E* gonna offer in Demand Type PRograamming

[Srimark]

I have hated Cable T.V. since it showed up. I have had E* for about 4 years and have the everything pack with 3 receivers 501,508 and a 5000. Things are ok.

We did loose the long distance locals (LA and NYC) when we got the boston locals on E* Waiting patiently for the 921 to come out.


Well My question is. When will E* offer the INDEMAND type program my neigbhor has from Ccast. For a long time I have been the envy of the neigbhorhood. NOW they all have this cable and get better features than I get with E*. The HDTV is great. The INDEMAND is slick. DVR being released soon. And they have to BUY NOTHING.

What is going on. VERY FRUSTRATED at close to 100 bucks per month.

Mark

 

[dlsnyder]

When you say "INDEMAND" are you talking about their pay-per-view channels or the newer video on demand (VOD) service? If you mean VOD I don't think it will ever happen due to satellite's limited bandwidth. The closest they could ever come would be to "push" popular programming or PPV movies down to a DVR like your 501 or 508 when you weren't recording anything late at night then hope you would want to order it. With cable it is a much different story. They can dedicate a certain amount of bandwidth to send programming you choose directly to your settop box at the time you want to watch it. That is true VOD and can only be achieved on a local level. Your cable company serves maybe thousands of subscribers, each on a defined and possibly independant part of the network with maybe tens or hundreds of your neighbors. Satellite on the other hand has to serve millions of subscribers across an entire continent. That makes it really cheap and efficient for broadcasting but very expensive and inefficient for anything like VOD.

 

[dlsnyder]

Thinking about it a little further, VOD could be possible for satellite customers if they had a high speed DSL connection. Currently the technology isn't quite there yet but will be soon. The other solution might be to partner with local broadcasters and use something like the Dotcast system that Disney is testing as a PPV distribution method. Not as elegant but with the right hardware it is doable.

 

[mike123abc]

More likely is that Dish could download a bunch of movies to your 510/921/etc in the area of the disk that they reserve. Then when you want one of them they are ready to go.

 

[dlsnyder]

Yeah, that's about as close as they can possibly get with today's technology.

 

[Stargazer]

I seen where they had purchased a lot of new pieces from one of the modem manufacturers. Also I have heard of them reserving space on the hard drives in the DVR receivers to download PPV from the satellite to offer PPV On Demand from the hard drive. It would be nice if they done this with games.

 

[Peter Parker]

MAybe he means the Naked News. That is on INnDemand.