Dish Network

New Dish Network Satellite Launched, More HD Channels On the Way

In order to offer more HD channels, satellite providers need more satellites. So happy day for Dish Network subscribers, their EchoStar XI satellite was successfully launched this morning after a satellite propelled into space last March didn’t reach the right orbit. This’ll let Dish add 17 new HD channels shortly, bringing them up to 100.…

AT&T Dumping Dish TV (Is Satellite Screwed?)

AT&T is nixing the agreement they’ve had with Dish TV since 2003 to sell their satellite TV service as part of a triple play bundle with internet and voice. Some are speculating it’s because AT&T is simply down on satellite TV (it’s got its own U-verse IPTV thing after all), but more likely it’s pitting…

New Dish Network 722s HD DVR Has Built-In Slingbox and Slingcatcher

At their Team Summit Retailer Conference over the weekend, Dish Network pulled back the curtain on a new flavor their latest HD DVR, the 722s. It’s got a built-in Slingbox, plus Clip + Sling and Slingcatcher functionality to boot. The pile of whip cream on that box of synergy awesomeness is a brand new HD…

Dish Network Wants to Go Mobile

Oh, the irony. A wireless content distributor (Dish Network) needs somewhere between $500 million and $2 billion to support mobile (wireless) TV. Dish owns a chunk of the 700Mhz spectrum; now they just need a friend. But as Dish vice chairman Carl Voge put it, “We’re a long, long, long way from building anything out.…

News Corp. Hires Hacker to Break Into Dish Satellite Network, Steal Security Codes for Pirate Cards

This is classic corporate espionage/sabotage at its finest. Dish Network is accusing News Corp.—which used to have a 39 percent stake in DirecTV and still provides its security tech—of hiring hacker Christopher Tarnovsky to break into Dish’s network, steal the security codes, and use them to make pirated cards to flood the black market. It…

Comcast and Time Warner To Launch WiMax Network, Asking Sprint to Run It?

Cable operators Comcast and Time Warner plan to gather up $1.5 billion to $2 billion in order to get their own WiMax network going, and it’s said that they would turn to Sprint to run the show. Now, I don’t know what part of this plan makes sense to anyone else, but A) WiMax as…

Proof Satellite Sucks: Dish and DirecTV Get FCC Approval to Downgrade HD Channels Until 2013

High-def channels consume bandwidth like Britney Spears at a Frappuccino trough (props, last night’s South Park). That’s a problem for twinkly satellite providers Dish Network and DirecTV, who just don’t have the capacity to blast every channel in HD—so the FCC just gave them the nod to downcovert broadcasters’ HD signals until 2013. Basically, it…

What Satellite Service is Better for Your HDTV?

On Black Friday, some of you walked home with your first HDTV. Or second. Discount voodoo is understandably hard to resist. But unless you’ve got HD content, you’ve got nothin’ but a pretty frame. Since it’s the holidays, you probably don’t wanna screw around in customer service hell. If you’ve narrowed your choice down to…

Dish Network ViP 722 DVR: More Space, Black Chassis, Slight Improvement

We got our hands on the Dish Network ViP722, making sure the next generation of satellite DVRs has plenty of storage space. Its makers have added hours of storage to this beast, now totalling 55 hours’ worth of 1080i or 720p HD video, or 350 hours of standard def. In addition, you can now plug…

Dish Network’s ViP622 DVR now supports external USB 2.0 Hard Drives and requires a one time $39.99 activation fee. TiVo’s eSATA support isn’t official yet. Time to wake up, TiVo. [Zatz Not Funny!]

Dish Network PVRs Won’t Be Shut Down

Dish Network PVR users can breathe again: a federal appeals court has just blocked a court ruling that would have forced the network to stop selling the PVRs and shut down the ones they’ve already sold. The federal court blocked the injunction that was part of a case where TiVo sued EchoStar, claiming that their…

TiVo Beats EchoStar’s Butt

TiVo went up against EchoStar in a patent infrigement lawsuit and won, with a jury awarding TiVo $73 million in damages. Why the lawsuit? When EchoStar put together its own digital video recorder for its Dish Network, TiVo cried foul, saying that its patent for a “multimedia time warping system” was violated by EchoStar’s DVR.…

Dish Network Announces HD Package at CES

Looking for HD content? Echostar and Dish Network are coming to the rescue with more than 1700 hours per week of the stuff. Claiming that its new high-definition television package offers the most HD channels in the pay-TV industry, this year we’ll see five new original VOOM channels and other new networks including ESPN2 HD…

PocketDISH Makes Great Travel Companion

If you’ve got Dish satellite TV, you’re gonna likey the new Archos-branded portable media devices. As well as recording your satellite programming, it can download and record content from a PC or Mac, digital cameras, mass storage devices, as well as other video or audio sources such as DVD players, camcorders and VCRs. A USB…