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EchoStar Rolls External Hard Drives for DVRs
August 8, 2007
After a slow quiet summer, things are about to pick up for both satellite TV companies.
Dish Network will start rolling out its long awaited “USB External Storage” solution for its ViP622 MPEG4 High Definition DVR on Thursday. This USB External Storage solution will allow Dish Network customers to hook up an external USB hard drive to their ViP622 receiver and save content from their receiver to the external hard drive for later viewing. Dish Network will be charging a one-time $39.99 enabling fee for the service, and with the software going out on the 9th, customers will not be able to subscribe to this service until Aug. 15.(So those folks who have been waiting for this feature will need to wait just a little longer.)
Also with the scheduled Aug. 9 ViP622 software update, Dish Network will be turning on a new feature which will allow the satellite receiver to “phone home” via the Internet using an ethernet connection. This means a phone line would no longer be required to be hooked to the 622 to phone home and report PPV purchases. The enabling of the VIP622’s ethernet port is the first step as Dish Network is getting ready to launch their new DishONLINE Video On Demand service which is scheduled for this September.
(Update: August 9th 4:00PM - When Dish Network said this software was slowly going to roll out, they meant it! So far it appears that this update has only been sent out to a few hundred receviers. It has not be mass released at this time)
The DirecTV 10 satellite which was launched July 6 from the Baikonum Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, and will soon be in its test orbit for full testing, when testing is complete the new bird will be moved over to its new home at 102.8 degrees and will allow DirecTV to make good on its promise to deliver more HDTV and will also be used to help DirecTV expand it's international channel offerings. It is expected that this new bird will be in full operation on or around September 15th.
XM Satellite Radio customers woke up Sunday morning to find that the music channels on XM sound a lot better. XM has been working with its partner Neural Audio for over a year to upgrade their audio processors. These upgraded processors give XM's seventy plus music channels a fuller and richer sound. The feedback online has been largely positive by XM customers.
Posted by Scott Greczkowski on August 8, 2007 | Comments (27)
