Direct TV HD channel capacity ?

[Matt Heebner]

I think both have their place and both have their pro's and con's.
I have been deciding myself whether to switch from Directv to TWC....the HD PVR really, REALLY holds sway over me. But I figure that I have been pretty happy with the way Directv has approached the whole HD programming, and it seems they are focused on the future with 7S's launch.
However.....I really, really want a HD DVR, and NOT have it be $1000 now, nor $500 next year. Thats one of the "con's" of Directv. I will probably stay with them to see how 7S pans out, and make my decision after my new 12 mo. commitment for a $99 HD STB is up.....

(Of course I could always sell it, pay off the pro-rated bill, and get into whomever has the best package available! :p)

Matt

[sp44again]

gparris, you are definitely in the minority so I don't why you say anything about price differences. I don't know anybody that has 2 HDTV's if even 1. As far as being the norm in the future for having more than 1 HDTV in the house, that's in the distant future not the near. Lot's of things could change by then. All I hear is people complaining about how high cable bills are. I still can't believe people overlook in every thread that Directv has all digital channels and TWC does not! The main reason I don't have TWC. If you have a big HDTV analog looks like crap! The other point that people don't bring up is that the boxes that you buy for Directv are much better than the rentals from TWC. Yes you are buying a box for $100, but it's better and the lady at TWC doesn't know you by your first name from returning the boxes monthly. I know, I went through that.

[btbowen1]

I recently switched over to directv from TWC, I have a tivo box and two other recievers for $99 and an open box E86 hd box at Bestbuy for $250. As far as picture quality goes, to tell you the truth I think they're about even now. Directv channels such as ESPN looks just as compressed as TWC does. But your right, Directv recievers are higher quality than TWC's, especially the Tivo box compared to the DVR. I kinda miss the movie rating system that was on TWC's guide which is not on directv's guide. HD material looks equally as good on both but it is nice to have ESPN hd . I also have HBO free for three months, some people say that TWC have the advantage of having more HBO channels, I dunno because I don't miss them, I was a subscriber of HBO on TWC and it just seemed like those channels would play the same movies just at different times each month. I think I'm going to what a while before I get the HD tivo box, too expensive and to me the sd tivo box is fine. I also switched over to DSL from roadrunner. Its nice to have $90 monthly bill for sat. and internet now instead of $143 with TWC.

Brian

[mhz40]

Originally posted by borghe
[clip]but enough bickering.. we always seem to go round this way...

peace [/clip]

Hey, discussion is a good thing... I don't consider much of what goes on here as bickering... simply discussion.
You did point out another huge difference though... the franchise fee.  This is almost a universal requirement, which goes to each customers local government.  Most likely it goes into the general fund, reducing what you would normally pay in city property taxes.  Sometimes, the fee goes where it was originally intended... to fund the city's ability to program their government access channel.
From my understanding, the part about requiring service to schools etc... is not so universal in existing franchises anymore; so yes in many cases it is 'out of the goodness of the companies heart.'  It certainly dosen't pertain to broadband, which was invented/deployed years after many franchise agreements were signed.
The prices I quoted and compared against are right on DirectTV's & Time Warner's web sites while comparing similar packages, not comparing locals on one and no locals on another.
I'm happy to give up SD versions of 18, 24, 36 & 55 for 4, 6, 10 & 12 HD.  Like the dish folks with the HD issues, if I wanted those SD feeds so badly, I can get them off-air.

Enjoy the weekend all, it's gonna be a barn-burner outside!

MHz40

[borghe]

however, to be realistic you do in fact have to compare bill vs. bill, not package cost vs package cost.. that is why I mentioned the franchise fee, and that is why it would seemingly only make sense to not get the local channels for directv if you have a box that can tune them in over the air and add them into the program guide. the costs all add up, or in some cases, don't..

as for the broadband thing... well, MPS is already on it's own government funded network. All of the schools are networked back to the administration buildings and the admin buildings are out through a big fat dedicated connection.. there may be some smaller broadband cable offerings here and there, but for the most part they are all dedicated connections over typicval data lines. And this is fact as one of my good buds is an admin at the admin building on vliet. like I said, I don't know how much broadband they are using over cable vs. dedicated over the wisconsin education network (k12.wi.us)

and what I was referring to is I thought I remember reading a bunch of info around 5-10 years ago talking about how the franchise fee and virtually free government-wide service by the cable companies were basically ways of paying the cities back in return for digging most of it up to lay cable lines. I could be wrong as it was a while ago that I would have read this, but comparted to the fees other ultilities pay to the local governments on an annual basis, I would hardly say cable companies are doing this out of the "goodness" of their heart.

gparris, while I do understand what you are saying about 2HD sets, I think it will still be a few years before that is the norm. On that note, by the time it is the norm a two room HD install will probably be free from DirecTV and HD Tivos will be $99 a pop.. No I don't live in some wonderful fantasy land, but the fact of the matter is that 1 HDTV in a house isn't even the norm yet, let alone 2. By the time HD sets outsell SD sets (total annual number, not some market segment such as large screen which is only a fraction of total television sales) DirecTV will be there with free or nearly free products for the consumer also. Unfortunately for the (relatively at this point) early adopters the facts remain as you state.. Even now to stick two HD boxes in your house as a good DirecTV customer it will still cost you $200. And as a Joe on the street it will likely run you closer to $400-800 depending on deals. But you can already see those prices going down, because just a year ago that same thing would have cost $1000 no matter who you were, and two years ago closer to $1200. That's my basis for saying that by the time your setup is the norm, or even 1 HDTV as the norm, DirecTV will be able to compete just fine with cable on hardware, just like they are able to right now on SD hardware.

[mhz40]

Originally posted by borghe
as for the broadband thing... well, MPS is already on it's own government funded network.

It's nice to see Milwaukee schools have the money to allocate to this.  Fact is, TW reaches many more school districts than just Milwaukee...most of which can not fully fund a full-time librarian let alone afford T1 lines for the internet.

Originally posted by borghe

and what I was referring to is I thought I remember reading a bunch of info around 5-10 years ago talking about how the franchise fee and virtually free government-wide service by the cable companies were basically ways of paying the cities back in return for digging most of it up to lay cable lines.

The franchise fee has nothing to do with 'digging up' a city.  In all cases (other than drops to the house), cable followed existing utility right-of-ways.  At that time, consumers were literally chasing construction crews and cable trucks around trying to get an answer to 'when will it be available at my house?'  So I don't think the build-out was very devastating to any given community.
The original franchises of lore have virtually all expired.  New ones may or may not include the same language.  If the new agreements have the same wording to include free service to schools, it's because the cable company was obviously willing to continue the policy.  I guess by some people's definition that would make it 'not in the goodness of their hearts'.  Others would disagree, seeing as they could simply not have agreed to the provision in the new franchise agreements.
Whatever uneven parallels some draw between cable & satellite, the fact is cable gives back much more to the general area and state in terms of jobs, taxes (business, property etc...), franchise fees to local governments and free service to local schools & governments than satellite.  I can't imagine that the items mentioned are not part of the driving factor in pricing differences between the two distribution companies.  On the consumer level, both are price competitive, as you mentioned.  However in some cases, cable offers more (channels of HBO in their HBO package for example).
Yes, in the not so distant past, cable was not as reliable as one would like.  Fact is, most of the service interruptions were power related--- car/pole accidents, falling trees in thunderstorms etc...  However the fiber technology deployed eliminates the long string of active devices needed to provide service to a given area.
Now cable & satellite can compete head-to-head and it's up to each household to take all of that in and make a decision on what to do with their entertainment dollar.

Getting back the bandwidth topic, I don't think either format (satellite or cable) will have an unmanageable problem with bandwidth, however I think cable could increase and/or manage existing bandwidth cheaper than satellite.  Satellite companies must compress data onto existing birds or launch new satellites at a higher incremental cost and fixed amount of bandwidth.  (No satellite company is going to launch a new satellite with only 1-3 channel capacity)  Cable on the other hand has more options available... a new channel here & there, more VOD technology deployment etc...

MHz40