Greetings from the Echostar Press Event

[jsb_hburg]

What is embarrassing about asking if their resolution will be increased? That is like not asking the dealer if your pick-up has a hemi in it out of fear of putting the dealer in a bad spot.
To me, it is more embarrassing, and a waste of time to ask about Stern. Of course Dish isn't going to carry Stern. In the end Charlie laughed about it! I would rather have Charlie utter a nervous laugh when Scott asked him about HD-Lite. The last few months has been built-up to finding out what new HD channels we will get and what resolution they will be. Everyone makes mistakes I guess.... In the end Scott went to CES on his dime, in support of his web-site, so he can ask what questions he sees fit.

Comcast offers Stern on Demand from "In Demand" and it is a pay service.

 

[mike123abc]

I wonder if the 622 is going to have video on demand. That could explain why the hard drive space is going up but the recording time specified is not changing.

 

[Stargazer]

I think it would be a safe bet to say that the 622 will have VOD based upon the fact that the 625 does.

 

[Reefer123]

Wow, soooo much talk about the down rezing of the Voom channels and no one (at least it seems till now) had the stones to ask a question of find some concrete info. Pathetic. Following the entire Charlie Chat and now CES has been a complete waste of time. I for one will now tune into the next HD Charlie Chat because I am guessing, and this is pure speculation that no answers come out of that either.

 

[Purogamer]

Was scott asking bout stern TV or stern sirius? Charlie wouldn't laugh at stern TV considering the revenue he could make from it. Talk about an actual killer app for this crap VOD service they insist on having...

I was also surprised to not see scott pose the question about HD resolution. It's absolutely expected of him to ask about it. Worst response he could get was "Wait until the chat" or "We're not sure", it wouldn't have put anyone in any spot...

BTW, I can't believe you guys are complaining that you won't have a box on Feb. 1st to be the guinea pigs...Who in their right mind wants to be the first person to get their hands on these bug-filled boxes? Honestly??

 

[BrianMis]

Look at Scott's profile pic, he is standing right beside Charlie.

http://www.satelliteguys.us/customprofilepics/profilepic1_2.gif

Maybe he did ask him and we just don't know it yet, info has been kinda slow since the press conference yesterday.

 

[Bob Haller]

FROM TODAYS SKY REPORT
Company officials also emphasized the importance of
making the technological transition to MPEG 4 to
maximize current bandwidth, expand the HD market
and make the addition of the new HD networks a
successful one. Ergen said that DISH network would
make it "very attractive" for current customers
with MPEG 2 set-top boxes to upgrade to one with
MPEG 4. "Probably the cost of a service call," he
said.

does this answer the question?

frankly for average joes, even paying for a service call might be a problem, and as always I MUST OWN the box, require rent, makes a clear statement they DONT want me as a customer!

 

[waltinvt]

<snip>.... Ergen said that DISH network would
make it "very attractive" for current customers
with MPEG 2 set-top boxes to upgrade to one with
MPEG 4. "Probably the cost of a service call," he
said.

does this answer the question?

It's still their typical ambigious, subjective response. What's "very attractive"? And when will it be available ?

Their track record doesn't lend itself to fostering optimism.

What kind of upgrade path did 6000, 921, 811 owners get to the 942 (officially)? What kind of options were offered to existing subs to even get into HD compared to what they were offering new customers?

This decision about MEPG4 didn't happen the night before CES, this has been planned a while, yet they let it be known (from more than one venue) that MEPG4 was NOT what they anticipated and would not be the path Dish would take for a while yet. They also told their dealers to "get rid" of their stock of 942s.

You do the math and tell me how likely it is that existing customers with MEPG2 HD receivers will offered an "attractive" upgrade option to an equlivent MPEG4 receiver.

The best I can see happening is maybe months down the road Dish will quietly be doing closed door deals with those subs that look like they're on the verge of leaving - just like they did with the 942.

The only thing I see maybe changing any of this is if Dish picks up so much chatter on these boards combined with a lot of ceo-emails that they get a little nervous. Even then, I doubt their stock of 622s is enough yet to supply both new and existing customers.

At best and if we make enough noise, they may decide to put a few of the new HD channels up in MEPG2 too for a transition period - something they should have planned to do from day 1 in my opinion. It's the one thing that would made this whole announcment take on a completly different light - but maybe that makes too much sense.

 

[gutter]

Nobody has explained to me what happend from the November TECH CHAT that told us that MPEG4 really isn't together yet and will not fill expectations. It is a long way off and will need further codec improvements before it was a real alternative. What happened in 30 days or was it just smoke to distract the competition. (which it probably didn't do anyway). The the TECH CHAT guys have egg all over their face or smoke up their ass?

Again I will say that the entire PR department of DISH should be fired for not advising Charlie to do a special CHAT from CES Thursday evening. That would have limited the number of complaints we have seen on here quickly and built stonger loyality. What a dumb move.

 

[SpenceJT]

I "own" my 921 and 811. If I am going to upgrade to a pair of 622's they best be either mine to "own" (for a nominal charge), or FREE if a lease is forced upon me.

 

[Purogamer]

Things change DAILY at E*. They kept saying "next month" every month so you had to know it was coming soon. That BS from the Tech Chat was taken with a grain of salt from what I can tell, and rightfully so. They had to give a reason for why they decided not to drop any info on the chat, and that accomplished it.

They didn't really lie they just stretched pretty well. It does need improvement, and it's not like they can flip a switch and turn MPEG-4 on across the board. They'll tweak it as they release it while replacing MPEG-2 content. Once all the MPEG-2 is gone and everything is MPEG-4, things SHOULD be really good from the customer perspective. You have to realize that we won't be at that point for at least another year though...

 

[mike123abc]

Before everyone screams about having to pay a lot of $$ wait to see what the upgrade deal is. As I posted before I made money upgrading from 2 6000s to an 811 and a 921. Now I do not expect that the 811 or 921 will have ebay resale value like the 6000s, but the cost for the upgrade on the 6000s was free for one and $49 for the other. The cost of buying a new 811 was $99. I sold the upgraded 6000s for $600ish on ebay, and bought a 921 (not right at release but after a bit and the price had dropped).

HD customers tend to be the highest paying customers that Dish has, they are not going to be stupid about it. Of course they wanted to get rid of all the old MPEG-2 equipment. It does not do any good to have it in a warehouse. May as well have it working in a new sub's home until it is upgraded. They had them made and paid for them, may as well get a few months income off of them before switching them out rather than just sending them to the landfill. It is also possible that the upgraded subs could use that equipment for secondary TVs not in HD, giving them even a longer stream of revenue.

Perhaps it would be $50 to upgrade your equipment with programming commit and you get to keep all your old boxes (hence the cut off date for activation). Perhaps free if you decide to ship the old box back.

This is just speculation and it could be all wrong and Dish could decide to screw over their HD customers and say well if you want more HD than any other provider you better pay big $$ and shut up. But, like I said in the past they have not done so, and I would be surprised if they suddenly started to do so.

 

[NightRyder]

Before everyone screams about having to pay a lot of $$ wait to see what the upgrade deal is. As I posted before I made money upgrading from 2 6000s to an 811 and a 921. Now I do not expect that the 811 or 921 will have ebay resale value like the 6000s, but the cost for the upgrade on the 6000s was free for one and $49 for the other. The cost of buying a new 811 was $99. I sold the upgraded 6000s for $600ish on ebay, and bought a 921 (not right at release but after a bit and the price had dropped).
HD customers tend to be the highest paying customers that Dish has, they are not going to be stupid about it. Of course they wanted to get rid of all the old MPEG-2 equipment. It does not do any good to have it in a warehouse. May as well have it working in a new sub's home until it is upgraded. They had them made and paid for them, may as well get a few months income off of them before switching them out rather than just sending them to the landfill. It is also possible that the upgraded subs could use that equipment for secondary TVs not in HD, giving them even a longer stream of revenue.
Perhaps it would be $50 to upgrade your equipment with programming commit and you get to keep all your old boxes (hence the cut off date for activation). Perhaps free if you decide to ship the old box back.
This is just speculation and it could be all wrong and Dish could decide to screw over their HD customers and say well if you want more HD than any other provider you better pay big $$ and shut up. But, like I said in the past they have not done so, and I would be surprised if they suddenly started to do so.

Well said. All the knee jerker's around here are just feeding off each other. I think I'll just take a break for a while and come back when things settle down a bit. Maybe when we actually know something there will be reason to be upset, but right now there isn't.


NightRyder

 

[dlsnyder]

It sounds to me like Dish is moving toward a unified platform. All new receivers are HD-capable (and MPEG-4 capable), so in the not-too-distant future they may want to phase out ALL SD-only receivers. This would save them a great deal of bandwidth over time as more and more channels go HD. Eventually E* could take down the SD MPEG-2 streams and all viewers would tune to the HD MPEG-4 stream, regardless of whether they were watching on an HDTV or legacy NTSC TV. IMHO that is the future they are trying to create with this strategy.

 

[waltinvt]

You guys make a certain amount of rational sense but one of the points this "knee-jerker" is trying to make is why couldn't Dish have said something about the existing customer upgrade path at the press conference and that there would be more information released at the upcoming Chat instead of dropping the "atractive offer" bit to Scott AFTER a lot of us made noise here on the boards?

You know as well as I do that if we all acted like this whole deal was just hunky dorry and were willing to just sit back and wait for Dish to offer "attractive" upgrades, we'd be waiting a long time.

Dish would love nothing better than for all of us existing subs to just sit back and pay our bill every month, content to either buy a new receiver at full price or wait until they've peaked out with new customers and hope for some sort of lease deal. And that's just what they'd expect if some of us knee jerkers didn't get a little rowdy.

 

[mdonnelly]

You guys make a certain amount of rational sense but one of the points this "knee-jerker" is trying to make is why couldn't Dish have said something about the existing customer upgrade path at the press conference and that there would be more information released at the upcoming Chat instead of dropping the "atractive offer" bit to Scott AFTER a lot of us made noise here on the boards?

You know as well as I do that if we all acted like this whole deal was just hunky dorry and were willing to just sit back and wait for Dish to offer "attractive" upgrades, we'd be waiting a long time.

Dish would love nothing better than for all of us existing subs to just sit back and pay our bill every month, content to either buy a new receiver at full price or wait until they've peaked out with new customers and hope for some sort of lease deal. And that's just what they'd expect if some of us knee jerkers didn't get a little rowdy.

Well, I won't add to the number of times the Dish HD news release was posted at satguys, but it clearly says in the release "DISH Network will offer a convenient upgrade package for existing customers who want to expand their HD lineup to include the new channels." Now, you and I would like more details about this upgrade, and maybe that's coming up Monday night, but you can't say that current subs were being ignored by Dish.

 

[DJ Rob]

Did Charlie say anything about the promised named-based recording for the 501/508/510s?

I'm starting to think that they tell us what we want to hear but don't try as hard to deliver it...

If Charlie & company drops this one (upgrading current customers to MP4 boxes free or real cheap), it's gonna be BIG. I hope they realize that.

 

[gutter]

Well, I won't add to the number of times the Dish HD news release was posted at satguys, but it clearly says in the release "DISH Network will offer a convenient upgrade package for existing customers who want to expand their HD lineup to include the new channels." Now, you and I would like more details about this upgrade, and maybe that's coming up Monday night, but you can't say that current subs were being ignored by Dish.

That really said nothing than we all could have guessed 6 months ago. What they should have done was had a special Charlie Chat from CES Thursday night. That would ahve stired the fires much less. But that would have been the smart PR move.

 

[Carl B]

I'll give E* until mid-year to see how the dust settles before I actually jump to Comcast. I can't decipher yet whether the new HDPak equivalent of what I have now will cost more or about the same. That's number one.

Number two is the upgrade path to a HD-DVR. $300 up front for a lease and $10/month is not attractive. Sorry about the 942 whining, but it was known that DBS was going to MPEG-4 in the near future when the 942 was released. CR magazine printed an advisory to not jump into HD-DVRs w/ any service as much new was coming in 2006. I'm sitting on an 811 almost since Day 1 and I would have jumped on a 921 at that time, but heard of all the problems and decided to not be a "first adopter".

Third item is the expanded HD content isn't too exciting to me. While I watch a considerable amount of ESPN-HD, I haven't watched more than an hour/month of ESPN2. Ho hum...and they still aren't going to provide Starz and Cmax HD channels, the movie services I subscribe to at the behest of my better half.

Lastly, as a Dish 500 users from back in '99, my dish and switches will require a significant upgrade to utilize the new HD packages. That's a lot of additional bucks unless E* upgrade path helps out w/ the cost. Comcast looks better w/ every mail flyer I get from them, but I'll wait until all the facts and costs are fully known.

 

[NR2D]

ENGLEWOOD, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 5, 2006--EchoStar Communications Corporation (NasdaqISH) and ESPN announced today that the DISH Network satellite TV service will offer ESPN2 HD, a 24-hour high-definition simulcast service of ESPN2, as part of the newly introduced "DishHD" programming package. DISH Network will make ESPN2 HD available beginning Feb. 1, 2006.
Bah!!!!

I am reading about the new HD package BUT what about us who already have the HD package? Will we need to incurr addition cost for another package or will E* be nice and add the new cahannels to our package??

Rich Dunklee
NR2D

I am editting this after reading some more posts. I hope the up grade for the additional HD channels is programming ONLY. I just upgrade 2 of my 3 receivers to the 411.

RD
NR2D