NFL Thoughts / New Sirius XM Equipment

After having a few days to digest it, the addition of this channel could be a game changer for Dish Network. I know many people who subscribe to DirecTV just for the NFL Sunday Ticket package, and these folks normally watch the local NFL game but use the Sunday Ticket package to check the scores on the other games in progress. With the new NFL RedZone channel these folks can now save themselves over $300 a year as they no longer need the Sunday Ticket package for this live football coverage.

Sure some folks do watch many of the out of market games, but many don’t. And for those folks Dish Network might now be the better option for them.

Granted Dish Network still has a long way to go to improving their total sports coverage, as they are missing some essential sports channels such as the Yes Network and they also fail to offer most regional sports networks 24/7 in high definition. But for some sports fans this one channel may make the difference for them in which satellite provider they will choose.

Sirius XM Introduces New Radios

Today Sirius XM introduced some new equipment, which will be available to consumers just in time for the holiday selling season.

One of the worst kept secrets in recent memory was announced today by Sirius XM, that secret being the introduction of the new XM SkyDock. The XM SkyDock turns your iPhone or iPod Touch into a satellite radio. While it sounded exciting all that it really is, is a glorified charger and a FM modulator. Sure the dock has a built in XM satellite tuner in it, but with the cost of $119 plus another $299 for the iPhone you could buy 3 or 4 real XM radios for your car and have better performance and a dedicated XM Radio.

One of the issues I have with the XM SkyDock is that the satellite radio tuner is built in the cradle, this cradle requires its own subscription to XM’s satellite radio service. The issue is if you want a cradle for your second car, or desk at your office it will require another subscription to the XM Satellite service. So ultimately you could be paying 2 or 3 times to listen to the same programming on one iPhone or iPod. It would have been better to built in an add on radio technology in the iPhone so that you could take your iPhone and use it in any compatible cradle and enjoy your programming.

Another issue with the SkyDock is its only an iPhone player, It appears (and someone please correct me if I am wrong) is that you cant use it to listen to things like Slacker, AOL Radio, any music on your iPhone or any other audio application on your iPhone through the SkyDock cradle.

To listen to music or podcasts on your iPhone you will need to use something else to get the audio from your iPhone onto your car stereo.

Plus it ties up your iPhone, when you get a phone call if you don’t have a bluetooth headset you will need to pop out the phone from the cradle while your driving to answer the phone. I can see this product being a safety hazard. Sirius XM should have made it so that the cradle can act as a speakerphone when a call comes in the customer can answer and the callers voice will be heard on the cards sound system.

The XM SkyDock could have been an amazing product, but it seems as though this first version was not thought out well. With the features I mentioned above this could have been a must have product. While some may enjoy it I think its better, easier and cheaper just to buy a real XM Radio, there is no reason to try to pretend to make your iPhone into a satellite radio.

Another disappointment is the new TTR1 Sirius Table Top Radio, while its attractive it only does one thing and that is it tunes into Sirius’s Internet Radio service.

It seems like Sirius XM forgets that Sirius and XM are one company now, the new table top radio does not receive XM’s internet radio broadcasts, only Sirius’s. Now does the TTR1 allow you to listen to other Internet radio streams, you are locked into just Sirius.

For $149 there are other Internet radio devices that not only let you listen to Sirius via the internet, but also lets you access many of the other internet radio services found online.

Other products were announced as well but again Sirius XM split the products so that they only work with Sirius or XM, nothing that can do both. If they are one company now then they should start acting like it.

Most disappointingly was that there was no new programming announcements, I was really hoping to hear something from Sirius XM that said they were listening to the subscribers suggestions and complaints. New radios are cool, but they are no good if they don’t have good programming to listen to. Any kind of programming announcement would have been great.

More Bad News for Tivo

As I was writing this column I was informed of some news, which I can imagine don’t have the folks at Tivo too happy.

Tivo’s request to vacate Echostar’s re-examination of Tivo’s Patent was dismissed by the US PTO.

In a statement received by Echostar & Dish Network they said “We are pleased the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) dismissed Tivo’s petition to vacate EchoStar’s re-examination of Tivo’s patent. In the decision, the Director of the Central Re-examination Unit of the PTO specifically found that ‘the references of record may be used to find that a substantial new question of patentability is present, [and] the decision of the [PTO] examiner has not been shown to be in error’ in granting EchoStar’s re-examination petition. The PTO’s decision clears the way for the re-examination to continue, which we believe will result in a Final Office Action invalidating the software claims of Tivo’s patent. These software claims are the very same claims that EchoStar was found to have infringed in the contempt ruling now pending on appeal.”

Not good news for Tivo, but this one is still far from being over.