Posted on 02/23/2006 4:35:14 AM PST by abb
DirecTV Group Inc. is preparing to launch a broadband-video service before the end of the year.
The service will start with a library of 2,000 videos, company executives said yesterday at an annual investor meeting in New York. Customers with a DirecTV Plus digital-video recorder will be able to order programs "on demand" from their television sets or remotely through a Web site. The videos would then be downloaded onto the DVR and be available for viewing later in the day or the following day.
It won't be streaming real-time, but "it'll be faster than Netflix," said Eric Shanks, executive vice president of entertainment.
The upcoming broadband-video service is a response to cable's video-on-demand service. Satellite, for technical reasons, doesn't have the same ability to offer video on demand. To make up for it, DirecTV is focusing on other things such as high-definition broadcasts, original programming, and interactive applications.
The El Segundo, Calif., satellite-TV company, controlled by News Corp., doesn't have its own broadband service, though about five million of its customers have broadband-Internet service. The upcoming broadband-video service would be taking advantage of that connectivity without DirecTV having to invest heavily in developing its own broadband service. Customers interested in the broadband-video service need a broadband connection from any provider and a premium DirecTV box.
DirecTV also is looking into various wireless-broadband technologies. "We'd like to see more broadband players in the marketplace," Chief Executive Chase Carey said. "If there were only two broadband providers, if that was the world, it would create problems for us."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Satellite broadband, hurry, hurry, hurry. So long COMCAST, DISHNetwork, etc, etc...
My new DirecTV 10-250 Tivo HD receiver has two USB ports an IR port and a strange "serial" port that are described in the manual as "for future use". Looks like I may be able to hook my PC up to the USB port and download HD video from DirecTV to my Tivo. That sounds interesting. What sounds better would be to simply download it straight to my computer and decide for myself how I wanted to watch it. But that would surely be too much for the Hollyweird types who don't trust me to protect their precious IP.
Secondly, if you want it in HD, you had better have a TV that accepts HDMI input, because they will NOT allow any HD video over analog (component) inputs.
Thirdly, over-compression of the video will render SD that has more in common with mp3's than 480i DVD. HD will macro-block on fast motion, and have ALL of the HD-Lite characteristics that DTV's HD offerings have today.
That is, until someone posts a crack on the internet.
I've clustied about the extra ports on my Comcast DVR. Apparently, in countries of origin(Taiwan and Japan) these boxes are used for more than what we are offered here. ON enterprising techie hooked up a USB wireless NIC and found the hard drive full of useless data files. The most interesting is that he found addresses of previous users of the box.
Before you praise DirectTV, remember that this is the outfit that conducted an extortion campaign against purchasers of smart-card writers, automatically assuming that they would be used to pirate DirectTV signals. They nailed people who didn't have dishes and people who were already paying for the full package.
You've got me interested. I think I will hook up the USB port to my Media Center PC and see what I see.
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