Dish/Direct Need To Get On The HD Ball

[Mike Richardson]

Voom now has The Movie Channel HD and Starz HD. InHD and InHD2 have been available for a while although it is unknown if they are available to DBS. Time to get on the ball. Sadly though DISH and Direct are both in a bit of a primary spot bandwidth crunch. I think it was said that E* could shuffle channels around and make room for two more HD channels. Direct has a new bird going up soon to alleviate bandwidth problems.

[Mike123abc]

Voom is probably why they are not working that hard on adding more HDTV... If they saw voom selling HDTV like crazy and attracting their subs, they would probably react.

Dish came to the conclusion adding markets as fast as possible, even if they do not have the equipment to support them (like superdish) was better than HDTV.

[TiredFerret]

I recently spoke to a sales person at a national retailer, and she tried to tell me that Dish will have about 50 HD channels by the end of the year. :sure: I rolled my eyes so hard they almost got stuck in the back of my head.

[Mike D-CO5]

If Dish buys Voom then they will have about 50 hd channels by the end of they year.

[Slordak]

Dish must add more value to the HD Package. Paying $9.99 for four channels, one of which shows re-runs of old shows and another of which shows almost nothing but stretched SD sporting events is not viable in the long run.

In fact, I would go so far as to say forget the notion of an HD package and start switching to carrying HD versions of whatever is available alongside the SD versions, without charging any additional fee (ala HBO-HD). If Dish Network seriously wants to win in HD, they have to make it reasonable for folks to get HD content and not have to double pay (i.e. paying for both the SD and HD version of a channel?).

[Mark Holtz]

There is some bandwidth problems with sending HD channels over DBS. While a transponder can hold 8-11 different standard channels, it can only hold 2-3 HD channels.

AFAIK, there is no additional charge for getting HBO-HD or Showtime-HD if you already subscribe to the premium movie channel package. CBS-HD is also available via Dish, but you either have to live in a CBS O&O area and subscribe to locals *OR* live in a white area.

[DarrellP]

In fact, I would go so far as to say forget the notion of an HD package and start switching to carrying HD versions of whatever is available alongside the SD versions, without charging any additional fee (ala HBO-HD).
I totally disagree with this because I don't sub to ANY SD programming. If Dish would quit compressing the Hell out of their signal, I may pick them up again, but at 110" diagonal, Dish sucks. I refuse to pay for SD to get HD, so I think the HD Pack is a good deal, but I do agree they need to add more HD programming quick.

[Mike Richardson]

While a transponder can hold 8-11 different standard channels, it can only hold 2-3 HD channels.

It seems that right now DISH is putting two HD channels per transponder, but they are putting up to 12 SD channels per transponder (usually locals). Might we see DISH attempt 3 HD channels per transponder? If they reduce FEC (which I believe would give them more space) then HD channels would rainfade more quickly than others. So right now I believe there are 3 transponders being used for HD at 110/119, for HBO, SHO, DISCHD, HDNET, HDNET MOVIES, ESPN HD. They could move them around to 3 per transponder and free a transponder for 3 more HD channels.

[DarrellP]

The day they start messing with HD is the day I totally drop Dish. I can live without them, I get plenty of material OTA.

[Mike123abc]

If dish were to run the same error rate and 8PSK that Voom run 22msymbols@5/6 they would get about 50.6mbit/sec (they get about 39.6 at the current 21.5msym@2/3). It is interesting that turbo coded 8PSK at 2/3 actually is better than QPSK at 5/6 (what they run the non HD channels at). Running 8PSK at 5/6 would make it more likely to suffer from rainfade. But, how often do you get rain fade and it would only be on a few channels. I would rather suffer 15 more minutes of rainfade a year to get more HDTV.

[Mike Richardson]

Well from what I've heard and seen it looks like that in exchange for more rainfade and maybe a little bit more compression on the HD channels, at least one transponder could be freed up. After looking at all the slots it looks like significant optimizations could be done on the wings and maybe a little bit of optimizing on the main slots.

It puzzles me as to why there are two lonely little Pay Per View channels on the wings. Also, why are there three lonely little PPV Sports channels? My guess is that they're for international-only subs or something who might want some english PPV now and them.