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Author Topic: Viacom & Echostar Squabble Phil Hill I love my cootie bug Posts: 7595 From: Hollywood, CA USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 03-09-2004 11:45 PM                  Dish net sucks as much as "digital" cable anyway! Their picture quality is shit! Change to DirecTV! They rule! >>> Phil  |  IP: Logged Daryl C. W. O'Shea Film God Posts: 3977 From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from) Registered: Jun 2002 posted 03-09-2004 11:48 PM                        quote: As for the quality, yah, it blows, but considering they're putting 4,000 channels up on 3 satellites with a 12" pizza pan for a dish, you probably can't reasonably compare it to C-band. Sure you can. It looks 4000 / (24 * 3) times worse than C-band. Not to mention it's digital so it looks inherently bad. Even worse than the digital channels on C-band.  |  IP: Logged John Westlund Expert Film Handler Posts: 204 From: Burney, CA, USA Registered: Jun 2001 posted 03-10-2004 01:20 AM                     I just saw a commercial on Comedy Central that said "now only available on cable and DirecTV."  |  IP: Logged Robb Johnston Expert Film Handler Posts: 147 From: St. Louis Suburbs Registered: Nov 1999 posted 03-10-2004 06:15 PM                        viacom took out a full page ad in (at least) the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Some excerpts: "Echostar/Dish Network has yanked your favorite channels" "You have been just been left high and dry without spongebob!" "EchoStar/DISH Network recently raised your rates by as much as $3.00 a month. And yet they refuse to pay us less than six cents a month more so that you can continue to see all of your favorite shows on the channels we provide." They list national numbers to get in touch with local cable providers and DirecTV and list a website for more propaganda/information. I see this going on for a while  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 03-11-2004 03:18 PM                     Apparently Echostar and Viacom have settled their differences and channels like Comedy Central and MTV are in the process of being restored to Dish Network. I'd really like to know all the specific details behind what caused the flap to happen and also how it got settled. Both sides have been throwing around some very fuzzy figures and issuing tough responses to the claims made by opposing sides. Echostar's CEO scoffed at the 6 cents per subscriber claim coming from Viacom, stating if that's really all they wanted the issue would have been settled a long time ago instead of being brought into Anti-Trust litigation. They're all just greedy bastards. I'm still considering the choice to just turn off my satellite service. It would be a real easy choice if I didn't regularly watch HBO series shows like "The Sopranos" and "Six Feet Under" or the various news channels. But even those channels are not above sacrifice.  |  IP: Logged Jesse Skeen Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1517 From: Sacramento, CA Registered: Aug 2000 posted 03-11-2004 03:29 PM                     As long as they still have those constant onscreen logos, they would have to pay ME to watch them! I had free cable a while ago and still didn't watch anything on it!  |  IP: Logged Claude S. Ayakawa Film God Posts: 2738 From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA Registered: Aug 2002 posted 03-11-2004 03:35 PM                        Bobby, Although I have HBO, I never watch shows like "THE SOPRANOS", "SIX FEET UNDER", "OZ" and "BAND OF BROTHERS" on television. I wait for the shows to come out on DVD and watch them at that time by renting the discs for a couple of nights. The only HBO show I watched during it's two Sunday night run was "ANGELS IN AMERICA" and it was excellent! By the way, the DVD image does not have the HBO logo on the bottom right hand side of the screen. -Claude  |  IP: Logged Brad Allen Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 688 From: Evansville, IN, USA Registered: May 2000 posted 03-11-2004 04:02 PM                     Nor is there the HBO logo on HBO-HD. HBO-HD Beats a DVD any day.  |  IP: Logged Daryl C. W. O'Shea Film God Posts: 3977 From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from) Registered: Jun 2002 posted 03-11-2004 04:13 PM                        By any chance, does the Dish Network software let you see (display) the channel's current bitrate?  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 03-11-2004 08:47 PM                     quote: As long as they still have those constant onscreen logos, they would have to pay ME to watch them! HBO usually doesn't flash their logos on the screen during a movie or any of their other shows. Other networks like Showtime have been common offenders of logo spammage in the past. Logo spamming usually occurs with the cable networks who air commercials. Some other channels like IFC (Independent Film Channel) are pretty bad about logo spamming. quote: Does the Dish Network software let you see (display) the channel's current bitrate? As far as I can tell it does not. I've wondered what kind of video and audio bitrates are used for their programming. For instance a number of pay per view movie and premium cable channels on Dish Network often feature shows with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. I strongly suspect the DD 5.1 audio is presented in bitrates as low as 256kb/s or 192kb/s (DD 5.1 can be encoded at those data rates). Channel separation is often not very good and there is often a slightly muddy quality to it. A few weeks ago, I did a comparison between an HBO showing of "Speed" in DD 5.1 versus the 2-disc DVD I have of the same film. Both DD 5.1 and DTS 5.1 tracks on the DVD sounded very noticeably better than the DD 5.1 playing back on HBO.  |  IP: Logged Dave Williams Wet nipple scene Posts: 1836 From: Salt Lake City, UT, USA Registered: Jan 2000 posted 03-12-2004 08:52 AM                        Dish Network made it big by using mpeg2 compression before directTV had a chance to upgrade its systems. HOWEVER... Charlie Ergan.. Egan.. whatever his name is... He has tried to stay a step ahead of directTV since they upgraded thier systems to mpeg2 years ago. How does he do this? Funny you should make me ask myself this question. He carries more and more channels than directTV can accomodate. So he has had to increase the size of the dish itself, and also launch more satellites into space to broadcast this insane amount of useless programming to the rednecks of our society under every damned rock you can find them. HOWEVER... even with a new change in dish coming in the next two years.. (its nearly 4 feet wide children), to accomodate HD signals, there is one thing that DISH has gotten very good at... COMPRESSING SHOWS beyond decent or acceptable levels. Some networks have compression ratios of nearly 10/1, they are that bad. However, I have not seen this level of arrogance in DirectTV. Thier compression ratios remain at much more sane levels, for the most part undetectable by most humans. Direct TV has refused to partake in the channel adding game. Now VIACOM tried to force DiSH to take channels it did not want. Now there is a unique thing to hear. Dish not pushing more useless channels that no one can see or hear anyway. I used to be a big fan of DISH. however, thier compressions are too heavy and I cannot watch many networks. I cancelled my service mid last year and will only work with direct tv in the future. Even with ol charlies fightin words and tacticts, directTV still has more customers. Could be that most people aren't as dumb as charlie thinks? Imagine if Dish was able to buy out DIrect TV last year as ol charlie wanted? Thank god that Mr. Simpson.. i mean Mr. Murdoch got it instead. Ciao Dave  |  IP: Logged Jeff Taylor Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 601 From: Chatham, NJ/East Hampton, NY Registered: Apr 2000 posted 03-12-2004 11:03 AM                     FWIW: Dish and Viacom "kissed and made up". All is now well in satellite land.  |  IP: Logged Thomas Procyk Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1842 From: Royal Palm Beach, FL, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 03-12-2004 12:30 PM                     Our local cable company a while back offered a service called "CableSelect" where they'd install a box in your house and you would pick and choose what channels you wanted and paid by the month by the channel. The popular ones like Comedy Central, CNN, Nickelodeon, and MTV ran about $0.25 - $0.35 a month each. The less popular ones like Food Network, Lifetime and the shopping channels were about $0.15 each, right on down to C-SPAN which was $0.03 The program probably never took off because the only time I heard about it was the initial mailing. I did the math and it would actually cost us MORE a month (you had to pay a $7 per month fee for the box) with LESS channels than the standard package. But I guess it would be good for people who only need those 6 or 7 cable channels in addition to broadcast. =TMP=  |  IP: Logged

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