Yup. And anyone who thinks otherwise is smoking some good cheeba
NY Post: DirecTV and Dish in merger talks once again despite past antitrust concerns
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Agreed. I will believe that the H3 can support viewing DIRECTV satellite channels only if it happens. At least the claim has shrunk from all of the latest receivers.
That being said, the Hopper Plus and Joey 4 should be able to run the DIRECTV Stream app.
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The separation will need to be done unless AT&T wants to support DISH in the future. The point of the sale was to get out of the MVPD / vMVPD business. Still collect a cut of whatever profits DIRECTV makes but not have "Video" as a focus. Other than billing for customers with other AT&T products, they should be working away from providing customer support. I'd expect that they would want all of the independent customers on DIRECTV billing before they wrap up the "Video" services with a bow and hand it to the next buyer.
I expected the deal to last a lot longer than 6 months before they shopped for someone to bail them out. I have not researched every company TPG has flipped (bought and then later sold). Alltel was a quick flip (6 months from buy to sell) but I didn't see anything else flip that quick. (Perhaps you have a list?)
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I don’t understand why anyone thinks they would start moving everyone to one system. I don’t see the point, not anytime soon anyway.
Nor would they stop selling either service, they’d run them both separately to the front facing customer imho. Combine backend where they could (csr for example) but leave the products separate for the customer.
I can see them using hoppers as new hardware for DIRECTV satelite service but it would still be sold either to dish customers or DIRECTV customers. Want satellite, ok…. Here the box, which service? Ok we will slap this sticker on the front of the box then.
There is zero incentive money wise from a cost savings point to move everyone to either platform. The cost savings would be in the bargaining power for channels and streaming rights. And those would become crazy complicated since they’d still be selling most channels on two totally separate systems in different packages.
It would truly mean dish could permanently drop every sports channel there is, and make sure DIRECTV carried everyone of them forever. It’d allow them to truly offer more options. It’d make for crazy negotiations but it’d benefit them big time in the long run because they’d be able to have their cake and eat it to in the dispute category.
Nor would they stop selling either service, they’d run them both separately to the front facing customer imho. Combine backend where they could (csr for example) but leave the products separate for the customer.
I can see them using hoppers as new hardware for DIRECTV satelite service but it would still be sold either to dish customers or DIRECTV customers. Want satellite, ok…. Here the box, which service? Ok we will slap this sticker on the front of the box then.
There is zero incentive money wise from a cost savings point to move everyone to either platform. The cost savings would be in the bargaining power for channels and streaming rights. And those would become crazy complicated since they’d still be selling most channels on two totally separate systems in different packages.
It would truly mean dish could permanently drop every sports channel there is, and make sure DIRECTV carried everyone of them forever. It’d allow them to truly offer more options. It’d make for crazy negotiations but it’d benefit them big time in the long run because they’d be able to have their cake and eat it to in the dispute category.
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I wonder if they actually shopped or if dish called and said, ok, now that someone with a brain is in charge let’s talk. Likely thinking they may get a better deal if they chase it sooner rather than latter as well.
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Actually you are reversed it and do fly again common sense; like asking to prove miracles. You have no base to suggest such universality of H3' HW while having no proof of your idea.
The point is HW capability, while you're repeatedly pedaling SW/FW features, carefully carving out my points of inability the dish H3 HW to support many DTV key features.
Yes I do. My basis for believing what I believe on this subject are statements from other folks whom I deem to be more credible than you. Bye.
The reason a merged Dish/DTV would aim to consolidate their business under one brand and one technical platform is the same reason that Discovery's CFO today announced that the future Warner Bros. Discovery will merge HBO Max and Discovery+ into one service/app: to reduce operating and marketing costs. It's not as simple to do that with two DBS services as it is with two OTT SVODs; the consolidation process would certainly take longer. But it just wouldn't make sense for them to continue spending money marketing two separate DBS services or creating hardware for two separate tech platforms.
That said, there's no getting around them having to continue supporting all the existing installed hardware out in the field. And they're not going to yank away anyone's existing channel package, whether its under the DTV or Dish brand. But going forward, they'll want to sell a unified set of channel packages. As existing Dish and DTV channel carriage contracts expire, they'll negotiate new ones that cover their entire customer base. Relatively greater numbers of subs under a given contract tend to result in relatively lower carriage costs.
I think the main point of the sale, from AT&T's perspective, was just to get DTV off their books and out of their quarterly earnings calls to Wall Street. That sale, along with the subsequent Warner sale, is all about AT&T getting leaner and focused once again on their core competency: communications networks.
I do think we'll see AT&T separate out DTV billing but, as I say, it may make more sense from them to wait until a deal is struck with DISH so that they know the technical specifics of what the final billing system is going to look like. For instance, let's say that the merged company would place all accounts in the existing DISH system. DTV accounts currently exist in two separate systems: the original DTV system and the AT&T system. Why shift all those DTV accounts in the AT&T system over to the DTV system in 2022 if, come 2023, all those account will then have to be shifted over to the DISH system? Wouldn't it just make more sense to stick with the status quo for the time being?
They have already started moving accounts to directv.com from att.com. Mine, and some others were migrated back within the last week.
Account has been migrated...
back to DIRECTV from AT&T. WOOHOO! I only found out because I needed to replace a remote under the protection plan. Logged into AT&T and none of my DirecTV info was there. No billing. No receivers. No Programming. Only option was to add an AT&T service. Logged into DirecTV.com which usually...
www.dbstalk.com
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Duh!
You have no doubt following words from folks who are totally have no credibility in HW of dish and DTV IRDs, but reporting rumors from unknown source. That's fine for personal consuming, but only if you will keep it for yourself and do not propagate it in Internet.
Else, you are posting a "miracle" nonsense here. Sorry, it's not your cup of tea.
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Are you forgetting that it is AT&T's goal (and the primary purpose of the joint venture) is to liquidate DIRECTV?
To that end, they should tidy up any loose ends rather than waiting until the last minute (or pass on to the next owner) such that everything is current and accurate.
Hughes Electronics was renamed to The DIRECTV Group in 2003 when News Corp acquired it.
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Can you show me any statement or evidence anywhere their goal is to liquidate DIRECTV? Liquidate means to sell it off for parts and see it disappear.
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We will have to disagree on this one completely. The customers of the two service are at least 50% different in what they want, as one doesn’t care about sports and I’m sure the other does.
And the HBO max is a terrible comparison. That will cost minimal amount of money. No confusion for the customer. Swapping everyone to one system or the other will cause a massive amount of customers to just flat out leave the system. The vast majority of people with dish and DIRECTV are with them because they offer something the other service/s don’t offer and would see no point in staying if those options disappeared.
There is a reason so many grocery chains have multiple brands even in the same markets. Or why Walmart owns sams club…
Now I could see them merging sling and DIRECTV stream…. But even then I’m not totally convinced because they both offer very different options as well.
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Liquidate was the wrong term (my bad). The term used was "monetize". The end result is that DIRECTV will end up off of AT&T's books.
AT&T CEO John Stankey Updates Shareholders
AT&T CEO John Stankey gave an update on the company’s operational and capital allocation strategies at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference.
about.att.com
This announcement came less than a year after Stankey told the Wall Street Journal that DIRECTV was "too important" to be divested.
Minimal amount? Discovery's CFO said yesterday that the total spend for marketing and technology between HBO Max and Discovery+ is $6 billion. By combining the two into one service running on a single tech platform, they think they'll lower that cost considerably. The overall cost savings they think they'll get from merging WB and Discovery is about $3 billion.
Streaming Combo Of HBO Max And Discovery+ Will “Take A While,” CFO Affirms
Eventually, HBO Max and Discovery+ will come together as a single streaming offering, but the integration will “take a while,” CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said at an investor conference Monda…
deadline.com
God, I don't know how many times I have to type this up: Existing customers will NOT be forced to swap out their existing installed hardware or channel packages after DTV and DISH merge. They'll be grandfathered in on what they have.
What I'm talking about is having a single service going forward that is actively sold to new subscribers (as well as to existing subs who wish to make changes to their hardware and/or channel package.) Maybe that single service will be branded as DIRECTV. Maybe it will be branded as DISH. Maybe something else. My guess, for various reasons, is that it will be branded DISH. And if they continue to use the DIRECTV brand, it will be for the streaming version of the service. (In time, if not immediately, both the satellite and streaming version will offer the same set of channel packages, just as is the case between DTV satellite and DTV Stream today.)
Let's say the new service is branded as DISH and has a slightly rejiggered set of channel packages versus what DISH sells now (perhaps with RSNs available as a la carte add-ons to any base package, much like HBO and Showtime). You can be sure that if there's only one ongoing satellite TV service, it will offer all the popular channels (especially sports) already offered between the two current services. And my guess is that it will continue to use the more advanced DISH hardware: Hopper 3, Hopper Duo, and the new Hopper Plus and wireless Joey. New DISH customers would get a rooftop dish pointed at the newer DTV satellite fleet with which their new DISH hardware would be compatible.
And just as DTV has not shut down the legacy AT&T Uverse TV service, even though it hasn't been sold to new customers in two years now, the merged company wouldn't shut down the legacy DTV satellite service. Maybe your bill would change to denote that your DTV service is now run by a different company (e.g. "DIRECTV by DISH"). And eventually, over time, you might see a channel here or there dropped or added from your package. But as long as your old Genie continued to work and you were happy with your grandfathered package, they'd let you keep it. Why run off a paying customer?
Those are flawed analogies. A better analogy would be Ford Motor Company having two essentially similar brands, Ford and Mercury. It became increasingly obvious that there was no point in spending the additional money to produce slightly differently trimmed versions of Fords and brand them as Mercury. It just increased production and marketing costs. So they eventually killed the Mercury brand. Likewise, if one company owns and operates both satellite TV services, they'll only keep one of them alive as an ongoing brand that is marketed and sold. And as time goes by, they'll renew their channel carriage contracts in order to produce a single set of contracts that cover the entire customer base, whether they're under the DISH brand or the legacy grandfathered DTV brand (or on a streaming pay TV service they operate).
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The cost of conversion is not the same as the savings generated by converting to one platform.
The same would apply to satellite. Most if any of the cost savings of combining DIRECTV and DISH will be in areas that do not require customers to change to the other service. Any savings that potentially could be realized by moving customers would be weighed against the cost of moving those customers.
Time Warner Discovery may end up spending millions of dollars to save billions of dollars. That is good (and qualifies as a minimal amount of money). Moving all DISH customers to DIRECTV or vice versa could be billions of dollars to save millions of dollars. Not a good ratio. Spending millions to save billions is a good idea. Spending billions to save millions is not.
Definitely not immediately. Carriage contracts prevent that. Companies that refused to allow DIRECTV to carry their content are not going to allow content to be added to DIRECTV leveraging DISH contracts. Companies that refused to allow DISH to carry their content are not going to allow content to be added to DISH leveraging DIRECTV contracts. The combined company does not have the privilege of picking and choosing which contract serves them best and shifting all of their customers over to that contract.
As for "eventually" look for how long it took other companies to eliminate one line in favor of another. Especially in industries where there is brand loyalty it is not good to kill off a well loved brand in favor of another.
Ford/Lincoln/Mercury and Dodge/Chrysler/Plymouth. Often rolling the cars off of the same assembly lines with very minor differences. Perhaps the cheaper trimmed model would be one brand and the more expensive model another brand instead of referring to trim models by packages (SE, SXT, etc). How long did it take for either group to kill off a brand?
SiriusXM would be a better example ... still package differences 14 years after the merger. They have some radios that can serve channels from both platforms but the merged company is relying on non-satellite technology for reaching many of their customers. There is speculation that one platform may be shut down later this decade ... 20 years after the merger? That "eventually" would require a critical mass of subscribers to leave one platform for the other. (Merging lineups was easier for SiriusXM since they produced most of their content.)
No, not "immediately".
Rather than responding to straw man arguments that I didn't make, maybe read what I actually posted (and even bothered to put in bold)?
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Thank you for not wasting another 10,000 words trying to wear out people who disagree with you by shouting them down.
If you feel led to reread my post you will see that I read yours and responded kindly, My response was to the thread, which included some discussion you apparently overlooked.
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