http://www.multichannel.com/marketing/fox-takes-new-tack-hopper-legal-battle/141846. Fox Takes New Tack in Hopper Legal Battle
Wat? :lol:hilmar2k said:Right, because so many people choose to watch commercials when given the choice.
Please, can you and Stewart quit saying this. DISH doesn't care if you watch commercials. Why would they? They just realize that most people don't want to watch them and have found a way to automate that. It's a competitive advantage if their counterparts in providing television service don't offer that option so they promote it. But to say that they don't want us watching commercials is completely wrong.James Long said:It seems pretty simple ... DISH doesn't want people to watch OTHER COMPANY's commercials. Or at least they support their customer's desire to not watch commercials once they have subscribed to DISH.
It is not complicated. It is not hypocritical. DISH is in the position to offer a service people want ... so they are doing it. If they were refusing to offer the Hopper service out of fear that people would skip DISH ads that would be bad.
They don't want people seeing commercials for Genie on DirecTV (or any other competitive service). The Hopper is a vast conspiracy to improve retention. Once customers get the Hopper from DISH they are prevented from seeing commercials from other providers. It is all a part of the vast conspiracy to ...strikes2k said:DISH doesn't care if you watch commercials. Why would they?
Im not even a DISH customer and I think its pretty childish. You dont announce every other sponser except for the one you dont like Its a NASCAR race not a FOX race.Hoosier205 said:Good for FOX. Dish is attacking a significant revenue stream, so game on.
It's not nearly that simple. We are talking about two companies that are not even in direct competition with one another. Were talking about one company which is going out of their way to interfere with a revenue stream of another company. Not to mention that other providers have had access to this technology and have wisely chosen not to utilize it. Imagine that! Every other provider has chosen not to screw over the content providers that they must do business with.joshjr;3186143 said:Im not even a DISH customer and I think its pretty childish. You dont announce every other sponser except for the one you dont like Its a NASCAR race not a FOX race.
Is it really a significant revenue stream? Yes, ads are but those with a DVR (whether it's a Hopper or not), generally don't watch commercials, except with the common exception of sports. Hopper users would be at least fast forwarding if not skipping commercials anyway.Hoosier205 said:Good for FOX. Dish is attacking a significant revenue stream, so game on.
You have just described being a leader, a pioneer. The networks have been screwing Satellite service since the beginning not to mention us. Chuck is not intimidated. In your scenario, there would be no DVR's, no skipping/fast forwarding. Lets not make them mad.Hoosier205 said:Not to mention that other providers have had access to this technology and have wisely chosen not to utilize it. Imagine that! Every other provider has chosen not to screw over the content providers that they must do business with.
Exactly. It's reported elsewhere (I have no way to confirm) that Direct TV has the Hopper technology ready to go. The Movie industry finally got it after fighting so hard not to allow VHS/Betamax and changed their business plan to include releases of movies in various forms. It must have added billions to the industry. I have a large assortment of movies I would never have gone to see in theaters, or maybe even buy at full price, but did buy at what I thought was a more reasonable price sometime after release. All that money would have gone somewhere else.James Long said:Other companies being to timid to use technology should not prohibit DISH from innovating. I will not be surprised that once the dust settles on the court cases and Hopper issue if the other companies come out with their own commercial skip feature ... and the die hard promoters of such other companies will be the first to laud adding the feature as being the right thing to do.
DirecTV has had it for a long time and has chosen not to implement it for obvious reasons. Charlie has no concept of right and wrong...just what his massive team of lawyers can conspire to get away with on his behalf. He's ethically bankrupt. Nothing new there.tampa8;3186168 said:Exactly. It's reported elsewhere (I have no way to confirm) that Direct TV has the Hopper technology ready to go. The Movie industry finally got it after fighting so hard not to allow VHS/Betamax and changed their business plan to include releases of movies in various forms. It must have added billions to the industry. I have a large assortment of movies I would never have gone to see in theaters, or maybe even buy at full price, but did buy at what I thought was a more reasonable price sometime after release. All that money would have gone somewhere else.
Guess its just more FOX being a, fair and balancing act ?joshjr said:Im not even a DISH customer and I think its pretty childish. You dont announce every other sponser except for the one you dont like Its a NASCAR race not a FOX race.
I can run a mile in 3min 50seconds and a marathon in 2h 50min. But I choose not to.Hoosier205 said:DirecTV has had it for a long time and has chosen not to implement it for obvious reasons. Charlie has no concept of right and wrong...just what his massive team of lawyers can conspire to get away with on his behalf. He's ethically bankrupt. Nothing new there.
+1Stewart Vernon said:I'm amazed that more people don't see my point. Not because it is my point but because it sticks out like the literary and literal "sore thumb"...
If you are a Dish subscriber with a Hopper, Dish says to FOX "customers don't have to watch your commercials"... but if you are a DirecTV or cable customer, Dish says to FOX "you have to air our commercials"...
How is that not the height of hypocrisy?
Yeah, I get what they are trying to do... but they are being on both sides of the issue.
IF Dish truly believes customers don't watch commercials, then why is Dish wasting money on commercials themselves?
They must believe their money is well spent, which is only true if they believe customers were watching... which is only possible if you don't help making it easier for customers to not watch commercials.
Nobody can force me to watch commercials. I can take a bathroom or snack break. I can skip them manually after I DVR them.
AutoHop does too much for you once you say "yes"... and that makes it easier.
Many customers will be too lazy to pick up the remote and fiddle with it to skip commercials... advertisers bank on this... but AutoHop requires just the one press of a button in the beginning to activate it.
I also point out that Dish isn't doing this for all channels... they are only doing it for the "big four" OTA channels... IF Dish truly believed in the technology as they say, they would enable it for ALL commercial channels... wonder why they haven't done that?
I'm usually on Dish's side for most things... but even as a happy Dish customer, I can't really see anything good coming of this... Down the road, when Dish wins this fight... we will either:
1. Lose OTA channels.
2. More banners on the screen during programs and you can't skip those!
3. More product placement.
4. Higher price to watch those OTA channels via Dish.
One or more of those is the only way for the channels to make up that lost revenue when Dish helps you skip the ads more conveniently and the advertisers begin to pull back their money.
It seems that you're overthinking this. Is this another "devils advocate" thread where you want to stir up a fight?Stewart Vernon said:IF Dish truly believes customers don't watch commercials, then why is Dish wasting money on commercials themselves?
Yes, that clearly states the issue. It is important to note something I thought was a bit odd. Those same four stations local stations in each DMA are on 24-7 and could be recorded in 4-hour blocks with ad skipping. The fact that Dish only enabled this in the prime time block does make a "political" statement that only "coincidentally" came about just months after the networks started demanding significant payments from us, the viewers, through our signal carriers via the local channels.James Long said:And as far as backing down and letting the networks have their way ... once DISH starts to cave in where should it stop? If the networks demand the end of auto-hop and $5 per subscriber per network station per month is that good for you? How about if the networks demand that DISH disable all commercial skipping during that network's programming? Are we at a point where DISH needs to cave to any demand of the network? I hope not. And not caving on AutoHop is a good place to start.
No Directv is just sitting on it waiting for the outcome of the commercial skip lawsuit. If dish wins you can bet we will see them turn the feature on in a heartbeat.Hoosier205;3186173 said:DirecTV has had it for a long time and has chosen not to implement it for obvious reasons. Charlie has no concept of right and wrong...just what his massive team of lawyers can conspire to get away with on his behalf. He's ethically bankrupt. Nothing new there.
They had it long before Dish did or any lawsuit over it existed. They simply understand how silly it is to purposefully screw over the very content owners that you rely on and must do business with.EdBott;3186326 said:No Directv is just sitting on it waiting for the outcome of the commercial skip lawsuit. If dish wins you can bet we will see them turn the feature on in a heartbeat.
Sorry, I didn't answer sooner. Must be my wife's hearing, she still has me turn lots of commercials down because they are so loud.KyL416 said:FYI, since December there's been a law in place that requires the volume to be consistent. If you are still seeing that commercials are louder than the program you can complain here:
http://www.fcc.gov/guides/program-background-noise-and-loud-commercials
It is a much easier feature to implement during prime time when the stations are airing the same programming in each time zone. With the most watched programs being in prime time on the big four networks it makes sense to start there where the feature will be the most useful.phrelin said:Yes, that clearly states the issue. It is important to note something I thought was a bit odd. Those same four stations local stations in each DMA are on 24-7 and could be recorded in 4-hour blocks with ad skipping. The fact that Dish only enabled this in the prime time block does make a "political" statement that only "coincidentally" came about just months after the networks started demanding significant payments from us, the viewers, through our signal carriers via the local channels.