Scott's Thought's: Satellite HDTV - Too Little, Too Late?

[rtt2]

I agree with you motjes2 Cablevision is one of the worst companies in America. They are arrogant, rude, dishonest, and overpriced. The amount of money I have saved by going to DBS has afforded me to get new toys and get more programming. In fact Cablevision has the highest priced rates in the country and the lowest customer satisfaction according to JD Powers & Assoc. It mystifies me how Cablevision will succeed in their Voom venture because they have the mentality of a cable company going into it.
DBS will be the winner in the long run because it is just more efficient way to distribute video rather than stringing hybrid fiber coax lines on telephone poles and maintaining them. DBS will always be able to have lower costs than Cable and the vast majority of Americans are looking for value. The fact that you can get X amount of channels on cable ignores the cost element. Us early adopters are less prone to complain about price but as HDTV moves into the mainstream people will weigh cost vs. volume of available HD channels. They will decide if paying $20-$30 more than DBS is worth getting networks in HDTV. But with the slide in Network ratings to the Cable networks I don't see the network locals as being the compelling reason to stay with cable. I agree DBS has to figure out something to do about the HD locals. Perhaps putting HDlocals on the wing slots could alleviate some of the problems. At least they could put the major cities up like NY, LA etc to prevent an exodus to cable in the major markets. This would let people have a second dish only if they wanted to see that channel in HD.

 

[AndyMon]

I agree with you, Cablevision for tv stinks, but optimimun online is very good.

Yeah, what he said!

 

[Sean Mota]

Another problem with cable that I forgot to mention was the steady diet of 'increases' that one gets.

Here is an article that denotes this as well:


http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~78~1645219,00.html

There are reasons why dish is eating cable's lunch.
The monthly cost of satellite TV services, once perceived as exorbitant compared with plain old cable, has held steady, while cable companies spent billions upgrading to digital and raised their prices to recoup those costs.

And consumers simply like their dish companies better than the cable giants, claiming they get better service and higher value for their subscription.

The satellite companies "are picking up steam," said Steve Kirkeby, a telecommunications researcher for the independent consumer survey J.D. Power and Associates. "It's getting stickier still for the cable companies. Dish is being very aggressive, and cable is slow to react. It's a monumental gap in that one particular factor: Do I think this is a good deal?"

And satellite companies such as Colorado-based Echostar, which owns Dish Network, are watching. "They're keeping an eye on when rates change in cable franchise territories and they are following those up almost immediately with promotions," Kirkeby said.

Comcast, which owns the largest cable franchises in metro Denver, has not significantly boosted its customer perception; it finished near the bottom of the satisfaction index.

 

[rcbridge]

I believe the impact of local HD availability will follow the trend as the local SD availability, those of us who are fortunate enough to utilize OTA capabilities for HD will do so making that a non factor. As more and more sports teams choose to create there own networks and broadcast in HD this will cause some to choose local cable over satellite, if you are not a sports fan this is a non factor. (I happen to live in the Philadelphia region so you know the story there).
Overall I think this will be good for the consumer, so let the competition begin! 8)

 

[James]

No local HD on Sat, why bother? I hate having to pull out the antenna and stick it on top of the TV. Its bad enough having to put a dish outside.... Either offer HD locals and a HD DVR soon or there is no reason for staying.

 

[Tampa8]

Ok, here they all go crying again. That was my first thought when I saw this thread, but the question is indeed a very good one. As HD takes off, will the statellite companies be able to stay ahead, or even keep up? HD tv's are still very much in the minority, but if you go to the stores you see more and more of them and lower and lower prices. It's only a matter of time. I got on the locals bandwagon a very long time ago. Many of us knew the only way for DBS to thrive was to carry locals. Direct was not convinced till Dish started doing it and was beating the pants off of Direct in new sales. I can see where it will be the same arguement again. When most will expect at least their network programs in HD, will Dish and Direct be able to deliver?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Thanks Tampa,

The question is a good one, at my local Best Buy I am told that 75% (if not more) of the TV's being sold there are HDTV Ready (meaning it can display HDTV but has no HDTV tuner)

Thats a lot of Joe Consumers.

My local WalMart now has HDTV's they seem to get new pallet loads of them once or twice a week, and when I go in (and I go in a few times a week) they are almost always out of stock or only have 1 or 2 of the HD sets left. Their lowest price HD set in my local WalMart is $729 and thats a 32inch HDTV.

People who have these TV's are eventually going to want to watch something on them in HDTV, and they are going to be VERY price oriented. If comcast can give them a HDTV receiver for $5 a month they will take it over a $399 HD box from Dish or DirecTV.

I just hope the satellite companies open their eyes and see whats going on, it's not to late to make some needed changes, but if they wait too long they may lose a market share and may never ever be able to regain it again.

 

[Guest]

I don't think it is necessary to provide Hdtv locals with satellite. I think ALL the sat receivers should include the ability to intergrate your ota sd and hd channels into the sat guide complete with info. The ability to do this will make it not necessary to do all the hd locals on the satellites. The only exception to this would be in white areas where you would have to have Distant locals in hd.

I am surprised that the networks haven't thought about doing hd as a premium service. Like HBO and Showtime etc. This way they could charge a premium price for network feeds for the hd content.

In the future because of Tivo and DVRs the networks will have to come up with another way to generate revenue, so it makes sense to become a premium service that is subscription only. They could offer the ABC, CBS,NBC,FOX etc packs split into sports ,soaps ,talkshow, Primetime shows channels. Kind of like Showtime, Showtime family , etc. all for the price of say a premium package . ABC for like $5.99 , CBS $5.99 -you get the idea. It would be cheaper to buy all the network packages at a discount of course.


Either way they would have to change the SHIVA laws and the existing Affiliate dynamics, but it would be a way to do away with commercial generated revenue and turn to subscription fees instead.

As far as hd locals , it is not needed if you can use your ota atenna for digital signals. I agree and have suggested on other boards that the sat companies ought to intergrate an omni directional atennas into their sat atennas so they can make it easy to receive your locals in hd and sd. Think of all the bandwith they can use if they made it easy to do this with their sat receivers and have them intergrated into the sat guide complete with the ability to record them as well. They could have done this all along and saved themselves all this money in order to do local into locals . From what I have read the new Voom Service is doing this very thing with the dish and the ota antenna intergrated and the sat guide with the ota info included. This is forward thinking and this is the most economical way to do locals in both hd and sd. The only thing the sat companies would have to do is keep the guide info right on the ota channels.

I have now put up the ota antenna with my dish and using diplexors I can use the same cables for both sat and ota channels. The picture quality is pretty good for ota channels with this Terk atenna and it is amplified so it much better than the Terk 42 atenna.

Either way I think that Satellite companies will have to do this also so they won't have to try to do all the locals in hd. If Voom does this and succeeds with the locals intergrated and the built in ota atenna in the dish then you can look for the other sat companies to do the same in the future. They all pretty much follow each other in promotions and hardware, pricing etc. 8)

 

[sampatterson]

Comcast in Atlanta still has the same problem that lots of cable systems seem to have - outages. Especially on the HDTV side. I see the Atlanta HDTV forum reporting the outages, mismatched audio, etc over and over. Once they do get it right it will give Satellite a run for its money. Rainbow VOOM (or whatever it is called) is interesting also.

 

[Tampa8]

I have to disagree with MikeD-C05. There are many, even some DBS enthusiasts who will shy away from having both a dish and antenna, especially if you need a rotor to get all the stations, because then you run into not being able to do unattended recording. But more importantly, I can't stress enough how many there are that can't get OTA HD or can't get a reliable signal. And until or unless they can find a way to bypass the loss of advertising revenue for the local stations, having HD on national channels will not happen beyond what limited area is covered now by CBS. As I posted above, this is just like the posts of a couple of years ago about DBS carrying locals. When people come to expect HD, and cable is providing it, DBS will have to also to compete. I don't think a lower DBS price alone will do it.

 

[Guest]

I meant that the dish would have a built in omni directional antenna that would make your local channels avialable. This is what the new Voom service is suppossed to have. This makes it easy to get your hd locals with your existing Dish antenna. This is very easy for the customer with no other antenna needed.

 

[jssat]

I meant that the dish would have a built in omni directional antenna that would make your local channels avialable. This is what the new Voom service is suppossed to have. This makes it easy to get your hd locals with your existing Dish antenna. This is very easy for the customer with no other antenna needed.

That would work fine in and close to the cities, but where I live you need a deep fringe antenna.

 

[Stargazer]

Especially if what I am hearing about HD/digital channels not operating at full power is the case. Many places do not even offer them yet.

Seeing how there is a limited amount of space for satellites and a limited amount of bandwidth, that there should be one satellite slot available to pick up all the local channels for everyone and an additional antenna could be used to pick up your locals (just as you would have an extra antenna to pick up OTA).

Maybe they could make the technology to where the dish/antenna would be much smaller. If the satellite would be located in a centralized slotwhere everyone on the east or west coast could pick them up then maybe DirecTV and Dish Network could use a one dish solution to pick them up. Seeing how most HD tv's do not have tuners in them one of those could be made available for consumers to pick up the channels since they would have to purchase one anyways.

A technology like NorthPoint would solve a lot of problems if it would not cause any interference.

 

[Guest]

You would still have to have hd distant locals for the white areas but would only need one city for east and central time and one for mountain and one for west coast time zones. This would still be much easier for satellite to do this as oppossed to doing all the locals again in hd. Either way my original suggestion still would work for the majority of the customers. Either that or national feeds by subscription on hd content for all the networks.

 

[James]

I have to disagree with MikeD-C05. There are many, even some DBS enthusiasts who will shy away from having both a dish and antenna, especially if you need a rotor to get all the stations, because then you run into not being able to do unattended recording.

Very true. I have an antenna right, now on top of my TV, but I hate it. I don't get ABC really well so football games are tought to get. :evil: Sure I could get a new antenna, but why should I have to pay for one? :shrug: They need to take off the small markets and give the large markets HD Locals.

 

[Stargazer]

I also believe that it seems a lot more possible to have a national HD feed of each network but when it comes to local content they would need to have some type of software to cut in for that. A lot of local stations may not have HD content for a good while if at all.

 

[James]

I've read that they could give a national feed for like CBS and when commercials run, swap the local commercials in their place. That would work well for all IMO.

 

[jcrash]

My wife and I are pretty big TV watchers (obviously, or I wouldn't bother reading/posting here ).

We have talked it over, at length, and while we want HD and have a HDTV and a Dish 6000 on the way, the most important thing for us is a good PVR.

We have the 721, and thanks to Wednesday and Thursday night lineups, there is no way we could do without it. I'll be getting the 6000 installed Monday and it will be primarily for Football. To me, I no longer care who I get my service from mostly because picture quality from cable is now equal to and usually better than satellite, but it will have to have a two tuner PVR. I don't think cable is likely to offer that in an HD form for a year or two, seeing how they've dragged their feet on normal SD PVR's.

People analyze costs and point out a $5 or $10 advantage on satellite over cable, but honestly that all goes out the window when a $1000 PVR is thrown into the mix. I would guess that either HD Satellite PVRs have to come down in price or Satellite will begin to lose it's appeal. Eventually, the rest of the television viewers will figure out how important PVRs can be. At that point, the real contest begins.

 

[Stargazer]

They could use spotbeams for local news and advertisements to target certain areas. 105 and 121 will not be able to use spotbeams will they? Will the new satellites going to those slots not even be able to support spotbeams?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

If national HD feeds were to go up the local commercials would be pulled from their SD transponder, so if a city is on spotbeam or not is not really an issue.

For the time being Dish will intergrate OTA Digital and Satellite together the guide will be seemless. The gude data for OTA digitals will be provided by Dish, the Dish Network receivers will not read the psip guide data.