receivers could tune in DVB signals with a software update. The next step would be the security, and if I were Dish I would switch over to NDS. Looks at how good Nagravision 2 has done them. While NDS is unhacked.

Of course they could always have a dual encription method which was discussed a few years ago, but I am not sure how that all works.

 

[Smith P.]

Umm Scott ?
DTV abandoned NDS when all their cards has been hacked and did switch for in-house development.
As to different stream and encryption - look at other side of Atlantic.
For many years they standartize signals by DVB and DVB-S2 comitee; all STB manufacturers making the boxes with CI ( common interface) slots (more then one) for accept cards from different providers with different encryption.
Dish is close to "civilized" satellite providers world, using DVB standard, but DTV.

 

[LonghornXP]

Also to the poster that said the phone service would have a delay I suggest you try this and see how wrong you are because I have tried this myself. Try and order wildblue satellite internet first. Next buy yourself a router and tie your wildblue internet into it like you would any cable internet connection. Now order Vonage and tie their phone adapter into your router. Now after all that is done and Vonage service is activated have somebody from a landline call you on your vonage line and find that call quality and delay are 100% fine. Now use your Vonage connection to place a phone call to another land based line and also find that call quality and delay have no issues at all.

I have "confirmed" that this works with a wildblue satellite internet connection and as such this means that a DirecTV provided phone modem or phone/internet modem will work just as well if not better. Also as Scott said the fact that Malone is very close to Charlie makes this whole deal all the more likely. Also most boxes and dishes most likely don't need swapping. I've also been told that to reduce the time and cost of new dishes they will only need to install a new two-way dish for customers who want VOD, HD VOD, internet service and/or phone service. I've also been told that most likely to get a free dish and install you will need to agree to one year of service to any of the following below.

1 year of SVOD service which will cost about 7 bucks a month and will get your unlimited access to all SVOD services you subscribe too. So if you order just Starz and HBO you must still order Starz and HBO but for that extra 7 bucks a month you will get Starz On Demand and HBO On Demand including all HD selections that go along with those two premiums. I'm also told that both companies highest packages (all premiums) will most likely include free SVOD access to all premium service offerings. It will work for the most part like Time Warner Cable's SVOD Premiums On Demand offerings and prices.

You can also get a free dish and install if you agree to one year of either internet or phone service. Again you only need this new dish if you want two-way services such as voice, internet and/or VOD services.

Edit...also I believe most companies would love giving a free dish and install in exchange for a 40+ a month increased bill for say high speed internet service. Right now they are paying to upgrade a dish just for a customer to get HD locals while said customer isn't paying one cent more so you can be sure they would love paying for this for the chance of getting 40+ more a month. Even at worst they will get an extra 7 bucks a month from said customer. Also if a customer orders high speed internet service I'm hearing they will provide a modem that also supports the voice service so if a customer calls to add voice service no service call nor hardware is required beyond what is within the house.

Again this move is more about matching wired offerings such as VOD, internet and phone services and even more important is that triple play matching this will provide them. This isn't a small move for one service because lets face it this is about gaining massive amounts of bandwidth, being able to offer true two-way high speed internet service, true two-way VOD and HD VOD services and being able to offer that voice service for the triple play. Again we all must look a the whole big picture for both companies.

 

[navychop]

No need to bother getting Wild blue to know.

When I was first stationed on Guam, telephone calls to the states were "problematic." I think we had some undersea cables, which introduced echoes and other problems. Then they moved to satellite, I believe. Clear connections, but delays in speaking.

Easy to calculate- correct me if I'm wrong. The geo satellites are about 22,241 miles up. Actually, the distance would be even longer because you are aiming at the satellite at an angle, which increases the distance traveled. But let's go with the best case scenario. The speed of light is about 186,282 miles per second. You speak, the signal travels up to a satellite, down to the other party. That's over 44,000 miles. They hear you about .238 seconds after you speak. They respond- another 44,000 plus miles. You hear a reply no sooner than .477 seconds after you spoke. Small, but annoying and not conducive to a normal conversation.

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt- and burned it. Thankfully Guam has fiber today.

 

[Chris Freeland]

Also to the poster that said the phone service would have a delay I suggest you try this and see how wrong you are because I have tried this myself. Try and order wildblue satellite internet first. Next buy yourself a router and tie your wildblue internet into it like you would any cable internet connection. Now order Vonage and tie their phone adapter into your router. Now after all that is done and Vonage service is activated have somebody from a landline call you on your vonage line and find that call quality and delay are 100% fine. Now use your Vonage connection to place a phone call to another land based line and also find that call quality and delay have no issues at all

I have "confirmed" that this works with a wildblue satellite internet connection and as such this means that a DirecTV provided phone modem or phone/internet modem will work just as well if not better. Also as Scott said the fact that Malone is very close to Charlie makes this whole deal all the more likely. Also most boxes and dishes most likely don't need swapping. I've also been told that to reduce the time and cost of new dishes they will only need to install a new two-way dish for customers who want VOD, HD VOD, internet service and/or phone service. I've also been told that most likely to get a free dish and install you will need to agree to one year of service to any of the following below...

Yes but can they offer download and upload speeds equal too cable or even DSL for a competitive price? Satellite may offer a better service for National broadcast type TV, but cable and DSL is better for Internet and VOD service. Satellite internet and VOD will be great for rural folks, but in order for DBS to compete in the metro area's their best bet is to set up terrestrial Wi-Max services and expand their partnerships with local telephone companies in areas that the phone companies are not laying fiber for their own in-house TV service.

1 year of SVOD service which will cost about 7 bucks a month and will get your unlimited access to all SVOD services you subscribe too. So if you order just Starz and HBO you must still order Starz and HBO but for that extra 7 bucks a month you will get Starz On Demand and HBO On Demand including all HD selections that go along with those two premiums. I'm also told that both companies highest packages (all premiums) will most likely include free SVOD access to all premium service offerings. It will work for the most part like Time Warner Cable's SVOD Premiums On Demand offerings and prices.

You can also get a free dish and install if you agree to one year of either internet or phone service. Again you only need this new dish if you want two-way services such as voice, internet and/or VOD services.

Edit...also I believe most companies would love giving a free dish and install in exchange for a 40+ a month increased bill for say high speed internet service. Right now they are paying to upgrade a dish just for a customer to get HD locals while said customer isn't paying one cent more so you can be sure they would love paying for this for the chance of getting 40+ more a month. Even at worst they will get an extra 7 bucks a month from said customer. Also if a customer orders high speed internet service I'm hearing they will provide a modem that also supports the voice service so if a customer calls to add voice service no service call nor hardware is required beyond what is within the house.

Again this move is more about matching wired offerings such as VOD, internet and phone services and even more important is that triple play matching this will provide them. This isn't a small move for one service because lets face it this is about gaining massive amounts of bandwidth, being able to offer true two-way high speed internet service, true two-way VOD and HD VOD services and being able to offer that voice service for the triple play. Again we all must look a the whole big picture for both companies.

Comcast cable here does not charge extra for VOD for anyone who has any level of digital service, all video content connected to a channel that a person subs to is included at no charge if they have digital service. If D* and E* are going to compete, they should not charge any extra for VOD service on at least their larger tiers (E* AT120/200 or DL2 and above, D* TC and above at least for example), which would mean more dish upgrades unless E* and D* would offer the VOD service to anyone with a broadband connection, weather purchased from E*, D*, Local cable company or DSL.

I do agree that this will be great if D* and E* can pull this off. Much better to share infrastructure as separate companies, then a merger between D* and E*. This way D* and E* would still have their own separate packages and marketing and would still compete with each other, cable and telephone companies for customer's.

I have heard that E* newer receivers could receive signals from both D* and E* with a software upgrade and you stated that newer D* receivers can do the same, so this would mean only people with older receivers would need to upgrade their receivers. This might make it easy for those who own their hardware, to switch from E* to D* or vise versa without changing STB’s unless it is set up so that each company can only activate their own . Could satellite ready TV’s be far behind.

 

[rad]

Longhorn, unless Wildblue has figured out how to circumvent the speed of light problem, latency on satellite based calls will not be something that mainstream consumers will tolerate. Like Navychop I also had a long distant service that used satellite and the delay was horrible, almost to the point of having to say "over" so the other person would know when it was OK for them to talk.

I also agree with Chris, unless they will be giving away the satellite hardware and pricing the service at price point that would beat DSL or cable I don't see a big demand, except for rural market. The folks that really need 'high speed' internet service have probably already have it so they would be needing to go after folks with cable or DSL now, which means undercutting their pricing to get them to switch. Even then, I for one, wouldn't switch due to the before mentioned latency issues that geostationary satellite services have, I hate latency.

 

[Juan]

I wonder if VOOM is gonna show up on d*after all

 

[Poke]

Yeah WildBlue is mainly going to be for folks that live out in the sticks. Most people will have DSL or Cable but for those who live out in he sticks WildBlue is better than dial up. Overall WildBlue Speeds are not as fast as DSL or Cable and the price for it is kind of high. But this due to their customer base will not be as high due to most folks can get service from their local telco. Again WildBlue is good for those who can only get dial up out in the sticks. When it comes to Internet service where you live will make a difference on what kind of service you can get. It will always vary from state to state.



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[SRW1000]

It would be nice if a partnership could be reached, if only to share HD locals. If they could share resources, this would relieve each provider of half of their highest-demand bandwidth.

Scott

 

[navychop]

And oh yes, LNBs are not the same for the two companies, and certainly aren't two way. Plus, the number of, and which, satellites would need to be seen is not known. Non-starter for phone/internet. They should have pursued their wi-max idea.

 

[SmityWhity]

For all practical purposes, such a sharing of satellites and programming would be a merger. I doubt it'll "fly."

Although maybe not considered a merger, there would no longer be competition, and I would think that someone would have to have oversight to eliminate price fixing, as with the airlines.

I think it could work, there would have to be some changes, but as already said by a couple - this wouldn't happen overnight. Change in dishes and/or LNBF would also depend on how much of or how many services you decided to keep or upgrade to.

Now for the humor....

That's over 44,000 miles. They hear you about .238 seconds after you speak. They respond- another 44,000 plus miles. You hear a reply no sooner than .477 seconds after you spoke. Small, but annoying and not conducive to a normal conversation.

It takes me that long to comprehend what someone "had told" me, no wonder I always thought South Atlantic Sat calls to Alaska Shore Side were great. A double satellite hop!

So I guess there'll be a market for some, but not all.