Interesting E* FCC Filing

[JohnH]

Seems like there will be a lease of 61.5 in the works.

Possible reason for keeping 61.5 separate in the short term would be to protect any agreement with Dominion Sky Angel.

Also, seems there would be a possible third DBS provider to reduce the problems of regulatory approval of a sale to that PHONE COMPANY.

 

[Minac]

My guess is the only way they might be able to get rid of 61.5 is if they put all of the HD on 110 & 119. I'm guessing due to lack of bandwith that's not possible? I don't know the number but there is probably a large # of customers that have 61.5 for HD.

 

[long_time_DNC]

I'd be amazingly happy if they put all the HD on 110/119, as 129 is a piece of orbiting cow dung...

 

[mdonnelly]

I'd be amazingly happy if they put all the HD on 110/119, as 129 is a piece of orbiting cow dung...

At least until this time next year.

Actually, here in America's Heartland, it works okay.

 

[Bulldog]

My guess is the only way they might be able to get rid of 61.5 is if they put all of the HD on 110 & 119. I'm guessing due to lack of bandwith that's not possible? I don't know the number but there is probably a large # of customers that have 61.5 for HD.

Yep! at least New York and Florida to name a few.

 

[Cranked]

This probably isnt good for us customers of E*.

They already arent trying to compete with D* on the new HD channels, now they will take satellite(s) from the service part and try to "cram" more channels into the rest? That just means less BW for everything else.

I like E* and it would take a lot to get me to leave them, but if this thing goes as south as it seems possible: Hello, D*.

 

[JohnL]

They found lots of credit from a Federal Court for having infringed on TiVo's patents, so they DID get some credit for their hardware & technology, they "borrowed" (stole is such a nasty word) it.

Not the kind they wanted?

Mike,

Dude, Dish had a DVR deployed into the market before TIVO existed.

The Big problem was that DVR Model 7100 was a receiver with firmware written by both Microsoft and Dish Network. This is probably the reason Dish didn't have a Patent on the technology before TIVO did.

It is also quite possible that TIVO STOLE some of the Firmware technology from the Microsoft/Dish Product.

Dish has some pretty deep pockets, they just bought Sling Technologies. If, and it is a "BIG IF", Dish loses the Tivo Patent infringement suit they have plenty of money to buy out TIVO outright. TIVO is still on shaky financial footing.

John

 

[LER]

the 10-Q E* just released today seems to say they believe they will win the Tivo appeal.

 

[jcrash]

The short answer is: the owners of the holding company.

"Holding Company" is a very common name. It is almost the "Default" name in a situation like this.

our firm has two pieces that operate, and a "holding Company" that is the sole shareholder in the operating companies. The partners own the Holding company, not the operating units. Sears is set up the same way with Sears Holding owning both Sears and Kmart.

It does make it easier to sell one of the operating units, although there are a lot of other reasons for setting things up that way. Among other reasons, it limits liability if one of the operating units is sued. It can shield one from the liability of the other.

There also could be financial reasons in the way of the kinds of loans that one company takes out. For example, A stand-alone satellite company would be very capital intensive: They spend big bucks to launch a satellite and then they take in payments over a long time to make the money back.

A stand alone Dish Network, no so much. They take in cash every month and would make payments to programmers and the Satellite provider on the same basis. If it were separate, almost none of its costs would be capital.

This would probably almost immediately increase the valuation of both entities, I would think.

Another advantage would be that you would thik Dish competitors would be more likely to buy things from Echostar if the two companies were separate. Settop boxes, in particular. Why would Comcast make it's own boxes when they could by them? Now they won't because Dish is a competitor.

This has happened in the auto industry. Delco used to be owned by GM. At that time they did some business with other automakers, but not much. Now that they are separate from GM, they do a lot more, although most of their business is still with GM.

Also, it would make it easier to start a new DBS service. Echostar could almost make it turnkey.

This is getting more interesting.

At a P/E ratio over 30 currently, not much room to "improve the valuation."

 

[Mike0616]

The short answer is: the owners of the holding company.

"Holding Company" is a very common name. It is almost the "Default" name in a situation like this.

our firm has two pieces that operate, and a "holding Company" that is the sole shareholder in the operating companies. The partners own the Holding company, not the operating units. Sears is set up the same way with Sears Holding owning both Sears and Kmart.

It does make it easier to sell one of the operating units, although there are a lot of other reasons for setting things up that way. Among other reasons, it limits liability if one of the operating units is sued. It can shield one from the liability of the other.

There also could be financial reasons in the way of the kinds of loans that one company takes out. For example, A stand-alone satellite company would be very capital intensive: They spend big bucks to launch a satellite and then they take in payments over a long time to make the money back.

A stand alone Dish Network, no so much. They take in cash every month and would make payments to programmers and the Satellite provider on the same basis. If it were separate, almost none of its costs would be capital.

This would probably almost immediately increase the valuation of both entities, I would think.

Another advantage would be that you would thik Dish competitors would be more likely to buy things from Echostar if the two companies were separate. Settop boxes, in particular. Why would Comcast make it's own boxes when they could by them? Now they won't because Dish is a competitor.

This has happened in the auto industry. Delco used to be owned by GM. At that time they did some business with other automakers, but not much. Now that they are separate from GM, they do a lot more, although most of their business is still with GM.

Also, it would make it easier to start a new DBS service. Echostar could almost make it turnkey.

This is getting more interesting.

Huh? Say what? Delco's home page says "ACDelco has nearly 100 years of experience in the automotive industry and is a brand of GM Service and Parts Operations, a division of General Motors." Delco is still owned by GM.

Maybe you are thinking of the Delphi Corporation, which was a sub of GM? If so, check your glowing history as they are still in bankruptcy reorganization, which is NOT exactly what I call a great business model or one that I would go after. Check out Reorganization Information for more info on that.

Sometimes splits make sense, but lots of times, spun off companies are spun as they are so undesirable and are dragging down the rest of the corporation. The case study books in any MBA program are full of those kinds of deals, check them out.

 

[Mike0616]

Mike,

Dude, Dish had a DVR deployed into the market before TIVO existed.

The Big problem was that DVR Model 7100 was a receiver with firmware written by both Microsoft and Dish Network. This is probably the reason Dish didn't have a Patent on the technology before TIVO did.

It is also quite possible that TIVO STOLE some of the Firmware technology from the Microsoft/Dish Product.

Dish has some pretty deep pockets, they just bought Sling Technologies. If, and it is a "BIG IF", Dish loses the Tivo Patent infringement suit they have plenty of money to buy out TIVO outright. TIVO is still on shaky financial footing.

John

John,

Sorry, but I beg to differ. If the case were that simple, it could have been on Judge Judy and not in a federal court.

As I have worked in the hardware and software areas since the late 60s, can assure you that each and every thing that M$ has done has been copyrighted and patented (if applicable). To think they "forgot" this is very naive to me. All the companies I ever worked for (think Bell Labs, IBM, etc.) all did this as a matter of course and so did M$. Hell, M$ even did it on work they were later found to have stolen from other companies.

In the late 80s one of my projects for my employer was to work with M$ and interface with one of their Operating Systems (their flavor of OS/2) and I can assure you that unless the people at M$ were all given frontal lobotomies between that and the current time, the practice of patenting and copyrighting everything new is still in place.

IF the technology could be proved to a court of law to have existed before TiVo filed and was granted their patents, the TiVo patents could have been rather easily overturned, but that is not what has happened. Its not as if Dish did not spend or have the funds to have to spend to prove their side of the case, and same goes for getting "expert testimony" and supporting records from M$.

Dish bought Slingbox. So what? Its a nice toy and since the market is growing in that area it sounds like a good idea to me, however, it has NOT A THING to do with the TiVo lawsuit, in fact one could assume that Dish learned their lesson on "borrowing" from the TiVo loss.

As far as TiVo going under, I would not count them out yet. While I don't think they have particularly run their company well, they could sell to someone who could, maybe DirecTv or one of the many cash-laden cable companies? What has really surprised me has been that Dish has not bought TiVo and gotten rid of the judgment they owe and implemented any and all technology that TiVo has that they would care to use (although I actually prefer many aspects of Dish DVRs over the rival TiVo offerings.)

Back to the original topic, am not sure what E* has to gain by splitting this company, but as we all know, it won't happen any time soon. The FCC, in its rush mode is slower than a turtle and so is the FTC, which would have to approve any selling of a part of Dish to ATT, et. al.

Is it curious? Yes, indeed. Is ATT the ONLY party interested in buying a portion of the company as it now is organized? I would venture to say "no way, there has to be other suitors for a company with this kind of earnings track record." Who would have the pocket change around to pull off such a major acquisition? Cuban, who is seeing HDNet die on the vine? Gates, who always wants more money and is tired of failure in the hardware arena? The list goes on....

-Mike

 

[Mike0616]

the 10-Q E* just released today seems to say they believe they will win the Tivo appeal.

lol

They say "We believe that we do not infringe any of the claims asserted against us."

BUT, if you look at the beginning of the filing, They must, under law, disclaim that statement by: "We make “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 throughout this report. Whenever you read a statement that is not simply a statement of historical fact (such as when we describe what we “believe,” “intend,” “plan,” “estimate,” “expect” or “anticipate” will occur and other similar statements), you must remember that our expectations may not be correct, even though we believe they are reasonable. We do not guarantee that any future transactions or events described herein will happen as described or that they will happen at all. You should read this report completely and with the understanding that actual future results may be materially different from what we expect. Whether actual events or results will conform with our expectations and predictions is subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. "

The statements above are "boiler-plate", nothing more. Even IF they felt they were going to lose the cases and any and all appeals, they would still say it, all corporations do. That is the reason that they must have the statements disavowed. The old adage "the large print gives and the fine print takes away" seems very applicable in this case, doesn't it?

-Mike

 

[MLBurks]

Seems like there will be a lease of 61.5 in the works.

Possible reason for keeping 61.5 separate in the short term would be to protect any agreement with Dominion Sky Angel.

Sky Angel as of Jan 1 2008 will no longer be in the satellite business.

 

[sweetladycola]

Where does the HD channels on 61.5, for us out east go???

You will need to upgrade to the new MPEG 4 HD channels that come off 129. This of course will require you to upgrade to an MPEG 4 receiver. But you do get a lot more channels than in the legacy package. Right now the upgrade cost is between $149 and $199 with $100 back at $10 a month for 10 months and you get 6 months free of the HD programming so save $120.

 

[M Sparks]

Dish had a DVR deployed into the market before TIVO existed.

As a former 7100 Dishplayer owner, I'm pretty sure this is not true.

I KNOW ReplayTV was well before the 7100.

EDIT: Did some Wikipedia searches...real answer is unclear. Dishplayer was released in June 1999. Tivo was SUPPOSED to be released in March 1999, but I've read a few thing that indicate it was delayed until July, so Dishplayer MAY have been on shelves first.

Replay and Tivo were both introduced at CES 1999. I know personally, I had some Replay brochures before I had ever heard of Tivo.

In any case, they were all released around the same time, so infringement would have been near impossible unless we're talking about industrial spying.

 

[slimoli]

You will need to upgrade to the new MPEG 4 HD channels that come off 129. This of course will require you to upgrade to an MPEG 4 receiver. But you do get a lot more channels than in the legacy package. Right now the upgrade cost is between $149 and $199 with $100 back at $10 a month for 10 months and you get 6 months free of the HD programming so save $120.

129 is a no go in many places , specially here in South Florida.

 

[okiekevn]

ok, this is all speculation, but sounds possible....

charlie is going to seperate the satellites, put some under echostar, and some under dishnetwork. he is then going to sell dishnetwork and the dishnetwork satellites to att. he is then going to forget about dishnetwork and focus on his new baby, vip-tv. the echostar satellites will be kept for vip-tv. vip-t will be used to aquire smaller cable companies that decide to join with it. after a short while, he will have aquire a plethora of smaller cable companies, forming one large cable company. just an idea.

 

[mike123abc]

I doubt he will go into cable directly. Providing cable feeds to small independant cable companies is something he does now, and I see him expanding the service. They get the advantage of reduced prices by having Dish negotiate all the service contracts, and Dish of course gets money for every sub.

It would be interesting to see the numbers, but I bet for a small operator, the Dish service is probably less than it would be possible to negotiate with every provider separately. Plus you get the added bonus of not having to deal with all the contracts.

I do think the new consumer Dish network replacement if built at 61.5/77/86 will be kept separate from the old Dish. But, I would bet that they would be sold together if they were sold to AT&T. The main reason would be AT&T could still sell Dishnetwork as Dishnetwork and make the new service exclusive to U-Verse. I hope this is not the case since I would like to get the new all MPEG-4 service without U-Verse since I doubt they will get the U-Verse service here any time soon. Dealers would be upset too since they probably could not sell the U-Verse service either.

 

[JayStil]

I don't remember the timeframe, but the DVR portion of the 7100 was not operational at release. It was enabled with a firmware upgrade at a later date (I'm thinking sometime in the fall, but that's from memory and I sometimes suffer from CRAFT)

There was an outcry when the DVR features were added because DISH decided to charge a monthly fee and none of the literature promoting the 7100 previously gave any clue there'd be a charge.

I know because I lived it. Still using 2 7100's TODAY!

As a former 7100 Dishplayer owner, I'm pretty sure this is not true.

I KNOW ReplayTV was well before the 7100.

EDIT: Did some Wikipedia searches...real answer is unclear. Dishplayer was released in June 1999. Tivo was SUPPOSED to be released in March 1999, but I've read a few thing that indicate it was delayed until July, so Dishplayer MAY have been on shelves first.

Replay and Tivo were both introduced at CES 1999. I know personally, I had some Replay brochures before I had ever heard of Tivo.

In any case, they were all released around the same time, so infringement would have been near impossible unless we're talking about industrial spying.