The Satellite Dish

December 30, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (2)

The year 2008 was a strange year in the world of satellite television.  It seemed like satellite world was set to take off in 2008, but instead as I look back on the  year it looks like someone hit a big pause button.

The year started off looking bright for Dish Network who announced some big HD plans for 2008 at the Consumer Electronics Show, but those plans were delayed back due to a launch failure the AMC14 satellite.  Depending on who’s counting, Dish Network claims  currently offer over 100 national HD channels and as of this writing is still advertising “up to 150” HD channels by the end of th...Read More

December 29, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (2)

Welcome to The Satellite Dish, I hope you had a great holiday!  Normally, I do not do equipment reviews here in "The Satellite Dish",  however I recently got my hands on a "Slingcatcher" unit by Sling Media and I have been so impressed with this unit that I decided to share my review here.  If you are a gadget geek like me you might want to look at this product.

Since the arrival of the Slingbox on the scenes in July of 2005 people have had a hard time explaining what a Slingbox is.  A Slingbox is an amazing product which is usually better explained by showing what it does then explaining it. And once you show someone what a Slingbox can do they want one.  The same can be said about the new Slingcatcher from Sling Media.

...Read More

December 23, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (2)

A lot of the news over the last few weeks has been about Dish Network’s public disputes with some broadcasters over retransmission consent.  And if you have been watching it almost looks like Dish Network is the only company which has these types of fights, but they are not.

Since Dish Network serves then entire country their programming disputers make the headlines, but if you’re a smaller company such as Charter Communications such skirmishes don’t seem to garner the same attention.

Charter Communications is in a bat...Read More

December 19, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (4)

I was saddened but not surprised to see the news from Linda Moss yesterday of the domestic demise of VOOM HD Networks.

VOOM was ahead of its time when it was its own DBS service.  And the VOOM spirit lived on after the demise of the DBS service when 15 of the VOOM channels moved onto Dish Network.  It was sad to see VOOMs amazing programming slowly turn into nothing more then HD demo material as VOOM turned into repeat city.

In May Dish Ne...Read More

December 18, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (7)

Last night as clocks stuck 11pm on the West Coast the local channels owned by Fisher communications were dropped from the Dish Network lineup.

Dish Network said that Fisher is "demanding unreasonable contract terms and an excessive programming rate increase of 82 percent for continued carriage." 

Last week Dish was in a dispute with Young Broadcasting, and the Young Broadcasting channels were removed from the Dish Network lineup for 3 days.  Dish is also in a dispute with ComCorp which appears to be demanding up to 2 cents a day per subscriber fo...Read More