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Television Media

Voom No More 206

Posted by CmdrTaco from the never-had-a-pvr-anyway dept.
RokaMoka writes "Today the world got a little fuzzier. Voom has announced thay they are shutting down. As a subscriber I can tell you they will be sorely missed, as they far better than the competition. For those of you who are not familiar with voom, they had 3 times as many HiDef channels as the next competitor and a really nice remote control. It sure was pretty while it lasted." I think they died because they don't have a PVR. Hi-Def folks are early adopters and they want the technology. Of course, with all the mess swirling around DirecTV's move to Mpeg4 and the obsolesence of the HD-Tivo, it will be interesting to see what happens next.
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Voom No More More

Voom No More

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  • Mpeg4? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Can someone clue me in about directtv and mpeg4?
  • PrimeStar was also, what happened that? It shut down.

    Ironically, me and my Scottish friend were discussing this yesterday

    • Re:It was run by a cable company (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well, your Scottish friend should punch you in the haggis for not knowing what irony means. You can say "strangely" or "appropriately", but leave irony out of this.
    • Primestart didn't shut down, it was bought by DirecTV.

      I know, I had it when the merger happened. We were given a new DirecTV receiver and switched to a comparable package.

      I've had satellite TV continuously for about 12 years, beginning with a 3m dish, moving to Primestart, then DirecTV and currently with Voom.... having my Dish turned back on Saturday.

  • Voom (Score:3, Informative)

    by woah ( 781250 ) on Sunday April 10, 2005 @09:29AM (#12193056)
    More info about voom here. [satellitetv-hq.com]

  • Voom went down because they had no customers (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And shit content, there isn't 3x more HD channels than the next provider, they had a bunch of homemade channels and they just aren't big enough to carry that. They'd need 10s of millions of subscribers to pay for all of that.

    • Re:Voom went down because they had no customers (Score:5, Informative)

      by TGK ( 262438 ) on Sunday April 10, 2005 @09:35AM (#12193087) Homepage Journal
      Not sure what you mean by homemade, but I can give you an explanation of how they arived at that number.

      Lots of Vooms channels were "upconverted." IE, they weren't natively filmed in HD, they were filmed in SD and had the extra lines added by some hardware before broadcast.

      Of course, those of us that have groaned in dismay when CSI enhances four pixils into a 1024x758 high res image of a distinctive and case busting tatoo, can easily attest to the reality that you can't create content where none existed.

      Vooms content was HD in format only. It's clear and evident when you look at the final product what's native HD and what's an upconverted mockery.

      Anyone paying through the nose for Vooms services should be savy enough to tell the difference and demand the real thing.

      • Upconversion doesn't need to mean creating content where none existed. Superresolution techniques can extract subpixel detail by integrating over time.
        • First, let me hope you were just going for a "funny" moderation...

          However, in case you were being serious: I don't know what science fiction you've been reading, but I've been working with digital imaging for the better part of two decades, and these ridiculous CSI image enhancements/upconversions are simply not possible.
          You just cannot take grainy 320x240 video (VHS) - or worse 160x120 as when they have 4x splitscreen security footage - zoom in on the license plate of the car in the background that encomp
          • For still frames, interpolation is pretty much the only method of enhancement which, as you state, is just making an educated guess about the information that isn't there. For animation, as I understand it, there are techniques for creating a higher quality frame by adding information from the preceeding and successive frames which provides much better results. IIRC, this technique was used in the latest re-re-re-release of the Star Wars trilogy, and the detail enchancement was fantastic. Not only can th
            • That's kinda what I was saying.
              However, it's entirely contingent on the availability of recognizable information available in the scene.
              If it's a locked down camera with not a lot of action in the frame, so the scene is practically a series of still photos of the same thing, the only variations you can use to calculate, are the variation in grain structure in the film from one frame to the next. Often this can yield great results, but of course it depends greatly on the complexity of the scene.

              For still s
      • How much of their content really was upconverted crap and how much was 'original' HD crap material (such as older film material telecinned to HD)?

        I note that HD Net or one of those other oddball HD channels on our cable system plays Hogan's Heroes in HD. OK, so it probably was telecinned to HD from film, and Hogan's is mildly amusing, but it's hard to call that blockbuster HD content.

        If that's what Voom was offering, it's easy to see why they went down.

    • too many channels, not enough content... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This is really hurting HD in general, and I'm sure Voom suffered from it too.

      Over half of HD content is "cheap content". That is, it is made up of either pointing a camera of things that don't have to sign a release (animals) or converting old cheap film content to HD.

      Every company wants to start their own channel. Look at Universal HD. They have very little content, why don't they sell it to someone else? Why don't they air it on UPN HD? Well, no one wants to buy their content (see cheap content above) a

    • Voom also died because nobody gives a rats ass about HD except us that have HD setups. For 90% of the people regular TV is just fine. And if you sit back and look at a directv picture on a regular, but good, it is pretty damn good. HD just doesn't offer that much more of a better picture.

      Voom just didn't have enough to offer over HD. They needed more than just that. Directv will be able to survive and offer HD services because they will have that huge ass base of regular subscribers to fall back on.

  • That sucks! I was looking into getting Voom's service this summer. Oh well, I guess I'll stick with my local cable company's service. I also wasn't aware that Voom didn't include a PVR service, so I can see where that was a setback for sure. Hopefully, DirecTV will start offering more HD channels and I will start using them!

  • Perhaps.... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by 0x461FAB0BD7D2 ( 812236 )
    if their traditional business model was failing, they could have tried an online business model based on BitTorrent.

    I regularly see thousands of peers on torrents for TV shows. If Voom offered HDTV rips of popular shows, they could have had a viable business model - a TV/media form of the clicks-and-bricks model.
    • they could have tried an online business model based on BitTorrent.

      I won't be a participating customer if any company that uses BitTorrent. I've only rarely seen BitTorrent work adequately in my opinion. I'm on a T1 and for every slashdot torrent I've used, the direct downloads of the same file was faster and more reliable. Even if it did work, I don't want to be subsidizing their business model with my own expensive upload bandwidth, I'd rather that bandwidth go to waste.
      • And you'll be waiting a long time for a direct download business model...5,000+ clients all trying to download that HD file should go real well.

  • Most will migrate eventually to DirecTV. (Score:5, Informative)

    by MtViewGuy ( 197597 ) on Sunday April 10, 2005 @09:31AM (#12193072)
    The reason is simple: DirecTV has already publicly announced that they will launch more satellites to provide more 720p/1080i high-definition channels from both cable channel provider and local broadcast sources.

    In short, by the end of 2007 your DirecTV receiver dish will get most (if not all) your local channels broadcasting in high-definition along with high-definition signals from the cable channel providers (ESPN/ESPN2 HD, Discovery HD Theater, HDNet, HBO and Showtime in HD, etc.).
    • Great, and while I am watching all those local High Def channels, I can run Duke Nukem Forever on my computer running MS Longhorn!
    • As of for now, scratch satellites for Local channels. A tech for DirecTV was kind enough to point out that the Digital Signal for Local is beamed from the landbased towers due to the Local networks not putting up a satellite. Not that I don't mind since I do get all my Local channels from DirecTV, presently, but I hope they eventually get the signal from Orbit, as advertised.
  • http://voom.com/ [voom.com] It was like that yesterday.
  • 40,000 subscribers = $660,000,000 in losses last year. Currently only $285M in assets (of which about $200M is their satellite). It really is amazing that their parent company allowed it to continue for as long as they did.

    Too bad there wasn't a larger customer base available for HDTV.
    • The problem is, HDTV isn't a market. You don't build a programming service based on the medium, you build it based on content. Voom just didn't have enough of the popular Standard Def content that people want, not enough to attract customers away from Dish & DirecTV anyway. High-def documentaries and travel shows just get boring after a while.

      For that matter, I don't know what Mark Cuban is thinking with his HDNet. Once there's no need for a High-Def demo channel, what will become of it? At least

  • PVR didn't kill it (Score:5, Informative)

    by Xeo 024 ( 755161 ) on Sunday April 10, 2005 @09:33AM (#12193081)
    Article [nypost.com]

    It didn't die because it didn't have PVR. It's death could partly be blamed for the internal family conflict between the Dolans.

    "Earlier this year Chuck Dolan lost a boardroom battle with his son, CEO Jimmy Dolan, that resulted in the company cutting off funding for Voom. "

    and

    "In 2004 Voom lost $661.4 million on paltry revenues of $14.9 million, including $354.9 million in write-downs."

    • Re:PVR didn't kill it (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SpiceWare ( 3438 )
      Lack of PVR was definitely part of the problem. I'm an early HD adopter and didn't consider VOOM because of it. Not enough subscribers = paltry revenue.

  • Signal Loss (Score:3, Informative)

    by mecro ( 597901 ) on Sunday April 10, 2005 @09:37AM (#12193097)
    I've read numerous reports that VOOM had terrible problems trying to connect people on the west coast, as their satellite supposedly is hovering over the east coast. This meant that their satellite service was more suseptible to rain fade and the like. Anyone have anymore info?

    • Re:Signal Loss (Score:5, Informative)

      by Xeo 024 ( 755161 ) on Sunday April 10, 2005 @09:47AM (#12193167)
      Check out this thread [satelliteguys.us].

      It appears that they did have signal problems in the West Coast, but they were trying to get another satellite up to help fix that problem:

      "Those slots might be used to expand Voom's limited transmission capacity, to create a backup for the single satellite it launched last year off the East Coast of the United States and to improve its ability to reach the West Coast."

      "Cablevision Systems Corp. Wednesday won the bidding for two orbital slots that could help fill a gap in its Voom nationwide satellite TV service.

      The two orbital positions would allow satellites to reach mainly the West Coast.

      Since Voom launched service in October, its single satellite, whose orbital position is off the East Coast, has been weakest in transmitting TV channels to the West Coast, especially the Seattle and Portland areas."
  • I don't understand why these new technology providers go belly up without getting sold to someone. There is a lot of value there and just throwing it away must be a big waste.
  • I just don't think that the time was right for HDTV sateillite service. It would have worked if it was a few years now maybe.
  • I have voom and I like it, especially the kung fu, equator and monster channels. You can watch HD content on voom that you simply can't get anywhere else. With my voom package I got all of their programming plus discovery HD, UHD, and a couple of others.

    One problem I had with Voom was the local channel delivery. I live in a city where and local channel broadcast power is not strong so I've missed having Fox (That 70s Show) and a few other channels most of the time.

    In any case, I will miss Voom. It was a q
  • Wow! This seems kind of sudden especially since I've seen their commercials splashed all over various cable channels recently.
  • So, i guess they went out with a bang eh?

    BA-BING!!

    Thank you, you're great! I'm here all week! Try the shrimp!
  • I am a professional satellite installer. I work for a small independent company in Washington state. We install both Dish and DTV. We looked at Zoom to see if we wanted to install it as well. It is true that all of there channels were broadcast in 1080i or 720p but most of these channels source material was not HD. Anyone who has ESPN in HD knows what I mean, just about the only time you actually get HD is Sports Center. Also there only satellite being way on the east cost made it next to impossible to get

    • Re:Zoom sucked to start with (Score:5, Funny)

      by Golias ( 176380 ) on Sunday April 10, 2005 @10:33AM (#12193430)
      I am a professional satellite installer.

      You install satellites?

      You must be very tall.
    • I have to stop posting when I first wake up :)

      Corrections : VOOM and Satellite DISH installer.
    • Anyone who has ESPN in HD knows what I mean, just about the only time you actually get HD is Sports Center.

      They had some sports channels that would bring in foreign stuff. I watched a game on someone else's system (no Voom here). It seems that European sports may be filmed in HD at a greater rate than US sports. Though I rarely ratch sports and don't own HD gear, so I really don't care...
    • Professional? So you're part of that 1/10 of 1% who are. Cool. I always thought of myself more as Pro-Am really given the ever changing nature and lack of guidelines to it. (Writer is SBCA certified and has almost 1,000 installs to his credit, so this is a joke, okay?)

      East coast people have similar problems with SuperDish where they get set up for birds just barely over the trees, and when you're in an area that hasn't been clear-cut to a moonscape, that means no line of sight for you.

      I wouldn't re-en

  • Good Riddance. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lordfly ( 590616 ) on Sunday April 10, 2005 @10:43AM (#12193495) Journal
    I work at a retail store that sells Dish and Voom... Voom was the laughingstock of the store the second it came in.

    It had the feel of a "fly by night" organization... the contractors who came to install it for us hadn't heard of it... the tech support number we had for them was disconnected... their HD Box, which originally sold for 800 dollars (!!) plus installation fees plus 40 bucks a month minimum, was prone to crashing. Their satellite dish locked us out of everything except "demo" mode, which meant we could showcase the exact same stupid animation show every half hour.

    Every time we had a customer ask about Voom, we steered them towards Dish. A shame, too, since we got paid more for Voom than for Dish... but we couldn't in our good conscience sell that piece of crap.

    Did I mention the HD channels they offered were rotten? A Fashion Show channel (high def anorexia), a Moov channel (a Winamp vis set to music), a couple of black-and-white B movie channels, a few more shitty movie channels, high definition weather (wtf?), and so on. What a waste of bandwidth.

    I laughed when I heard they only had 20,000 customers after a year.

    Good bye, Voom.
    • "since we got paid more for Voom than for Dish... but we couldn't in our good conscience sell that piece of crap."

      How unAmerican.

      "What a waste of bandwidth."

      It's my understanding that that statement can describe HDTV programming in general and not just Voom.
      • It's my understanding that that statement can describe HDTV programming in general and not just Voom.

        Your understanding is flawed.

        Sports, nature, and travel shows, to name three examples, are 400% better in HD. The grandparent post is correct that some shows like HD weather are a waste of bandwidth.
    • Did I mention the HD channels they offered were rotten?

      No you didn't. But my cable company told me that Voom had exclusive contracts for much of the HD content when I was bitching about the lack of HD options from my cable company. When I heard that, I said to the cable guy "You mean that I have a limited HD programming options due to some exclusive contracts to a company with no business model that will go out of business soon".

      Well, feel free to correct me about the content part, but it looks like I

    • Re:Good Riddance. (Score:4, Informative)

      by rossjudson ( 97786 ) on Sunday April 10, 2005 @04:42PM (#12195866) Homepage
      Gee thanks, moron sales guy. Good thing people like you were pounding the nails into the coffin; now we can all go back to watching shitty cable and shitty satellite quality. I hope you enjoy pushing turd products, 'cause that's where your career is headed.

      I dumped DirecTV and got Voom based on picture quality. Voom has the best technology right now, period. Their price point is also pretty damn good.

      Voom's own HD programming was not all that interesting, with the exceptions of the travel channel and the Rave music channel, both of which were excellent. Where Voom was/is the best is delivery of all the other stuff.

      For each of HBO, Showtime, Starz, Max, etc...the full HD feeds for both coasts are available. Every channel that had an HD version is carried -- ESPN HD, Discovery, TNTHD, etc...That's a lot of good HD content, and you pretty much don't want to go back to watching the conventional crap afterwards. DirecTV's crap-ass HD offering: ONE HBO HD channel, ONE Showtime HD channel, ESPNHD, Discovery HD. Oh, and please pay an extra $11 for that. Wahoo. Yeah, we're all MUCH better off without Voom.

      One thing that isn't mentioned very often is that Voom's SD channels are of _substantially_ higher quality than other satellite systems. SciFi, a channel that needs HD more than anybody else, is quite watchable in SD on Voom. Not so on DirecTV, where it looks like a bag of colored lego with rainbow blocking MPEG distortion so painful that if you threw up on the screen watching it, you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the puke and the image. (Once upon a time DirecTV's PQ was actually decent. Those days are long gone, and they're the reason I switched to Voom).

      What I still can't figure out is exactly why Voom failed in the market, given that the product was dramatically superior to everything else out there, in cost and performance. Talk about a marketing failure!

      I guess when Voom started out it was really pricy and unreliable. By the time I got my Voom box, the service was reliable, the price was WAY cheaper than anything else, and I've been completely satisfied from day one (with the except of an HD DVR -- I still use a plain old SD Tivo for that, and it works fine with Voom).

      Well, fuck it. Summer's here anyway, and my spiffy Samsung DLP will just stay dark more often. I'll probably get skin cancer, and it'll be James Dolan's fault.
  • I was going to get Voom but the constant turmoil left me on the sideline. I'm not buying a $500 set-top box just to have the company shut down por have an obscene price hike. Voom's demise started in the board room.
  • voooo-oooooooo-ooooooommm-mmm-mmmm.

  • My HDTV Trivails (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DumbSwede ( 521261 ) <slashdotbin@hotmail.com> on Sunday April 10, 2005 @11:58AM (#12194049) Homepage Journal
    I had thought about getting Voom and am conflicted about their demise. I hope the Content providers don't draw the wrong conclusions from Voom's failure. I went the homebrew setup way for HDTV with an MyHDTV board and a digital projector. It wasn't until the Olympics this last fall that I could get any HDTV channels OTA. About the same time my Cable provider started offering a small set of HDTV channels and PVRs. I am not happy with the limited selection of HDTV I have, 2 OTA and 6 Cable (one of which is HBO), but over 90% of my viewing is HDTV. If not for Fridays on Sci-Fi it would be about 100 percent.

    If there had been an HDTV viewable media at HDTV introduction things would have evolved far differently. High-end equipment owners like myself would have bought HDTV content proving the marked for HDTV content. HDTV sets would have sold because even in HDTV signal deprived areas like the one I live in, people would still have had something to watch. And with more HDTVs, more OTA HDTV transmission would come quicker. With high end users and their larger amounts of disposable income watching mostly HDTV, advertising revenues would have switched to HDTV and again faster adoption.

    Of course the poor choice of modulation scheme for US transmission didn't help. There were other more robust schemes, but ignored for cost cutting reasons (which by now would have made no difference I suspect as technology marches on and becomes more affordable).

    Of course all this MPEG2 vs MPEG4 and obsoleted equipment that was suppose to be cutting edge HDTV, Joe 6-pack is going to be HDTV shy even longer.

    Content providers are scared shitless of the digital age, they know that once this stuff is digital anyone that waits long enough will just be able to snare it for free at whatever quality he or she wants depending on download times. I suspect also that content providers are conflicted about providing upgraded broadband as it will start to eat into their content revenues. Why would I continue to subscribe to HBO when I can just download the episode for free off the same cable?

    DirectTV is promising a shit load of channels soon, so maybe this did in Voom as much as anything else. If the DirectTV line is reasonable after the new HDTV channels come on line I will probably ditch Cable and go satellite. It seems I've made the smart move in the mean time with cable, the HDTV and PVR are very affordable, but probably aren't MPEG4 compliant. Soon I will have my Blu-Ray player, 20+ HDTV channels and viewing nirvana.

    For those that think I'm a little over the top on my TV viewing, I suspect I watch an average or below average amount. But what I do watch is on a glorious 10-foot screen and I only want razor sharp images on it. I spent about $4000-$5000 putting my system together and I want to get the most out of it. I personally don't understand why people would pay $50-$100 a month for cable or $600-$1200 a year, and then watch it on a $200 set from Wal-Mart.

    • Re:My HDTV Trivails (Score:3, Informative)

      by TheSync ( 5291 )
      Regarding modulation, the most recent demodulator chipsets for 8-VSB now perform just as well as COFDM receive chipsets. They can handle multiple ghosts, pre-ghosts, etc.

      But only a small percentage of Americans depend on over-the-air transmission of any kind, most are on cable or satellite, so I don't think you can blame the current state of US HDTV on 8-VSB. I'm not sure HD has caught on anywhere on the planet, including COFDM modulation countries!

      HD's problem has been one of inertia and technological
  • What good is HD if the content sucks?
    Why would I want to watch bad programing in HD when I can ignore more cheaply in SD?

    It kind of sums it up when with 180 channels of DISH
    the best thing on is curling on ExpressVu.
  • Nobody offers what I want. And I think my want list is pretty basoc.

    1. I want the standard channel lineup.
    2. I want the local channels in HIGH DEF that broadcast in high def.
    3. I want some decent selection in HD channels.
    4. I want a highdef DVR that can handle all channels. Locals and regulars. Highdef and standard.

    DirecTV can't give me my locals in highdef because, they say, I live in the city and need that precious waiver that I'll never get.

    Dish Network can't give me my locals in high def. So I'd lose
    • "DirecTV can't give me my locals in highdef because, they say, I live in the city and need that precious waiver that I'll never get."

      Waivers are hard to give because of FCC regs. You need to have essentially no picture before you can even think about getting waivers.

      "Sadly, I'm stuck in bed with Cox once again until somebody gets me what I need."

      DIRECTV is launching 4 new satellites which broadcast in the Ka band. With a new dish, new multiswitches, and new recievers, you will be able to get HD locals fr

  • "VOOM"?!? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Cloud K ( 125581 ) on Sunday April 10, 2005 @12:49PM (#12194392)
    Mate, this site wouldn't "voom" if you put four million hits through it! It's bleedin' demised!

    (Sorry, that was necessary. British humour.)

  • Balloney! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bs_02_06_02 ( 670476 ) on Sunday April 10, 2005 @12:59PM (#12194483)
    I think they died because they don't have a PVR. Hi-Def folks are early adopters and they want the technology. Of course, with all the mess swirling around DirecTV's move to Mpeg4 and the obsolesence of the HD-Tivo, it will be interesting to see what happens next.

    Voom died because they didn't know how to compete. They were the 3rd player in a 2 player race. If you want to break into an established market, you go back to the basics and compete on price. First and foremost, people are going to ask, "What does it cost?" You do what it takes to bring in the subscribers. Voom didn't do that. Sure, they had a big lineup of channels, but half of those channels, no one had ever seen. There's not enough marketshare to survive on HD alone. What incentive did Voom offer to switch? You couldn't walk into Sears, Best Buy, or anywhere and look at their lineup. Why? I've had an HDTV from the moment the 2nd gen Mitsubishis were introduced. I picked up a DirecTV HD receiver as soon as they offered service. I have no interest in the HD TIVO box because you have to reboot the thing EVERY DAY. What a piece of junk! It's more aggravation that it's worth. There aren't enough HD owners out there yet for a satellite company to survive. And HD owners that want TIVO? There's no way I'd gamble on such a specific audience. Your speculation doesn't wash.
    The truth is, PVR, MPEG4 and the impending doom of the current HD-TIVO box have nothing to do with the decline of Voom. Voom never acquired enough subscribers to pay for their programming. And their programming stunk. They had a hodge-podge of everything, which meant they were excellent at nothing. If you want subscribers, you've got to go after the sports market first.

    Their sports lineup stunk. Instead, Voom chose to compete with custom programming. Switching to Voom was a risk, and in the beginning, no one was willing to risk it because Voom wasn't willing to offer any fantastic deals. I would have done the opposite. I would have worked hard to get the sports market, and ALSO undercut everyone's prices... a lot more than what they were willing to do. Subsidize the hardware... from the beginning. And then word of mouth might have gotten them more subs. I don't have a single friend that asked me about Voom. Not one. And I'm the early adopter. No one was interested in trying Voom. I mentioned it. But no one cared.
  • The reason I never Voom was that they required a credit card to order. Note that I mean an actual credit card, not a debit card. Since there was no way I was going to get a credit card just to get their service, I didn't get it. I couldn't really get why they needed a credit card as opposed to a card tied into my bank account, seems like they could go after me just as easily if I bailed either way.
  • I know that this comment is not going to be popular with the "bleeding edge" /. types but its got to be said.

    HD is not that great. HD is not in great demand by the general public. HD will/would have never gained any market share unless forced upon it by the government.

    While HD material that was filmed in HD looks really good it simply isn't necessary because in the end it's still just TV.

    Most people don't feel that they need to be able to see every pore in Dan Rather's nose to be able to understand the
    • I disagree. Watch sports or movies on a larger HD set, and you will see the need. As more and more big screen TVs show up in consumers' homes, more and more consumers notice how bad the picture on regular television is. Why would you think 720x486 resolution is good enough on a 50+ inch monitor when you demand a minimum of 1024x768 on even a 17" computer monitor?
    • "The picture we currently have is more than adequate for general TV."

      The picture we had in the 50's was adequate for general TV, but I seriously doubt you'd want to go back to the crappy blurry B&W.

      "Most people don't feel that they need to be able to see every pore in Dan Rather's nose to be able to understand the evening news."

      Dan Rather isn't on TV anymore, and NO NATIONAL NETWORK does their evening news in HD. 99% of local affiliates don't do any of their news in HD either.

      "Whatever entertainment

  • With the advent of Tiger and H.264 and Apple's deep knowledge of MPEG4 and its QuickTime APIs what are the odds that one of Apple's future Digital Hub Hardware products is a TiVO like box that DirecTV would license?

    We already know they could pick Linux for their solution.

    This is just highly speculative thinking here.

  • Voom did NOT fail because "nobody cares about HD."

    HD is growing in popularity like crazy. That's why you always hear about more and more HD channels being launched and more and more programs being filmed in AND aired iN HD.

    Voom failed for many reasons, but it wasn't lack of HD content:

    1.) Voom failed to offer the SD channels you expect from a DBS provider. I think Sci-Fi channel was not on their system either ever, or for a long time. Thus if you were an HD enthusiast, you were reluctant to go to Voom be
  • What happens next? I bet Apple will come out with a PVR that will do for television what the iPod is doing for music. And then, goodbye ReplayTV.

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