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Project Insomnia

Project Insomnia is many things, but in this context it is simply a "braindump" of whatever I happen to be thinking/reading/watching/doing at the moment. Parental guidance suggested.

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Satellite TV rates going up

The Chronicle reports Dish Network fee to rise next month; DirecTV to follow.
EchoStar will charge $2 to $4 more per month, starting next month, an increase of about 4.3 percent of the $56 a typical customer spends, according to the Associated Press.

DirecTV spokesman Robert Mercer would not say how much rates would rise, but said the company would make an announcement sometime in the next three months. "Counting a rate hike that we put in place in March, we've had only four price increases in the 10 years that we've been in business," Mercer said. "That's despite rising programming costs and having made significant investments to improve the quality of our customer care and expand our programming offerings."
It's still less expensive than cable--even with the necessity (for DirecTV) of buying the equipment--and I would prefer anything over a cable company. This quote from Comcast's local VP of operations continues the outright lies typical of cable companies in their efforts to dissuade people from satellite:
We're able to offer video-on-demand and (local) high-definition television channels, which satellite can't.
Untrue.
a) Comcast does not offer VoD in the true sense, which is no set start times; they offer pay-per-view as does DirecTV, and, presumably, DISH. My DirecTV service offers something on the order of 200 PPV choices at any given time.
b) DirecTV offers local HD channels to subscribers with HD-capable DirecTV receivers. This one is particularly annoying because Comcast has hired local KCBS news legend Al Hart to shill their product, and he goes on and on about how "you can't get that with the dish." Sorry, Al, but you can.
The real problem comes later in the article when we get into News Corp's motives for buying DirecTV last year and how they will likely not try to compete on price for much longer. I'm happy with what I'm paying now for what I'm getting--$48/month for everything but the premiums, plus locals, plus TiVo service. I don't know that I'd want to pay much more than that, but I do have the investment in equipment that would be hard from which to turn away.
|| Andrew, 10:47 AM || ||

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