XStreamHD Lives
We were wondering what ever happened to XStreamHD the 1080p satellite service which was introduced last year. The question was answered yesterday when the folks from XStreamHD announced that they have successfully tested its unique transport stream on the AMC-16 satellite.
This unique transport system will allow XStreamHD to deliver full HD movies, music and games to subscriber’s homes in the United States.
"By unlocking existing FSS (Fixed Satellite Service) capacity, our service delivers Full HD (1080p) content to homes, independent of Internet or cable congestion," said George Gonzalez, founder and CEO of XStreamHD. "Our advanced technology enables consumers to experience a new level of quality, convenience and service never before offered."
Last year at CES XStreamHD the idea of XStreamHD was announced, promising full 1080p video and also DTS Master Audio. However since the announcement of the technology not much has been heard from XStreamHD until today.
I am looking forward to stopping by their booth at CES and seeing what they are cooking up for 2009.
SES Discontinues IP Service
Yesterday SES Americom announced that it will shut down its IP Prime service. IP Prime delivered IPTV encapsulated programming to small telecom operators. However while they had deals with 70 small telecom operators they only had a subscriber base of less than 10,000 customers.
IP Prime will discontinue its service by July 31st of 2009.
One can only wonder how this announcement might affect Echostar and its new ViP-TV television service which was going after the same market at SES Americom’s IP Prime service. While there has been some talk about Echostars ViP-TV service I am not sure if it even launched yet. A check to Echostarviptv.com shows nothing new since October of 2007.
U-verse Hits 1 Million Subs
Congrats go out to AT&T who today announced that they have reached the 1 million subscriber milestone. Since being deployed AT&T’s U-verse now reaches 79 markets across 16 states.
And while AT&T has reached it’s one million customer milestone by the end of the year it appears that they will miss another major milestone which they planned for this year. That milestone was the rolling out of pair bonding which was supposed to bring up to 40Mbps to the customers homes. This pair bonding would allow for U-verse to allow HD on more than two televisions in your house at the same time, plus would allow for U-verse to offer higher data speeds for customer’s internet service.
I am told that pair bonding is now pushed back until 2009 and testing of pair bonding technologies has not gone well so far. However knowing some of the folks from AT&T who make it work, I have no doubt that they will get it to work.
