It's Not Just Dish

A lot of the news over the last few weeks has been about Dish Network’s public disputes with some broadcasters over retransmission consent.  And if you have been watching it almost looks like Dish Network is the only company which has these types of fights, but they are not.

Since Dish Network serves then entire country their programming disputers make the headlines, but if you’re a smaller company such as Charter Communications such skirmishes don’t seem to garner the same attention.

Charter Communications is in a battle with Belo Corps. stations in St. Louis, MO, Norfolk, VA and Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX.  And Charter is threatening to pull these local channels from their customers on December 31^st.

Even DirecTV is not immune from these fights, while not as public with its fights it appears that DirecTV will be pulling the plug on Hampton Roads, VA channel WSKY television on January 1^st.

WSKY has posted an appeal to their viewers to contact DirecTV to keep WSKY on DirecTV.

Last night Dish Network had a special “Charlie Chat” with Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen.  The chat was only viewable by those customers who lost the locals from Fisher Communications.  On the chat Ergen explained Dish Networks stand on the situation and also told customers that they would receive $1 off their bill until the stations are returned plus Dish is giving those customers Hallmark Movie Channel for free for the length of the dispute.  This one looks like it could last a long time.

So as we have seen for programming disputes Dish Network is not alone, and I suspect these are not the last fights we will hear about by the end o f the year.  Tis the season for programming disputes I guess.

Echostar Terrestrial?

Echostar has started shipping its award winning DTVPal DVR to customers last week.  And customers opening the boxes are finding an unexpected surprise and Echostar Smart Card.

The DTVPal software is upgradable by plugging your DTVPal DVR into an Ethernet connection to the internet. It is expected that in the future owners of these receivers will be able to enjoy video on demand and pay per view movies over the internet.  And that might explain why the security smart card.

However in diving deeper into things I got a new application on my iPhone the other night called i.TV.  Now iTV is a program which displaying your television program guide on your iPhone. In setting up this program it asked me to select a television provider for my area.  It listed my local cable company, Uverse, DirecTV, Dish Network and one very interesting service that peaked my curiosity, on called “EchoStar Terrestrial Digital Set-Top.”

I chose this one as my program provider and was given a list of 7 cable channels which can apparently be received on a Echostar Terrestrial Digital Set-top box (aka the DTVPal DVR.)  The channels in the lineup are as follows:

USA Network – Lifetime – History Channel – ESPN – Disney Channel – Discovery Channel – Fox News Channel.

So now the question is what exactly is this?  Is this a new service that is going to be announced at CES? Where will these channels be broadcast and who will broadcast them?  Of course this would explain why the new DTVPal receivers come with a smart card included with the receiver.

It’s just something to make you go hmmmm….

Getting Ready for CES

We are getting ready for the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and a few things I am looking forward to seeing include the new hardware offerings from Echostar and Sling Media plus a demo of AT&T’s upcoming CruiseCast service which is a new mobile television platform.

If you are from a Satellite or Home Theater company and have a product you think my readers would enjoy hearing about please email me at scott.ces@satelliteguys.us.  While I won’t be able to meet with everyone I will try my best to bring my readers the most unique and innovative products.

Happy Holidays!

To all my readers I would like to take a moment to wish you all happy Holidays!  Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah or just Holiday wishes to you no matter what you celebrate!