pushing back mpeg4 with turbo 8psk

[CivicOnBoostEK]

I was talking to one of the trainers a few days ago and they said theyre pushing back the launch for mpeg 4 because they said its only around 20% more efficient and instead rolling out with the "turbo 8psk" which is compatible with all recievers.. If their numbers are correct it doesnt sound like a bad thing, although wouldnt it be better for dish to just come out with mpeg4 now and continue to improve on it? Whenever they do come out with it, the technology will be better obviously, but if they were working on it now, it would be more advanced than it will be if they take this route. Kinda seems like theyre wasting money on it.. I know alot of people will rather go to direct just because they have mpeg4. more of a marketing tool.

Just wondering if anyone else has any kind of info on the subject :

 

[Cyclone]

Yeah, they dropped that info at last month's tech forum.

If dish were to launch any new or existing channels in MPEG-4, then only people with the model 411 receiver could view that channel. That would be very few people. Rather than require a expensive swap out effort at this time, its better to just let the MPEG-4 compatible receivers ship out naturally. That way there will be an imbedded base of receivers already deploy be the time for MPEG-4 does arrive.

 

[waltinvt]

One option "E" may try for MPEG4

I believe that when "E" is really ready to push MEPG4, it will happen all of a sudden and at the same time as they launch an "irresistable tier of new MPEG4 only, HD channels.

However at first (soon probably) they will start trickleing out receivers for as much $$ as they can realistically get - no special deals. They don't expect to sell too many at first because there won't be any MPEG4 only HD channels out yet.

Ok, they may put 1 or 2 carrots out early but mainly they just want to tap the market of 6000 / 921 / 811 owners that held off on the 942 (because of MPEG4) plus there's always that predicable few that just can't wait for any new piece of equipment.

Anyway, this gets some units out there for top $$ and gives them some time and money towards mass production of receivers prior to the big launch I mentioned above.

I have nothing to really base this on - just feeling a little prophetic on a Friday afternnoon

 

[Tom Bombadil]

Here's my take on this talk, please feel free to correct any bad information:

A) All HD channels are already being transmitted in 8PSK-turbo.

B) All HD receivers are compatible with 8PSK-turbo.

C) At present Dish is not realizing much efficiency with the MPEG4 encoders, so they will continue to work with those vendors toward higher, and expected, efficiencies. In the meantime, they will stay with 8PSK.

D) Eventually Dish expects MPEG4 to be signficantly more efficient than 8PSK-turbo and expects to move all HD channels to MPEG4. But this may not happen for another 12, 18, or 24 months.

E) The new 211/411 HD receivers are MPEG4 compatible. The rumored 962 DVR will be MPEG4 compatible. The 6000/811/921/942 will never be MPEG4 compatible and thus will have to be replaced once MPEG4 is fully implemented.

F) Dish may look at moving the SD channels to 8PSK-turbo, which would give them roughly a 30% increase in efficiency and thus they could reclaim several transponders to use for other purposes.

G) A large number of SD receivers are 8PSK compatible, but a few million receivers would have to be replaced. This would include models like the 4000, 4700, 4900, Dishplayer 7100 & 7200, 501, 508, and perhaps even the very popular 301. I forget what the case is with the 510, but I don't think it is 8PSK compatible. Obviously this would be a very complex and expensive conversion.

Thus Dish's satellites would be able to carry significantly more channels if all SD were transmitted in MPEG2/8PSK-turbo and all HD in MPEG4 (assuming it improves). However getting there means replacing millions of receivers, which would likely require millions of service calls. Dish has to weigh the finances of the cost of replacing all of these receivers vs the long-term benefits of more efficient data transfer.

 

[Stargazer]

Perhaps Dish Network realizes that if they do the swap out now it will cost them more than it will cost them later on to do. They may be able to give the customer a "special deal" to get the new HD channels and be able to get the customer to pay for at least part of the receiver cost. They probably figure that there is more money to lose on the hardware swapout than what would be lost with churn going to cable and DirecTv until HD gets popular enough. By waiting they can take advantage of newer technologies that may get released in the future beyond what MPEG-4 is. This gives them more options. The hardware prices would also drop.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

They will save by waiting, as long as they can continue to be competitive with D* while waiting.

Every month they wait, the number of older receivers to replace will drop, as customers churn off and others upgrade. And MPEG4 technology will get cheaper as it matures, and simpler chip sets can be put into receivers. If a lot of people upgrade their 811s to get 211s, that will be fewer 811s to put to pasture.

 

[rocatman]

Here's my take on this talk, please feel free to correct any bad information:
A) All HD channels are already being transmitted in 8PSK-turbo.
B) All HD receivers are compatible with 8PSK-turbo.
C) At present Dish is not realizing much efficiency with the MPEG4 encoders, so they will continue to work with those vendors toward higher, and expected, efficiencies. In the meantime, they will stay with 8PSK.
D) Eventually Dish expects MPEG4 to be signficantly more efficient than 8PSK-turbo and expects to move all HD channels to MPEG4. But this may not happen for another 12, 18, or 24 months.
E) The new 211/411 HD receivers are MPEG4 compatible. The rumored 962 DVR will be MPEG4 compatible. The 6000/811/921/942 will never be MPEG4 compatible and thus will have to be replaced once MPEG4 is fully implemented.
F) Dish may look at moving the SD channels to 8PSK-turbo, which would give them roughly a 30% increase in efficiency and thus they could reclaim several transponders to use for other purposes.
G) A large number of SD receivers are 8PSK compatible, but a few million receivers would have to be replaced. This would include models like the 4000, 4700, 4900, Dishplayer 7100 & 7200, 501, 508, and perhaps even the very popular 301. I forget what the case is with the 510, but I don't think it is 8PSK compatible. Obviously this would be a very complex and expensive conversion.
Thus Dish's satellites would be able to carry significantly more channels if all SD were transmitted in MPEG2/8PSK-turbo and all HD in MPEG4 (assuming it improves). However getting there means replacing millions of receivers, which would likely require millions of service calls. Dish has to weigh the finances of the cost of replacing all of these receivers vs the long-term benefits of more efficient data transfer.

I believe most of what you posted is correct although there are some who still believe Dish can get more effieciency out of 8PSK-Turbo for their HD channels.
Dish can lower their costs if when they do items E) and G) above, they reuse these HD/MPEG-2 receivers to upgrade subscribers with non-8PSK receivers to 8PSK receivers. For example, when Dish swaps out a 811 receiver for a 211/411 receiver they reuse this 811 to swap out a 4000/4700/4900/301 receiver. Now as Dish moves HD to MPEG-4, they certainly do not want to add to the number of HD/MPEG-2 receivers in subscribers hands. So when they swap out a 4000/4700/4900/301 receiver with a 811 receiver they will need to modify the 811 via software so that it no longer can receive HD/MPEG-2 satellite programming. This modified 811 becomes like a 311 but with an analog and digital OTA tuner, kinda like a souped up model 5000. Dish could use this same strategy for DVRs but if Dish had any sense they would not reuse the 6000 or the 921.

 

[Stargazer]

Think about how many customers churn each year. As high as it is it would not take as long as you think to get a lot of the receivers swapped out. I thought I read a little while back where the companies may actually get a million new subscribers per quarter but lose about 3/4ths of that to churn so the net about a quarter million. Something like that, the numbers may not be exactly true. But if it was something along those lines it would only take about three years for a lot of the customers to churn out.

 

[Van]

E's token to compete with D is the voom21, D's token to compete with E is mpeg4 for hd locals, wonder who will have the upperhand.

 

[MikeD-C05]

If both do HD LITE then no one will win.

 

[dishdood]

Here's my take on this talk, please feel free to correct any bad information:

<snipped>

C) At present Dish is not realizing much efficiency with the MPEG4 encoders, so they will continue to work with those vendors toward higher, and expected, efficiencies. In the meantime, they will stay with 8PSK.

D) Eventually Dish expects MPEG4 to be signficantly more efficient than 8PSK-turbo and expects to move all HD channels to MPEG4. But this may not happen for another 12, 18, or 24 months.

<snipped>

Thus Dish's satellites would be able to carry significantly more channels if all SD were transmitted in MPEG2/8PSK-turbo and all HD in MPEG4 (assuming it improves). However getting there means replacing millions of receivers, which would likely require millions of service calls. Dish has to weigh the finances of the cost of replacing all of these receivers vs the long-term benefits of more efficient data transfer.

MPEG4 and 8PSK-turbo are not mutually exclusive. MPEG4 & MPEG2 are forms of compression, 8PSK-turbo is a modulation sceme.

 

[Stargazer]

I think if they do national HD channels that will get more customers at this time than what the local HD channels would. Dish Network could offer more people more HD channels going this route and they would still have their SD locals. They should do the national HD channels FIRST before going the HD locals route. They may want to save some space for when more HD channels come out.

 

[Gary Murrell]

If both do HD LITE then no one will win.

Truer words were never spoken

-Gary

 

[BobaBird]

A) All HD channels are already being transmitted in 8PSK-turbo.

Are they? 8PSK has been around a couple years already. The way I understand the Tech Forum summary (I haven't watched it yet), Turbo is a new software enhancement to 8PSK. And to further confuse the issue, recent software release notes for one of the receivers called it "QPSK turbo."

 

[Tom Bombadil]

I can't speak from my own knowledge, but I've read multiple other posts from people who seemed to have a much more in-depth grasp of the technology and they have insisted that Dish has been using 8PSK-turbo on HD for a while now and were just floating the term during the recent chat to deflect attention away from the disappointing MPEG4 news.

 

[PATECO]

Dish needs to get the old boxes off the streets anyway, I predict a free upgrade to a refurbished 301/311 for all owners of 1000 2000 3000 4000 2800 3800 4900 5000 etc receivers with an option to upgrade receivers to 211/411 HD for all customers at a small fee plus additional programming comitment. If they offer the HD upgrade first, it gets them a steady stream of 301/ 311 receivers to use to upgrade the older non 8psk boxes. I also beleive, that the 111 was capable of 8psk, and could be a cheap new replacement box if they run short of 301/311 refurbs.

 

[Stargazer]

I do not see customers being upgraded from the legacy receivers (1000,2000,3000, 2800,3800,4900, etc) receivers to the 111/311 boxes to just have to be upgraded to the 211 receivers later on. They will upgraded them right from those legacy boxes to the MPEG-4 receivers. If the MPEG-4 swapout is going to be a long ways off and they plan on doing a lot of MPEG-2 still for a while and take advantage of some advanced compression technology that these receivers may have to increase the number of channels then maybe they would swap them out to the 111/311 refurbs. They had a chance to do this with the SuperDish swapouts. Instead of providing a DishPro receiver they provide a DishPro adapter which costs just about as much and the adapters that they first came out with were junk.

 

[HokieEngineer]

All existing HD is already modulated on 8PSK-turbo transponders. The test transponder at 148 which carries mpeg4 content is also 8psk-turbo. Think of mpeg4 being water and 8psk the pipe which carries the water .

I could see dish doing something like putting the sports packs on 8psk transponders, that way if you want NHL-CI, you need an updated receiver. This would impact far fewer customers, at the same time getting rid of customers with the old equipment. They could even start doing locals this way. They are gaining about 13Mbit/s by using 8psk (43Mbit/s) over qpsk (30Mbit/s). Thats room for 3-4 more SD channels.

 

[navychop]

DISH stated they had "over 10 million" 8PSK capable receivers out there. That's very roughly half of their receivers. IIRC, the 510 and later units are 8PSK capable, as are all HD receivers, but the 301, 501, 508 & 721 are NOT.

So they need to upgrade millions of receivers anyway to take full advantage of 8PSK. All new receivers are to be MPEG-4, 8PSK & HD capable. Starting with certain HD Locals and new nationwide HD, they can start replacing receivers on a reasonable phase in basis. Since it will likely be a year or so before the MPEG-4 ENCODERS work at a high efficiency, say 40% and up, there is no rush to move rapidly to MPEG-4 transmissions. After a year of gradual replacements, they will likely have a good handle on the process and can plan for a more aggressive rollout. All this could go out the window, of course, if Echostar X fails.

Satco churn is quite low, below 2%, per this link: http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA498351.html?display=Special+Report

On edit: OK, above link requires log in. But if you go to Google and enter DISH "customer churn" and then click on the second result (Multichannel) you will see the page. Maybe this is a quirk of Firefox 1.5. Anyway, in 2004 churn was 1.77%.

 

[Cyclone]

Are you sure that the 510 can do 8PSK and the 501/508 can't? I would have expected those receivers to be identical except the Hard Drive capacity.