Is Voom doomed?

[Chris Blount]

Intersting analysis. He might be right. Voom could go bankrupt before they really get off the ground.

http://www.tvpredictions.com/voom030404.html

[BobMurdoch]

And I can see E* making a REAL good fit as they already have several dishes pointing at that slot. D* would have a tougher time, but might want to play spoiler and bid the price up (I'm sure they are still cranky over that sweetened price they had to pay Loral's bankruptcy trustee to keep the satellite they were building for D*)

[greggg]

The kiss of death? Voom has teamed up with Sears.

[BobMurdoch]

The only thing worse than that would have been KMart.

[Mike123abc]

There is very little doubt in my mind that VOOM is going down, and going down soon. There is no way they can compete. If by any means they suddenly develop an audience, both E* and D* will suddenly match all the HDTV on VOOM. I know VOOM likes to brag about the exclusives, but in reality they have almost no exclusives. The movie pack could be easily duplicated by either E* or D* at a pretty low cost. I do not think the exclusivity of the Playboy channel in HD for a year is going to save the company.

Yes my local Sears store has had the display up for months now. I wonder if there is even a single customer in my town of 100k. With an average of 32-34 people per STATE, it is hard to imagine my town having one of the lucky ones.

If VOOM had managed to get 20k people by now I might be impressed. Sears has 863 mall locations, and 1200 other locations. That is less than one system per store, or if you only count mall locations, it is 2 per store in 5 months. Like I said I would be surprised if my local Sears had even sold one system.

Cablevision is under all sorts of government examinations now for accounting problems. I do not see them being able to spin off VOOM soon, at least until they finally get out from under the government investigations. Who in their right mind would want the stock of a company that has no customers, is loosing money faster than anything, plus has huge debt (satellite costs). Cablevision's plans of bundling some highly profitable divisions in to try to float the ship is just another way to destroy more assests of the company. It is not looking pretty.

Unfortunately the only thing this does is ruin the chances of getting more HDTV out of E* and D* any time soon. When it comes to allocating satellite space for more HDTV they only have to look to VOOM to see that having a ton of HDTV does not bring customers.

Don't get me wrong, I thought long and hard about changing over to VOOM they have a very attractive lineup, and I hope that someday someone digs this post out of the archive and says, hey look you did not know what you were talking about.

[MarkA]

"f VOOM had managed to get 20k people by now I might be impressed. Sears has 863 mall locations, and 1200 other locations. That is less than one system per store, or if you only count mall locations, it is 2 per store in 5 months. Like I said I would be surprised if my local Sears had even sold one system."

Actually, that would be a little less than TEN systems per store... Still, not exactly flying off the shelves :)

[Mike123abc]

"f VOOM had managed to get 20k people by now I might be impressed. Sears has 863 mall locations, and 1200 other locations. That is less than one system per store, or if you only count mall locations, it is 2 per store in 5 months. Like I said I would be surprised if my local Sears had even sold one system."

Actually, that would be a little less than TEN systems per store... Still, not exactly flying off the shelves :)

I was not exactly clear, currently they have less than 2 per store at 1600 or so subs. Yes if they managed 20k subs they would have 10 per store. I meant that sears with 863 mall locations and 1200 other locations has managed a paultry 2 subs per store in 5 months.

[KenO]

Well, I just signed up for Voom. Install next week. I currently have Dish and their lack of HD programming forced me to supplement my Dish. I couldn't pass up Voom's current offer of zero down and small lease payments. If Voom goes under, I'm not out anything. Plus, the OTA HD reception on my Dish 811 is very poor (49% bug). So now I will get StarzHD, CinimaxHD, 10 movie HD channels, HDNews, and so much more. I'll keep Dish also, since the equipment didn't cost me anything also. I don't see *D or *E catching up with Voom for at least another year...they have no capacity.

[Peluso]

What people are forgetting is that their are a few big cash cow telecoms who would love to get into the TV business. I'm thinking Bellsouth and Verizon. How about the new Cingular & AT&T. The way I see it, a successful way for Voom to get into the market in a big way would be for a RBOC (Regional Bell Company) like Bellsouth, to get Voom, put locals on for the Bell South Cities, and then market like mad through their own means. We then have a good regional competator with a potential for national customers with the HD contentent.

[BobMurdoch]

EXCEPT none of them will only chase HD. They want the walmart crowd to make it viable. Just selling to the top 8% of the market will not appeal to them for the foreseeable future.....

[Jacob S]

In order for Voom to compete with Dish and DirecTv along with cable, they will need to offer what they have AND offer good HD content, not just one or the other, unless they can offer most of the main SD content in HD, but still there are not nearly as many HD customers out there as there are SD customers, so perhaps they should not only go after consumers for HD but for SD as well to help drive up their subscriber numbers.

[uncdanwrong]

One huge problem Voom has is that a lot of people aren't sure it will survive. Voom is obviously trying to address the problem in a couple of ways. One is $0 upfront deal. However the fact that it can't be ordered online probably means it requires a credit check and is being financed directly by a bank or credit company. IOW, the $9.50 a mo. will probably continue even if Voom doesn't. Voom also has their $499 equipment / installation deal through May. Unfortunately, the receiver won't work as a stand alone OTA DTV tuner. IMHO that's Voom's biggest mistake, many more people would be willing to subscribe if they didn't have to worry about being left with a potentially worthless piece of equipment.

[Nick]

What a wild prediction on the part of Phillip Swann. He really goes out on a limb predicting the demise of Voom. Swann's biases are obvious and his motives suspect as long as he writes for HDNet which, BTW, is a competitor as long as it is not carried on Voom.

For the new Voom sub or potential subscriber, getting Voom is a "no risk" deal as long as the up front is zero. The worst that could happen is you eventually lose Voom's HD programming and get to shove yet another obsolete satellite receiver in the back of the closet.

I would be interested in seeing what their sub totals will look like at the end of Q2 and at year-end -- if Voom lasts that long.

[madpoet]

Rumor from the AVS Forums has Voom subscribers between 5k and 10k now. Not bad! Still growing, which is good.

[Mike95967]

Rumor from the AVS Forums has Voom subscribers between 5k and 10k now. Not bad! Still growing, which is good.

Plus, if you go the SatelliteGuys forums, most of the time there are more people viewing the Voom forum than the Dish or DircTV forums.

[DarrellP]

I love Voom and hope it survives in one form or another. I find that I can tolerate their SD channels where I couldn't with Dish. They must use a different compression scheme because I don't see the blurry, soft silly putty image that Dish has. Some channels are soft but most look like an upconverted analog signal. At least I can tell when people have freckles whereas with Dish, faces become a single toned mess.