What happened to being the HD leader?

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I'll say this as nicely as possible. People would be alot more inclined to buy premium channels at $12-$14 a month then spend $4.99 (or more) on a movie that goes away in 24 hours.

Your talking 4 movie premiums. A person would hafta get 3 ppv movies a month to match one premium channel, and 6-9 to match the package when you buy it as premier.

And at that point you'd hafta be a movie buff, which at that case makes more sense to buy a premium channel.

If D* was to remove most of the HD ppvs and replace them with premiums people want, they would make alot more money, esp. due to more people buying premiums.

The people who think it's better to have all these hd ppv's must have graduated from the same economics class as Darth Malone.

When a person says that something makes money, they should take it while understanding that the customer will make the choice. Because customers can easily leave for other companies with bigger choices, IE Dish Network. Just because you have a service doesn't mean people will buy it. They need a compelling reason.

When you say that HD PPV makes money from people, while other tv companies have a larger amount of movies that DON'T EXPIRE AFTER ONE DAY, then you obviously don't get what customers are after.

As much as HD PPV channels are hyped by D* apologists for making money, you cannot show me a large number of people who buy enough hd ppv that wouldn't end up with them spending more on a premium channel subscription.

And BTW, just because you only have two channels that replay the same movies over and over, doesn't mean anything when you have tons of channels playing different movies over and over. At the very least, having a large selection will net you more choices.
I agree 100%
 
Okay, of all 29 hd ppv, lets count how many different movies or shows are on:

1. Royal Rumble
2. Dr. Suess
3. Burn after reading
4. Death Race
5. The Express
6. Disaster Movie
7. Tropic Thunder
8. Step Brothers
9. Indiana Jones
10. Wanted
11. Appaloosa
12. CHE Part 1

So all of these movie channels couldn't be shrunk? And a person who subscribes to premiums and wanted to buy a new movies somehow COULDN'T find one between the 17 identical channels? And the premiums running the same movies over and over are WORSE then 29 channels running the same 12 movies for weeks?

If all that is shown are 12 different ppv channels, then there's no excuse not to take 10-17 away for other stuff, no one would have a problem with ppv selection and more would subscribe to premiums.

If you STILL can't figure it out after this, try and understand that PPV is a means to an end, not THE END. PPV is an extra subscribers use for new channels. Regular channels and premium channels are what entice users to subscribe to them. PPV should NEVER be used in place of regular channels, because regular channels entice users to buy into your service and stay.
Which only provides more evidence that these are TEMPORARY placeholders and part time fillers for sports packages. If bandwidth is not being used, why not put temporary PPVs up at no extra costs.
 
Why not put up HD premiums. They are available!

I agree :up

To me having a bunch of temporary HD PPVs puts D* in the worse possible light and reflects very poorly on their priorities. Having spare bandwidth available and not using it for actual channels that do exist is the worse possible thing D* could be doing.

I could take channels not being added if D* was out of bandwidth. I could take having spare bandwidth and D* not adding channels if there were no more channels to be added. But we know D* has spare bandwidth for at least a dozen channels and by my count there are over 40 channels that could be added.

So by D* not adding real channels when they have the ability to do so makes one believe that D* is more interested in making money than making their customers happy. And from past history that clearly seems to be Malone's pattern.

I don't believe all of the excuses as to why we don't have more channels. The "it takes two to tango" excuse for why it is taking forever to negotiate is lame. D* had no trouble getting contracts done before Malone took over. Either Malone has forced D* to hold out for completely unreasonable terms or Malone isn't really interested in giving us more channels. And D* has had almost a year since D11 was launched to get terms worked out for the channels that we don't have yet.

We've also heard the lame excuse as to why we don't have more HBO/Max channels. The supposed excuse of "D* is being forced to get MPEG4 feeds of HBO instead of MPEG2 and they are working out the tech issues" doesn't make sense either. This issue (if it is a real issue) hasn't stopped U-Verse, FiOS or E* from getting extra HBO/Max channels. So either this is a lie from D* or D*'s tech people are morons.

And the worse example of a channel that D* should have no technical or contractual issue in adding Encore HD. D*'s competitors have this channel but they can't get whatever the problem is worked out with their own corporate cousin. Both D* and Encore are Liberty properties but they can't make it happen? Mind boggling. :mad:

All this just means that there is something really rotten at the top of D* and it is spelled M-A-L-O-N-E. And until if/when he sells D* to somebody...anybody, it won't get any better.

:(
 
Why not put up HD premiums. They are available!
I agree to an extent, but that could also be said of several other channels. Perhaps D* is going after a different market when and if it adds actual channels to those slots? From the looks of what they offer, and what you and others have said when compnaring premium offerings between companies, premiums are not that high on their priority list for whatever reason.
 
D*will have Soccer channel HD, T-Ball HD,Shotput HD before they add another premium HD channel.
Sorry but at this point D* is the Loser at HD and SD movie channels.
And with that in mind they should have Every premium they have "Which isn't Much" In HD right now. Atleast that would cater to more then just Sports Fans.
Maybe then they can brag and say "Unlike Dishnetwork and cable , Directv has all of our Premium movie channels in HD " Instead of Bragging about 30 HD PPV and Massive amounts of HD RSN's" I don't know many people who pay $12 for the sports pack to watch more repeats then any other channels on D*. You need a Sports Subscription to watch 90% of out of market games anyway. Maybe D* thinks customers enjoy 30 channel all showing the World Poker Tour. Or the same Womans Volly ball Game. Or the 15 hours a day of informercials. Sorry But $14 for 7 HBO's IMO has more D* customers subscribing to it then that BS Multisports pack. You paying for $12 for ESPNU, CBS-C, Outdoor, Fox soccor the rest is Garbage since everyone gets RSN's to begin with in their base package.
 
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How do you Know that?. Because they have 18 million subscribers.? D* in its 14 year history has damn near the same Premium line up since day 1. So I guess unless D* adds some ,We 'll never know.:)
That is why I think that. They seem to be adding subs every quarter (although I have not seen the most recent), whereas E*, with its big premium advantage is not. Dont get me wrong, I do not think premiums have everything to do with the situations at both companies, I simply think the lack of said channels is not hurting D* that much. I could be wrong of course, just going by the sub numbers.

Of course if D* had them, who knows how many more they would add.
 
Maybe you guys haven't thought of the obvious. If D12 blows up or somehow becomes unusable then they don't have a whole lot of bandwidth left to work with now do they. So why go crazy now and fill up what they have and then 6 months from now end up in a pickle and can't add any more channels at all? One would think that if D12 is a goner that they would much rather spend their bandwidth on channels other then 8 different HBO repeat channels. So why not pick and choose carefully which channels to add for the next 6-9 months, ones you *have* to add due to contract, get D12 up and running and then in the fall they can come in with a bang and add a whole bunch.

Whole lot easier to never put up a channel in case of sat failure vs. removing channels you already added, wouldn't you say?

Nahhhh, that couldn't be it. DirecTV is just out to screw us all by not adding "HBO 12: Repeat of the repeats" or the Travel Channel instead of making a better long term business decisions and just wait a whole 6 months to make sure before they don't toss all their eggs in one basket. They must hate us all...
 
That is why I think that. They seem to be adding subs every quarter (although I have not seen the most recent), whereas E*, with its big premium advantage is not. Dont get me wrong, I do not think premiums have everything to do with the situations at both companies, I simply think the lack of said channels is not hurting D* that much. I could be wrong of course, just going by the sub numbers.

Of course if D* had them, who knows how many more they would add.

Exactly. It never has. As mentioned, Dish has *always* had more premium channels then DirecTV. What's the old equation? DirecTV = Sports. Dish = Movies. Not much has changed and DirecTV is not in any way hurting because they don't have HBO the Ocho in HD. The vast majority of customers just don't care how many premium channels they have available. How many channels do you need old reruns of Fletch on anyway? :)

If something goes wrong with D12 I think they would much rather put something other then a bunch of HBOs on their limited bandwidth. But who knows, they may add 10 premiums next week for all we know.
 
Whole lot easier to never put up a channel in case of sat failure vs. removing channels you already added, wouldn't you say?

Nahhhh, that couldn't be it.
No one is asking them to add channels they don't have the capacity to add. Whats D* going to do if D10 fails right now? Launch D12 tomorrow and have it up and running in 24 hour . Doubt it! They have 4 satellites Just for HD alone.
 
No one is asking them to add channels they don't have the capacity to add. Whats D* going to do if D10 fails right now? Launch D12 tomorrow and have it up and running in 24 hour . Doubt it!

exactly. they already have a bunch of unnecessary HDPPV using up bandwidth than can be easily replaced with National HD channels without using up anymore bandwidth.
 
Bottom line if D* didn't blurt out we are going to carry 11 HBO and Cinemax channels in HD, Well I doubt we would be having this conversation. Instead you got 30 PPV in HD, Sorry 12 Real HD PPV choices.
 
Bottom line if D* didn't blurt out we are going to carry 11 HBO and Cinemax channels in HD, Well I doubt we would be having this conversation. Instead you got 30 PPV in HD, Sorry 12 Real HD PPV choices.

True which is why I switched. I'm a movie watcher not a sports watcher. 95% of my viewing is movie channels.
 
No one is asking them to add channels they don't have the capacity to add. Whats D* going to do if D10 fails right now? Launch D12 tomorrow and have it up and running in 24 hour . Doubt it! They have 4 satellites Just for HD alone.

I agree with that. Its good to be cautious, but there is overcautious too. I doubt they are thinking ahead to IF D12 does not make it, and they have capacity now. I agree with you that channels should be added to take the place of some of the PPVs that are up now, I am just mixed on WHAT they should add.
 
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