Directv announced today that MPEG4 will start at the beginning of 2nd half of the 2005 year. The first markets will benefit first then slowly everyone else who will benefit from MPEG4 HD. Directv also announced that current HD custmers who have HD and will have their HD boxes upgraded at Directv's expense in which they will cover the cost for in 2006! Also Local HD is not only on the agenda, National HD channels will be launched as well!!! 
This info came from the Live Conference call today at 1pm!
Things we expect to allow D* to leapfrog the competition:
Our announced plan to offer later this year a more advanced DVR, and dramatically expand our HD program. We will also introduce a product that we be a transforming product for both our company and the industry. The Home Media Center, or Home Gateway as we may refer to it, is being developed in-house by DirecTV. It will provide whole-house connectivity with all multimedia systems with mobility for devices outside the home. And since we control the design and architecture, I’m confident that over time, the Home Gateway will drive our customer retention costs lower. I say this for a few reasons.
First, since the Home Gateway will provide, HDTV, DVR and other home media services throughout the house, our upgrade or retention costs should be lower. We also expect to save on installation costs when we are able to connect the system wirelessly. We will introduce a revised marketing offer more akin to a lease plan. And finally we are designing the system to be very flexible and easily upgradeable.
From the Q&A period:
We’ll have the upgrade to MPEG 4 at the early part of the second half of the year and we will clearly convert our HD customers which at today’s numbers are about half a million. The people that sign up for the Spaceway services will be timed so that they will be receiving Spaceway capable, or MPEG4 set top boxes. So you would not have a conversion required for those new customers that are signing up for the Spaceway services. What we will have is a set of customers that take HD that will have to be converted to be able to receive the Ka signal, so it will have to be the customers who don’t work on Spaceway that will have to be converted and that will be a potential marketing cost that we’ll have to bear in ’05 or rather early ’06.
..: …and it will be staggered, the first wave will be 12 markets, and then more thereafter. So I think around the same time, if all goes well and our Home Gateway is introduced, the conversion may be part of that, not just going to your house and replacing some equipment. Part of a whole new issue to the home.
Do you expect that you will be going to MPEG 4 for all of your CONUS or national HD programming as well for efficiency reasons….?
Yeah, it will clearly be a transition – there will still be customers well into ’06 that will still be getting HD programming over the Legacy based – we’re only talking about the half million existing customers, all new customers that buy into the Spaceway sats will be getting HD LIL’s and National HD channels over MPEG4. It’s the Legacy customers that will be converted over ’05 & ’06…or converted over time to MPEG4.
Special thank to CPanther95 @ AVS Forum for this timely edit!
This info came from the Live Conference call today at 1pm!
Things we expect to allow D* to leapfrog the competition:
Our announced plan to offer later this year a more advanced DVR, and dramatically expand our HD program. We will also introduce a product that we be a transforming product for both our company and the industry. The Home Media Center, or Home Gateway as we may refer to it, is being developed in-house by DirecTV. It will provide whole-house connectivity with all multimedia systems with mobility for devices outside the home. And since we control the design and architecture, I’m confident that over time, the Home Gateway will drive our customer retention costs lower. I say this for a few reasons.
First, since the Home Gateway will provide, HDTV, DVR and other home media services throughout the house, our upgrade or retention costs should be lower. We also expect to save on installation costs when we are able to connect the system wirelessly. We will introduce a revised marketing offer more akin to a lease plan. And finally we are designing the system to be very flexible and easily upgradeable.
From the Q&A period:
We’ll have the upgrade to MPEG 4 at the early part of the second half of the year and we will clearly convert our HD customers which at today’s numbers are about half a million. The people that sign up for the Spaceway services will be timed so that they will be receiving Spaceway capable, or MPEG4 set top boxes. So you would not have a conversion required for those new customers that are signing up for the Spaceway services. What we will have is a set of customers that take HD that will have to be converted to be able to receive the Ka signal, so it will have to be the customers who don’t work on Spaceway that will have to be converted and that will be a potential marketing cost that we’ll have to bear in ’05 or rather early ’06.
..: …and it will be staggered, the first wave will be 12 markets, and then more thereafter. So I think around the same time, if all goes well and our Home Gateway is introduced, the conversion may be part of that, not just going to your house and replacing some equipment. Part of a whole new issue to the home.
Do you expect that you will be going to MPEG 4 for all of your CONUS or national HD programming as well for efficiency reasons….?
Yeah, it will clearly be a transition – there will still be customers well into ’06 that will still be getting HD programming over the Legacy based – we’re only talking about the half million existing customers, all new customers that buy into the Spaceway sats will be getting HD LIL’s and National HD channels over MPEG4. It’s the Legacy customers that will be converted over ’05 & ’06…or converted over time to MPEG4.
Special thank to CPanther95 @ AVS Forum for this timely edit!
