I think both companies will stay even in the HD race, Dish will always claim the lead as they have the VOOM channels, but to me the majority of VOOM is filler material.
There is only so many times I can watch the (great) concerts on RAVE, or the same monster movies on Monsters HD. I consider the VOOM channels demo channels now more then anything else. The only one useful is HDNews.
I think most people are too busy to actually sit down and see what is really on Voom. They hear about shows on other channels, because those channels are watched by millions of SD viewers. Then they watch that show in HD if they have it available.
While there is a lot of repeats, there
is new material. I just tuned to Rave to check out what it looks like in MPEG4, and they are showing a concert with Original Air Date 6/29/07. There is continually new material - just not at the rate one sees on a Broadcast Network.
Clearly not a lot of people on SatelliteGuys interested in Fashion
, but my wife
is, and UltraHD has hours of the runway shows that only celebs can get tickets to. On September 7, they start showing the "Spring 2008 Collections".
And, there is a
major exaggeration of the HD content of the non-Voom HD channels. The example I like to use is A&E-HD, which shows endless upconverted SD 4x3 versions of their SD channel (some of which are available in HD, such as their reruns of 24) - only a few hours a day are true HD.
I've read that not only is the NBC Nightly News the only one in HD, but their reports from the field are still always in SD.
We are still a year away from anything other than major primetime shows and sports being in HD. I think that the 2008 Olympics will be the big catalyst.
PS E* just freed up the strongest transponder on 129...
A total of 12 new HD channels can be added to 129 due to changing Voom to MPEG4. Are there 12 new HD channels launching in September ? I don't think so.
