Its still a kick in the teeth for Dish network. And its gonna cost them in the wallet what ever they do. But I suspect that paying TIVO royalties will be their cheapest option.
And its all well and fine to talk about the competitive situation Dish is in when we talk about the bulk of the population, who can pick and choose between Dish, Direct TV, and other companies that can deliver high bandwidth content via coax cable, or offshoots of fiber optic with only the last bit coming through phone lines. But when we talk about small dish satellite delivery for folks in the sticks, still a market of many 10's of millions, there are only 2 major players, Dish and Direct TV. So if Dish goes belly up, Direct TV is likely to raise prices in a less competitive market.
And as read the Dish and Direct TV sections of these forums, Satellite customers seemed to have flocked to Direct TV as the Cadillac brand, and instead of trying to grab the low price al carte section of the market, Dish management seems dedicated to competing with Direct TV on sheer bloat volume of content with prices to match. Losing the lawsuit with Tivo means either Direct TV will have increasing difficulties delivering satellite style recording or that they must raise prices.
Its been Six years since I dropped Dish because I could not choose what programming I got and did not get, Maybe its time for Charlie to swallow his ego, drop the programming packages only option, he may may not make as much profit per customer, but he could gain many many new customers if he did.
__________________
High definition is not the definition of my life.
But knowledge is power and HD does have some potential to increase content variety and choices.
|