Looking into the Bell's future through dishnetwork

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I was seeing what may come to Canada by looking at dishnetwork. And read the stats on the HD-DVR 942 which is of course already here as the 9200.
but I couldn't figure out what this ment?

DISH CommTM Technology
 
I believe it is a 9-day guide!

The 1.75 day guide EV offers is pathetic. If it was a full 2-day guide it would be a lot more useful in terms of setting up / verifying the programming for the next day or two, but as-is, may as well only give a day.

An extended (5, 7, or 9 day) guide is definitely something I'd love to see and can't understand why they don't provide it. I wonder if the units are ready to handle it (could they really be dumb enough to disable it in the firmware) and it may just be a matter of sending the info to the reciever and they aren't currenly doing it.

Maybe there needs to be a sticky thread on (realistic) features we need to lobby EV to work on providing (other than the obvious "fix their customer support issues")?
 
It means what it say's, only one receiver will need to be conected to a phone line. They will all be able to communicate through a home's AC wiring.
 
While looking over the fence is a reasonable guide, Bev is their own company and works on their own timeline.
For example, they are several models of DN receivers that had no equivalent in Canada and in some models, popular s/w features available on U.S. models were removed.

While it might be considered a great deal that Bev has access to a large team of h/w and s/w engineers, history has shown that sometimes things don't always go as planned.
There has been some product so disastrous that they were killed off within 1 year.
Imagine be orphaned with a $1200 HD PVR.
Thankfully, no Canadians were injured in this experiment.
Also witness several product lines were the s/w got progressively worse, should it get better?

Why do providers lock into a single technology source?
In the early DirecTV days, you could choose amongst RCA, Toshiba, Hughes, Sony and others.
They all were compatible with the transmission signal and conditional access, yet each offered their own experience in user interface and product features.

Since millions of FTA receivers have proven their apparent working compatibility with Bev signals and many have amazing features, why hasn't this been leveraged by Bev and remove the distraction of having to deal with h/w technical issues and push that back onto the dealers/installers?
Imagine their advancement in the market if unencumbered by such baggage.
Particularly in light of the less than stellar job they do in that area.

If I want to watch TV, I can go to the store and choose any brand/model I want, we need something similar in the television set top market as well.

There were be more rapid advancement of products and innovative feature if the marketplace had some competition.

Is the future bright for Bev, that's a big question given the current conditions, but being handcuffed to Echostar technology and possibly the associated un-secure Nagra encryption will put Canadians at a disadvantage for some time to come.
 
I don't follow the U.S. side too closely, but wasn't there an article about the U.S. cables companies having to decouple the hardware and encryption recently so that that 3rd party hardware could be used?

It would be great (assuming I recall the article correctly) if some day this applied to satellite services as well, and then of course applied here in Canada as well. A little (legit) competition in the hardware market would put pressure on EV (and *C) to fix software issues and provide features that people actually want.
 
Who actually manufactures it doesn't matter, it is who markets the hardware to the consumer.

FWIW, JVC at least used to manufacture Echostar receivers, and recently I think RCA did some also.


But they will try (sometimes rightfully) to pass the buck onto the other guy.


Yes, DVB can be standard for pay receivers. The horse is long out of the barn on that though on that. If they got on board with that notion at the beginning, or as late as the 1995/6/7 timeframe, it might be doable.

Most of the FTA receivers would have to be essentially scrapped, as they would be unsuitable for pay service (a lot of them cheap Chinese copies of better receivers), or not worth reworking to be useable, so they don't count.



That is the way it used to work.

The providers found it more popular with consumers to provide at or below cost receivers and even cheaper/easier to contract manufacture them, rather than sell a manufacturers receiver, then have the customers buy the receivers.
 
Good points, but I imagine the mind to trying to keep the single proprietary hardware source is something along the lines of:
- A single source is more secure than an open or licensed standard (Obviously that isn't true)
- It makes support easier. Imagine if CSRs had to keep up with a dozen different receiver models from 4-5 different manufaacturers?
 
If it were me, I'd do no more Nagra, no more ST chips in the IRDs. DN would be on their own.
I'd go with a Motorola DCII based system, on the condition that our IRDs and SCs could be cross authorised.

Or use some soft-CAM system suitqable for the ST5518, that has not yet been hacked, such as the NDS P5.


If DTV/DN merged, I'd think they'd go to the more popular DTV platform. BEV might be given that option, ot told to find someone else.

Their legit DTH would be too much to to give up, even if the CRTC would let them.



No. Starchoice is. Mostly becasue I like their hardware. It is less annoying to use IMO. I'd get cable if I could.
 
All the PVR's should have the option to "give up" a small amount of Hard Drive space for the extended Guide, that would be a great improvement, IMHO.

I love that Bell Express Vu even borrow the advertising slogans from Dish, the last one from Dish was "Better Tv for All" Express Vu must have spent a fortune to come up with "Way Better TV", wow impressive.

Nimiq 1
 
Control and costs.
Control, in that they have only one or two contract manufacturers in line, and can decide what features to include or not, and work with the manufacturer to keep costs down.

Costs, in that they have to develop firmware for fewer units, as well as support them.

And it is easier to offer promotions on your receivers, or at least to price as you want, usuallt at or below cost.


Actually, when DirecTV started, you could only get RCA receivers. The deal was RCA had to sell something like one million receivers before anybody else could sell them, becasue they developed the home receiver platform.

Becasue those receivers are being used to steal their service. That is the primary reason that people have them. There is no way they can control them.
 
BEV purchases the equipment from Dish/Echostar no differently than ALL the cable companies do, as well as SC. There is no silver platter, it's business.



As a customer, what do I care you writes the software? As long as it works well and I like it. I don't care if BEV's only involvement is taping up the boxes!



That's silly. The satellite business is CANADA is relatively tiny by comparison to the states. Neither satellite provider is in any position to be going alone. Unfortunately SC has found themselves in exactly that position.



According to most of the posts here at DHC, Canadians want more (all) American programming, TIVO, HBO, etc.



Probably not, but if the service is good for 13 million Americans, it's likely good for us too. I love my 9200 PVR and have no doubt that has everything to do with Echostar, not BEV.

-Mike
 
Software for Evu receivers is not just a copy of the Dish software. It has to be rewritten to provide everything in English and French.
 
The key to this was the open cable standard. There is no equivalent on the Satellite side.
 
i think dishnetwork has a 7 day program guide
that would be a nice feature for bell to add......
im not holding my breath though
activating the USB on the 9200 would be nice too.....
anyone listening bell????:confused:
 
They still don't need to be in the hardware business, they are TV providers!


Look at the NEW DirectTV model, they design a reference platform and have other manufactures build it to that spec.
I'm sure RCA, Phillips, JVC and others are all in on it, we just don't see their brand anymore.

No reason this shouldn't happen either, a common spec.
As for support and control and costs, the marketplace takes care of that.
We don't call the utility company when the toaster acts up, nor the telco when we plug in a new dollar store phone.

With standards, this should be ubiquitous and support is handled by dealers.
The amount of DVB receivers/viewers in N.A. alone should permit a spec, similar to NTSC or ATSC for acceptance that manufactures build to in order to sell their boxes to 10's of millions of subs.

As for promos, you can always make a rebate deal with some of the players, buy any unit from now till ... and send in your receipt for 6 months of free programming or the like.
 
Cable companies have the ability to switch over one town at a time or even one neighborhood at a time. If you go to a new common platform for the satellite stream you are going to have to get every one to convert at once. I'm not seeing it, unless it could all be handled via firmware. Of course while every one is upgrading to some version of PSK and MPEG4 would be a good time to roll it out.
 
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