You are part right and part wrong. Dish not only bought the sat they bought the uplink facility that controls it (price paid is about what a sat cost). In the same location Dish already has a bird that they use. The slot for the birds is at 61.5 degrees W. So this new bird will help them compete w/ Directv. Direct is going to start putting up their new birds next month. The chipsets for Mpeg 4 have just come out and are in the test stage. It will be sometime late this year when M 4 receivers will hit the market. I'm in a running dialog w/ Dish people to try and get a change out of Dish for Voom. Reason is the Direct deal stinks. They are offering a $200 rebate for switching to an HD DVR. Best deal around for it is around $600 which means I'll be out $400 just for the rcvr then sub pricing. The info I have gathered from Sky Retailer (an industry mag) is that Dish will do 2 rooms free w/ HD rcvrs. But I'm gonna have to pony up $250 for the HD DVR. Not great but better than Direct. Dish is also offering additional 130 chs (SD) for the price of 60. In short Dish offer isn't great but better than a kick in the teeth. Hope that they will expand the HD prgming to at least cover all the Movie channels. One last statement about Directv what they will be offering in the way of HD prgms when they get all their new birds running and have switched to M 4 is 150 HD chs. Then the 1500 other HD's are going to be locals. Which means one will get at max 157. The customer only get one set of HD locals. BTW Voom died due to the fact that they were owned by a cable co. (Cablevision) and they were losing money. Cable co's aren't know for losing $$ for long so when the board was convinced that it would be yrs before making $$ they turned on the chairman and gave him the thumbs down.
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You are part right and part wrong. Dish not only bought the sat they bought the uplink facility that controls it (price paid is about what a sat cost). In the same location Dish already has a bird that they use. The slot for the birds is at 61.5 degrees W. So this new bird will help them compete w/ Directv. Direct is going to start putting up their new birds next month. The chipsets for Mpeg 4 have just come out and are in the test stage. It will be sometime late this year when M 4 receivers will hit the market. I'm in a running dialog w/ Dish people to try and get a change out of Dish for Voom. Reason is the Direct deal stinks. They are offering a $200 rebate for switching to an HD DVR. Best deal around for it is around $600 which means I'll be out $400 just for the rcvr then sub pricing. The info I have gathered from Sky Retailer (an industry mag) is that Dish will do 2 rooms free w/ HD rcvrs. But I'm gonna have to pony up $250 for the HD DVR. Not great but better than Direct. Dish is also offering additional 130 chs (SD) for the price of 60. In short Dish offer isn't great but better than a kick in the teeth. Hope that they will expand the HD prgming to at least cover all the Movie channels.
One last statement about Directv what they will be offering in the way of HD prgms when they get all their new birds running and have switched to M 4 is 150 HD chs. Then the 1500 other HD's are going to be locals. Which means one will get at max 157. The customer only get one set of HD locals.
BTW Voom died due to the fact that they were owned by a cable co. (Cablevision) and they were losing money. Cable co's aren't know for losing $$ for long so when the board was convinced that it would be yrs before making $$ they turned on the chairman and gave him the thumbs down.