Dish Network on HDTV

[Scott Greczkowski]

The other day Dish had it's Retailer Charlie Chat on behalf of the members here at SatelliteGuys.US I sent in two questions.

One being when will Dish be announcing the Olympics in HD?

This one was answered on the chat when the announced that indeed Dish Network would be offering the Olympics in HD.

The second question was...

Last Night DirecTV announced that they were giving 6 months free of its HD package if the customer agreeded to subscribe to their HD pack for 1 year. Also they recently announced they were adding NBC-HD and Bravo HD plus there are rumors coming from DirecTV that by the end of the year they could have up to 20 HD channels available. How does Dish plan of fighting back against that?

A few minutes ago I got a reply to my second question, and here is the reply from Dish Network...

To answer question #2:
We are aggressively working to get the contracts necessary to launch additional HD channels. We too anticipate launching additional HD channels this year. Although we may not be discounting our HD package, we do offer two great bundled HDTV, HD receiver packages and installation...one of which is under $1,000.00. Our goal is to maintain the leadership role in HD.

And there you have it, you guys wanted me to ask so I did.

 

[Cyclone]

Our goal is to maintain the leadership role in HD.

. hehe, Glad I've hooked my cart to the right horse.

 

[Carl B]

Did Charlie find some compelling content that wasn't there last week?

 

[BFG]

When is there going to be an Academy, to truely give out the award for HD Leader, there's like 10 HD Leader's out there now...

 

[bpasker8]

ugh, to me its the same song and dance... we aren't going to add anything unless its compelling.... we too are aggresivley working to sign contracts... blah blah blah.... if every customer wanted a pink pony in their yard standing next to the dish I'm sure we'd hear that they were aggressivley working on developing compelling DNA to breed more compelling pink ponies. Basically I'll beleive it when I see it from either D* or E*.

 

[Bulldog]

Thank you for asking that question for us Scott. As far as the response that
"E" 's goal is to maintain the "leadership role" in HD, I still think that "E" 's
"Role" will be in the "me too follow-ship" in HD.

 

[RBBrittain]

Obviously, to Charlie "compelling" means "someone else compelled me to carry it"--first Turner, now D*.

 

[SimpleSimon]

Oh, that's great! Sadly, I'll bet it's also true.

 

[korsjs]

scott, thanks for submitting the questions and providing the answers.

 

[goaliebob99]

ugh, to me its the same song and dance... we aren't going to add anything unless its compelling.... we too are aggresivley working to sign contracts... blah blah blah.... if every customer wanted a pink pony in their yard standing next to the dish I'm sure we'd hear that they were aggressivley working on developing compelling DNA to breed more compelling pink ponies. Basically I'll beleive it when I see it from either D* or E*.

lol sing it brother

 

[DanB474]

"We are aggressively working to get the contracts necessary to launch additional HD channels. We too anticipate launching additional HD channels this year. Although we may not be discounting our HD package, we do offer two great bundled HDTV, HD receiver packages and installation...one of which is under $1,000.00. Our goal is to maintain the leadership role in HD."

The leader who aggressively works to get HD channels. Sweet. Now maybe they'll agressively work to get HD feeds of our RSN's.

 

[Unthinkable]

The leader who aggressively works to get HD channels. Sweet. Now maybe they'll agressively work to get HD feeds of our RSN's.

As soon as you engineer and patent a revolutionary compression scheme that allows for HD material to be compressed to the same size as SD material, I'm sure they will be all for it.

 

[bytre]

Actually, that was the initial design of HD. An HD signal fits into the same bandwidth of an old analog SD signal.

 

[John Kotches]

bytre says:

Actually, that was the initial design of HD. An HD signal fits into the same bandwidth of an old analog SD signal.

If only satellite broadcast used the same transmission technology... It doesn't. Not even close.

Cheers,

 

[DanB474]

As soon as you engineer and patent a revolutionary compression scheme that allows for HD material to be compressed to the same size as SD material, I'm sure they will be all for it.

Actually, it's not up to me. It should be up to them to either compress HD material w/o signal degradation or to acquire more satellites. I don't mind throwing another dish on my roof, I just want my sports in HD.

 

[long_time_DNC]

I wouldn't mind adding another dish, if they'd just add more HD programming.

The entire "compelling" argument is fairly moot due to the fact that what is "compelling" to one person may be utterly useless to another. Charlie evidently can't imagine what is compelling enough to carry it in HD, whereas I can easily think of at least 10 channels I'd like to have in HD. Until E* management realizes that people want HD, they won't find anything that's "compelling".

Thanks for the info, Scott!

 

[Unthinkable]

Actually, it's not up to me. It should be up to them to either compress HD material w/o signal degradation or to acquire more satellites. I don't mind throwing another dish on my roof, I just want my sports in HD.

Point is, posters are often guilty of overly simplifying or worse yet, completely ignoring the finite bandwidth available to satellite providers to add additional channels whether they be HD or not and certain standard operating procedures like programming contracts being in ongoing negotiations are often scoffed at as though its all corporate BS. I'm actually with Charlie Ergen on the whole "compelling content" issue and have been since day one. Much rather see quality content added to the HD Pak making it way more enticing to the average consumer for ten bucks a month then just adding quantity for the soul purpose of adding more to it myself. He certainly gets a lot of flak for having a vision and for taking a stand against potential offerings that aren't even full-time genuine HD and the like.

Don't you ever personally tire of the constant "compelling", "Dish is the HD leader?", "yeah, but which year?" tried-and-true cliches and stale jokes we see run into the ground every night on all the various satellite forums and chats? Its the proverbial dead horse thats kicked, beaten to death, set on fire, defecated on, doused in gasoline, buried, beaten with lead pipes, dug up and then beaten again ad finitum. We can't lose sight of the fact that A) Dish is a company like all others looking to turn a reasonable profit and B) Dollars and cents contract-wise in addition to universal demand and available bandwidth have to make sense for both parties to sign off on a mutual partnership. Sometimes I think these points tend to go completely ignored in the heat of the emotions where subscribers want more, more, more to show off their new HD sets right away to friends and family.

 

[DanB474]

I'm actually with Charlie Ergen on the whole "compelling content" issue and have been since day one. Much rather see quality content added to the HD Pak making it way more enticing to the average consumer for ten bucks a month then just adding quantity for the soul purpose of adding more to it myself. He certainly gets a lot of flak for having a vision and for taking a stand against potential offerings that aren't even full-time genuine HD and the like.

I agree with you 100%. I don't want to see upconverted 70's movies or second rate production shows in HD. I could care less. I do feel, however (as I would think a decent majority would feel), that my local professional MLB, NBA, and NHL teams in HD is probably the most sought after HD stuff out there. I would drop all other HD channels to get my FSN in HD. To save some bandwidth, is it possible to use spotbeams for the RSN's? I'd think they could save some space by doing that. How about the many extra sports PPV channels that are often not in use - are those taking up much bandwidth when unused? Shopping channels? I guess they pay Charlie to show those off and take up my channel line up. I'm just trying to think of ways (as Charlie should be) to make the RSN's in HD a reality. Does D* have more capacity than E*? They are planning on showing a good number of NFL games on their package in HD. Sorry if I oversimplified on my previous post.

 

[dlsnyder]

There is another way to do it - make all boxes capable of decoding HD content. If all boxes could decode HD, even if you were just seeing an SD version on your set, then they could eliminate SD feeds for channels with 100% program duplication. It wouldn't be much of a savings at first but over the long haul it would help free up more bandwidth for more HD. Efficient use of spotbeams would make the savings even greater.

 

[Neutron]

Then you would have those without HDTV sets complaining about the black bars since HD programming is widescreen.