So where will we be one year from today?

[jm9]

Hoping to invest with the right company, which provider will provide the best picture and sound quality one year from now? Who’s standard definition output will have the highest quality and who will offer the most HD? My choices are:

1. Dish
2. Direct
3. Comcast cable

I will assume that one year from now all will have HD PVR units.

Here are my Perceptions and Questions:

Dish – They will have the satellites, Receivers and dishes to be able deliver more programming than the competition. With the new satellite and super dish do they have the capacity to deliver 50 HD channels when operational?

DirecTV – How will they deliver more HD content? Will they have to deploy new hardware for better compression and launch more satellites? At what point does Direct have to make the same changes that Dish has been going with this year, 10HD channels?

Comcast – What is Comcast’s limitations? Why can’t or why don’t they improve the standard definition programming? How many HD channels can they add without affecting their other business.

[Nick]

What are Comcast's limitations? It's cable.

What is your location?

[Jacob S]

One year from now a lot more people will be enjoying their locals and a little bit of HD content and people will be complaining that more HD content is not being offered yet. They will be talking more about two way internet by satellite and adding even more local markets trying to offer all of the local markets. We will have the 311 and 111 receivers out and they will either have the 322 and 522 out or will be talking about a release date on those. The 921 will have already been out. Dish will have raised the price on the Top 100 and Top 150 packages to $35 and $45 respectively.

[dfergie]

On the next Charlie Chat the first monday of Sept. O4, Charlie hopes to announce the date of the release of the 921. And he will announce the new "megadish" that all HD folks will need. :)

[jm9]

What are Comcast's limitations? It's cable.

What is your location?


Minneapolis, Mn.


I'm trying to understand what limitations Direct and Comcast have in providing HD and would it be correct to say that Dish with the new satalite, new hardware with better encoding has enough when operational to do 50 HD channels.

For me programming will be the most important followed by hardware (HD PVR) then price. Right now programming is not the driving factor because they all carry what I want to watch. One year from now Programming will be the most important from a HD stand point. Who provides what I want to watch in HD. Fox sport Net is the channel that would be a deal mover for me. I follow Gopher Hockey, WIld Hockey, Timberwolves and the Twins on Fox Sports Net. They will be broadcasting some events this year in HD, I want to be with the provider that will give me this channel in HD. I have a feeling InHD and HDNet will get blacked out because Fox Sports Net has the rights locally.

[Steve Mehs]

Where will I be in about 2 months from today?

DirecTV hopefully :)

[PSB]

If you ask me Dish wont be around too much longer, after the DirecTV take over, the same thing happened in the UK, where BSKYB blew the only other satellite company out the water! Remember where you heard it first!

[Mark Holtz]

Dish won't go away any time soon, in fact Dish is modifying their plans so that instead of a one year commitment, it's now two. And, they are targeting the low end of the market with the AT-50 packages for people who are tied of "paying the high cable prices".

DirecTV will target the sports fan.

And we'll be talking about it here a year from now.

[Jacob S]

I also do not think that Dish will be going away anytime soon either. There is so much that Dish could do to compete offering their current customers special deals to prevent that from happening and attracting new customers at the same time.

The government would not like to have one major company take over the bulk of the mini-dish market. Perhaps, in the future, if Rainbow does get some subscribers they would allow it but still seeing how Dish and DirecTv, after seeing the increase in subscriber counts to come, would have a combination of probably 25-30 million subs compared to 2-3 million subs that Rainbow would have, I dont see DirecTv taking over Dish Network.

[Mike D-CO5]

I think you will see Dish eventually surpass Directv in the next 2 to 3 years unless Rupert pulls some real positive changes out of his hat when he finally gets Directv . This is personal with Charlie and I feel he will get even more aggressive against Directv.

Have you seen any other company offer a FREE DVR as a new customer? Walstreet loves this idea and I have seen articles talking about the pressure they feel from this offer. Tivo , Directv and Cable are feeling the pressure to come up with a deal as good as this. When you look at cable there is usually no money up front to get into cable and now Dish has no money up front to get a dvr and 3 free months of the top 100 hbo and cinemax. Look at Directv they are now offering current customers a Directivo for $99.00 , so they are trying to compete so they won't loose subs.

The only thing I can see that Dish needs to do, is come up with a competive way to upgrade their current customers to Dvrs or even newer receivers. This would pay for itself in lower churn and if they went with Dvrs they could make Dish money in fees or upgrade to AEP to escape fees. Either way Dish would benefit and so would their customers who want to have the newest receivers.

I also think they should loose the per dvr fee so they will be competive to Directv but I guess they are not competing with Directv but with TIVO and Cable which charges per box fee as well. Then again Directv continues to bleed red ink so maybe Charlie is doing the best for the company. Most customers will have only one dvr on their account and if they want more they will most likely upgrade to AEP to escape the fees all together. ;)

[Jacob S]

I agree. What good is it to get new customers to increase your sub base if you are going to lose your existing sub base in the process? You lose some if not a lot of your gain in new subscribers due to the sub loss for not giving your existing subs good deals to stay competitive. The competition would come out with good deals that would look very tempting to your existing subscriber base so while you come out with a good deal to get new subs, you can do some harms as well. Its just a matter of seeing whether you do more good than harm.

[rtt2]

Dish is getting over a quarter million subscribers a quarter and has about 1.5% churn. Roughly at 8.5 million subs times .015 churn equals 127,500 subs lost. So roughly they are getting 2 new subs for each 1 that they lose.
Compare that to cable where they lose a sub and don't get new ones and have a net loss for the quarter.

(I am using rough numbers because each quarter does not have consistent numbers)

[Jacob S]

Perhaps that is one reason why cable rates are going up. They have less room to spead the rate increases and have to make up for the loss of subs therefore its a double whammy and a bigger rate increase.

Eventually if satellite were to not have such a strong growth rate they will be in the same boat as cable, lose more subs than they gain. According to the previous post Dish loses half a million subs per year. If they kept a lot of those subs then their sub growth would look much stronger.