Four new Dish Network channels are up!

[gparris]

I'm just surprised that Directv has "let itself go" this far vs. Dishnetwork with its many more HD channel offerings as of late.

As one who had Directv for many years in the past, I am surprised that Directv has HD-Lite, No MPEG4 HD DVR, few HD national channels offerings and so on.

As for the future, maybe Dishnetwork will be the lessor, but for now, I am recommending Dishnetwork to those who want more HD and can get HD OTA.

Mark Strube is an example of a satisfied HD subscriber (with Dishnetork) who will probably never go over to Directv whether it changes for the better or not.

[Matt Heebner]

All along they have said when the new birds are up the new channels everything else will be activated.

How long are you willing to wait on the continual promise of "better offerings" though

However, in my business I have many "plans of action" that I have provided customers. If you think that projects ALWAYS go according to "plan" I've got some swamp land in Arizona available.

So if you continually push out due dates, and continually break deadlines, your customers are fine with that ? Especially if your competition is putting out the product you keep delaying ?

Sorry but Directv is all talk and no action. By 2007 it's possible that everyone else will have left Direct in the dust. I too have been a long time Directv customer...1997 to be exact...back in the days of Directv and USSB and $1000 two room installs but it seems lately that Directv has done nothing.... NOTHING to further the HD plan. Where or where is the MPEG4 DVR...delayed month after month. Oh wait it will be out sometime in August. Well it is now the middle of August and there is no concrete evidence that a NON-TIVO HD DVR even exists yet....maybe they just have to iron out the bugs for the next  6-8 months first.

HD-Lite...dont even get me started on that.  What kinda crappola is that ?? And I definitely dont want to hear about how it doesn't matter that its 1280x1080 (or what ever it is this particular day) at a good bit-rate. I pay for true HD and dammit I WANT HD !!!!  

Maybe Directv will have some serious offerings in the next 1.5 to 2 years from now but seriously I will not be waiting for the around for it. Directv is too little now...and way too late later. I have a lot of money invested in Directv equipment-wise so I am not that quick to pull the trigger on changing providers....and TWC doesnt seem any better but DISH is out kick arse in the HD lineup. Directv seems pretty sad compared to it.


 I am not interested in getting into a 'net arguement about the merits if any particular provider....I have had the patience to stick with Directv this long through all the upgrades and bird launches...but my patience is wearing very thin......and I'll be damned if I am going to wait another year or two for Directv's plans to come to light.

Matt


As an addd on....has anyone heard or knows about FIOS or whatever it is called here in Milwaukee ??

Add on number 2....Directv wont even release the super-duper ultra-secret 6.3 rev upgrade for the HR10-250 that has been hinted at on the Tivo forums for oh...about 2 months now.  I've been with Directv for a long time now but they have soooo much working against them right now.... :bang:

[kevbeck122]

FIOS is not coming here.. AT&T U-Verse will be here eventually.  Their HD lineup is terrible.. maybe even non-existent where it's available now.

[Mark Strube]

I'd still gladly take the net access portion of it.

EDIT: Is this as fast as AT&T's version of "fios" is going to get? It's basically the speed I have now with Road Runner/EarthLink Cable.... with a bit more upstream.

Take a look... http://www.sbc.com/gen/u-verse?pid=7880&cdvn=custom

[kevbeck122]

I did a little more reading.. sounds like users are capped at 25mb down and 3mb up for everything (tv and internet).  The max bandwidth that they can do is 50-100mb downstream from what I could see.  So it is possible they may up the internet sometime in the future.

HD isn't offered yet because their boxes aren't HD capable.. but they are introducing a Motorola HD DVR and a regular HD box in the next few months.  All of the regular boxes will have DVR functions and can store on the DVR.. so only one DVR will be necessary for the home.  Each house now has a 4 TV stream limit.. so you can record up to 4 shows at a time.  The boxes use cat5 instead of coax, but there are ethernet over coax adapters.  Sounds like all the channels are H.264 MPEG4.  I got this info from http://www.uverseusers.com/ so it may or may not be accurate.  I think someone said the HD offerings would be comparable to Dish.. but nobody knows for sure because AT&T is tightlipped.

[Talos4]

Matt, this is not a rant against you personally, please don't assume that it is. Just a continuation of an overall debate in the SAT TV community.

So if you continually push out due dates, and continually break deadlines, your customers are fine with that ? Especially if your competition is putting out the product you keep delaying ?

We are not continually pushing dates out and breaking due dates.  The point I'm trying to make is that in many trades and business's hard deadlines cannot always be kept.

I'll say it again, if my material supplier has a delay how is it my fault?   I just had a one this past week,

My supplier was to provide a custom mixed product for my customer.  I received a target date for delivery which in turn allowed me to set a start date.   Well..

My supplier's lab didn't approve the the final product prior to shipping and the mix "recipe" had to  be  re-engineered and produced.  This threw everything out of whack and resulted in a 2 week delay.  

Now should I have said "that's OK, send it anyway because I'm expected on the job on this date"  Not hardly.  My customer would have received an inferior product. Then who would be happy.  

Instead I contacted my customer and explained the situation and he was OK with the situation, he wasn't entirely happy and quite frankly niether was I, both of our schedules were screwed up but you have to keep moving forward.    

If you were my customer and found yourself in this exact situation would you:

(A) Accept the situation and move forward
(B) Fire me and start the bidding process over/ exclude me and start over with a new contractor?
(C) Proceed to blame me and tell me to get the job done no matter what it takes and accepting the inferior product? and then calling me complaining when the inferior product does not perform as specified? and then asking me "What are you going to do about it???"  ( when the customer insisted on accepting the inferior product!!!)


BTW, I've had all three of the above happen at one time or another.  


How much different is that from the great D* vs E* debate.

In my business our competitors all offer the same basic products and services as we do. If one our competitors starts offering the "latest and greatest" of products and we don't guess what, we get left behind for a while.

It takes time to gear up to a new product line. ( getting manufactures approval, Training, time in the field working out installation bugs etc)   So that means our competition has a leg up on us and we might lose a few customers.  It's business that's how it works.

[Mark Strube]

I'd like to note that DISH has gone back to mpeg2 for StarzHD. It's rather low-bitrate @ 1440x1080, but still looks a lot better than when they were using the inferior 1st generation mpeg4 encoders.

Also, HDNet and HDNet Movies has gone down to 1440x1080 hanging around 10-14mbps (original is 1920x1080 @ 18mbps). This is because they put the NFL-HD free preview (for people with older HD boxes) on the same transponder. Hopefully they'll restore the HDNet's to full resolution and bitrate when this preview is over.

[AndrewP]

I'd like to note that DISH has gone back to mpeg2 for StarzHD. It's rather low-bitrate @ 1440x1080, but still looks a lot better than when they were using the inferior 1st generation mpeg4 encoders.

Also, HDNet and HDNet Movies has gone down to 1440x1080 hanging around 10-14mbps (original is 1920x1080 @ 18mbps). This is because they put the NFL-HD free preview (for people with older HD boxes) on the same transponder. Hopefully they'll restore the HDNet's to full resolution and bitrate when this preview is over.

I watch StarzHD from 61.5 Dish and I think it is in MPEG4, but it looks better then when they started it. But still fast motions kind of painful to watch.

[Mark Strube]

I watch StarzHD from 61.5 Dish and I think it is in MPEG4, but it looks better then when they started it. But still fast motions kind of painful to watch.

61.5 used to be in MPEG2 around 8mbps... 129 used to be MPEG4 around 15mbps. They've now switched it, so 61.5 has the MPEG4 and 129 has the MPEG2. The MPEG2 definitely looks much better than the MPEG4 - even though it's lower bitrate which causes artifacting in moderate to high motion, there's loads more small object detail and the picture is now naturally smooth. (the MPEG4 had very fine 'jaggies' in the picture all the time, on top of the horrible smearing and motion blur)