# E* to replace ALL receivers for MPEG4



## larrystotler (Jun 6, 2004)

In the TWICE(This Week In Consumer Electronics) Volume 19, No. 24, there is an article on page 6 That states that "E* will go to MPEG-4 in '05".

Excert:

"The CEO said Echostar has not added new channels to its HDTV programming lineup in recent months because it has not had the bandwidth capacity aboard it's satellite fleet. It also has not been more aggressive about promoting it's HDTV services lately because plans for the MPEG-4 transistion were in the works, Ergen said."

The article says that E* will replace ALL existing receivers within the next 4 years in order to go all MPEG-4 and eliminate MPEG-2. The HD subs will be changed out first with the majority of the subs changed out later. They had originally planned this for this year, but they have had problems getting chipsets and standards finalized.


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## Cyclone (Jul 1, 2002)

It makes sense. Its best to get off of MPeg2/QPSK and move to newer protocols which are more efficent anyways. DirectTV sounds like they are going to do the same thing, but have everyone get a DVR while they are swapping out. I wonder if Charlie is thinking new 522s (or whatever MPG4/8PSK Duel Tuner DVR they have) for everyone? 

I'm also betting that they will discontinue SD only STBs in favor of HD/SD STBs shortly.


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## invaliduser88 (Apr 23, 2002)

The upgrade deals better be pretty darn good. Charlie has ignored the current install base too long.


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## rocatman (Nov 28, 2003)

Charlie shouldn't use this as an excuse to put off adding more HD channels when Dish gets more capacity from AMC-15 and AMC-16 but I am afraid that is exactly what will happen. It could be another year before MPEG-4 HD receivers are available from Dish.


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## stonecold (Feb 20, 2004)

to me it is funny as if you look at what Dish has more bandwith than dtv and voom combine yet they dont have bandwith . When is someone in the press going to press charlie on this one.


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## rocatman (Nov 28, 2003)

stonecold said:


> to me it is funny as if you look at what Dish has more bandwith than dtv and voom combine yet they dont have bandwith . When is someone in the press going to press charlie on this one.


Dish's problem is that they don't use their bandwidth effieciently. They duplicate a lot of their international progamming on 61.5, 121 and 148. They also do not have a super effiecient spotbeam satellite like DirecTV until they launch E-10 although they provide programming for more local markets.


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## finniganps (Jan 23, 2004)

Which receivers does this changeout of receivers affect - (sorry, I'm not familiar with the tech specs)? I have a 508, 721 and an inactive 4900.


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## n0qcu (Mar 23, 2002)

All the current receivers as none are mpeg-4 capable.


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## Guest (Nov 29, 2004)

From the stated plan, all HD customers first. That will imply the receivers numbered 6000, 811, 921, and maybe even some rogue 5000s. If the 942 will become a target of this switch remains to be seen.


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## Guest (Nov 29, 2004)

Cyclone said:


> I'm also betting that they will discontinue SD only STBs in favor of HD/SD STBs shortly.


That would be soooo stupid to continue development of any new SD IRDs. But you know they will.


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## DoyleS (Oct 21, 2002)

I would be open to a replacement for the 6000 which has a pretty antiquated guide and is a bit quirky but I really need the RGBHV/VGA output for my CRT projector.
..Doyle


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

If they replace the receivers, they better make sure that they can upload new codecs as the need arises.


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

Maybe this will be the way Charlie gets everyone to lease their receivers. This way Dish can get everyone to trade in all the existing receivers in and lease all the new replacements. Charlie better think about making ONE consistent dual tuner dvr that does both sd and hd at the same time. 

Imagine the uproar when everyone is told that in order to keep owning their receivers they will have to pay to upgrade at a high price. Imagine the price we paid for the now defunct 921 at $999.00 a receiver. This would be the way to get most Dishnetwork customers to go all lease. This would also change ,on paper, the entire accounting process. All the new replacement receivers would become an asset on the books instead of a expense. 

I wonder what Directv has in mind for their swapout?


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## finniganps (Jan 23, 2004)

I really wonder if they would REALLY replace all the receivers and not allow people to continue to use their existing receivers. The cost for this would be HUGE....not to mention how are you going to decide who gets what receiver?? I look forward to additional info. about this.


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

Well STANDARDIZING on just a couple boxes, would be best. picture a standard model all DVRs. You give that ONE box to EVERYONE, with a second unit a DVR for high def. Everyone gets FREE DVR enabled for 3 months Then the start charging for it

Easier support, the end of lots of troubles if done right. 

Wonder what the future of D Tivos would be, such a upgrade if it occured culd gut tivo since most of their new subs come from D.


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## alebowgm (Jun 12, 2004)

That would be good, until they come out with a Firmware update that winds up damaging everyones boxes and then they have to replace another million boxes. Just look at DTV which is doing a lot of firmware upgrades right now for support of their new 72.5/95 satellite locations. They already burned out one SD reciever and one HD reciever...


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## Lyle_JP (Apr 22, 2002)

When they start replacing the 501s, 508s, and 721s with new DVRs, it's a safe bet that those of us who enjoy paying no DVR fees will no longer have that luxury. I think that's when I'll jump ship to D*. Hey, if I have to pay for DVR software, it might as well be *good* DVR software.


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## MSoper72 (Jun 18, 2004)

I have, 4, DP-301 receivers that I bought and not leased. When the trade out takes place. Will the new receivers be mine and NOT leased??  
Although, I could care less about HDTV. I am NOT going to spend 5 thousand dollars or more for a tv.


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## kzosat (Aug 22, 2004)

Lyle_JP said:


> When they start replacing the 501s, 508s, and 721s with new DVRs, it's a safe bet that those of us who enjoy paying no DVR fees will no longer have that luxury. I think that's when I'll jump ship to D*. Hey, if I have to pay for DVR software, it might as well be *good* DVR software.


That is what I am worried about. They better grandfather in my 721 and 508 no fee dvr service.


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## Paul Secic (Dec 16, 2003)

Cyclone said:


> It makes sense. Its best to get off of MPeg2/QPSK and move to newer protocols which are more efficent anyways. DirectTV sounds like they are going to do the same thing, but have everyone get a DVR while they are swapping out. I wonder if Charlie is thinking new 522s (or whatever MPG4/8PSK Duel Tuner DVR they have) for everyone?
> 
> I'm also betting that they will discontinue SD only STBs in favor of HD/SD STBs shortly.


Well in 4 years I should have a nice cheap LCD HDTV.


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## Paul Secic (Dec 16, 2003)

MSoper72 said:


> I have, 4, DP-301 receivers that I bought and not leased. When the trade out takes place. Will the new receivers be mine and NOT leased??
> Although, I could care less about HDTV. I am NOT going to spend 5 thousand dollars or more for a tv.


I could care less about HDTV now, not enough channels, content. But in 4 to 5 years when analog signals go off, there should be lots. Unless the FCC extend analog due to cusumer confusion, apathty.


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## Mike Richardson (Jun 12, 2003)

I thought the plan was to just upgrade to 8PSK for use with SD. They already have a lot of 8PSK models out there... 6000 (w/module), 821, 921, 311, 322, 522, and 111. They could probably make a 511, which would be a single tuner 522, and migrate everyone over to these 8PSK boxes and they can increase bandwidth by 33%.

We'll probably see them upgrade certain classes of users at a time, either way... for example they could upgrade all customers with International programming to a new 8PSK (or mpeg4 or whatever), and a Superdish. Then they can kill all the international programming on the wings and beam it in 8PSK from 121.

Maybe if they can get international off the wings then they could increase the FEC, and then, they could put whole local markets on the wings, and use those small little 13" dishes instead of the bigger ones. Maybe that would appease some people, maybe not.

There's a lot of really neat things they could do. Right now they're using their bandwidth really crappily. Locals should always, always be on some kind of spot beam, or at least on a non-CONUS.

They need to get it so that the most someone would ever need is a Superdish and ONE wing. For a long time if you wanted a Superdish and a wing sat you were screwed, unless you did a poor mans superdish, or other less elegant solutions. Perhaps if they had 110, 119, and 121, which would have locals for big cities, primary stuff, HDTV, and international, and then they can do locals for small cities on wings, perhaps HD locals there or something. Perhaps the international and HD can go on 121, so if you don't want that you can just have a Dish 500.

There's so many possibilities, they just need to make a move.


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## ClaudeR (Dec 7, 2003)

And I'm scheduled for a new 921 install on Friday. I can just imagine them saying in June I have to lease a box, on second thought, we are talking E*. Maybe another 5 years, and then 2 years to get the software stable.


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

MSoper72 said:


> ...I could care less about HDTV. I am NOT going to spend 5 thousand dollars or more for a tv.


You don't have to spend $5,000. Maybe it's time for another look. I've been enjoying stunning HD, DVDs and pretty decent SD on my 53" Panny HDTV for well over a year now  and it cost less than $1200 back in August 2003. You can get a very nice set and a whole lot of enjoyment for much less than 5k.


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## bavaria72 (Jun 10, 2004)

Mike D-CO5 said:


> Maybe this will be the way Charlie gets everyone to lease their receivers. This way Dish can get everyone to trade in all the existing receivers in and lease all the new replacements. Charlie better think about making ONE consistent dual tuner dvr that does both sd and hd at the same time.....


I really think you hit it on the head here. Those folks who lease their boxes will get them changed out. Those of us own our boxes, I think we are screwed. Oh, we will get some type of "discount" but Charlie wants lease boxes out there not owned (I wish someone would explain that business case to me. It must be compelling but I don't see it but I'm not a tax expert either). I'm holding off on making any more purchases until I get a better feel on what E* and D* (new DVR to replace TiVo?) are going to do. I also sometimes I wonder if they know!


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

rocatman said:


> Charlie shouldn't use this as an excuse to put off adding more HD channels when Dish gets more capacity from AMC-15 and AMC-16 but I am afraid that is exactly what will happen. It could be another year before MPEG-4 HD receivers are available from Dish.


I echo what you say! I consider the switch MPEG4 as a typical E* delay tactic. Why not move all the lil's to one bird and free up a bunch of bandwidth for HD? What is more expensive? Replace satellite receivers or relocate and/or replacing satellite antennas? This would at least allow for more HD and allow for a smoother transition for the upgrade to MPEG4.


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

bavaria72 said:


> I really think you hit it on the head here. Those folks who lease their boxes will get them changed out. Those of us own our boxes, I think we are screwed. Oh, we will get some type of "discount" but Charlie wants lease boxes out there not owned (I wish someone would explain that business case to me. It must be compelling but I don't see it but I'm not a tax expert either). I'm holding off on making any more purchases until I get a better feel on what E* and D* (new DVR to replace TiVo?) are going to do. I also sometimes I wonder if they know!


 That is why I am not going to buy anymore sat receivers either. It looks like we will be leasing if we want to stay with Dish unless we want to pay to upgrade. I remember reading that Charlie said something about subsidizing the cost for upgrades to a certain degree but it would cost subs to upgrade. I would just as soon lease than pay to upgrade anymore. I have paid a lot of money in the last couple of years to get the latest and best receivers from Dish . From now on I am going to sit on what I have until they make up their minds about the future.

To bad , I really wanted to get a second 921. Seems pointless now. I have read some where on the web that the 942 ,the next hd dvr , will be most likely a lease deal . It is supposed to become available to current subs as well as a lease only option. I will be leasing if it costs any more to upgrade my existing equipment or switching back to Directv. :eek2:


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

If everyone gets a DVR then I wonder if they would force the $5 DVR fee (on the DirecTv customers even). I imagine they would have to make it a function that they could turn on and off if the customer did not want it. I can also imagine customer's bills going up a bit more for a period of time to make up for the upgrade. $3 a month extra is $36 a year, it would take a good while to make up for that loss. I dont see all that many customers paying to do an upgrade and I also dont see many customers giving up receivers that they actually paid money for. Now I can understand if someone didnt pay anything for the receivers when they got them.


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## Combow (Aug 8, 2004)

It don't matter because in mid 2005 Directv VOD will have all Dish Network customers droping their service :grin:


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Combow said:


> It don't matter because in mid 2005 Directv VOD will have all Dish Network customers droping their service :grin:


We will believe it when we see it. D* has had it's share of problems. VOD isn't an easy rollout.

JL


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## Mike123abc (Jul 19, 2002)

Leasing from Dish is not that bad of a deal if they continue the practice of not charging the mirroring fee and charging a $5/month rental fee instead. If you buy your box you pay $5/month anyways.

Before you could get equipment for free, cancel service and sell the equipment on ebay for some nice $$. Dish was out $$ and lost a customer. This way, Dish gets the boxes back and is not out the money. Yes the lease thing makes them cable in the sky, but it is better for Dish.

Now the whole question comes down to what they allow you to "lease". In my case I have an 811/6000/301/921. I want all HD boxes in the future (not an issue if they make HD/8PSK the minimum standard). The question then comes down to how many DVRs they let you have.


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## larrystotler (Jun 6, 2004)

Considering that E* is trying to go to a lease only model, I would say that it look like this may be what we end up with. However, only time will tell. If they replace my receivers in a way I do not like, then I will switch. Also, if enough of us subs flood charlie's email complaining about it, maybe we can force a change. Or sue. I prefer to own my equipment, but if I get a replacement DVR with a fee, then I will refuse to upgrade. It will be at least 4 years before they quit running the MPEG2 stream anyway, so we have some time. Also, I am willing to bet the new receivers will be MPEG4 & 2 compatible so to use the MPEG4 part, you will have to get a SD pointing at the 105 or 85, since it wouldn't make sense for them to mirror the new streams on the existing sats since the "don't have the capacity". The internationals will move to the 121 exclusively, and everyone will end up with 2 superdishes or a torrordial dish. The next few months will be interesting as they finialize the specs and locations for the new HD content. Since they are doing the HD first, they will probably also release the new HD sat location at that time......


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

IF they make a dual tuner hd /sd receiver , that works with either sd or hd tvs , has 2 ota tuners ,and has a large hard drive for recording ,does namebased recording as well as season passes, they could sell this easily to subs. They could also go to 2 different tvs or work in single mode with pip. This might be why they have held off giving us namebased recording . It was promised to start last July. They might just hold off and make one good receiver ,described above , that does all these features and then they could sell people on becoming a lease customer. Wouldn't you trade in your old receivers if you could get all these features and more hd as well? Then Dish could eliminate all the older receivers and concentrate on one good dvr box, that can be upgraded for more services with software upgrades. Hopefully Dish can't screw up the software if they only have one good receiver . Kind of like Cable companies have today with their motorolla receivers. 

The promised mpeg4 will allow Dish to add more hd and possibly more national channels and cleanup the picture qaulity as well. They could also finish the sd locals and then start on converting these to the hd versions as well. The new receivers could easily downconvert the digital local channels to sd . They could just start changing over the sd local channels to digital versions . Then they could also easily change over all the national channels like TNT , BRAVO, etc to the hd versions that could also be downconverted with these new hd/sd receivers. INstead of selling all the hd channels seperate, they could just change out the existing versions of these channels like HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Starz , to the hd versions. This converison to mgeg4 will take 4 years according to what I have read , so this could be the start in transitioning all the service to hd versions. Unless you had a hd tv, you couldn't see the great pq and it would look just about the same as what you already have now, or a little bit better. 

IF the option is to pay highly to upgrade to the newer boxes in order to keep owning the receivers, or trade them in to get the new lease receivers ,wouldn't you lease. That way when ever Dish wanted to change the receivers or make new ones they could easily send them to you and you could send the older receivers back in the box provided with the label provided . Dish could recyle the older receivers into newer ones and no waste. No selling them on e-bay or constanly working on 16 versions of software for older discontinued receivers. Also the security factor would be tightened. 

Either way this could be the time that Dish could make all the changes happen . They could become an all lease satellite/cable that they have been pushing far. We could finally get a good dual tuner dvr that does both hd and sd with namebased recording as well.


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## Kagato (Jul 1, 2002)

I think the DVRs will be the last thing that gets upgrades. In particular the 721 and 921. 522 is already "lease only", so it's a fairly easy swap. The 921 MAY be upgradable as it has three PCI like slots open in it. I would guess they'll do this like digital cable. Keep most of the current line up as MPEG2, but start adding new channels as MPEG4.


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## Mike123abc (Jul 19, 2002)

I could see Dish coming out with boxes like:

Basic Box #1:

8PSK, MPEG-2/4, HDTV satellite, 2 tuner, 2 TV box.

Basic Box #2:

8PSK, MPEG-2/4, HDTV satellite, 2 tuner, 2 TV box with DVR

#3 Perhaps even 4 TV versions of the DVR

The only questions of course will be if there are OTA HD tuners, and what type of feed will the second TV get? (UHF like now or perhaps something else that can transfer HD).

The issue is how does Dish "compensate" those that went out and paid $1000 for their box (i.e. 921)? Do they throw in some free programming (like free HD pack for 2 years) for the 921 trade in?


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## Mickdog (Jul 17, 2004)

Well, apparently, some of Dish Networks recievers allready have 8spk, so could not they be software upgradeable to MPEG4? Read the following from a december 1 page at

http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=473736

Broadcom's Advanced Satellite Communications Technology Selected By EchoStar's DISH Network™ Service

Advanced Modulation and Turbo Code Technology Deployed
In EchoStar's DISH Network High-Volume Set-Top Box Product Line
IRVINE, Calif., Dec. 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), a leading provider of silicon solutions enabling broadband communications, today announced that EchoStar Communications Corp. (Nasdaq: DISH) is using Broadcom's 8PSK (Phase Shift Keying) turbo code technology across EchoStar's newest line of DISH Network™ satellite TV receivers, including the DISH 111, DISH 311, DISH 322, Dish Player-DVR 522, DISH 811 and Dish Player-DVR 921 products.


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## Lyle_JP (Apr 22, 2002)

> could not they be software upgradeable to MPEG4?


As I understand it, MPEG4 takes more compute cycles to process than MPEG2, and specialized chips dedicated to MPEG4 decoding are really the way to go. This is why ATI cards are preferred over nVidia for Home-Theater-In-A-Box computers. They have special hardware for reducing the blockiness of MPEG-4 type files (like DivX files).


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## Anonymous (Jun 19, 2004)

MSoper72 said:


> ...I could care less about HDTV. I am NOT going to spend 5 thousand dollars or more for a tv.


Why not pay $699 for a 42" HDTV instead of paying $5000 for a TV?


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## Guest (Nov 30, 2004)

You can get a nice 50" DLP (samsung) for $2499 from Sam's.

Item 915144 @ samsclub.com


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## cpdretired (Aug 25, 2003)

gpflepsen said:


> You can get a nice 50" DLP (samsung) for $2499 from Sam's.
> 
> Item 915144 @ samsclub.com


That's the same model that I bought Dec of 03 for $2999.00. It is last years model but for that price who cares.


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## Mikey (Oct 26, 2004)

Mickdog said:


> Well, apparently, some of Dish Networks recievers allready have 8spk, so could not they be software upgradeable to MPEG4? Read the following from a december 1 page at
> 
> http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=473736
> 
> ...


Dog,
Looks to me from the spec sheets referenced, that MPEG-2 is decoded on the chip, just like 8PSK. Doesn't look like software is the answer to MPEG-4 for existing receivers based on Broadcom technology. By the way, that's from December 1, 2003.


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## Guest (Nov 30, 2004)

cpdretired said:


> That's the same model that I bought Dec of 03 for $2999.00. It is last years model but for that price who cares.


I bought the HLM model in Dec 02 for $3200. This was the first generation Samsung DLP. I can live with $700 over two years.

Honestly, these DLP TV's are less complex than a complete computer system. In a few years, I'd be surprised to not see them hovering around $1000-$1500. A large unit cost of these things will be shipping. You can ship a load of computers at 1/10 the cost of a similar number of these TVs.


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## Mickdog (Jul 17, 2004)

Mikey said:


> Dog,
> Looks to me from the spec sheets referenced, that MPEG-2 is decoded on the chip, just like 8PSK. Doesn't look like software is the answer to MPEG-4 for existing receivers based on Broadcom technology. By the way, that's from December 1, 2003.


Yes, it is from 2003. Dec 1 2004 is not till tomorow! I have MPEG4 codecs installed on my computer that uses a motherboard mounted SIS 650 video chip. So, why couldnt codecs programed for the chips in the recievers work the same way?


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## Kagato (Jul 1, 2002)

Because the CPU in the STBs hardly has enough power to render the openTV stuff, let alone act as a decoding codec. And Broadcomm, even if the chips were DSPs that could be upgraded, isn't about to release specs on reprograming their chips. There's MUCH more money to be made by selling new MPEG4 chipsets.


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## Mikey (Oct 26, 2004)

Mickdog said:


> Yes, it is from 2003. Dec 1 2004 is not till tomorow! I have MPEG4 codecs installed on my computer that uses a motherboard mounted SIS 650 video chip. So, why couldnt codecs programed for the chips in the recievers work the same way?


Your PC is a general purpose box, with an open architecture, that was built for expansion. Your E* receivers are the exact opposite. They were built to do one thing, and given the minimum amount of resources to do that one thing. There might have been MPEG-2/MPEG-4/8PSK chips available when the receivers were designed, but they would have cost more. Someone made a business decision to go with MPEG-2 last December (well, sometime before that), and now we're living with it.


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

> Honestly, these DLP TV's are less complex than a complete computer system. In a few years, I'd be surprised to not see them hovering around $1000-$1500.


I have a DLP TV (in the form of an InFocus X-1 projector) hanging from my ceiling that I paid $899 for. 18 months ago that same projector would have run over $1500. A month ago a friend of mine bought a floor model of the same projector for $499 including an extended 3 year warranty. Things do change.


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## Rick_R (Sep 1, 2004)

For my off topic reply: $5000 for an HDTV? Only if you buy the Cadilac. Circuit City has an Akai 52" widescreen for $797.

On topic again. Changing all STB would allow 8PSK and MPEG4 thus would increase their capacity by about 150%. To get that increase with new satellites would require the launch of 15 new satellites (over the current 10). This number of new satellites would cost near 4 billion dollars. The change out of STB is cheaper plus requires no new satellite slots.

Rick R


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## Mikey (Oct 26, 2004)

Something like this will be the guts of the next generation of satellite receivers:

http://www.conexant.com/servlets/DownloadServlet/102488A.pdf?FileId=1824


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## Paul Secic (Dec 16, 2003)

Rick_R said:


> For my off topic reply: $5000 for an HDTV? Only if you buy the Cadilac. Circuit City has an Akai 52" widescreen for $797.
> 
> On topic again. Changing all STB would allow 8PSK and MPEG4 thus would increase their capacity by about 150%. To get that increase with new satellites would require the launch of 15 new satellites (over the current 10). This number of new satellites would cost near 4 billion dollars. The change out of STB is cheaper plus requires no new satellite slots.
> 
> Rick R


$789 is all I get from Social Security


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## larrystotler (Jun 6, 2004)

Actually, it's kinda amusing that every company wants to go ALL DVR, but subs resist them due to the cost, $5 monthly VoD fees, and complexity. It's hard to convince some people how much TV viewing is made better with a DVR. I despise having to watch TV on a standard box. 

MickDog - The processor in my 721 is equivalent to a 300Mhz Pentium II. This is too slow to decode MPEG4 or DiVX. My main PC is a Dual P-III Xeon 500Mhz with 512MB of registered SDRAM and a 10k RPM Seagate SCSI drive & nVidia Geforce 440MX and it has a hard time decoding MPEG4 or DiVX. Add to the fact that the 721 probably only has between 32 and 128M RAM, and you have a huge problem with trying to decode. However, if they had an upgrade card with hardware decoding support, then it would be entirely possible to upgrade the 721 to use the MPEG4. And, since the streams are smaller, you would actually get more total hours as well, and the read and write times would be faster due to less accessing of the HD.


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

So you mean my laptop I am running right now is more than 10 times faster than the 721 receiver? Even the computer that I have that is five years old would be about twice the speed as the 721. Thats pathetic!

Even if the current SD receivers we have now (311, 322, 510, 522) could be converted to do MPEG-4 they still would only be doing SD and not the HD which defeats the purpose of doing MPEG-4 since its to get HD to the consumers (unless Dish Network plans on some customers still receiving SD when they get all these receivers out which dont seem idealistic by that time).

Its time to let go of some big amounts of cash as you knew this was coming and do the upgrades.


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## MikeW (May 16, 2002)

Here's an unrealistic idea. D* and E* combine resources so that they could share locals from one satellite. If E* is going to build new boxes, why not (aside from $$$).


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

They were thinking about doing this before when they figured that the merger would not go through. Why couldnt they not only do this with the locals but also for all the other channels as well and just share all the satellite space? They could still keep seperate entities but just share the cost in operating and launching satellites to the main orbital locations. Think of what they could do with all of that space. It is just like Charlie said in the beginning, cable is the real competetor, not the other satellite television service. All locals could be launched in HD along with every other channel when they become available (and a possible upconversion of these until they are made available). Perhaps they should both standardize what they use such as the MPEG-4 so that both companies receivers will be able to receive and use the signals from the satellites.


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

Char;lie said once that the latest boxes at the time were cross compatible in preparation for the merger.


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## Mike Richardson (Jun 12, 2003)

Rick_R said:


> Changing all STB would allow 8PSK and MPEG4 thus would increase their capacity by about 150%


Where do you get that? 8PSK increases bandwidth by about 33%. MPEG-4 is not that good.


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## FTA Michael (Jul 21, 2002)

Jacob S said:


> Why couldnt they not only do this with the locals but also for all the other channels as well and just share all the satellite space?


For one thing, a lot of cable channels leave some time for the cable/DBS company to run their own ads. Dish runs FYI and other ads during those times, and I imagine D* does about the same.

But with locals, nobody gets to add any commercials, having a common source for them makes sense. Too much sense.


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## the_bear (Oct 18, 2004)

Mike Richardson said:


> Where do you get that? 8PSK increases bandwidth by about 33%. MPEG-4 is not that good.


I think we are talking about H.264?


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## larrystotler (Jun 6, 2004)

Jacob S said:


> So you mean my laptop I am running right now is more than 10 times faster than the 721 receiver? Even the computer that I have that is five years old would be about twice the speed as the 721. Thats pathetic!
> 
> Even if the current SD receivers we have now (311, 322, 510, 522) could be converted to do MPEG-4 they still would only be doing SD and not the HD which defeats the purpose of doing MPEG-4 since its to get HD to the consumers (unless Dish Network plans on some customers still receiving SD when they get all these receivers out which dont seem idealistic by that time).
> 
> Its time to let go of some big amounts of cash as you knew this was coming and do the upgrades.


They are planning to move all content to MPEG4, so they can shut down the MPEG2 streams. This will increase their available bandwidth by far. They are doing HD first because it takes up so much more bandwidth.

As for the 721 being slow, it uses linux, so that helps a great deal.


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## Mikey (Oct 26, 2004)

larrystotler said:


> They are planning to move all content to MPEG4, so they can shut down the MPEG2 streams. This will increase their available bandwidth by far. They are doing HD first because it takes up so much more bandwidth.


And the HD customer base is smaller, so it's a better choice for a beta test group. You don't really expect them to get MPEG4 right the first time, do you?:hurah: Anyway, E* had better put a MPEG4 receiver in my house before the cutover. Actually, the receiver needs to do both, since I'll be wathing SD and HD with the same box.


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## Cholly (Mar 22, 2004)

Richard King said:


> I have a DLP TV (in the form of an InFocus X-1 projector) hanging from my ceiling that I paid $899 for. 18 months ago that same projector would have run over $1500. A month ago a friend of mine bought a floor model of the same projector for $499 including an extended 3 year warranty. Things do change.


All DLP projectors are not created equal. Your InFocus X-1 is an EDTV projector, but a very good one indeed. The review on Projectorcentral.com raves about the rendering of 1080i signals on this 800x600 resolution projector. Incidentally, the average price quoted on the site is still $899 as of this date.
There ARE better DLP projectors to be had, but to get to 1920x1080 resolution, it appears from my searching that you have to go to an LCD projector at a huge price (witness $27,000 for a Sony - yep, 27 thousand!) 
:eek2:


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## james39 (Dec 10, 2003)

I've experimented with MPEG-4 on my 27" standard television. I've found that the video "still doesn't suck" (I know, that's subjective), down to about 1MBps. Considering that MPEG-2 needs around 2.5MBps to achieve the same quality, you've more than doubled your space for SD channels. Switch to 8PSK, and there's even more space to play with!


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## Mike123abc (Jul 19, 2002)

DBS companies are working on MPEG-4 because they realize that one day in the not too distant future they will be up against cable companies that have every channel in HDTV. The whole notion of an HD pack will go away because HDTV will be what is the minimum expected...

DBS needs capacity for all the HD channels... HD lite is probably coming soon...


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

I agree with Mike123abc, the standard will be raised, all will be HD (or with a digital output to the television at least) but everything is heading for HD. It is just a matter of time.


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## larrystotler (Jun 6, 2004)

Yep, about 5-10 years from now when HD sets drop in price enough for the average joe.


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## BurgEnder (Aug 15, 2003)

Combow said:


> It don't matter because in mid 2005 Directv VOD will have all Dish Network customers droping their service :grin:


 Doubtful, VOD definitely isn't enough for me to EVER go back to D*, and if VOD were that much of a dealbreaker then everyone would have gone to cable.


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

I dont rent pay per views so that would just be something extra that they would be storing on a hard drive when they could be using the same space for storage for the consumers. Perhaps they will sell extra space that the VOD is being used for at an additional monthly rate.


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## tnsprin (Mar 16, 2003)

I have 2 921's (one I just got and am activating this weekend) and 2 6000's (1 I was planning to deactivate but...). If they want to replace all these with equal or better machines doing mpeg4, I have no problem.


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

Can you see them replacing your expensive DVR's? Perhaps they will think that the cost of replacement will not be worth what the customer is worth to them for those with expensive DVR's unless they can get the price of production way down in which they may be able to do for those types of receivers by then.


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## larrystotler (Jun 6, 2004)

When you get right down to it, E* receivers are way overpriced due to they way they used them for a tax writeoff. The actual cost of the receivers is much less than what they are charging. And quite frankly, they really don't have a choice. It's either switch to MPEG4 or have a dish farm at everyone's house and need a DP10/4 switch to run them. I'll wager it costs them more for an SD than it does for a 510, especially considering that each SD comes with a DP34.


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

Then Dish Network must be liars including Charlie himself seeing how they say that each receiver is subsidized, that they have more in them than what they are being sold for. The retailer does not even get a discount on the receivers and has to pay for shipping fees which makes it above retail price in the receivers.


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## Mike Richardson (Jun 12, 2003)

There are too many receiver models, and they have too many interfaces. They need to standardize on one interface style. The less receivers they have, the more of one type they can produce, and therefore buy more parts at a lower price, and save money.

Make leasing the default and most desirable option, but still allow people to buy receivers, at cost. A long time ago in the analog cable days, you could legally own your own (legal) descrambler, and sometimes it was desirable to do so, because your descrambler might have better features like channel blocking, composite/svideo output, and even an EPG, while the cable company's was usually very basic.


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## larrystotler (Jun 6, 2004)

Too many interfaces? When's the last time you tried to trouble shoot a D* install over the phone? At least E*'s are almost all the same. Theor problem is the buggy software, not really the interfaces. And Charlie is full of it. What they do is reimburse the retailer for the receiver, which is WHY they have to subsidize it. There is no way that a 311 costs them $100 to make from start to finish. Maybe $50. The DVRs cost more, but that is expected due to the hard drives and stuff.


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