The C-Band Chronicles: Motorola Speaks
JAB
At last! We have word from Motorola regarding their plans regarding
C-Band and that word is ... um ... well ... judge for yourself:
"Please note that Motorola is continuously working with our customers
to deliver expectations and offerings that will meet our customers
needs. Motorola operates the C-Band authorization center on a
cost-recovery basis for the benefit of those who continue to utilize
C-Band as a content delivery platform. As programmers move from
C-Band to other distribution methods, costs on a per-user basis
continue to rise. Motorola will continue to operate the Authorization
Center until the remaining users no longer feel that it is an
economically viable distribution strategy for their content."
On further inquiry, Motorola's spokeswoman would neither confirm nor
deny that the company had promised to keep C-Band authorizations
operating at least through the end of the year. So, hmm. What else?
We promised to tell the "other side of the story" and although there
appear to be more sides than a hexaflexagon, we will try. On one side
of the equation are those who blame the C-Band struggle on NPS. A
sample of such comment comes from one reader who writes:
"The real question is "the commitment NPS has to the C-Band business,"
after supporting them in this business for over a decade. I have found
some consumers indicating that NPS is trying to switch them to Dish
Network and refusing to activate any new receivers. I find this
troubling that the burden be put onto Motorola, when the discussion
should be towards NPS�s commitment."
In response to such comments (and similar, less polite ones) Jon
Pardieck, NPS CFO writes (in part): "This is appalling and far from
the truth. NPS has been the back bone to C-Band for many many
years.......we are and have been the only C-Band distributor to go to
the expense (in excess of $100,000 per month) of re-uplinking multiple
programs so our customers can continue to receive the programs they
enjoyed watching."
Mr. Pardieck also notes that NPS is offering the DISH solution to its
customers, saying "We feel this is a great offer to a C-Band customer
who's current system is likely to be in jeopardy beyond 2010."
Finally, we also have some comments from those who believe that the
press is complicit in a C-Band death beat. Writes Dr. Mull of
Satellite Emporium:
"I contend one of the missing parts of 'the C-Band Saga's missing
story' that you are not telling is that part you [and your colleagues]
have always not told, and are still not telling. You find C-band
worthy of your mention now during your deathwatch? ... It's been all
about little dish since their inception. Even now... what's the buzz
in little dish? Oh boy, might they get a la-carte, or not? My - oh -
my, what shall the future hold? Such edge-of-the-seat riveting news!
No mention at all, as usual, that C-Band was built on a la-carte, and
in fact still has it!!"�
JAB
>SkyReport:
February 5,
C-Band at the End?
Looks like the consumer C-Band business will be dead and gone by the
end of this year. After hearing from several retailers about rumors
that Motorola would cease its authorization stream, we started making
inquires. No response from Motorola but Mike Monfort of National
Programming Service (NPS) confirms that the demise is likely.
"We had a conference call in late December when Motorola talked about
discontinuing the authorization stream on April 15th," Monfort says.
After some protests and concerted lobbying, the giant manufacturer
boosted prices by 20%, agreed to continue service until the end of the
year and said they will then decide the future.
Motorola will almost certainly discontinue the service, Monfort says,
so his National Programming Service (NPS) has ceased selling annual
subscriptions. That's bad news for many retailers and C-Band's
current 22,606 subscribers. "The people who are left love their
C-Band," Monfort says. But Motorola apparently finds the business
inconvenient ... and so an era is coming to an end.�
JAB
>SkyReport:
February 8, 2010
SkyBOX: A C-Band Saga
Here's a story about a once-great business, the inexorable march of
technology and the arrogance ... to say nothing of the destructive
power ... of monopolies.
The first hints of serious disease trickled into my mailbox early last
week. We hear, they said, that the C-Band business is going out of
business .... We hear that Motorola will kill it by ceasing to support
of C-Band authorizations.
Now Motorola is, of course, the ONLY support for C-Band
authorizations. It wound up with that monopoly via its take over of
General Instruments, the former "VideoCypher" C-Band monopoly, in
1999. It has profited handsomely from the C-Band business which, at
its pre-Motorola peak, numbered nearly 2.4 million subscribers.
But, as in many things Motorola, the company has given this business
only token support, being content to milk the revenue stream from far
flung subscribers as the newer little dish services soaked up
subscribers in more urban/suburban settings. Today the big dish has
fewer than 23,000 subscribers ... but the revenues still come in.
Would Motorola cut that off?
I called Motorola PR honcho Jennifer Erickson. I left a message. I
wrote an email. I got no response so I called a few more times and
... bingo! ... Ms. Erickson answered her phone. I made my query and
she said, in essence, "What's C-Band?" She said she would check the
rumors out. She said she would call me back.
That call never came. So I tried Mike Mountford at NPS. And he gave
me the scoop: Yes, Motorola is likely to discontinue its support of
C-Band authorizations at the end of this year. There's a glimmer of
hope, but Mountford's NPS has stopped selling annual subscriptions.
So I wrote a story on that (along the way completely mangling the
spelling of Mr. Mountford's last name ... urgh! my apologies.) And I
got a lot of response to that story. And guess what? Some of that
response came from programmers who had been planning new C-Band feeds.
Some of it came from folks who service C-Band equipment. One message
admonished me to tell "both sides of the story." (And if the author
of that email would tell me what this story is missing, I most
certainly will.) But none of it ... nothing ... nada ... came from
Motorola.
So we're talking about people's lives, and business plans, and 22,606
households who just love those big dishes. But we're also talking
about Motorola which is, apparently, too big to be bothered.�
M.M.
Get over it...
JAB
>It's dead, people. It was a great ride but it's dead.
Are you sure? People are still listening/watching...
Richard Crowley
> Now Motorola is, of course, the ONLY support for C-Band
> authorizations. It wound up with that monopoly via its take over of
> General Instruments, the former "VideoCypher" C-Band monopoly, in
> 1999. It has profited handsomely from the C-Band business which, at
> its pre-Motorola peak, numbered nearly 2.4 million subscribers.
>
> But, as in many things Motorola, the company has given this business
> only token support, being content to milk the revenue stream from far
> flung subscribers as the newer little dish services soaked up
> subscribers in more urban/suburban settings. Today the big dish has
> fewer than 23,000 subscribers ... but the revenues still come in.
> Would Motorola cut that off?
Motorola is in business to make profits for its stockholders. I'd
bet that some (many?) people reading this are Motorola stock-
holders, whether directly or via mutual funds or retirement
plans, etc.
If the C-band business went from 2.3 million to 0.023 million, do
we think it costs Motorola proportionally LESS to operate the
system? Do we think it costs Motorola ANY less to operate the
system? I propose that it does NOT, and the fewer customers
there are, the more each of them bear for the fixed cost of
operating the system. At some point (perhaps this year) it will
no longer be a viable business model to provide the up-linking,
the satellite transponder leases, and the operation of the C-band
authorization system. I can't think of ANY business that survived
a 99% loss of business.
Once upon a time the Helms Bakery truck rolled down our street
(and most streets in the Los Angeles, and Orange County and even
down to San Diego areas) with freshly-baked bread, doughnuts,
cookies, cakes, etc. (Not to mention the neighborhood milk-man,
etc.) But those are no longer viable business models, either, as nice
as they may have been in their day. Not to mention that Standard
Definition (4:3) programming itself if shriveling up rapidly in favor
of HD (16:9).
> So we're talking about people's lives, and business plans, and 22,606
> households who just love those big dishes. But we're also talking
> about Motorola which is, apparently, too big to be bothered.
Do we really think that Motorola wouldn't sell the technology, the
authorization system, whatever, to someone else if they could get
any money for it? If it isn't profitable for Motorola to operate (likely
with a skeleton crew of people who will be laid-off when the system
goes dark), why do we think it would become profitable for anyone
else to operate?
Things go extinct and die. From shifts in consumer preferences,
from superior technology rendering old systems obsolete, just
from ordinary entropy. It is the cycle of life. None of us is getting
out of here alive.
Philo
I dont think so! Wait till the fat lady sings!
Still supporting Cband here in Canda!
windows
>in fact still has it!!"•
The bastards at NPS sent me a letter last week stating that "No Cband
programming will be offered by ANY provider after 12/31? Which is a
fucking lie! Those motherfuckers have been in bed with Echostar/D!sh
from the pizza dish inception!!! There was NEVER any doubt but that
NPS would help D!sh shut down Cband over time, which the two have
almost accomplished!
FYI, Dish network IS OWNED by Echostar, who built their business on
the back of Cband subscribers! After they got enough money to
develope the pizza dish, they slowly but surely kept taking ala carte
stuff offof Cband in an effort to A. force Cbanders to buy packages
full of useless shit like the dumbasses that sub to Dish get and or,
B. put Cbanders on pizza dishes like the rest of the dumb asses paying
$40a month for shit like the fucking food channel! Looks like they
almost succeeded until the DVB receiver was put out, which puts a shit
load of FREE TV in the hands of those of us that have BUDs.
I can say this with all certianty, I WILL NEVER HAVE A SUB TO DICK
NETWORK ANYTHING!!! If I happen to have a weak monent and decide to
sub to a pizza dish it will be Direct TV as their HD signal is 5 times
better than anything Dick network has. And on the other hand, why
should I ever consider spending more money with motherfuckers that
fucked me like Echostar/DICK ketwork did over the years!
JAB
wrote:
>And on the other hand, why
>should I ever consider spending more money
Nothing is better
It was 1961, and President Kennedy's new Federal Communications
Commission Chair Newton Minow was speaking at the NAB's annual
convention in Washington, DC. The broadcasters were already suspicious
of this guy, so he tried to be nice at first.
"When television is good, nothing—not the theater, not the magazines
or newspapers—nothing is better," Minow assuringly began.
The NAB execs folded their hands and politely smiled. Wait for it,
they thought. And as they expected, it came.
"But when television is bad," the FCC's new boss continued, "nothing
is worse."
I invite each of you to sit down in front of your television set
when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a
book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and
loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to
that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you
will observe is a vast wasteland.
You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about
totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence,
sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes,
gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly commercials—many
screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True,
you'll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very
few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it.
Minow's speech, with its oblique reference to T.S. Eliot's most famous
poem, reflected the widespread perception that TV had lost its way.
The Golden Age of the mid-1950s, symbolized by Paddy Chayefsky's
brilliant TV drama Marty, had been shunted aside by a cavalcade of
garbage like Queen for a Day and game shows, most of them corrupt.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/08/how-do-you-spell-device-mandate-failure-u-h-f.ars
windows
Skyvision is taking over where NPS is leaving off by offering BUD
owners "some" programming on W5 that will be compatible with the 410,
920 and 922 beyond the 12/31/10 death sentence imposed by Moto.
Only problem I see with that is that it's only a package deal that
still has a ton of useless shit that costs $23 a month? And not only
that, but there in plain site on their webpage is a D!ck Networks
advertisement and you can sign up for that shit on that site? Which
only makes me wonder if they're only in it to make a DN comission off
the few BUD holdouts that won't go quietly into the night now.
I've come to a point that I'm just not going to worry about it anymore
as I'm sure that my 920 will still work as a dish mover for my AZBox
and Pansat receivers after 12/31. In fact, I'm so confident that BUDs
will be revilant after the first of the year that I've been hunting
more of them to plant on my dish farm. I've recently found two 12 ft
mesh dishes and a couple of solids that I plan to use for Ku feeds.
So yeah, Moto can do what they want but between OTA HD and my many
dishes and AZBox HD I'll have plenty to watch next year without them.
Next item on the agenda will be when someone files a class action
lawsuit against Moto for not providing authorizations for receivers
taht advertised all the guide stuff in their sales material. I've
still got the stuff that came with mine and would be glad to see
someone put their feet to the fire since new 922s were still being
sold in recent years.
Rich Piehl
There is an interesting sidebar to your comment about the IRD being a
good dish mover for DVB signals. Actually the ironic part about the
whole this is that after all those year of scrambling signals so people
couldn't watch backhauls in their living room. Since the popularity of
BUD's have dropped dramatically and many of the dishes have failed and
good many of the signals, including backhauls, have switched over to DVB
and DVB-S2 I believe there has been an increase in he number of ITC
transmissions over the last year or two. Scanning the arc with a BUD
has returned to being more in the hobbyist realm rather than a Joe
Sixpack, flop on the couch and look for a sports event or movie, type of
situation.. The effort required to tune such signals is more effort
than the average Joe wishes to expend, or even try to comprehend.
That said there are still plenty of transmissions that are encrypted ,
and there are a lot more different types of encryption that there were
10 or 20 years ago, and some of the signals (like Fox NFL Football) have
switched exclusively to fiber and a citizen has NO chance of reception.
But my impression is there are a lot more local baseball and hockey
games along with some other sporting events starting to turn up ITC on
DVB and DVB-S2.
windows
Rich I agree. There's more and more feeds ITC now than it was 5 years
ago and DVB is the reason. I've got around 20 or so channels that
have decent programming on them not to mention the backhauls for
sports. Ii'm watching a backhaul basetball game now!
Like I said, with HD OTA and the AZBox I've got about all I want or
have time to watch.
windows
I wouldn't count Cband dead just yet. Skyvision and SRL are offering
subs on programming on W5 that will be compatible with the DSR410,
DSR920 and DSR922. And not only that but there's a TON of stuff up
there that a DVB receiver can get when slaved to a 4DTV receiver. Me,
I'll be watching OTA (15 channels) and the countless wild feeds and
backhauls on my AZBox HD!
Then there's streaming online TV that is also available now at NO
additional cost from my internet service provider.
So Cband is only dead to those who want it dead, like NPS who has
worked for Dishnetwork to kill it! But as you can see, it's far from
dead and if there ever comes a time when I can't get ANYTHING on my
BUD, it will be OTA TV and streaming video online from then on as I'll
NEVER own a pizza dish!!