A dramatic turn of events in the ongoing story of U.S. carrier consolidation: Dish Network is launching a $25.5 billion bid for number-three carrier Sprint, amounting to $17.3 billion in cash and $8.2 billion in stock. If successful, the deal would effectively snatch Sprint out of the hands of Japanese carrier Softbank, which in October announced that it would pay $20.5 billion for a 70% stake in… → Read More
Aereo has a lot of plates spinning. The streaming TV startup just launched a huge marketing push in NY, along with the announcement of a $38 million funding round aimed at expansion to over 20 new cities in the coming months. And if that weren’t enough, Aereo is still in the midst of a fierce legal battle with network broadcasters. Still, the company continues to juggle its issues, not least… → Read More
About a month ago, if you’ll remember, the very fabric of the Internet journalism game was rent asunder when CNET’s parent company, CBS, refused to let it write about the Dish Hopper with Slingbox, a DVR with a system to view your shows remotely built in. More important, however, is the Hopper’s ability to “hop” past commercials in prime-time TV a few days after the show aired, allowing you to… → Read More
Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen had a few kind words for Netflix at the D: Dive Into Media conference today, saying that the streaming video provider would most likely be successful. More than that, though, he said that the company was already changing the way people are watching TV. → Read More
Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen is no stranger to controversy, so it should be no surprise that he has a controversial plan for the future of advertising. At the D: Dive Into Media conference today, the outspoken pay TV executive said he didn’t want to kill advertising, but wanted to make those ads more relevant to consumers. → Read More
Dish making big improvements in speed and reliability, and announcing a new feature powered by Sling that will allow consumers to stream live and pre-recorded video to their mobile devices both in and outside of the home. The new devices have double the memory and double the speed of the Hopper introduced last year. → Read More
So Dish is the latest company interested in building an Internet TV service, as Bloomberg reported last week that it was in talks with various networks about licensing their content and delivering it over-the-top. But while an over-the-top live TV would certainly be a welcome choice among video options, it’s unlikely to be as cheap or as competitive as everyone would like it to be.
Dish isn’t… → Read More
When Dish announced their new ad-skipping tech, response was fairly muted. Sure it was some cool technology – the experience is seamless in that you notice maybe the first second of a commercial and then a little notification pops you over the commercials entirely – but TV execs are reportedly upset by Dish’s unilateral decision.
Fox’s Peter Rice said it was “a strange thing to do” and NBC is… → Read More
Tell me if this sounds familiar — you’re sitting on a couch watching television, and the commercial breaks seem way longer than the snippets of the show you’re actually trying to watch.
As it turns out, some Dish Network customers have been granted a bit of respite from that advertising onslaught. Users who have their living rooms tricked out with the company’s Hopper DVRs can now… → Read More
Satellite TV and video-on-demand company DISH Network this morning announced today that Joseph P. Clayton has been named the company’s president and chief executive officer and has been appointed to its board of directors, effective June 20, 2011. The company’s iconic co-founder, Charles Ergen, will step down from his operational role at the helm of the company but remain as chairman of DISH… → Read More
DISH Network and EchoStar this morning announced that they’ve agreed to pay TiVo $500 million to settle all of their ongoing patent litigation with the digital video recorder company.
Under the terms of the settlement agreement, DISH and EchoStar will initially cough up $300 million, with the remaining $200 million distributed in six equal annual payments between 2012 and 2017. → Read More
According to an AP report, Dish Networks, the soon-to-be new owner of Blockbuster, is keeping the leases on 500 of Blockbuster’s physical stores. The reasoning, while on the surface inscrutable, will give Dish a physical presence and allow it access to Blockbuster’s assets and brand to sell its own satellite TV service to consumers. → Read More
DISH Network this morning announced that it was selected as the winning bidder in the bankruptcy court auction for substantially all of the assets of Blockbuster, which went belly up in September 2010.
DISH’s winning bid was valued at approximately $320 million, but after adjustments for available cash and inventory and others, the company expects to end up paying approximately $228 million in… → Read More
At this week’s Google I/O Conference, the company carefully articulated its vision of the world. There’s Apple in one corner, carefully controlling its ecosystem, rejecting Flash, and conjuring images of an Orwellian Big Brother. As the “one man, one company, one device” (Vic Gundotra’s words) becomes more powerful, Google is trying to posit itself as the other choice. The more “open” choice. → Read More
TiVo is having a very rough morning.
A federal appeals court stated today that it will revisit a digital-video recorder patent dispute between TiVo and both Dish Network and EchoStar. TiVo has sued the companies back in 2004 over its patented DVR technology back when the two were still a single company.
They won the suit, but the court has now decided to reconsider its verdict, which is a bit of… → Read More
The battle between Dish and TiVo rages on. As reported by Bloomberg, a judge has ruled that Dish and EchoStar must pay TiVo around $200 million for continuing to provide DVR service to its customers after being told to stop because it was violating TiVo’s patents. Dish and EchoStar plan to appeal the ruling.
The new ruling brings Dish and EchoStar’s total payments to TiVo to around $400 million… → Read More
Deja Vu? Yeah, EchoStar paid TiVo over a $100 million a couple of years ago for infringing on TiVo‘s DVR patents. But it seems that EchoStar didn’t follow the court’s orders to disabling all the Dish DVRs that infringed on TiVo’s patent. Now they have to pay. → Read More
Dish Network lost a bunch of subscribers at the end of last year but the company is still in the black even with losing 104,000 subs. Dish’s contract with AT&T is now up and it seems that all those peeps that got roped into deals are now dropping the service after the contract expired. Now, don’t think the company is washed up ’cause at the end of last year, Dish still had 13,678,000… → Read More
Picture your flat’s sink full of nasty dishes. Ok, maybe not nasty nasty, but you know, dingy. Then all you do is fill up the sink with water and drop this little guy in. Press the indicator light to have your new roommate wash everything submerged with ultrasonic tech. Who knows if this concept will ever make it out of CG-world and into my sink. If it helps though, I can provide an… → Read More
DISH announced today a net loss of 25,000 customers. The company blamed the loss of subscribers on a combination of economic factors and stiffening competition. Wall Street reacted unfavorably, sending the shares down in early trading. The stock price made up lost ground as the day went on. Craig Moffett, analyst at Bernstein Research, said: This is not pretty. It’s the first ever loss of… → Read More
I’ll be honest. I’ve never met anyone in real life who subscribes to DISH Network, but I’m fairly convinced that the company does exist and probably turns a profit. If you happen to be a DISH subscriber and you have one of the HD packages, then you, my friend, are in for what appears to be some sort of treat. Tomorrow, DISH will start rolling out a big, fat update to all of its MPEG-4 HD DVR… → Read More
EchoStar (now known as DISH Network Corporation) was dealt yet another blow in its ongoing patent battle with Tivo as the U.S. Appeals Court ruled against them. The dispute involves EchoStar’s alleged infringement of Tivo’s TimeWarp patent, which allows users to record one program while watching another. Tivo applied for the patent in 1998, and it was granted in 2001. In 2004 Tivo… → Read More
If you’re a Slingbox owner who happens to be of the opinion that there just aren’t enough ads on television already, you are weird. You also might be seeing even more ads if Sling Media puts into play the technology described in a recent patent. The patent basically entails using various methods of delivering ads including video overlays, pre- and post-roll ads, pop-up windows, and… → Read More
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