Team Summit: General Assembly Notes

Scott Greczkowski

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Sep 7, 2003
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Greetings from Team Summmit in Nashville, TN!

Before I start I want to thank our supporting Pub Members for making our coverage of events like Team Summit possible. If you are not a supporter yet what are you waiting for? CLICK HERE for more details about becoming a supporting Pub Member!

The General Assembly here at Team Summit just wrapped up and he is your SatellteGuys Exclusive Recap of the Team Summit General Assembly.

Amazingly the show started on time at 9:30am ET with Charlie Ergen taking the stage with his "State of Dish Network" address. Charlie stats that he loves Team Summit as he comes here to get ideas to make Dish Network better, he tells the he don't have all the answers and thats why retailers are important.

Charlie starts and says that we are in a recession, which is going to make it harder to sell pay TV services such as Dish Network but he wants to give them the tools to push forward through the hard times.

His goal with Dish Network is to reduce calls, improve staffing, and have increased training. Dish is also focused on offering better products including some exciting Sling functionality.

Dish Network offers the lowest prices on services and also offers the lowest priced (and only) all HD package in America.

Charlie says that today we have 81 national HD channels and by the end of the year they will have more the 100 national HD channels.

Charlie compares VIDEO to Telephone and Broadband and says that Video is where the money is. Dish Video will be fixed, portable and mobile. Starting next year you may be able to take your Dish Network with you anywhere.

He announces that Echostar 11 will launch in July and CEIL 2 will launch in December. Echo 11 will be the most powerfull Dish Network satellite ever launched. Ceil 2 will go to 129 and will offer spot beams for additional LIL HD offerings.

Charlie announces Eastern Arc (finally) which is an all MPEG4 service which will come from 61.5 72.7 and 77 degrees. Eastern Arc will totally duplicate what exists now on the Western Arc (110 / 119 / 129)

The Eastern Arc rollout will start in September. For folks on the East Coast this will offer much better look angles.

Charlie talks about Sling for a moment and says that it will soon be built in Echostar receivers.

Talks about 700Mhz and says that you will be able to watch Dish in you car, on your boat or sitting in the park. Soon you will have Dish Network anywhere.

By the end of the year there will be 45 millions HD sets in use, and f they want to watch HD they will need someone to provide them with HD content, he wants Dish Network to be able to deliver the HD to those folks.

Charlie then goes on to talk about the digital transition, he says that on February 19, 2008 35 million homes will have one TV that wll no longer receive TV signals. Retailers can sell them DTV PAL converter boxes. 5 Million homes will not be able to pick up any digital signals at all which means that those folks will no loner be able to watch television, out of those 5 million homes 1 million of them will op for the first time to subscribe to pay tv such as Dish Network.

Dish will offer a $9.99 Dish Essentials package, plus folks cn bundle in their locals for a total cost of $14.98 a month. this is a lower cost then cable and DirecTV.

Charlie wraps up and we are shown a video of what Dish can do with the 700Mhz spectrum with Dish Mobile.

Out next comes Mark Jackson and Leslie Harper to talk tech.

They start by talking about the 211k and 612.
Next they show the 222k and 722k both have no OTA tuner but a tuner module can be added. What is neat with this module both TV1 and TV2 can watch seperate OTA channels at the same time. The tuner also adds a modulator which can output video signals out to channel 2 or 3 for home distribution.
The new 2 way remotes are shown. They are the first remotes to use 2 way technology and also are the first to have the IR learning feature built in. The two way remote stores all your DVRs settings and timers into memory so if your DVR dies when you get a replacement the DVR will download all your settings to your replacement DVR. (My thoughts on this is you shouldn't have to ever need a replacement DVR) ;) The two way remotes also have an interactive setup wizard which can be accessed by pressing and holding down the 0 button on the remote.

Then Mark and Leslie introduce something that blows me away... The 722s. Its a 722 with Sling technology built in. Besides having Slingbox technology built in it also has Clip and sling which will let you send clips to friends. The 722s has a totally new interface, it has a guide with channel logos plus a totally new UHF remote, which features a touchpad and a trigger below it. This s a amazing unit. The front of the 722s also features al touch technology with no buttons and is backlit instead of using LCD's. They are looking at having 1TB drive at launch, however 500 GB will be used by Dish and the DVR will come loaded with name HD movies preloaded on the drive. The 722s also has a built in browser (although Jackson said it will only go to certain sites and will be tightly integrated with Yahoo.)

Next up the UHF to IR converter is shown. I need a few of these ASAP. :)

The show an IPTV Homeplug devices which will share you internet with any ViP receiver in your house,so you can access DishONLINE, and also callback to dish via the internew to avoid the $5 phoneline charge.

They talking about the ability to turn a 211 21k 222k into DVRs by attaching an external USB drive.
Next month they will be adding a USB Storage folder in your My Recording section so that your USB Hard drive recordings cn be easilly accessed.

They talk briefly about the Archo's 705 medial player (no one I have talked to yet knows if it will work with the all MPEG4 Eastern Arc service.)

The introduce the Dish Pro Plus 33 switch, which will cost $100 less then the DPP44 switch. This switch has 3 orbital inputs and can output to 3 receivers. It does not need a power inserter. The DPP33 switch will be available next week.

They talk about the DTVPal and the DTVPal DVR for a moment.

Leslie and Mark leave the stage and we see video of a bunch of celebrities talking about the sllngbox.

Out comes Sling CEO Blake Kerkorian and he talks about the Slingbox and talks a little more about the 722s. The 722 will be able to do Clip & Sling and Slingcatcher, plus it will be able to run more applications as well. (I REALLY want one of thse 722s') :D

Head of Marketing Jessica Insalco comes out and shows what Dish has cooking in Marketing. (Not much to talk about here)

Eric Sahl then comes out and announces that More HD is coming to Dish this Summer and another wave is coming this fall. He says they are working on making some of the HD RSN's which have a lot of HD content available 24/7.

SD Movies will be available on day of release to Home Video. A new VOD application will be launching and will offer more content including shows from programmers such as Discovery Channel and MTV Networks.) The number of shows in the TV Entertainment will increase to 10 hours of material instead of the 4 hour they offer now.
Starz VOD is coming to the 625 next month and is already available on the 612, 622 and 722.

He talks about Dish International for a second and mentions that Dish has more internationals then anyone and currently has 153 international channels serving 26 languages.

Next out are Jim DeFranco and Tom Stingley to talk about Retailer stuff. The stuff discussed here are dealer sensitive in nature and I have been asked not to report them here. (But lets just says there are some very VERY good money making opportunities for retailers to take advantage of)

With that the show closes. Jim DeFranco closes the show by yelling out "Now go and sell some damn Dish Network!"
 
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Question about the 722

"The tuner also adds a modulator which can output video signals out to channel 2 or 3 for home distribution."

Are the channels 2 or 3 output in HDTV, Modulated ATSC? Can you view all the content of the 722 or just the offair over this connection?

If so then this is the best news I have heard from dish yet. It would allow people to setup HDTVs and all rooms of their home and have HD content from 1 or 2 receivers!
 
Hmmm...I always assumed Eastern Arc was the first step, and eventually there would be a "Western Arc" based around 148. I didn't realize Western Arc is what we already have :(.

So no all MPEG-4 for us, I guess.
 
How high will the resolution be on the sling output? Are they viewing the RF output as standard def but will be able to sling HD out to a second TV?
 
Hmmm...I always assumed Eastern Arc was the first step, and eventually there would be a "Western Arc" based around 148. I didn't realize Western Arc is what we already have :(.

So no all MPEG-4 for us, I guess.
If they can mirror all the SD channels in MPEG-4 on 129, it could work.
 
Question about the 722

"The tuner also adds a modulator which can output video signals out to channel 2 or 3 for home distribution."

Are the channels 2 or 3 output in HDTV, Modulated ATSC? Can you view all the content of the 722 or just the offair over this connection?

If so then this is the best news I have heard from dish yet. It would allow people to setup HDTVs and all rooms of their home and have HD content from 1 or 2 receivers!

I can answer that right now... due to DRM you won't see an ATSC output.

The 722s sounds really cool. I was dogging the add on tuner deal but the ability to view two separate OTA signals is very cool.
 
Scott, thanks so much for the update. It inspired to immediately become a Pub Member, the payment for which has been completed.

FYI, the CLICK HERE link in Post #1, above, is incorrect. It goes to satellieguys,
not satelliteguys.

Great job, and have fun in Nashville. Check out the Wildhorse Saloon if you get a chance!
 
I guess I'm kind of disappointed here that the 722 customers will probably need a new box in order to have Sling built in or support two-way remotes.

You'd think the hardware platform wouldn't be that much different and we could have a software upgrade to enable some of this stuff.

Who knows, maybe they will offer a software upgrade but I think history suggests I'll be waiting for my 18 month to end so I can upgrade again.
 
I guess I'm kind of disappointed here that the 722 customers will probably need a new box in order to have Sling built in or support two-way remotes.

You'd think the hardware platform wouldn't be that much different and we could have a software upgrade to enable some of this stuff.

Who knows, maybe they will offer a software upgrade but I think history suggests I'll be waiting for my 18 month to end so I can upgrade again.

+1
 
You know I kept wondering when anyone is going to come out with an HDDVR with two independent HD HDMI outputs. This can easily get around the DRM issue, and with today's HDMI cable range, especially if a booster is built in the receiver, the installer can easily run long HDMI's to have one HDDVR do two separate HD sets.

A killer application if you ask me.
 
You know I kept wondering when anyone is going to come out with an HDDVR with two independent HD HDMI outputs. This can easily get around the DRM issue, and with today's HDMI cable range, especially if a booster is built in the receiver, the installer can easily run long HDMI's to have one HDDVR do two separate HD sets.

A killer application if you ask me.

The problem is how big of a pain in the *** the customer can be if such a thing isn't marketed carefully. Heck, even if it is marketed carefully then I'm sure the customer would still find some way to make the installer's life hell.

The ideal solution here would be something that runs over coax, but is an encrypted digital stream that you have a 'sidecar' in the other room that decodes everything and talks via Coax back to the main receiver. I'm surprised they can't do this and haven't. It would fulfill everyones interests and they could upgrade the firmware in both boxes if someone managed to 'break' the method.

Costly? Sure, but I think a 2nd full box would be more expensive.
 
any dates on when DTV PAL , DTV PAL DVR will hit stores? will they even be availible in stores ? all we is june for dtv pal and july/august for dtv pal dvr. specifics would be nice.
 
Western Arc (110 / 119 / 129), this doesn't look promising for Alaska and Hawaii.

I was hoping after the Eastern Arc, they would work on a Western Arc for the folks out west!
 
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