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Voom No More
RokaMoka writes "Today the world got a little fuzzier. Voom has announced thay they are shutting down. As a subscriber I can tell you they will be sorely missed, as they far better than the competition.
For those of you who are not familiar with voom, they had 3 times as many HiDef channels as the next competitor and a really nice remote control. It sure was pretty while it lasted." I think they died because they don't have a PVR. Hi-Def folks are early adopters and they want the technology. Of course, with all the mess swirling around DirecTV's move to Mpeg4 and the obsolesence of the HD-Tivo, it will be interesting to see what happens next.
More info about voom here.
The reason is simple: DirecTV has already publicly announced that they will launch more satellites to provide more 720p/1080i high-definition channels from both cable channel provider and local broadcast sources.
In short, by the end of 2007 your DirecTV receiver dish will get most (if not all) your local channels broadcasting in high-definition along with high-definition signals from the cable channel providers (ESPN/ESPN2 HD, Discovery HD Theater, HDNet, HBO and Showtime in HD, etc.).
Article
It didn't die because it didn't have PVR. It's death could partly be blamed for the internal family conflict between the Dolans.
"Earlier this year Chuck Dolan lost a boardroom battle with his son, CEO Jimmy Dolan, that resulted in the company cutting off funding for Voom. "
and
"In 2004 Voom lost $661.4 million on paltry revenues of $14.9 million, including $354.9 million in write-downs."
Not sure what you mean by homemade, but I can give you an explanation of how they arived at that number.
Lots of Vooms channels were "upconverted." IE, they weren't natively filmed in HD, they were filmed in SD and had the extra lines added by some hardware before broadcast.
Of course, those of us that have groaned in dismay when CSI enhances four pixils into a 1024x758 high res image of a distinctive and case busting tatoo, can easily attest to the reality that you can't create content where none existed.
Vooms content was HD in format only. It's clear and evident when you look at the final product what's native HD and what's an upconverted mockery.
Anyone paying through the nose for Vooms services should be savy enough to tell the difference and demand the real thing.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
I've read numerous reports that VOOM had terrible problems trying to connect people on the west coast, as their satellite supposedly is hovering over the east coast. This meant that their satellite service was more suseptible to rain fade and the like. Anyone have anymore info?
Basically, when the spaceway sats go up, there will be a transition to mpeg4 and an elimination of mpeg2 saving bandwidth, allowing for more hd channels and tons of hd locals, etc.
Hopefully there will be a reasonably priced hd pvr offered too...
Ocean is land, covered with water.
b/c they believe they can purchase the "birds" at lower costs from creditors looking to get some of their money back.
-b
Upconversion doesn't need to mean creating content where none existed. Superresolution techniques can extract subpixel detail by integrating over time.
I am a professional satellite installer. I work for a small independent company in Washington state. We install both Dish and DTV. We looked at Zoom to see if we wanted to install it as well. It is true that all of there channels were broadcast in 1080i or 720p but most of these channels source material was not HD. Anyone who has ESPN in HD knows what I mean, just about the only time you actually get HD is Sports Center. Also there only satellite being way on the east cost made it next to impossible to get it on the west coast, line of sight was only about 8 degrees off horizon. I have Dish myself but I cant wait for DTVs mpeg4 system to come online.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
I work at a retail store that sells Dish and Voom... Voom was the laughingstock of the store the second it came in.
It had the feel of a "fly by night" organization... the contractors who came to install it for us hadn't heard of it... the tech support number we had for them was disconnected... their HD Box, which originally sold for 800 dollars (!!) plus installation fees plus 40 bucks a month minimum, was prone to crashing. Their satellite dish locked us out of everything except "demo" mode, which meant we could showcase the exact same stupid animation show every half hour.
Every time we had a customer ask about Voom, we steered them towards Dish. A shame, too, since we got paid more for Voom than for Dish... but we couldn't in our good conscience sell that piece of crap.
Did I mention the HD channels they offered were rotten? A Fashion Show channel (high def anorexia), a Moov channel (a Winamp vis set to music), a couple of black-and-white B movie channels, a few more shitty movie channels, high definition weather (wtf?), and so on. What a waste of bandwidth.
I laughed when I heard they only had 20,000 customers after a year.
Good bye, Voom.
hookers and grits.
Our installer said it wasn't required except for Pay Per View.
Just like every other cable or satellite has been for a decade... where have you been.
This is really hurting HD in general, and I'm sure Voom suffered from it too.
Over half of HD content is "cheap content". That is, it is made up of either pointing a camera of things that don't have to sign a release (animals) or converting old cheap film content to HD.
Every company wants to start their own channel. Look at Universal HD. They have very little content, why don't they sell it to someone else? Why don't they air it on UPN HD? Well, no one wants to buy their content (see cheap content above) and no one wants to sell it. They'd rather squat on a channel with absolutely lousy content and hope their channel (real estate) becomes valueable later. So they don't air it on a network, they air it on their own channel.
There are two ESPNs HDs now, even though neither shows HD much of the time. Discovery has their own channel and carries 4 shows of note in HD. "Trading Spaces", "American Chopper", "Monster Garage" and I forget the other. They don't even have "Mythbusters". One channel, 4 shows total? You could air those in an evening!
The problem with companies squatting on these channels is that DTV only had bandwidth to carry maybe 25 HD channels. Eight are HD "locals" that many people can't get. 3 are decent movie channels that carry movies in HD 50% of the time or more. And the other ones carry something worthwhile about 10% of the time. So it's like having 7 HD channels. That's a pretty tough sell.
More HD content is being made every day (mostly for the networks). These channels want to carry it, but they don't want to pay for it.
What will make HD go is content.
Anyway, back to Voom. As the poster said, they had a lot of homemade channels. These channels just carried cheap content. I just can't watch that much footage of fish and prarie dogs.
If there had been an HDTV viewable media at HDTV introduction things would have evolved far differently. High-end equipment owners like myself would have bought HDTV content proving the marked for HDTV content. HDTV sets would have sold because even in HDTV signal deprived areas like the one I live in, people would still have had something to watch. And with more HDTVs, more OTA HDTV transmission would come quicker. With high end users and their larger amounts of disposable income watching mostly HDTV, advertising revenues would have switched to HDTV and again faster adoption.
Of course the poor choice of modulation scheme for US transmission didn't help. There were other more robust schemes, but ignored for cost cutting reasons (which by now would have made no difference I suspect as technology marches on and becomes more affordable).
Of course all this MPEG2 vs MPEG4 and obsoleted equipment that was suppose to be cutting edge HDTV, Joe 6-pack is going to be HDTV shy even longer.
Content providers are scared shitless of the digital age, they know that once this stuff is digital anyone that waits long enough will just be able to snare it for free at whatever quality he or she wants depending on download times. I suspect also that content providers are conflicted about providing upgraded broadband as it will start to eat into their content revenues. Why would I continue to subscribe to HBO when I can just download the episode for free off the same cable?
DirectTV is promising a shit load of channels soon, so maybe this did in Voom as much as anything else. If the DirectTV line is reasonable after the new HDTV channels come on line I will probably ditch Cable and go satellite. It seems I've made the smart move in the mean time with cable, the HDTV and PVR are very affordable, but probably aren't MPEG4 compliant. Soon I will have my Blu-Ray player, 20+ HDTV channels and viewing nirvana.
For those that think I'm a little over the top on my TV viewing, I suspect I watch an average or below average amount. But what I do watch is on a glorious 10-foot screen and I only want razor sharp images on it. I spent about $4000-$5000 putting my system together and I want to get the most out of it. I personally don't understand why people would pay $50-$100 a month for cable or $600-$1200 a year, and then watch it on a $200 set from Wal-Mart.
Letter To Iran
Voom also died because nobody gives a rats ass about HD except us that have HD setups. For 90% of the people regular TV is just fine. And if you sit back and look at a directv picture on a regular, but good, it is pretty damn good. HD just doesn't offer that much more of a better picture.
Voom just didn't have enough to offer over HD. They needed more than just that. Directv will be able to survive and offer HD services because they will have that huge ass base of regular subscribers to fall back on. Where Vroom was a one trick pony, and it was a trick that only a few cared about.
I, presonally, am looking forward to directv HD line up but I'm in that 10%.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Mate, this site wouldn't "voom" if you put four million hits through it! It's bleedin' demised!
(Sorry, that was necessary. British humour.)
I think they died because they don't have a PVR. Hi-Def folks are early adopters and they want the technology. Of course, with all the mess swirling around DirecTV's move to Mpeg4 and the obsolesence of the HD-Tivo, it will be interesting to see what happens next.
Voom died because they didn't know how to compete. They were the 3rd player in a 2 player race. If you want to break into an established market, you go back to the basics and compete on price. First and foremost, people are going to ask, "What does it cost?" You do what it takes to bring in the subscribers. Voom didn't do that. Sure, they had a big lineup of channels, but half of those channels, no one had ever seen. There's not enough marketshare to survive on HD alone. What incentive did Voom offer to switch? You couldn't walk into Sears, Best Buy, or anywhere and look at their lineup. Why? I've had an HDTV from the moment the 2nd gen Mitsubishis were introduced. I picked up a DirecTV HD receiver as soon as they offered service. I have no interest in the HD TIVO box because you have to reboot the thing EVERY DAY. What a piece of junk! It's more aggravation that it's worth. There aren't enough HD owners out there yet for a satellite company to survive. And HD owners that want TIVO? There's no way I'd gamble on such a specific audience. Your speculation doesn't wash.
The truth is, PVR, MPEG4 and the impending doom of the current HD-TIVO box have nothing to do with the decline of Voom. Voom never acquired enough subscribers to pay for their programming. And their programming stunk. They had a hodge-podge of everything, which meant they were excellent at nothing. If you want subscribers, you've got to go after the sports market first.
Their sports lineup stunk. Instead, Voom chose to compete with custom programming. Switching to Voom was a risk, and in the beginning, no one was willing to risk it because Voom wasn't willing to offer any fantastic deals. I would have done the opposite. I would have worked hard to get the sports market, and ALSO undercut everyone's prices... a lot more than what they were willing to do. Subsidize the hardware... from the beginning. And then word of mouth might have gotten them more subs. I don't have a single friend that asked me about Voom. Not one. And I'm the early adopter. No one was interested in trying Voom. I mentioned it. But no one cared.
-- No sig for you!
First, let me hope you were just going for a "funny" moderation...
However, in case you were being serious: I don't know what science fiction you've been reading, but I've been working with digital imaging for the better part of two decades, and these ridiculous CSI image enhancements/upconversions are simply not possible.
You just cannot take grainy 320x240 video (VHS) - or worse 160x120 as when they have 4x splitscreen security footage - zoom in on the license plate of the car in the background that encompasses all of 8x8 pixels and then "enhance" until you can read not only the number but you can see the date on the DMV sticker...
Any time you "extract" information by interpreting changes over time, you're simply using math to "speculate" and it wouldn't hold up in court. At least not if I were called as an expert witness.
A pixel contains brightness and color information, nothing else. Subpixel information is something that is smaller than 1pixel, but yet is being picked up as color and/or brightness information (and due to its size only affects the color/brightness of that one pixel, but is itself not registered in any detail on the image sensor) can only be derived if the subject is moving so its shape can be calculated by comparing the pixels it affects over time, and even then it's not possible to derive anything beyond a general shape. No amount of enhancing can reveal a license plate, tattoo or the name on a prescribed medicine bottle in the reflection on a teapot, like I remember seeing once, which prompted me to laugh out loud. A little like your letter - so if you were indeed going for that "funny" moderation, you should get it.
-- This sig for rent.