I would never want to see them merge. I want both companies to grow and provide excellent service for their customers. The more competitive the TV market is, the better it is for all of us.
Last thing I want is my service being ran by Charlie. Been there, done that!!
eurosport said:IF it ever happened....(and I sure as hell hope not) - they'd better stick with the far superior Dish branded receivers (VIP, Hopper etc....)
eurosport said:IF it ever happened....(and I sure as hell hope not) - they'd better stick with the far superior Dish branded receivers (VIP, Hopper etc....)
Yea, I only use Hoppers for one thing, and its not watching TV!You and others may want the hopper but I and others will want the HR34. The same could be said for the respective whole home dvr setups.
Yea, I only use Hoppers for one thing, and its not watching TV!
I use them when I have to take a Joey!:haha
Don't worry , I'm sure someone will be all bent out of shape over it!Now THAT'S funny..... no matter which provider you have!
I agree that the competition is a good thing--BUT I love the holding company idea.
Why not switch everything over to a single broadcast standard? Get all the channels uplinked to a set of sats, and it's up to each company to package the programming how they want. Figure out a standard that can be viewed by both companies receivers, and possibly only require a card swap across the board, a firmware upgrade to add the additional slots and dish upgrades as needed (from what I understand DVB and DSS aren't that different--it's mainly the encryption--DVB but using D*'s NDS encryption would be the logical choice since it's the worldwide standard). Then make sure all hardware going forward can see it--probably centered on 99/101/103/110/118/119 with international and other channels at 61.5 and 129 (you probably wouldn't even need 61.5 and 129 at that point, or the Eastern Arc since D*'s core is right in the middle). Both companies could cut a number of their satellites out reducing costs, increase capacity by reducing a TON of duplicate channels, and could go to one single dish with an LNB that can handle all that.
Something similar to how they did it with USSB--or even moreso like how Motorola controlled all the activations for C-Band. Each company can provide their own equipment and channel packages--but the activation is done out of one clearinghouse.
The real pain would be swapping the dishes over--but it could be done in stages by removing channels one-by-one, least popular first, and moving people over as they see the slate. Keep a core set of channels on 101* and 119* in D* and E* native formats until they get the last holdouts and put a core set of channels in the new format at 101* for people who need a single dish for RV's etc.
THEN if it ever is time to merge, everything is in place.
--Nat