Product Idea for Dish

Big Bob

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Oct 4, 2003
220
4
I wonder if Dish has considered making a PCI satellite receiver card for use with Windows XP Media Center.

XP Media Center is starting to really take off. The newest release seems to have hit the mark. And the products are starting to look very nice.
HP has recently released a really fine product for XP MC. See it here and a review by PC magazine here. Note that in the review, it mentioned that there is no direct way to integrate cable or satellite TV. If Dish were to offer a plug-in card now, they would be way ahead of cable and D* if/when XP MC takes off.

A couple of other points. Buyers of this in the beginning will be early adopters, and good word of mouth is always nice.
Also, many of the legal problems with recording and copy protection are taken care of by Microsoft. E* would not have to fight those battles.

Personally, I have been waiting for a long time for something like XP Media Center. I am glad it is here and hope to get a unit after the price comes down a bit. One big negative for me is the lack of a satellite or cable tuner. What ever company has one when I do get a unit will be the provider that I stay with for quite a while. $.02
 
Long, long ago there was a Dish-compatable PCI card (Broadlogic 2030, IIRC) and it never caught on despite a planned joint effort - read the article here.

Considering the initial attempt a few years ago was a dud I think it would be hard to get Dish interested - I think they are struggling to get DVRs that work right.

Also, there's no real love between Dish and Microsoft/WebTV as they don't exactly have a good history of joint product development (read/ask here and in other satellite forums about the Dishplayer 7100/7200, Dish's first DVR + WebTV box which was jointly developed between Dish and Microsoft). The Dishplayer looked good but it was a real bugfest... I still have scars from that thing.
 
too bad this was tried and failed. I can see how dish would be hesitant to go back to this idea.

Sad too. Many of the reasons that this failed the first time around have been fixed. My guess is that someone will come out with a cable card or maybe D* will try it. The time is right now.
 
BTW, was the old PCI card ever actually manufactured or was it just vaporware?
 
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