EchoStar Is Dead, Long Live EchoStar!

Posted on Friday, December 7, 2007 by MegaZone

EchoStar Communications Corporation, the parent company of DISH Network, is changing its name to – DISH Network Corporation. Yes, the parent is taking on the name of the child, to better reflect their core business. EchoStar… I mean DISH Network, will also be spinning off some of its holdings into a new company to initially be known has the EchoStar Holding Company (EHC). EHC will basically pick up the non-DISH Network businesses formerly held by EchoStar.

EHC will have two main business units – set-top boxes (STB) and fixed satellite services (FSS). The STB business makes STBs primarily for DISH Network, of course, but they also sell STBs to other operators around the world. And, once the acquisition is complete, Sling Media will also be part of the STB business. By separating from DISH Network, any conflict of interest is reduced and the EHC should be able to expand their STB business with additional customers.

EchoStar owns or leases capacity on nine satellites, has seven digital broadcast centers, and fiber optic POPs in 150 cities. The FSS business could offer network capacity to 3rd parties, via satellite or terrestrial networks.

There have been on-again, off-again rumors that AT&T is considering acquiring DISH Network. It could make some sense, as AT&T is already partnered with DISH Network and resells the satellite TV service to their customers. AT&T could find some synergies with the U-Verse fiber offering as well. The spin-off would make it easier for AT&T, or any other party, to acquire the now standalone DISH Network satellite TV operation without dealing with the other businesses.

And, in a final step, it is anticipated that, after all of these changes shake out, EHC will also change its name – to EchoStar Communications Corporation.

So, to sum up, EchoStar is divesting itself of the business units that aren’t DISH Network, and changing its name to DISH Network. Then the divested units will change their name to EchoStar. So why not just divest DISH Network as its own company? I’m sure it makes sense, but I’m not a corporate lawyer.

You just have to love these corporate naming shenanigans.

Picked up from GigaOM.

Posted in Dish Network, General, Sling Media | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

SnapStream’s Monster Commercial DVR

Posted on Friday, December 7, 2007 by MegaZone

You think your DVR is something special? How about ten tuners and 2TB of storage. Automatic indexing and searching abilities based on Closed Caption text. Easy point and click clip generation. Built in archiving to DVD. Access from any PC on the network for searching and playback.

These are all capabilities of SnapStream’s Enterprise DVR. Designed for professional use, it comes in the form of a rack-mountable server chassis. Who needs these capabilities? Think PR firms, news organizations, schools – anyone who might need to record, index, and search large quantities of video. Think of The Daily Show and all the news clips they use.

Here’s a video presentation on the product. Unfortunately, the sound is a bit poor, so you might need to turn up your volume.

Picked up from Davis Freeberg.

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Get A TiVo HD With Double The Space (320GB) For A Special Price

Posted on Friday, December 7, 2007 by MegaZone

DVRupgrade is selling the TiVo HD upgraded with a 320GB drive for $449. But, even better, as a special offer for TiVo Lovers readers, enter coupon code DVRTLB2007-050 during checkout and save $50 – for a total of $399. So you get double the capacity (320GB vs. 160GB) of a standard TiVo HD, which means you can record up to 43 hours of HD content or up to 409 hours of SD content, for $399.

The coupon is only good on that specific model, as a special offer, but they also have other expanded TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD models, with up to 1TB in capacity. And if you want even more, they do special orders up to 2TB.

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Remastering A Classic – Blade Runner Comes to High Def

Posted on Friday, December 7, 2007 by MegaZone

Sound and Vision Magazine has a nice article on the restoration and remastering process that films undergo as part of the process of bringing them to high definition, with the focus of the article being on the upcoming HD release of Blade Runner. A lot of work goes into cleaning up old films so they look their best in HD. I have some friends in the video production industry who have done this kind of work, even for SD DVD releases of older film. It is both an art and a science – you need to clean up dust and scratches, but if it is too clean it looks ‘wrong’, so you need to add ‘imperfections’ like film grain back into the video. It’s really quite fascinating – well, I think so anyway. I’ve also been told it can be utterly frustrating and maddening, especially if you’re, say, restoring an entire 36 episode classic anime series for DVD release. (You know who you are. ;-) )

I’ve had my deluxe box set of Blade Runner on Blu-ray on order for a while. I am very much looking forward to watching that.

Via Blu-ray.com.

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Sony PS3 to get BD Profile 1.1 this month, BD-Live in 2008?

Posted on Friday, December 7, 2007 by MegaZone

A Video Business article that is mainly about BD-Live titles coming out in early 2008 has a couple of tidbits that I find even more interesting:

Studio executive panelists as well as manufacturers speaking at the conference acknowledged the current absence of BD-Live players. Yet, Eklund said Sony and other studios anticipate that the PlayStation 3 will soon become one such player, likely through firmware updates, as the console already allows users to download game-related content.

Eklund added that firmware should be released for the PS3 this month that would upgrade the console to fully playback picture-in-picture interactivity, another type of high-def bonus feature that is popular in HD DVD titles but not yet available with Blu-ray titles due to few compatible players.

That Eklund is Sony executive VP of advanced technologies Don Eklund, someone who is likely to know of which he speaks. I realize that Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is separate from Sony’s gaming division, but since Blu-ray is fundamental to both groups they’ve certainly been working together.

The PIP capability would mean Blu-ray Profile 1.1 capability would be added this month. It has been long-expected, but there hasn’t been any word on when we might see it.

Via Blu-ray.com.

Posted in Blu-ray/HD DVD, Gaming | Tagged , , | Leave a comment