Retailer Chat Recap - November 10th, 2005

LER,

They didn't apologize publicly, they basically said that his comments were misinterpreted.

From the article:

"SBC spokesman Michael Balmoris said Whitacre was not talking about charging companies for letting customers access their Web sites. Rather, he said, Whitacre was referring to access Internet companies may want to the "managed and secure" portions of the fiber-optic network SBC is building largely to deliver video to customer homes.

"SBC has not and will not block or limit access to lawful content or applications on the Internet," he said. "Mr. Whitacre's comments are being misinterpreted. They were not made in the context of the Internet, but rather SBC's $4 billion investment in its new fiber network to provide Internet-based video services," Balmoris said."
 
Yeah, easily removed by anyone willing to do 30 seconds of work...

I'll give E* this much, they just made a bunch of people actually look forward to a chat for once...
 
HokieEngineer said:
Okay a few other details outta the chat...

Fox Sports West 2 going from Spotbeam to full conus.

Wow! That will be cool. I never understood why it wasn't on conus from the beginning.
 
A few observations from the slides provided and other subjects mentioned. First, I was surprised that the 411 has an s-video output. Other earlier postings on the 411 indicated it did not. One thing it appears not to have is an analog OTA tuner. Perhaps someone could confirm this. As an owner of the 811, the analog tuner is one part that causes a great deal of lockups so this might be a good thing although I am sure there will be some folks that really need an analog OTA tuner.

There was mention for retailers to continue to sell the 811. Certainly folks are expecting Dish to offer some sort of swap out of the 411 for the 811 as the MPEG-4 conversion begins. One way Dish could make use of the swapped out 811s is as a replacement for non-8PSK capable receivers. In the latest financial report there was a discussion about converting to 8PSK to gain bandwidth efficiencies and limit costs of MPEG-4 adoption. If Dish were to start converting SD channels to 8PSK they would gain anywhere from 25 - 33% bandwidth i.e., Dish could put 15-16 SD channels on a TP using 8PSK compare to 12 SD channels/TP using QPSK. Dish could take the old 811s and through software change disable the analog OTA tuner and perhaps both the digital OTA tuner and the satellite HD tuner. What would be left would essentially be a 311 that is capable of receiving 8PSK. Dish could perhaps do this as well with 921s and 942s to replace DVRs once a MPEG-4 DVR is released. Realize Dish will still have non-HD subscribers for a few years down the road.

It was also noted that Dish mentioned HD LILs spotbeams. Of course the Rainbow-1 satellite was designed for this with its 130 spotbeam TPs. From a marketing standpoint Dish would be using a D500/D300 two dish solution against the single Superdish sized 5 LNB dish that DirecTV is starting to use for HD LILs. In addition, for the western U.S. markets that have problems seeing Rainbow-1 at 61.5 W, Dish could move E-8 and maybe E-7 to 129 W and use their spotbeam capacity for HD LILs from there once E-10 is launched and takes over the spotbeam choirs of both. Dish would have to move another satellite to 119 W but maybe E-10 will free up E-6 at 110 W as well and it could be moved to 119 W. The reason to move all these satellites around is not only to provide HD LIL capacity but national HD capacity as well. Currently Dish uses 13 TP frequencies at 110 and 119 to provide non-distant network SD locals including 3 CONUS TPs at 110. If E-10 can provide all the SD locals from 110 and 119 (as well as the split wing locals) using only 7 or 8 TP frequencies, this would give Dish 5 or 6 TP frequencies to use for national HD capacity. Using MPEG-4 this would allow Dish to provide 30 - 36 HD channels at 6 HD channels/TP at 110/119.
 
I for one am pleased to see the part about integrating the local digital broadcasts into the EPG. Sounds like this is without further charge and independent of having a subscription to locals. Even if it's just the PSIP data that would be good- assuming good PSIP data gets transmitted by the stations in the next year or so. TV Guide sourced data would be even better.
 
navychop said:
I for one am pleased to see the part about integrating the local digital broadcasts into the EPG. Sounds like this is without further charge and independent of having a subscription to locals. Even if it's just the PSIP data that would be good- assuming good PSIP data gets transmitted by the stations in the next year or so. TV Guide sourced data would be even better.
Wow, I missed the part about integrating PSIP into the EPG. Great news indeed!
 
roachxp said:
Are both boxes going to have IR remotes or is it just the 211? I hate RF can't get my 811 to output IR at all.

Not sure if your issue is with the IR Blaster from the 811 or IR out of the remote but you may want to try posting your issue in the Dish HDTV forum. As a current 811 owner, the lack of RF is a huge negative. Perhaps Dish will design them similar to the 311 with RF access on the bottom of the receiver requiring an additional RF remote kit.
 
Yeah just talk to my locar retailer and he said he was post to have some in my end month. So I guess the question is the 211 the way to go with the jack I got DSL. Plus I could run some Cat5e into the room but makes me wonder if the 211 is just going to be for BELL. So what do you guys think if I can get one at the end of the month which way should I go?? 211 or 411 and my reatailer said for now he thinks it will be just to replace the 811's for now and 311 later. Anyway keep up the great work Scott!
 
The ethernet connection might be to download programing guides. If they did that, there wouldn't be any long delays for the equipment as they download. It could download them seamlessly at night. Kind of like what tivo and Replaytv do.

Of course I'm just speculating.
 
avsfan33 said:
I noticed one of the pictures said a "2 Day EPG". That doesn't seem right. Is that a typo?

The 211/411 is the MPEG-4 non-DVR receiver that is the replacement for the 811. The 811 has a 44 hour EPG. 2 days would be 48 hours so I would think it is correct.
 
Cegarrett said:
Could this be a way to distribute the Video over/in a home network?

The programming would run coax from the sat. Dish to a central "receiver" and then the receiver could use CAT5 to distribute the video to the rest of the house. Aren't most new houses wired for network?

Just thinking outside of the Box,
Cegarrett

WOW! That would be interesting INDEED. I wonder what bandwidth would be needed to transmit a program from a dish receiver through CAT5. Would 100mb be enough? Or maybe Gigabit? You could cram like 4 tuners in one box and there 's your 4-TV install! 3 UHF Antennas on the back! Dish would like that too because then only 1 phone line connection would be needed (har har). :D
 
BluEBoaR said:
WOW! That would be interesting INDEED. I wonder what bandwidth would be needed to transmit a program from a dish receiver through CAT5. Would 100mb be enough? Or maybe Gigabit? You could cram like 4 tuners in one box and there 's your 4-TV install! 3 UHF Antennas on the back! Dish would like that too because then only 1 phone line connection would be needed (har har). :D

You dont need that much bandwidth. The actual mpeg stream is only around 2.5-4Mbit/s. That can be transported easily via a 10Mbit network. In fact FTA DVB cards (pci cards that can recieve FTA channels) easily interact with a program called VLC, which will play a network video stream. This comes in handy, since my FTA machine is my HTPC. If I want to watch the channel upstairs at my other computer, I just load VLC, and whammo, I have video. You can even multicast the stream so multiple end stations can view the same video.

Dish would be wise to try and partner with Microsoft and their media center extenders (or another company making media centers).

There might be a few more hoops that Dish needs to jump through if they ever plan on doing this. I'm sure the MPAA and broadcasters would kill them unless this stream was encrypted somehow, which means dish engineers would have to develop something, and we'd have to beta test it for a few years :)
 

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