Dish Earnings Conference Call and reported HD Plans...

[mike123abc]

People have to remember that Charlie is not directly connected to engineering... In fact I would say he is pretty far removed in his current roll. I suspect that he made the MPEG-4/new receiver remarks because:

1. It is needed to show that Echostar is working on the latest technologies and investors do not need to worry about Echostar getting outdated (remember this call is for investors not customers).

2. He wanted to warn of possible future earnings hits because Dish might have to replace settop boxes (remember this is for investors not customers).

I suspect that we will not hear a reply out of Echostar at this time about any of this because they have no idea what the MPEG-4 plan is going to be. They cannot have a plan because the hardware needed is still in the future. No one really knows what impact MPEG-4 might have eventually on the satellite transmission of video. Perhaps Dish will come up with a way to upgrade the 921, what about the 942? Could the 942 simply be held up until they have more of a plan as to what hardware is needed? Could the 942 be released without MPEG-4 and a card could be put in both the 921/942 that can decode MPEG-4?

These questions are probably just now being addressed by Dish's engineering division and they cannot answer any questions we might have. Remember this could go far beyond HDTV, it could go to every single box Dish sells. Perhaps Dish could have a single box design that does HDTV/MPEG-4, a cheaper 811 replacement that can become the basic Dish box. If you do not have an HDTV simply use the Svideo/composit/RF outputs.

 

[hongcho]

At the moment, there is no silicon version of MPEG-4 HP decoder (nor VC-1 for that matter), so anything that is coming out "soon" would not have the capability. It may, however, have an extension mechanism (e.g., daughter boards) for later.

And I meant "having a plan" as having a plan to do something about the bandwidth limitation in the future in connection with MPEG-4.

Hong.

 

[jsanders]

It's just that there is no stable equipment, if at all, for realtime MPEG-4 HP encoding at the moment. I guess those encoder companies have plans to release something toward the end of 2005. That's why they all say it's in their plan, but at least a year away.

Why do you need a realtime MPEG-4 encoder unless your doing a live broadcast? Why would you need a realtime encoder in a 921? It seems like post-processing MPEG-4 encoding would be fine for everything but live sports. Most everything else is on tape delay now. It doesn't seem very practical yet, but it does seem possible to do it. Let's just hope they do it right when they decide to implement this....

 

[hongcho]

If everything you want to show is already pre-encoded in MPEG-4 HP, then fine. However, a lot of HD materials are already in MEPG-2 or some other less-compressing formats.

You can argue that they could all convert those into MPEG-4 HP beforehand. Sure, they could. But it takes time and storage (and thus money). I am not saying it's technically impossible, just not that practical.

They (Echostar and others) will migrate to MPEG-4 at some point for sure. They HAVE to (well, they could send more birds up in the sky, but that might be more expensive anyway because they are almost out of the Ku band allocation).

What I am trying to say is not to expect MPEG-4 to happen, say, within the next 6 months. They need their transmission system ready and their STB strategy ready before they could forge ahead. Think of this as being a year or more away since no one knows for sure what's going to be available.

Hong.

 

[HokieEngineer]

I believe what Hongcho is saying is that there are no available MP4 encoders available for charlie to use on his end. Everything they send up to the sats is encoded right now in mpeg2. Dish's plans to migrate to mp4 would have to happen sometime after there was equipment available to encode all their chans in mp4. Not to mention having hardware to decode the stream at the stb. Maybe I'm way off here, but thats what I got out of it.

 

[nippjas]

I would think the uplinks could transmit both simultaneously...

Jason

 

[jsanders]

I believe what Hongcho is saying is that there are no available MP4 encoders available for charlie to use on his end. Everything they send up to the sats is encoded right now in mpeg2. Dish's plans to migrate to mp4 would have to happen sometime after there was equipment available to encode all their chans in mp4. Not to mention having hardware to decode the stream at the stb. Maybe I'm way off here, but thats what I got out of it.

He said no "realtime" encoders. You can do it, you just can't do it for live broadcasts. A transcoder would be nice too, but not completely necessary, as you could decode MPEG-2 and encode the resulting frames into MPEG-4.

 

[Unthinkable]

We do have evidence that they didn't live up to their promises. Where is the firewire? When I bought this a year ago, it had firewire, it was supposed to work (OTA guide, record programs, time shift, channel surf, etc.), it didn't. It didn't do much other than freeze up. It didn't work as advertised. If you buy something that doesn't do the job it was intended, then there is reasonable grounds for settlement.

I see this kind of arguement posed pretty frequently in the Dish forums. I thought the MPAA threatened to sue the pants off of Echostar if they went ahead with their plans to have firewire enabled on the 921. This was a Hollywood versus the rest of the broadcasting industry pre-emptive strike, was it not? Can't chalk that up as a broken promise or "outright lie" if their intentions were in the right places, but ultimately deep-sixed by the threat of endless impending lawsuits.

 

[Unthinkable]

People have to remember that Charlie is not directly connected to engineering... In fact I would say he is pretty far removed in his current roll. I suspect that he made the MPEG-4/new receiver remarks because:

1. It is needed to show that Echostar is working on the latest technologies and investors do not need to worry about Echostar getting outdated (remember this call is for investors not customers).

2. He wanted to warn of possible future earnings hits because Dish might have to replace settop boxes (remember this is for investors not customers).

I suspect that we will not hear a reply out of Echostar at this time about any of this because they have no idea what the MPEG-4 plan is going to be. They cannot have a plan because the hardware needed is still in the future. No one really knows what impact MPEG-4 might have eventually on the satellite transmission of video. Perhaps Dish will come up with a way to upgrade the 921, what about the 942? Could the 942 simply be held up until they have more of a plan as to what hardware is needed? Could the 942 be released without MPEG-4 and a card could be put in both the 921/942 that can decode MPEG-4?

These questions are probably just now being addressed by Dish's engineering division and they cannot answer any questions we might have. Remember this could go far beyond HDTV, it could go to every single box Dish sells. Perhaps Dish could have a single box design that does HDTV/MPEG-4, a cheaper 811 replacement that can become the basic Dish box. If you do not have an HDTV simply use the Svideo/composit/RF outputs.

Awesome post mike123abc. This one really caught my eye. Glad you are a regular contributor here as I really enjoy reading your voice of reason posts all the time. We should all be a bit more cautious against prematurely making mountains out of molehills when focusing in on things of this nature. Lets see how this whole thing plays out in the coming months.

 

[jsanders]

I see this kind of arguement posed pretty frequently in the Dish forums. I thought the MPAA threatened to sue the pants off of Echostar if they went ahead with their plans to have firewire enabled on the 921. This was a Hollywood versus the rest of the broadcasting industry pre-emptive strike, was it not? Can't chalk that up as a broken promise or "outright lie" if their intentions were in the right places, but ultimately deep-sixed by the threat of endless impending lawsuits.

Hmmm. Good point, however, there is a lot more to it than what you said.

First, if it was just firewire, you wouldn't have the level of irritation and discontent that exist today. A year later, and I can still only view KBHK only once per reboot. When I recorded "Enterprise" last Friday, it shows up recorded as "Analyze that". Maybe you should analyze that! It isn't one thing, it is many things. It is easier to program a vcr than to setup an OTA recording on the 921. You have to set the channel, the start time, and start time. Up until this last release, you could only do that on the day you were to record it, because if you did it on another day, it would keep changing the day of the week to the current day.

Now, as far as the firewire fiasco goes, and the question of lawsuits, I have a couple of questions for you.... First, if E* was so afraid of the lawsuit, why didn't they try to figure this out *BEFORE* they shipped the box? My 921 actually has firewire ports on it. Later production runs have them removed. They should have done it first.... Second, why didn't the MPAA sue E* sooner? People were able to archive HBO HD movies for a while with the 5000 receiver, before they switched everything to 8PSK. So, why doesn't the MPAA sue comcast? Comcast leases you a receiver that has firewire outputs, and people can archive to tape with it, why don't they sue them? What about the people that make those HTPC cards? They allow you to archive to HD VCR, why doesn't the MPAA sue them? They are going to show "Saving Private Ryan" on Friday, uncut on ABC. You can record your perfect copy of it with one of these. What about the D* HR10-250? They allow you to add extra hard drives, you can swap them out and have what is termed as a video jukebox. You might well find a way to duplicate that swapped out hard drive either to another drive, or to tape. Why doesn't the MPAA sue them? Finally, what about those makers of HD VCRs? They could make them just for playback, but they don't. They don't even have ATSC tuners, they only record the bits. They are designed for the purpose for archiving HD material. No doubt a significant portion of what gets archived is copyrighted material, a perfect digital representation. Why doesn't the MPAA sue them?

Isn't there a copy protection scheme as part of the spec that only allows one copy? Seems like this stuff has already been hashed out, in a way that should protect people like E* from lawsuits.

 

[Peluso]

I don't usually think this way, but this really sounds like grounds for a class-action suit if it Dish follows this course of action (i.e. 921/922 dead-end, customer to pay the majority of the upgrade cost to get any future HD).

Dish has had Class Action suites before and as long as Charlie the 'work hard play hard risk taker' is in charge we'll have to deal with serious attitude and piss poor customer service.

Dish internally and externally is suffering from an age old problem.. too much growth. Look at Ebay customer service, it's another fine example. They don't care because they dont' have to care. For every customer they loose five are willing to take their place.

 

[slacker9876]

I timeshift everything I watch period. If I'm going to watch HD, that too must be timeshifted. I still don't have HD content because I'm too nervous to drop even $550. I think back to when I decided to buy my 721 and how hard it was to swallow the $550 for that. At least at that time, it was a huge jump from recording one show with a VCR to recording two with almost no effort. Dropping an additional $550 just for SOME HD content is hard to justify, especially with the additional $15 per month fee.

Bobby

I also timeshift almost everything. My exception is live sports. I have 8 NFL games a week in HD and before the HR10-250 I could not do my own replays. I have become quite accustomed to doing that over the last 3 seasons. Then again my unit was paid for by someone else so the $899 was easy to justifty. I hate the thought of having an $899 paperweight in 2006 or 2007, but it may happen. Remember ... V* aside, TV providers do what generates the revenues, not what us "1%'ers" want or need ... WE ARE THE TEST MARKET

The best HD Value today is OTA, free is always a good value. If NBC did not run all Law & Order in HD odds are I would not have aquired my HD SAT recorder for football alone.

 

[Unthinkable]

Now, as far as the firewire fiasco goes, and the question of lawsuits, I have a couple of questions for you.... First, if E* was so afraid of the lawsuit, why didn't they try to figure this out *BEFORE* they shipped the box? My 921 actually has firewire ports on it. Later production runs have them removed. They should have done it first....

My understanding is that Dish finalized the design of the 921 long before it ever shipped to the consumers. Like a lot of other Dish Network receivers before it, it was late to market by at least a year if not longer by general consumer expectations following its unveiling at a trade show. Weren't current subscribers saying at the time of its eventual release that the Broadcom chipset inside it was no longer as current as it could or should have been? I think the real crux of this problem is that we've really just begun to see in 2004 a much more proactive RIAA and MPAA with regards to endless threats of lawsuits and scare tactic advertising campaigns devoted towards curbing mass file swappers. Nowadays, you can do a quick search on the web and lookup a current list of people being sued by either regulatory agency in the blink of an eye. The MPAA is now posting actual IP's and usernames in movie poster fashions to try and embarass users publically over what they do online.

Second, why didn't the MPAA sue E* sooner? People were able to archive HBO HD movies for a while with the 5000 receiver, before they switched everything to 8PSK. So, why doesn't the MPAA sue comcast? Comcast leases you a receiver that has firewire outputs, and people can archive to tape with it, why don't they sue them? What about the people that make those HTPC cards? They allow you to archive to HD VCR, why doesn't the MPAA sue them? They are going to show "Saving Private Ryan" on Friday, uncut on ABC. You can record your perfect copy of it with one of these. What about the D* HR10-250?

Good question. I've read recently (think it was in a recent FHM or Maxim magazine article) that one of the top dogs in Hollywood responsible for addressing this exact problem wanted to gauge just how widespread the problem was before deciding how best to act towards curbing it. Wish I could recall his name offhand, but he went on record saying they've been relatively slow in moving forwards with lawsuits over the last few years while they decide how best to combat this problem with realistic solutions that don't have to be revised and revamped over and over again. He was pretty blown away after seeing someone selling a DVD on a street corner of a movie his brother had a hand in producing or directing during its opening week run in theaters right in NY. I'd bank on the threats of lawsuits extending to Comcast and HTPC cards alike just as they were issued to Dish and DirecTV though. One other thing to consider, Dish did announce this past year that they were the industry leader in terms of selling through the most DVR's to date. If those numbers are accurate, it could be that Dish has also sold more 921's over competitor HD Tivos and the like, hence drawing more initial fire from the MPAA right out of the starting gates as a "we'll make an example out of these guys" baseline approach.

Pretty devastating move to have all of Hollywood threatening to shut off your entire supply of movies over something like this to a multi-channel TV provider by all means. No dice on recording Saving Private Ryan in the local Boston market here since the local ABC affiliate (along with several others in other states) caved to potential FCC fine pressures and instead opted to show Far and Away. Different interpretations of what could inevitably come from all the bad language and graphic violence nixed it right away. Getting back to the firewire part of this, perhaps Comcast is carrying on as though these are empty threats from the MPAA. I really don't know for sure, but its reasonable to assume you have certain satellite or cable providers taking a much more conservative approach towards threats of lawsuits over active firewire ports in a similar fashion to what the major network stations are now doing judgement call-wise in the wake of the now infamous Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake Superbowl halftime "wardrobe malfunction" incident.

 

[jsanders]

In all honesty, I don't think you can sue one company and not the other. If you do, the company being sued can just ask, "Why didn't you sue the other company if what we are doing is so bad?" Comcast has a subscriber base of 21.5 million viewers, Dish Network has a base of 10 million customers, and DirecTV has a base of 13 million. Seems like you would want to go after the bigger player that shiped the offending box. I haven't heard anything of Comcast getting sued for their DVR, the DCT6208/DCT6212, or Motorola (who makes the box).

This has been thought out, there is supposed to be a broadcast flag that when set, restricts archiving digital media to only be played back with the device it was recorded on. This now puts the liability on the broadcaster for remembering to set the flag.

I think that people who bought the 921 have a good reason to be upset, whether it be the cancellation of firewire, or the lack of OTA guide info, the OTA bugs, the problems with setting timers, the problems with timers not firing, 0 second recordings, etc., etc.. It was by no means release quality software. The definition of alpha quality software is to be "feature complete". Beta quality is usually feature complete without "major" bugs. The 921 wasn't, and still isn't even feature complete.

 

[Unthinkable]

In all honesty, I don't think you can sue one company and not the other. If you do, the company being sued can just ask, "Why didn't you sue the other company if what we are doing is so bad?" Comcast has a subscriber base of 21.5 million viewers, Dish Network has a base of 10 million customers, and DirecTV has a base of 13 million. Seems like you would want to go after the bigger player that shiped the offending box. I haven't heard anything of Comcast getting sued for their DVR, the DCT6208/DCT6212, or Motorola (who makes the box).

I don't think the Comcast in my area has even had an HD recordable receiver available to subscribers for very long (if at all yet) fwiw. Dish has had the 921 out in the field for almost a year now. The MPAA cares more about people having perfect HD copies freely available to share then they do about customers with Tivo/DVR's that are SD only from what I've read on the subject. Comcast has way more subscribers, but I believe they are still playing catchup to Dish and DirecTV in terms of having the same HD recordable receiver offerings widely available in the US.

 

[bytre]

I forget the exact number (800-850MHz?), but I know the 921 CPU is less than 1GHz. It's an Intel clone - IBM/Cyrix/Via.

I find it amazing that the 921 has a CPU that was obsolete when they designed the box. On second thought, no I don't - just typical E* crapola.

It probably isn't that obsolete. Via makes low power processors which have a much lower heat dissipation and are popular in STBs. They let the box run cooler, use less power, and quieter (don't need a high RPM CPU fan). The processor they provided was sufficient for what the box was designed to do at the time.

 

[SimpleSimon]

It probably isn't that obsolete. Via makes low power processors which have a much lower heat dissipation and are popular in STBs. They let the box run cooler, use less power, and quieter (don't need a high RPM CPU fan). The processor they provided was sufficient for what the box was designed to do at the time.

No it isn't/wasn't. Not by a long shot. The very first time they hit a button on the remote while watching HD told them it wasn't enough CPU. Anyone with a 921 can see the difference.

As for power/heat/fan issues, if it ever was one, there's a LOT of solutions for that - but I say that E* simply cheaped out as usual.

Then there's the RAM - or more accurately, the lack thereof.

 

[jsanders]

I don't think the Comcast in my area has even had an HD recordable receiver available to subscribers for very long (if at all yet) fwiw. Dish has had the 921 out in the field for almost a year now. The MPAA cares more about people having perfect HD copies freely available to share then they do about customers with Tivo/DVR's that are SD only from what I've read on the subject. Comcast has way more subscribers, but I believe they are still playing catchup to Dish and DirecTV in terms of having the same HD recordable receiver offerings widely available in the US.

Comcast started rolling out their DVR around December 2003. The rollout was done by geographic area, and 90% of their customers should have it available by the end of 2004. If it isn't available to you, then it should be very soon. The comcast box only has an 80g hard drive, which almost encourages archiving "perfect HD copies", as you put it, onto tape. If you think they are playing catchup to Dish and DirecTV, then by your own logic, that should be all the more reason for the MPAA to sue them (since they let you archive "perfect HD copies" to tape), don't you think?

 

[jsanders]

I don't think the Comcast in my area has even had an HD recordable receiver available to subscribers for very long (if at all yet) fwiw. Dish has had the 921 out in the field for almost a year now. The MPAA cares more about people having perfect HD copies freely available to share then they do about customers with Tivo/DVR's that are SD only from what I've read on the subject. Comcast has way more subscribers, but I believe they are still playing catchup to Dish and DirecTV in terms of having the same HD recordable receiver offerings widely available in the US.

Ah! Here we go.... The MPAA filed a bunch of lawsuits today. John Malcom, senior vice president and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the MPAA, said, "It doesn't matter if it's 10 lawsuits or 500 lawsuits. The idea here is that there is no safe harbor."

The MPAA wants to leave no stone unturned, no safe harbor. What are these lawsuits about??

A trade group representing seven major movie studios filed a first wave of lawsuits against individuals they say are offering pirated copies of films using Internet-based peer-to-peer file-sharing programs.

They are not worried about an individual archiving movies. They will go after anyone that tries to put these perfect copies of movies available for download on the internet.

They are suing individual offenders, they are not suing companies that make equipment that enables the individual to do this. They aren't suing comcast.

Think about it, Comcast offers a DVR that allows archiving perfect digital copies of copyrighted HD content. Comcast *also* offers high speed internet access to make that perfect digital copy of copyrighted HD content available for download. I personally have a Comcast cable modem, providing me with three mega-bits per second, quite fast enough to download a movie. If Comcast doesn't look like the perfect candidate for a lawsuit by your definition, I don't know what is. They aren't being sued. I don't see any weight to your argument about Dish not providing firewire based on legal reasons.

Here is a link about this website on Comcast's website:
http://www.comcast.net/News/ENTERTA...ews/0fb34ddc-af5b-42aa-a298-a31002ef4e15.html

 

[Paradox-SJ]

Comcast started rolling out their DVR around December 2003. The rollout was done by geographic area, and 90% of their customers should have it available by the end of 2004. If it isn't available to you, then it should be very soon. The comcast box only has an 80g hard drive, which almost encourages archiving "perfect HD copies", as you put it, onto tape. If you think they are playing catchup to Dish and DirecTV, then by your own logic, that should be all the more reason for the MPAA to sue them (since they let you archive "perfect HD copies" to tape), don't you think?

The comcast DVR box here (San Jose) are the 6412... Two tunner w/120GB HDD. BUT comcast is lacking FOX/UPN/WB digital locals...which is a considerable amount of programing.