Im not buying all this hype about Directv HD.

[fredfa]

So what about all the "hype" (and that would be putting it very politely), from Dish last fall when it said it was about to add HD RSNs?

Then, when that didn't happen, it claimed there were "glitches" that would be cleared up quickly.

Then, finally, this week at CES, Dish said baldly that there simply wasn't enough content to warrant adding the RSNs.

Annoying as hype may is, it beats flat-out lying.

 

[jpn]

Well - its called hype, and please tell me a large company that DOESN'T do it.

Absolutely on the money. Also, FWIW, D* is notorious for being tight-lipped. They don't promise anything until they're ready to throw the switch, and that way nobody can bitch and accuse them of missing deadlines.

In this case, if they're saying they've had discussions about HD SciFi, then it's a certainty that it's been discussed. And that's a lot different from promising SciFi-HD at any particular date.

I'm also not understanding why it seems that you have taken the approach almost that they DON'T want to provide the programming they now promise? That too makes NO real sense to me. I am sure they know that to play in the future they will have to have the right stuff. The multiple hundreds of millions of dollars for Spaceway 1&2 and DIRECTV10&11 also speaks to it.

Agreed again. Let me see, I think I'll spend close to a billion on design, development, construction and launch of a fleet of satellites, just so I can break some promises. Now THERE's a rational line of thought! Who flew over the cuckoo's nest?

At least my D* subscription fees are spent on technology and programming, rather than legal challenges to the Supreme Court in ultimately losing causes; and my channels don't get summarily dropped whenever a provider raises the cost a penny per month. In fact, I can recall at least a dozen times when channels have been added and my fees have not risen. When I lived in CT, D* gave me YES at no additional charge.... years have passed and E* still does not carry YES.

 

[GaryPen]

I'm sure most people who have been observing how E* and D* do business over time have noticed the very different ways they operate.

D*'s advertising is top-notch.
E*'s is amateurish and lame.
D*'s promotions are simple and consistent.
E*'s promotions are complicated and constantly changing. (Even their CSR's have trouble keeping up.)
D*'s packages and pricing are relatively simple, without too many "nickle-and-dime" fees.
E*'s pricing is complicated and full of nickel-and-dime fees. (Again, even their CSR's have trouble figuring it all out.)
D* seems to plan things out fully, from programming to hardware to promotions, before announcing or implimenting .
E* seems to fly by the seat of their pants, making it up as they go along, promising all sorts of things, and either not delivering, delivering late, or delivering something drastically less than what was promised.
Overall, D* seems like a real company. E* seems like it's run out of a garage.

OTOH, very recently, D* seems to have been acting a lot like E*: poor PQ, clueless CSR's, lousy in-house-created HW released before it was ready. But, that can probably be chalked up to poor management by it's soon-to-be departed owners. But, if they get their act together with the new owners, I would gladly switch to them.

Still, with history as a guide, E* has always engaged in far more hyperbole, and broke far more promises, than D*. And, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

 

[wneilson82]

I feel pretty good about D* to be honest.

I bought D* 2 months ago because I felt that in the upcoming future, it would be the best option.

If what they say comes true, I will be very happy.

What worries me is kind of what the original thread starter said...the hype they are creating is pretty damn big....they better live up to it or else they will be facing a lot of adversity and a LOT of loss of subs, imo.

Cable down here is pretty average but it isnt terrible.

If D* doesn't have the channels towards the end of 2007, I and many others whom I know down here will be cancelling and heading back to Cable.

 

[bonscott87]

I gotta ask, what hype?

This has been their *announced* plan for nearly 3 years now.
Claude, you got on D* that they should have launched one less local HD market and added 4 national HD instead. But you should know, I would think, that the Spaceway sats are *spot beam only*. Thus why only HD locals have been rolling out. This was the plan.

Now with DirecTV 10 and 11 going up this year, all that bandwidth is CONUS and thus ready for national HD channels as they become available.
Again, all according to plan.

I don't see why people get so upset with D* being behind the HD game. It's been that way for years now and the plan has been layed out for years to get D* back in the lead. You knew 3 years ago that D* wouldn't catch up until end of 07 and even D* has said that. If you didn't want to wait then you should have left for something better.

Now D*'s plans are all coming together to finally allow them to be the HD leader if they so choose. And it looks like they want to be and they say that HD is the key #1 thing that is the future of the company.

You can cry and complain all you want, but this has been the plan all along. Once completed we will have a more level playing field between providers and unless Dish and cable have something up their sleaves, D* has the chance to blow them all away if it does it right.

 

[jpn]

I gotta ask, what hype?

This has been their *announced* plan for nearly 3 years now.
Claude, you got on D* that they should have launched one less local HD market and added 4 national HD instead. But you should know, I would think, that the Spaceway sats are *spot beam only*. Thus why only HD locals have been rolling out. This was the plan.

One thing nobody has pointed-out here. The D* plan, launching birds to carry some 1500 local HD channels, is how D* does business: it's compliant with regulatory agencies.

D* is working to hard to comply with distant-net regulations: find a way to show all the locals, in HD, so that distant nets are a non-issue. And in doing this, the TotalChoice Plus subscription has increased a paltry $5 over the past 5 years.

Contrast that to E*:

• first, announce that you can't comply with long-standing distant-net regulations
• cry foul that local broadcasters are unfair for protecting their franchise territory
• create petition web-sites with the goal of circumventing regulation through special favors of Congress
• Spend exorbitant legal fees on longshot legal challenges -- all the way to the Supreme Court
• finally, use loopholes to create new companies that can circumvent regulations

It's very hard to maintain any hype over a 3-year span, but you can't complete such huge jobs overnight. And it's clearly a more viewer-friendly (and ethical) solution than endless litigation.

 

[mikew]

I'm sure most people who have been observing how E* and D* do business over time have noticed the very different ways they operate.

D*'s advertising is top-notch.
E*'s is amateurish and lame.
D*'s promotions are simple and consistent.
E*'s promotions are complicated and constantly changing. (Even their CSR's have trouble keeping up.)
D*'s packages and pricing are relatively simple, without too many "nickle-and-dime" fees.
E*'s pricing is complicated and full of nickel-and-dime fees. (Again, even their CSR's have trouble figuring it all out.)
D* seems to plan things out fully, from programming to hardware to promotions, before announcing or implimenting .
E* seems to fly by the seat of their pants, making it up as they go along, promising all sorts of things, and either not delivering, delivering late, or delivering something drastically less than what was promised.
Overall, D* seems like a real company. E* seems like it's run out of a garage.

OTOH, very recently, D* seems to have been acting a lot like E*: poor PQ, clueless CSR's, lousy in-house-created HW released before it was ready. But, that can probably be chalked up to poor management by it's soon-to-be departed owners. But, if they get their act together with the new owners, I would gladly switch to them.

Still, with history as a guide, E* has always engaged in far more hyperbole, and broke far more promises, than D*. And, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

Very good list. Maybe it should continue.

D* planned space to provide for must-carry
E* felt must-carry may not pass, so they didn't plan the space. When m-c was passed, E* threw those channels on to wing satellites. Many customers were mis-led about the "free" installation of the second dish. Had to wait until the law was revised for E* to do the "right thing".

 

[Brendon]

Better watch out Claude, the will tell you that you are just a bitch and moaner type.

As for what large companies don't hype their products....they all do, but they don't hype them a year in advance. Not even the major car companies do that before they have their cars on the production line. Tell me one company that hypes what they are GOING to have when they aren't even sure if they are going to have the capability. Heaven forbid one of those birds blows up before reaching orbit, THAT'S never happened before has it?

I know this may be shocking, but D* had the imagination to have a 3rd ground spare built (Directv 12) should one of Directv 10 or 11 have problems or "blow up".

 

[monetnj]

Directv on the other hand simply amazes me, even going as far as to run commercials with the movie back to the future promising future HD content that they don't even have today. I just can't believe they can get away promising all these new channels without putting up a few new channels today.

Think about it, instead of launching 1 new HD local Market, they could have launched 4 new HD channels, but they didn't even do that, instead they put out more hype that they are going to have 150 HD channels by the end of the year.

But to be honest, I don't even think there 150 national HD channels they could pick up, and I think everyone here can agree instead of talking about it they should atleast have matched what Dishnetwork has now!

Maybe im just ranting too much, but it looks like to me they made the biggest announcements at CES and are not delivering. Gimmie 150 HD channels today and I'll switch from Dish!

Ok, since you are an E* customer, it seems like you are not fully informed about the reasons D* went with local HD before national HD. No, D* couldn't put up 4 nationals instead of 1 local market because the 2 satellites they use for local-in-local HD, Spaceway 1 & 2, were configured with spotbeams meant to cover discrete areas of the country, not the whole country. The satellites were originally designed for satellite based internet when D* bought them. There has been talk about D* experimenting with combining spotbeams to effectively cover the entire US, but there apparently were technical or other issues. Now D10 and D11, going up this year, have been designed from the ground up to provide CONUS and spotbeam coverage, thus the claims they made at CES about national HD coming soon. The reason we have to wait until mid-year is because the first of the satellites, D10, won't go up until late spring.

Now, as for 150 national HD channels this year, D* has made no such claim. That number comes from the marketing of D10 and D11 combined with Spaceway 1&2 giving D* the CAPACITY for up to 150 national HD channels and 1,500 local HD channels. The CES announcements have fleshed out rough numbers of how many channles we might expect by summer and end of year as well as the name of some of those channels.

D* has made it clear that they have been pressuring networks to launch HD versions this year because they want to outstrip the capacity of all available multi-channel providers. I think they may very well do that, and since E* doesn't currently have plans to launch anything more than a back-up sat this year, E* will probably be stuck in the position D* is today. That is, telling their subscribers they will have to wait for additional HD until they have more capacity next year. Now personally, if I had E* (and I have had it in the past), I would be pretty annoyed this year if E* didn't give me major networks like CNN, Sci-Fi, TBS etc. because all available bandwidth was going to the VOOM channels. You may or may not like the VOOM package, but who among us would want them over major cable networks?

 

[monetnj]

And not close in PQ either!

350+ days until D* delivers on so many HD channels that their promise will blow away the Red Sox 51.5Million Dollars on the Japanese Pitcher.

But again here are the questions. We know from past experience that even when a National channel has launched, it has taken them almost two years to accumulate a decent library of HD programming. So even if they launch tomorrow, do you seriously expect every Sci-Fi program to be in HD? I do not think so. But I could be wrong but based on previous history, I say nope.

Do you seriously believe that TimeWarner will launch CNN-HD and Cartoon Networks HD, etc and will give it to DirecTv before they launch it in their own system -- I think not but I could be wrong.

Everyone is buying the hype but the hype may evaporate by summer end. In the meantime do not worry because the 150 HD National Channels are still vaporware. As it is with a every product that it is based on a promise. Enjoy what you have and hope for the future. I personally would like to see all these network channels in HD but I do not think it will be that easy.

P.S. Yes I am not a D* / E* / C* fan boy... I am a P* fan boy...

A lot of networks have been shooting HD for some time to prepare for an eventual changeover. I know on Sci-Fi, Stargate Atlantis and BSG are HD. You can see the HD versions on UHD. Not sure about the original Sci-Fi movie programming. It has been reported over on AVS forum that CNN has been using HD cameras since last summer. Will every program be in HD? Nope, but that is probably an unfair measuring stick.

 

[ScoBuck]

And in fact, the MPEG4 rollout plan by DirecTV makes all of the sense in the world. They launched and then began pushing out HD lils first, market by market (they now have almost all of the 50 LARGEST markets lit). Doing this allowed them to train installers market by market (which makes sense), allowed them to better manage production and distribution of both the new 5lnb dishes, and the MPEG4 IRDs. Lots of subs set-up and waiting for DIRECTV10. Launching this at one time nationwide would have been a NIGHTMARE IMO.

Also, as we know, (and it is DEFINITELY better now) the MPEG4 signals needed lots of tweaking (still need some for sure), what a total horror it would have been if they suddenly announced last DECEMBER that all HD was going MPEG4 and moving to IMMEDIATELY to the 99 or 103 orbital slot. They NEVER could have handled that deluge of orders for dishes, installation and hardware NATIONWIDE. And as ridiculous as some posters get now, imagine the comments of they had tried that.

But they did hold very true to the plan they spoke about 3 years ago. And yes there have been some delays (but in all REALITY, you got to expect some of those too). The key is, when the next 2 birds are up and lit (and the first one is less than 90 days away from launch) they will have a very superior capacity advantage over EVERYBODY. And further, once the capacity is there, they will HAVE to deliver - and IMO they WILL. Why else spend all this money and all this time - a bird in the sky is not like a Rolls in your driveway, you can't show it off - UNLESS YOU ARE USING IT!

 

[GaryPen]

Ok, since you are an E* customer, it seems like you are not fully informed...

He is an E* retailer, not just a customer.

 

[Newshawk]

I think we have all seen the press releases, commercials and announcements by Directv in the past few days about them being the HD Leader.

When it comes to HD sports, D* IS the leader, and will be for the foreseeable future, if Ergen's attitude about HD RSN content is any indicator.

Personally im taking an I'll believe it when I see it attitude. Take a look at CES for example, what Dish DISH or DIRECTV really have to announce?

DISH Network talked about the DISH Online thing and the external storage for the VIP 622. Im thinking, gee this would be really nice if they realeased this after CES, turns out its another 6 months away, which really means we will not see it till Christmass. We did get FREE 622's for new customers, but doesn't help alot of people here who are already customers.

Directv on the other hand simply amazes me, even going as far as to run commercials with the movie back to the future promising future HD content that they don't even have today. I just can't believe they can get away promising all these new channels without putting up a few new channels today.

Um, Claude, you sorta glossed over a few things announced at CES. On E*'s side, they did announce two new receivers. On D*, side, they announced a unique receiver unlike anything ever seen before. You may scoff at SatGo, but just the idea of their being useful for disaster relief agencies justifies the release of SatGo. Then there's the "stealth" announcement of D*'s VOD solution, which sounds as it will be a really slick application. As for the gaming series, it just adds to the list of original programming that D* is producing... adding value (perhaps not in your mind-or mine, either, but to some) that makes D* a more rounded provider.

Think about it, instead of launching 1 new HD local Market, they could have launched 4 new HD channels, but they didn't even do that, instead they put out more hype that they are going to have 150 HD channels by the end of the year.

As has been explained previously, D* was working within the antenna linnmitations of the Spaceway satellites, in essence playing the hand that had been dalt them, much the same way E* played the hand that was dealt to them (the purchase of Rainbow 1 and it's earth station and the ability to provide the Voom channels.)

But are you saying that D* should have launced 49 national HD channels last year? Using that logic, shouldn't E* have launced 29 more national HD channels last year, too? After all, they're using that HD capacity to provide HD locals to 29 cities.

However, that begs the question of whether HD locals are a wanted feature. I'm sure that D* wouldn't have pursued the HD local rollout as agressively as it did if people weren't clamoring for their locals. That's evidenced by people now wanting the "netlets" (CW and MNTV) and PBS added to the current big 4 networks. I'd say, in this instance, D* made the right move.

Oh and the official word is that D* will have the CAPACITY for 150 national channels and that they will offer up to 100 channels by year's end.

But to be honest, I don't even think there 150 national HD channels they could pick up, and I think everyone here can agree instead of talking about it they should atleast have matched what Dishnetwork has now!

Match what? Niche channels that recycle their programming way too much? As for what HD channels will be out there when D10 & 11 are launched, have you not seen the article on the TV Week web site dated 1/9/07?

USA Network, Sci Fi Channel, TBS, Cartoon Network, CNN and other channels are readying to launch simulcast high-definition networks by the end of the year.

You can find the entire article here.

Maybe im just ranting too much, but it looks like to me they made the biggest announcements at CES and are not delivering. Gimmie 150 HD channels today and I'll switch from Dish!

Methinks you doth protest too much... especially since D* has said from the first that this was a long-term plan and that it would come to final fruition this year.

 

[DS0816]

Will these satellite additions fix DirecTV's transmission problems?

I have a 5 LNB dish. From time to time, I get intermittent interruptions on SD channels. HD channels are s-s-slow. (I recently had equipment change from DirecTV on H20 -- original was in Feburary 2006; I got a replacement in December 2006.)

I'm thinking the biggest bane with DirecTV lately has been in transmission troubles for those who have multiple receivers and a higher-level LNB dish. I didn't have such problems when I had a 1998-originally-installed Single LNB.

By the way, the intermittent interruptions in reception have happened in perfectly good weather.

 

[riffjim4069]

I think they may very well do that, and since E* doesn't currently have plans to launch anything more than a back-up sat this year, E* will probably be stuck in the position D* is today...

Offering a handful of bit-starved HD Nationals...???...I don't think anyone will ever suck as bad, and as hard, at HD then D* has the past two years.

 

[Sean Mota]

More to the hype according to D*... HD lite is fine and customers should be satisfied with it... period.. end of discussion... "We D* no better" than customers...

http://www.satelliteguys.us/showthread.php?p=777355#post777355

 

[charper1]

Will these satellite additions fix DirecTV's transmission problems?

I have a 5 LNB dish. From time to time, I get intermittent interruptions on SD channels. HD channels are s-s-slow. (I recently had equipment change from DirecTV on H20 -- original was in Feburary 2006; I got a replacement in December 2006.)

I'm thinking the biggest bane with DirecTV lately has been in transmission troubles for those who have multiple receivers and a higher-level LNB dish. I didn't have such problems when I had a 1998-originally-installed Single LNB.

By the way, the intermittent interruptions in reception have happened in perfectly good weather.

Odd, I have this scenario and none of those issues.

 

[rad]

Will these satellite additions fix DirecTV's transmission problems?

I have a 5 LNB dish. From time to time, I get intermittent interruptions on SD channels. HD channels are s-s-slow. (I recently had equipment change from DirecTV on H20 -- original was in Feburary 2006; I got a replacement in December 2006.)

I'm thinking the biggest bane with DirecTV lately has been in transmission troubles for those who have multiple receivers and a higher-level LNB dish. I didn't have such problems when I had a 1998-originally-installed Single LNB.

By the way, the intermittent interruptions in reception have happened in perfectly good weather.

I first got a H20 and AT-9 back in 12/05 in Chicago, replacing a phase 3 dish. The only issue I had related to that switch was the installer didn't use any monopoles and the dish drifted out of alignment. A call to D* fixed that. I moved to Austin in 6/06 and had an AT-9 installed then, expect for the rare heavy downpour, no problems there either.

As for the number of receivers, I have two HR20's, one H20 and one R15.

 

[paulman182]

Someone earlier mentioned how E* customers might react if D* gets the announced HD channels, and E* does not due to bandwidth issues.

Although I'd prefer the Voom channels to most of those announced by D*, I realize most people care little for Voom.

Would E* drop Voom (or some Voom channels) for the new networks? I'll bet there are some thought-provoking strategic conversations going on at E* right now.

 

[miff]

when are the new satelites supposed to go up?