JPShinn said:
I'm in the exact same situation as you. However, I would expect the worse.
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DirecTV HD Rumor
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I'm in the exact same situation as you. However, I would expect the worse.
rad said:
I never said it didn't work I said it wasn't working well enough for what they wanted todo. Now that Dish has their package of HD now they might feel that the hassle is worth the effort now if you catch my drift. I've also been told that if they use a few transponders as conus only it would limit how many local HD markets they can offer but maybe they feel they can get away for a year without offering a few more HD local markets if they risk losing tons of customers because they can't compete on the national HD level. Things can change and Dish might have changed the game and Verizon isn't helping that image either as in the next year many customers within the first 25 DMAs will soon have FIOS TV or enough of them that it matters.
We just don't know yet and DirecTV has said many things in the past even as a News Corp company that they changed their tune on as things changed. Remember when News Corp said that offering high speed internet on their own just wasn't important to their business but boom all the sudden they are willing to spend a billion dollars on wireless internet service which went againt what they said a couple of years ago. Things always change if the market changes.
What is set is that I never said it didn't work but I did say it didn't work well enough to offer the local HD markets they wanted to offer and the national HD channels. Now if they made the choice to not offer as many HD local markets that would change things wouldn't it. Also they are having problems handling the demand for dish installs as it is so they might as well hold off on a few of those markets until they can handle them while getting as many customers the new dishes in the meantime. I wouldn't be suprised if they over the next year got all HD customers dishes upgraded and move all HD channels onto the new satellites and as the other satellites get up in space they can move things around to make better use of bandwidth. Also remember that in about one year the third of the four satellites will be going up and they are supposed to be used for national HD offerings so they use the spaceways for one year until they can move these national HD channels over on the new satellite.
LonghornXP said:
Sorry, from thread http://www.satelliteguys.us/showthread.php?p=432314#post432314 when you said "Nope it seems that the next two satellites going up will provide nearly all of the conus bandwidth. They were planning on using Spaceway 1 and 2 as two giant spotbeams but it seems that a few technicial problems have held this back long enough that they just scrapped that idea. So right now both Spaceway sats are true spotbeamed HD LIL satellites and just cannot handle national conus HD offerings."
I read that as their plan didn't work.
Monsters HD is the only channel that E* has (& D doesn't) that I would really like to have. I can live without the rest of the Voom channels - for the short term anyway.
But Monsters is a big one for me - when I had it, I watched it more than any other premium movie channel.
But Monsters is a big one for me - when I had it, I watched it more than any other premium movie channel.
Don't they have an entire department of marketing types? There has to be at least one market researcher in there with a brain whose not afraid to tell them that they need to compete on national channels as well. Now I know why we made fun of the marketing majors in college.LonghornXP said:
It did seem quite ambitous to do 12 markets in back to back months. It would make sense to add a few national channels at the expense of a couple of markets in the 40's or 50's. Some of the naysayers reply that HD is wagging the dog yet and that HD subs have no clout.
Well, it seems that if D* adds markets in the 40's which average around 680-700,000 households with around 0.6% of the population, the the following is probably close to true:
D* 15M subs, 800K HD = 5.3%
0.6% x 15M = 90K average subs in markets in the 40's
90K x 5.3% = 4,770 HD subs in each market in the 40's.
Approx. 6.1% of households in all markets in the 40's
6.1% x 15M = 915,000 total subs in 40's markets
915,000 x 5.3% = 48,495 HD subs in all 40's markets
Top 25 markets contan approx 55% of households.
15M x 55% = 8,250,000 subs x 5.3% = 437,250 HD subs.
Would someone please tell me how D* could ever think it is a better idea to provide 48,495 HD subs in the 10 markets #40-49 with HD-LIL's than to provide 800K HD subs with more national channels?
For each market in the 40's on average, there a less than 5K HD subs. So if it costs D* all 10 markets to provide some new national channels, it really is not costing them that much in terms of HD subs.
Numbers and math could be wrong. If so, it was not intentional. Market percentages are from the AVSForum Local HD Thread Index.
herdfan said:
Exactly, What were they thinking??? I would be willing to bet that at some point this came up in a strategy meeting and for political/power struggle reasons the wrong decision was made! I have seen these kinds of screwup decisions made before for all kinds of reasons and no one seems to have the balls to look straight at the boss and say "thats wrong!" because they just want to go along to get along and please the boss.
Eventually, even the boss figures out that they are hiking down the wrong path and need to change direction in order to find their way.
Also, D* management probably figured they could just provide the HD-LILs for free and now they are being arm-twisted by the local stations for carriage fees that D* management didn't even think of.
My sense is that because HD sets have been selling well for a couple of years now that we are nearing a threshold where the transition to HD programming will accelerate dramatically.
To D* management, You can't wait until the HD train leaves the station to get on board. You have to get on board first!
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charper1 said:
Could the money they are paying for all of these be why they don't want to pay Lifetime, OLN and all the other basic networks that they don't carry? People may switch from D* to E* for more HD programing, but many will switch from E* to D* for basics that E* doesn't offer. Kind of a trade off, except there are many more SD subscribers than HD ones.
rad said:
I think that was quite clear. They planned on using the spaceway satellites to offer national HD channels in the first half of this current year and this was before the Dish Network HD news. They have been having delays on getting this to work well enough so that they couldn't offer national HD offerings on the spaceway satellites until closer to the end of the year "if" they wanted to continue rolling out the markets they had planned.
My last quote was simply stating that they cannot handle national conus HD offerings now but my quote before saying it got held up long enough was why they couldn't do conus HD offerings. Now because of this Dish Network announcement if they did finally get it through their heads that national HD offerings had to be offered soon they might just have changed their minds.
So if they decided to just offer the top 25 markets instead of the top 50 markets they could offer enough conus bandwidth on these two satellites without causing problems with these new conus offerings or the 25 markets HD LIL offerings. This is all about bandwidth and they just couldn't deal with 50 HD LIL markets and several extra conus HD offerings without too many problems. But again 25 HD LIL markets with the same amount of conus HD offerings might not strain the satellites bandwidth which means no glitches. This again will be a short term thing until the new satellite goes up in early 2007 but even if that new satellite goes up they still need to replace customers dishes before they can offer new conus HD offerings even on those new satellites. What I've heard is that MPEG4 boxes are coming into supply as rental options and the dishes are in fine supply so if they need to get this done no matter what they do they might as well do this above.
I called Direc 2 days ago and asked about commitments since Direc was raising prices for the second time without new HD offerings. I told them that rather than pay increased pricing for SD I'd be droping Sportspak, locals, and HBO and getting E* HD only offering until my commitment was over. At that point I'd make a decision on providers.
Maybe they're getting a number of calls like mine and want to nip it in the bud?
Maybe they're getting a number of calls like mine and want to nip it in the bud?
herdfan said:
Assuming they have MPEG4 National capability, and it is a choice between say 10 HD-LIL markets (in the 40s or 50s) or 6 or 8 national channels, I agree with you - and I'd wager D* probably does as well. I'm not sure that is an option, however.
On a side note, keep in mind that the HD-LILs aren't for those 48,495 existing subs. The primary reason for HD-LILs is to target those potential customers who they have not been able to attract without locals. Since they aren't charging extra for HD-LILs, the gain would be $0 among existing customers with the only benefit being improved churn numbers. The numbers weenies are calculating $85 or $90 a month(?) x all the new subs that HD-LIL will attract.
CPanther95 said:
IMO they have already attracted those subs. Directv already offers local in local. And the HDLIL target audience must be peanuts at this point. Its a huge amount of expense, 2 spaceway birds for a miniscule amount of potential subs at the expense of a 1-2 year delay in getting more HD national channels out to existing HD subs. By the time they get all of the HDLIL up cable will have added locals in HD so I dont see any real gains there and the areas not served by cable are going to remain unserved by cable.
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I would have to agree that the box supply is fine. Our local Best Buy had more R-10's (1) than H10's (0), but it had around 7 H20's. So if they are selling the H20's in the #64 market, then there really should not be a supply issue. I plan on getting one before the lease program begins.LonghornXP said:
And my AT9 should be delivered this week.
I completely agree. But can D* gain more subs from the HD-LIL's than they would lose from a poor national lineup? D* would almost have to double the number of HD subs in the 40's to offset a 5% loss of total HD subs.CPanther95 said:
I still can't understand D*'s push for HD-LIL's in the lower markets ahead of nationals. Based on what Longhorn says, If D* has the ability to do the top 25 markets with over 60+% of the households, and probably a higher percentage of affluent ones than in the other 40%, and the ability to dominate HD national channels, why they would go a different direction is beyond me. Again, with the whole marketing thing sort of fuzzy in my mind, (I hated marketing and helped the girls pass finance in exchange for them doing my marketing projects.
)Dumb question of the day...what does HD-LIL stand for? Im not trying to be funny but is it HD-LIght Locals?
LonghornXP said:
rad said:
rad,
It seems that you're just hassling LonghornXP over this. He's right that he never said it didn't work. I read this as it didn't work as expected and wouldn't work with their plan for HD-LIL's. Now if they change their plan for HD-LIL's, then maybe they could get it to work. I'd say that now is a good time to contact DirecTV to push for more national HD channels before 2007, before they finish their current HD-LIL rollout. If they get enough feedback, perhaps they'll change their plan and forego some HD-LIL's for more HD-national channels.
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