BFG, yep that was sarcasm. I know that without screen captures of my face, it's hard to tell when I'm being sarcastic.
I do get a kick out of this thread though, and it shows how quickly opinions change over the smallest detail.
Before news of this purchase, a significant majority was asking what in the heck Charlie was doing to E*. Lot's of negative posts and the call for some new visionary to assist Charlie.
Now it's, he's got all of these cards and he's getting ready to place them on the table.
Seriously though, Charlie has been vary succesfull and has the best cash reserves among the Sat providers (Note that's liquid cash, not revenue stream that also is going towards the overhead expenses and debt of a company). He didn't get there because he's stupid. I've always figured he had some great ideas in reserve that he couldn't mention due to SEC requirements (Now so much stricter since Enron) that customers that were used to more transparency in the past.
Granted I was and am still very frustrated with no clear idea on what's arround the bend, but I've always felt that E* would be a long-term player and a good bet to stick with. Other than a very few number of channels, I've never seen the need to switch back and forth between D* and E*, primarily because of all of my sports have been available to me from E* (I'm not a football fan, but I love the other sports packages, if I were a football fan, I'm sure Sunday ticket would have been very strong reason to switch).
While I expect that I may be frustrated to swap out all of my equipment for the eventual MPEG4 need, switching to another provider now would most likely yield the same result (D* mention of a future MPEG4 setup as well). D* is also moving away from the various manufacturers creating D* receivers, so in time that will be similar as well. I can only hope that E* engineers can pick up some additional expertise as they aquire competitors that will eventually improve our equipement.