perfidy

For the technology minded...a few weeks ago I had a hi-def satellite system installed at my house (Voom). A few days ago Voom's satellite was sold to EchoStar and the entire service is in a state of flux. It is possible that they will stop transmitting. Good thing I didn't pay for the equipment! In any case, here are a few thoughts...getting HD TV these days is a total pain in the ass, and Voom is the best thing out there at the moment. I hope the service survives in one form or another.
EchoStar knows the limitations of their current sat with respect to HD...they want to achieve rapid leadership in HD, ahead of DirecTV.

By buying the Voom satellite and uplink center, they have a turnkey HD broadcast system, with just about all of the kinks worked out, good and cheap STBs from a well-known provider, a DVR around the corner, and a starting subscriber base of 26,000.

Marketing goes to work selling an all-new EchoStar HD+ service. Yes, if you're an existing EchoStar customer you'll need a new dish, but EchoStar is locking in that customer at higher rates (presumably) over a long term. For existing EchoStar HD customers, bite the bullet and pay for the new install, for them. They'll be eternally grateful. Give them free upgraded HD programming for 3 months, then back to their original subscription. They'll call and buy the upgraded package, and it's one year to payback on the free install.

An upgrading current EchoStar customer keeps everything they have now in terms of channel but now is receiving unbeatable HD capability. EchoStar trashes the Voom originals and condenses the content down to five or six really good HD channels (Rave, Rush, Equator), once again to provide advantage of DirecTV. They can possibly use the spot transmission support to do locals in key markets, and rely on the STB's OTA tuner everywhere else. Remove the SD/HD doubling that Voom inexplicably does and make use of the bandwidth for key locals.

What's not to like about this plan? Ink an agreement with Motorola to ramp up STB (set top box) production, advertise like crazy (starting in a few months) to your own subscriber base, upselling to the new service.

Your turnkey HD operation can include significant parts of the current Voom technical staff for even faster startup time. Get the HD DVR support off and running, fast, and find a way to make it cost half of what D*'s does...then watch the new subscriptions roll in...

Where's the flaw?

EchoStar didn't buy Voom's programming, but Voom's own programming is fairly poor, with a couple of notable exceptions. EchoStar already has contracts with many of the pay channels that it could extend to get their HD versions (it's just more money for HBO, etc). It already has contracts with all the SD channels. With the MPEG-4 compression upgrade in place they could do spot beams to a number of the larger markets with full HD locals (MPEG-4 doubles bandwidth with same PQ, so there are 80 HD channels. That's 40 new ones, plus you can recover 12-14 more by dumping a good slice of Voom content (assuming EchoStar would want to find "showcase" HD programming to put on the remaining Voom channels. That gives you 50-60 HD local channels you can broadcast...Also, I don't know if the bandwidth is limited on the way up, or on the way down...if spot beams are used more channels might be possible.

The Voom technology really does have the possibility of "doing it all" in a very short time frame, if the right deals are cut and the decisions are made...