Sean Mota said:
If it's not Sears where else can they go seriously. All major vendors are already taken by the competition. At least Sears brings in 5%. So should they go ahead and give up on it. I would rather see management go to Sears and say "let's do it my way since your way is not working".
I never had any interest in getting VOOM, but I was curious as to what it was like, so just a little after VOOM started up, I decided to check it out one day when I happened to be at Sears. My local Sears has this little corner where most of the Projection HDTVs go (eight or nine maybe) with most of the floor going to standard TVs, smaller HDTVs and Plasmas, LCDs, etc., but it was still kind of hard to miss VOOM as they had a banner up for it, and then when you got into the corner where the Projection HDTVs were, they had a BIG display for VOOM with brochures, and they had the Motorola VOOM box sitting on top of a 65 inch Mitsubishi HDTV with WorldSports (I believe playing), and I was NOT impressed with it as the picture on WorldSports looked HORRIBLE!! I'm serious now, I have seen better picture from an SD channel on DirecTV on my analog 4:3 50-inch Hitachi back when DirecTV was having issues with their PQ. I then picked up the remote to see what else was on that might have a better picture. I flipped around to a few things, Cinema 10 I remember looking at which didn't seem to have that great of a PQ either, but it was TONS better than WorldSports. A Sears rep then came over to ask if I needed any help, to which I replied that I was just interested in seeing what VOOM was like, she "smirked" and walked off. I then noticed my two local channels on the guide and tried to check them out as I had never seen my local digital channels, and whenever I tried to check them out, the box brought up some sort of message... I forget what it said, but I believe it was something along the lines of "channel not available", or something before I tried to change the channel and ended up getting the box locked up. After some frantic thoughts about having to pay the $799.00 for breaking the box on a poor man's salary, I managed to turn the power off and get it working again. I turned it onto either MOOV or Animania or whatever channel it was... it had a kaleidoscope going on the screen that looked like it would give burn-in to the TV in about five seconds. I grabbed a brochure and left knowing that I was NOT impressed with VOOM.
Time went by however, and after reading Sean and other's comments on how VOOM worked on the functionality of their box (software upgrades) and the PQ of their channels, I found myself seeing what difference it made the next time I was at Sears (I don't go there very often). First thing I noticed when I went in there was that on one of the TVs (the same Mits) they had VOOM playing, and on all the rest of the TVs, they had Discovery HD Theater from a Dish 6000 receiver, and the difference was STARTLING!!! Here's a TV that has a picture on it (I don't remember what channel it was, Rave HD or Ultraa maybe!) that looked like you had just thrown soapy water on a window and let it dry, and then you had ALL these TVs that had a picture on that made it look like you weren't looking out a window at all... I doubt they had many people wanting to buy the Mits!
Next time I went to Sears they had Dish Network HD playing on all of the TVs except for the Mits, and they left it off. Since that time, I have been back to Sears a half a dozen times scatter throughout the time since VOOM came onto the scene, and they always have it off... in fact, I'm not even sure the Motorola box works any more.
I'm not interested in VOOM, it makes no sense for me for numerous reasons. I'd need at least three boxes (that would go up into a lot of money for me, and I don't make much!), though I LOVE HD, I honestly still spend most of my time watching SD as the majority of programming I watch either isn't available in HD, or in the case of the networks, difficult to receive OTA. I also live with two other people who watch NO HD, and the majority of their viewing habits are on SD channels not currently available on VOOM, not to mention that I count on the East & West coast feeds of ABC and CBS for their programming, and am anxiously awaiting DirecTV adding locals for my DMA so I can get a better quality picture for NBC and FOX programming.
That being said, I'm not putting VOOM down, I'm putting Sears down! If VOOM really put out that horrible of a picture like what I saw at Sears, I don't think VOOM would have EVER gotten any subscribers, nor would I imagine that VOOM's box would still be as "buggy" as it was the day I played with it. I blame Sears for keeping a box that evidently is defective, I blame Sears for not taking the time to figure out why the picture was looking LESS than High-Definition, and I blame Sears for not making VOOM look attractive to people it would interest, but I don't blame them for turning off the box as I'm sure it would have hurt sales of the Mitsubishi.
~Alan