Whatever happened to the extra bandwidth?

[GaryPen]

I apologize if this has been answered. I'm usually over at the Dish forums. However, I like to know what's going on with DirecTV, for the time when my Dish commitment is over, and I need to decide whether to stay ro go, and where to go to.

So... A few months ago DirecTV lauches 7S, and there is much speculation about what the additional bandwidth will be used for. At this point, there must be a pretty concrete plan in place, no? Internationals? HD? Locals?

I'm familiar with their recent announcement concerning long-range programming additions, especially in the area of HD. But, those are just pipe-dreams based on possible future bandwidth. What are they doing now, or in the near term, with the current increased bandwidth?

Thanks.

 

[Darin]

A lot of it is already being sucked up. Since then, they've added BravoHD, NBC-HD E/W, and quite a handful of Sunday Ticket games in HD. According to some, there COULD be up to nine simultaneous ST games, and if that's true, from a bandwidth perspective, that's almost the same as adding nine new HD channels. I'm sure they've already earmarked some for FoxHD E/W, so all together, worst case, that's 14HD channels, or 7 transponders (close to the amount that 7s would have freed up). It's certainly possible that we may not see many additions until after football season is over. Hopefully the new satellites will prevent the same sacrifice from being necessary again next year.

 

[beast37799]

as long as there launched and running before the next football season not to mention any new dishes or switches we will need

 

[GaryPen]

The Bravo, Fox, and NBC HD additions sound good. If they add ABC, that would be better. I couldn't care less about the football. But, by the time I'm ready to switch, the season should be almost over anyway, maybe freeing up some more space.

OTOH, I'm not liking what I'm hearing about D's new HD compression schema.