BB@Home is now Dish Movie Pack

[Hall]

I never did understand why they didn't have a streaming service, and why they didn't call their Pay Per View "Blockbuster PPV" or "Dish Cinema by Blockbuster" or something like that.

I think there are different companies that provide PPV services, so they can't simply lump them into one 'name'. Dish needs to do a major house-cleaning with these services, between VOD, PPV, On Demand, Blockbuster, etc. There's no practical method to simply browse all of the choices. I don't even think that the search function looks at VOD (channel 1 and 501) or PPV (channels 502-5xx).

 

[Tampa8]

Great observation. It is confusing and seems like it could be streamlined.

 

[bobvick]

I thought that Dish's PPV was done in house and unlinked from there, like DirecTV. I didn't think that Dish Cinema was produced for Dish by a third party. I know DirecTV is not. If they were doing their own looks like they could name the channels or suite of channels what ever they wanted.

 

[Hall]

Great observation. It is confusing and seems like it could be streamlined.

I think of the movie Heartbreak Ridge and the talk between GSgt Highway and one of his superiors and they described a situation as a clusterf*ck. I've described Dish's rental / on-demand / PPV, etc section similarly. I believe Scott mentioned this to someone higher-up at Dish at a conference and they didn't outright agree, but did say something like "yeah, we're working on it" or similar !

 

[Hall]

I thought that Dish's PPV was done in house....

They could be. I know there are "PPV" providers out there and many cablecos and I would have thought, Dish and/or DirecTV, simply contract that work out to them. This way, one PPV company negotiates with the movie studios, potentially gets better rates, etc, etc vs Dish working with all of the movie houses, Directv working with them, Comcast doing that, and so on.

 

[bobvick]

I do know when DirecTV first started, they did their own. I assumed Dish did the same. All I know that is left is "In Demand" formerly Viewers Choice. There used to be TVN, Request, Action and a few others that catered to TVRO and Cable.

 

[Yespage]

And it really wasn't "all that money." Dish picked it up for CHEAP firesale price. But typical Dish, they just can't seem to know how to run any business except Pay TV, and Ergen would not pay "all that money" (meaning a big salary) to someone to run Blockbuster who knew how to run it or turn it into a valuable asset for Dish.

Was there ever an attempt to run BB in the first place? Dish absorbed the disc assets, sold off whatever was left.

That's why some of these CEO's at other companies get paid $34 million for their services. They can often bring a huge return.

And the bad CEO's get paid about the same.

 

[pattykay]

They could be. I know there are "PPV" providers out there and many cablecos and I would have thought, Dish and/or DirecTV, simply contract that work out to them. This way, one PPV company negotiates with the movie studios, potentially gets better rates, etc, etc vs Dish working with all of the movie houses, Directv working with them, Comcast doing that, and so on.

There are some PPV movies that are "exclusive" to Directv. (They usually come to Dish, after a several week delay.) Also, I seem to remember that before Dish reached their new deal with Disney, some of the Marvel superhero movies were not available on Dish PPV. So, it would seem that each TV provider must negotiate for PPV separately.