Why Doesn't Dish Have Real On Demand?

[TheFid2]

This is the only thing I miss switching from Time Warner. They had like 20 channels of free On Demand where I could catch up on whole seasons of shows. Hell, they even had AMC HD on demand and they didn't even carry AMC HD.

But unless I'm missing something, Dish's OnDemand offerings are just PPV.

Mostly, I just want it for HBO and Showtime On Demand. Why doesn't Dish provide this? Is it technology? Licensing? Are there any plans to provide at least some of the premium OnDemands some time?

 

[Andrewwski]

There is some on-demand on Dish other than PPV, but not as extensive as cable. Most of it comes in the format of DishOnline - you download through the internet.

The problem exists with the technology itself. For cable on-demand, your cable box sends a signal back to the cable company that you want a program, and they deliver that to you in an IP-based format. When you hit pause, rewind, etc, it sends that signal back to the cable company and that function is performed.

For satellite, you're not in a two-way communication with a local substation. So you have to essentially download the program to your HDD and go from there.

 

[DishSubLA]

This is the only thing I miss switching from Time Warner. They had like 20 channels of free On Demand where I could catch up on whole seasons of shows. Hell, they even had AMC HD on demand and they didn't even carry AMC HD.

But unless I'm missing something, Dish's OnDemand offerings are just PPV.

Mostly, I just want it for HBO and Showtime On Demand. Why doesn't Dish provide this? Is it technology? Licensing? Are there any plans to provide at least some of the premium OnDemands some time?

Dish has many of the same VOD Channel specific content. The problem is that Dish only lists the VOD in alphabetical order by title. In other words, all the MTV, AMC, HGTV, etc. content is all mixed-up with all the other TV VOD's on the long alphabetical list (you can sort it by other fields). What Dish doesn't do but SHOULD is do organize the TV VOD by channel portal, like cable does. So, one would chose from the menu of CHANNEL services, such as the MTV portal or the HGTV portal, then all of the shows that air on that channels and are available for VOD would be listed. DishONline's organization of titles is HORRIBLE.

BTW, someone on this board was trying to find HERE! content, and Dish offers several titles of it, but because there is no HERE! portal, they had to wade through pages and pages of TV VOD listed content from other services. Remember, he didn't know all the titles of all the shows, so he missed out on a lot of HERE! content that he otherwise would have enjoyed.

 

[am7crew]

This is the only thing I miss switching from Time Warner. They had like 20 channels of free On Demand where I could catch up on whole seasons of shows. Hell, they even had AMC HD on demand and they didn't even carry AMC HD.

But unless I'm missing something, Dish's OnDemand offerings are just PPV.

Mostly, I just want it for HBO and Showtime On Demand. Why doesn't Dish provide this? Is it technology? Licensing? Are there any plans to provide at least some of the premium OnDemands some time?

I agree with you ondemand is the best thing cable has going and I still subscribe to the basic $30.00 with box from Charter just for the ondemand. The problem is Satellite doesnt have the bandwidth to stream content like cable so they offer theres via broadband download meaning you have to hook up your Dish or Directv box to your high speed internet via ethernet cable. Directv has done this correctly and allows you to view via channel similar to cable however its not truly ondemand since it has been downloaded first.

 

[PHXHoward]

DirecTV has great VOD too. You can browse by channel such as Showtime.

 

[kb7oeb]

I don't think dish has anything from HBO or Showtime on demand

 

[satjay]

One comparison that is kind of a bummer when comparing Direct VOD and Dish Vod, I was playing around with the Dish Vod last night and it does not play untill its completely downloaded (unless I am not doing something wrong), when I had direct you could start watching it once it started downloading and worked out ok. Also The dish download for me seems to take much longer then direct. Not a huge deal though as I did not use VOD a whole lot with Direct

 

[jclewter79]

E* has Starz on demand if you subscribe to Starz

 

[TheFid2]

I don't think dish has anything from HBO or Showtime on demand

Unfortunately, these are the only two I'm really interested in

 

[jdmacor]

The other thing I remember from cable was that every ondemand show was free! Plus, they had a ton of free movies! Last time I checked the Dish ondemand, any show or movie worth watching costed extra!

 

[nsafreak]

The other thing I remember from cable was that every ondemand show was free! Plus, they had a ton of free movies! Last time I checked the Dish ondemand, any show or movie worth watching costed extra!

I'm going to check a bit later today but I think if you subscribe to Starz their On Demand content with Dish is at no charge. But while there is some free On Demand content with Dish there isn't nearly as much as I had with Comcast that much I will admit. That's about the only feature I miss from having Comcast is that they truly did have an exceptional amount of On Demand content.

If Dish would do a better job of organizing their On Demand content and make more free content available more people might use it. Which would make everybody happy.

Edit: Ok I checked a bit early and I'm not sure if there is any free Starz On Demand content since I couldn't find anything in the movies listed to indicate who they were provided by. At a total of 16 free movies though that's pretty darn sad. Not even remotely close to what cable has available On Demand wise. Regular TV programming they had a pretty fair amount but it is hell to navigate. Cmon Dish, you can do better than this! (No this isn't going to send me back to cable at all, I'm quite happy with my regular programming that I can DVR its just that I know Dish is capable of a far better interface than this for On Demand content and should be able to provide more at no charge)

 

[ccuser]

I am in agreement as well. As far as concerned with interface, Sling Media (owned by echo) launched website very similar ( in contents and layout) to hulu. And that website will be available on newer DVR 922 to be browsed. That website has much better contents than current selection and hopfully it will level "on demand" field.