First Look: Dish Video On Demand

[AJF]

I agree with both posts in response to my "Charlie is a genius" comment. I still rent DVD's to watch in widescreen in my home theater and I've purchased a few HD PPV's. But I guarantee it'll go over big with the Joe-six-pack crowd, who make up a larger percentage of Dish customers than we do.

I am perplexed by the price structure though, and think that that won't go over very well.

 

[happymister]

I have had Comcast before... and i do VOD almost everyday for my son's Barney shows.
can't live without those VOD..and thats the only reason, i still have broadcast only service still with Comcast. There are lots of content on VOD that is freely available.
plus rather than PPV, VOD movies with Comcast is also great.. esp since u have 24 hours to watch it.

The key Q i have is..will only movies pre-downloaded on the harddisk be available for me to watch.. or will any others also be beamed down via satellite to my PVR to watch ? if that is the case.. then atleast its comparable to cable.. except the requirement of PVR.

 

[GaryPen]

No doubt that Comcast VOD has been useful to you. However, if you had DVR capability, it would be redundant and unnecessary.

 

[AJF]

BTW, this basic model of downloading a bunch of movies to a server in our homes and we pay if we watch, has some of the Hollywood Studios drooling. That would give them direct access to us ($$$) and cut out the rental stores and possibly other forms of delivery (sat & cable). Disney is testing such a system right now.

 

[bcshields]

My only concern is fragmentation... I heavily used my new 508, and in 10 months started to notice a few hiccups.

 

[GaryPen]

You would think they could build a defrag utility into the firmware. It could either be manually triggered, or automatically during off-hours, while the unit is "sleeping".

 

[DarrellP]

Sometimes fragmentation is a good thing with a file server, it just depends on how it handles it's files. When doing a simultaneous read/write, a drive is better off being fragged since it won't have to wait an entire rotation of the platter to get back to where it left of reading or writing.

The biggest cure for a Dish PVR is a weekly reset, I found this to be the best way to keep my 501 happy. At the first sign of hiccups, I reset it and it works great for about another week.

 

[Stargazer]

If they can fit like 8 VOD/PPV movies in their own reserved space then I wonder how much is left in their own reserved space for "The Best of Dish" since that would probably be used a lot more than the VOD's.

If they put 8 movies on there then that would be about 12+ hours in itself. I think they have about 25% of the total hard drive space for the reserved area which means a 721 has a total of 120 hours of storage space, 90 hours in which we can use for our timers (seeing how it has the 120 GB hard drive, 1 GB per hour if I am not mistaken).

 

[dlsnyder]

BTW, this basic model of downloading a bunch of movies to a server in our homes and we pay if we watch, has some of the Hollywood Studios drooling. That would give them direct access to us ($$$) and cut out the rental stores and possibly other forms of delivery (sat & cable). Disney is testing such a system right now.

With the system that Disney is testing they own the content and the distribution channel, so anything they make off of it is almost pure profit. With Dish's version of VOD Dish is still the gatekeeper, deciding what movies they will push to you and which ones they won't. It wouldn't surprise me if Dish charged a promotional fee to the film distributors for pushing their product to our DVRs.

 

[Stargazer]

It would seem like Dish would want all their customers to have a DVR. Perhaps they want to try to sell all their customers (even at a discounted cost) to get what they can out of them and lease what they can as well until they know they will have to convert the rest over to a DVR (especially when the prices drop a good bit more).

 

[Ken F]

This functionality is still not even remotely comparable to the VOD on cable.

True VOD lets you watch any episode of the Sopranos, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, etc any time you want, at no extra charge (to HBO subscribers). True VOD lets you watch any of the recent NBA or NHL playoff games, whenever you want. True VOD lets you view any episode of your favorite network show -- anytime you want. True VOD gives you access to all games of your area sports team shown in the past week or two. The network, sports, and premium channel VOD are all free to Comcast customers that subscribe to those channels.

As always, VOD offerings vary by cable system. Some systems have more capacity for VOD than others. Some networks make more of their content available on VOD than others.

In my particular market, Comcast does not yet offer any HDTV in VOD. However, they do offer new movie releases in 16:9 widescreen (not just letterbox) with Dolby Digital 5.1. They offer movies within a week of the DVD release (Miracle and Paycheck began showing last week). These movies do cost $2.99 to $4.99. I still prefer Netflix and the occasional DVD from Blockbuster, but these movies are much higher quality than the PPV offered by Dish Network.

If satellite didn't have DVR, they'd be in big trouble.

 

[Stargazer]

This is why the demand for larger hard drives will continue as they do increase in size. There will be more of a demand for additional tuners for other functions such as this as well but I do not think Dish and Direct wants to replace all the receivers everytime there is an advancement such as this. This is why I have stressed a while back about making the receivers more upgradable instead of having to be replaced each time. I see more and more discussion about people wanting to upgrade their hard drives, add dvd burners to their receivers, more software functionality (in which in some cases lacks memory and hardware to do so).

 

[RVD420]

This is why the demand for larger hard drives will continue as they do increase in size. There will be more of a demand for additional tuners for other functions such as this as well but I do not think Dish and Direct wants to replace all the receivers everytime there is an advancement such as this. This is why I have stressed a while back about making the receivers more upgradable instead of having to be replaced each time. I see more and more discussion about people wanting to upgrade their hard drives, add dvd burners to their receivers, more software functionality (in which in some cases lacks memory and hardware to do so).

I can see Dish getting DVR's into just about every customers home within 2 years.
Dish is already pushing the 522 to the lease plan. When the 522 is available to reatilers Dish will be pushing them to the masses as well.

Dish should make the DVR's upgradable (for HDD). Dish could make money in upgrading DVR HDDs.

Lets say I buy a 522. Then 9 months later I want more HDD space. Dish should offer an upgrade where for X dollars they will send a tech out, and swap the HDD.

Dish could make money on the upgrade. And use the swapped drive in a reman unit.

 

[RBBrittain]

I can see Dish getting DVR's into just about every customers home within 2 years.
Dish is already pushing the 522 to the lease plan. When the 522 is available to reatilers Dish will be pushing them to the masses as well.

Dish should make the DVR's upgradable (for HDD). Dish could make money in upgrading DVR HDDs.

Lets say I buy a 522. Then 9 months later I want more HDD space. Dish should offer an upgrade where for X dollars they will send a tech out, and swap the HDD.

Dish could make money on the upgrade. And use the swapped drive in a reman unit.

Or they could just ship a USB HDD add-on (add markup for Dish logo and/or DRM technology to lock out other USB drives) and avoid the service call completely.

 

[Stargazer]

A HDD add-on would be the best thing.

 

[Cyclone]

I don't know about the rest of you, But I have my 510 DVR in my bedroom. I really like that it is dead quiet at night. We turn it off, and its stays nice and quiet. It does its reboot/guide download for about 10 minutes, and then its quiet again.

I DO NOT WANT my 510 recording 2 hour movies back to back every single night to offer to sell me movies, that I will not purchase (on the bedroom TV). My 6000 is bad enough downstairs, but I won't have a DVR running whenever it feels like it.