is it just me or was ces bad news for everyone?

[korsjs]

topic is the question.

to me, ces did not benefit consumers, just providers and other big companies. the avearge people are the ones that lost out.

am i wrong or right.

 

[BrettTRay]

Your right

 

[slacker9876]

Pretty Lame, I am with ya.

 

[Carl B]

Yes, and the big Google revelation, no new technology or products, just a different business model for delivering what Apple already successfully has pioneered. What a waste of time!

 

[BFG]

Even though we are battling over technical details that the average doesn't know or care about; I think Dish's presentations with making Dish HD the forefront of their business kinda like Voom was is a very positive step and a big move forward in making HDTV the norm in programming.

 

[snidely]

I've been renting a Comcast DVR for 9 months waiting to see what DISH and D* are going to offer in the way of HD.
You are right - in this case no news was bad news. The D* reps said, flat out, no new HD - just a bunch of locals will be added wasting yet more bandwidth. The excuse is, people want their locals delivered by what ever provider they use - be it cable or sat.

The HD DVR (MPEG4) to get any of the new channels that may be added won't be out for several months. They are selling a plain MPEG4 box in the meantime.

DISH isn't adding anything substantial in the way of HD except for ESPN2 and a few of the old VOOM channels. They don't offer any of the premium HD channels except for HBO and SHO. Both D* and DISH have only one HD PPV channel.

Bottom line - since neither DISH or D*aren't really progressing w. HD - might just uupgrade our BEV (Canadian DBS) box to the DVR. Unlike the two U.S. companies, BEV carries HD PBS, WB, UPN. Even our local Comcast cable doesn't carry all the local HD - altho they do carry PBS HD. Comcast has no real HD PPV channel. BEV has 4 carrying mostly new movies.

...mike

 

[glennh73]

Even though we are battling over technical details that the average doesn't know or care about; I think Dish's presentations with making Dish HD the forefront of their business kinda like Voom was is a very positive step and a big move forward in making HDTV the norm in programming.

Well if you like HDLITE then yes, but the rest of us who want HDTRUE then no, Dish took a step backwards, and really screwed us all. Just sorry so many are to blind to see it yet.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I must chime in and agree 100%, I walked the entire floor and did not see anything that made me saw WOW I WANT THAT.

Also most of it shown the companies said that the products would hopefully be available by the end of they year. So judging by this next years CES might be a borefest as well.

On the satellite side of things I know everyone is upset at the dish network stuff, but honestly they did MUCH better then DirecTV and their land of white booth.

When I asked DirecTV when they were going to announce new national HD I was told "hopefully" next year.

As I said I know you are upset, I bitched to them about what your upset about, unfortunately these were all engineers (besides Charlie) and most of them AGREED with me.

When talking about this with Charlie it was like I was speaking greek to him, in fact I believe at CES was the first time he actualy saw the 622 as he had a tech give him the tour and tell him all the features.

My feeling on things is at Dish there are too many hands in the cookie jar and it seems all the departments do not communicae well.

 

[charper1]

Scott,

Anything at CES from ReplayTV / Digital Networks / D&M Holdings

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I did not see them, but I also was not looking for them, so I could have missed them.

I took yesterday as a personal day so I could just walk the floor and see everything besides just the satellite stuff.

 

[glennh73]

Scott did u at all check out the new TVS like the Toshiba prototype SEDs ?

Or there HD DVD running on there TV's?

This bottom end of the year looks great for us on the TV side with Toshiba and the fuss with LED tvs coming our way.
Just awlful that there is so few HDTrue programming.

 

[charper1]

I am somewhat interested as to why they decided to abandon their set-top DVR. Their SD box is the best and mot user friendly. It has a vey large following among people in the know. They are VERY competitive with absolutely ZERO advertising.

Once I saw no HD box from them I knew something was going on, but it is no real concern right now because we still can't backup our HD DVR recordings to any DVD format in HD. That is coming quickly.

If they move to their supposed software only deal they best lower their monthly costs.

They best rethink the removal of set-tops and I was hoping you could give them some of these thoughts as you did DirecTV and others.

Thanks for all your hard work!

 

[CPanther95]

At least we D*'ers have the (probably false) hope that MPEG4 will usher in real HD. I'll cling to that hope over 10 new HD channels with the message that the new MPEG4 system will be HD-Lite.

In this case, no news is better than bad news. IMO.

 

[charper1]

I agree; I truely think that they announced what they would be doing for the next 2 years 6 - 9 months ago, so they have no more news; chose not to wait for CES to make the release.

 

[rad]

As a D* customer I was hoping without hope that they would throw us a bone or two for some national HD channels and I got what I expected zilch. I was hoping for the HMC to be announced and instead we got a rack mount receiver. And as someone that's been married 24 years the dating channel does nothing for me. You also won't be seeing me pay to get a day or two head start on watching a program or a week after it aired. So the only bright spot that may have come out of this is the a**hole that came up with this business plan ends up getting canned when the project revenue doesn't come close to what he quoted and next year we might be rewarded. So until that time Comcast will get the majority of my $'s and not D*.

 

[CPanther95]

I chalk up all of D*'s announcements to "no news". Many different ways to say absolutely nothing of interest.

As far as the HMC - that was definitely bad news. We're further away now than at the last CES.

 

[charper1]

I was hoping without hope that they would throw us a bone or two for some national HD channels and I got what I expected zilch.

Any new HD nationals more than likely would not be announced until a week or two before they come online and via a regular old run of the mill press release not at CES IMHO.

 

[rad]

Any new HD nationals more than likely would not be announced until a week or two before they come online and via a regular old run of the mill press release not at CES IMHO.

So what's your point? They could have announced on Thursday that TNT-HD, Cinemax-HD or Starz-HD was going to be up in a week or two but they didn't. The hope was that after NFL-ST finished this year we'd get something but we didn't. So as their press release said last year, and all the other things that have been said, point D* users to having to wait until sometime in 2007 for any new national HD channels.

 

[charper1]

The point is:

1. they rarely ever announce the channels to begin with. so no surprises they didn't do it now.

2. we all have known for some time not to expect anything until some time after SW2 is under DirecTV control and tested by them. prob Q2 2006 after some additional HD LIL is online.

3. the constant day in and day out of asking about the same thing (national HD additions) is pointless.

4. the campaign to make some false case that DirecTV has lied or broken promises, when nothing has ever been promised (see #1)

 

[rad]

The point is:

2. we all have known for some time not to expect anything until some time after SW2 is under DirecTV control and tested by them. prob Q2 2006 after some additional HD LIL is online.

And what are you basing this on? SW 1 and SW 2 are spotbeam satellites only. LonghornXP had posted that D* was going to use these beams to basically create a CONUS beam but has not retracted that saying that the plan wasn't going to work. So that lease using bandwidth from their current constelation of satellites, so how do you think they'll come up with this additional bandiwdth? Also, all I've seen from CES is folks reporting that D*'s telling them that no new national until 2007.