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DirecTV: Surging Stock Price, Plenty of Potential

DirecTV is presently firing on all cylinders simply because it has the most dedicated bandwidth to offer the broadest HD programming platform. The lead that DirecTV has over the competition in HD offerings is, in my opinion, a bit overblown, as the lion's share of programming on newly launched HD channels is minimal. Hopefully, this will change by 2009 when these newly launched HD channels have had the time to produce or purchase HD content. The amount of HD content on these channels in 2008 is slowly improving.

Where I believe the author is overly optimistic is on the VOD front. I own a DirecTV HD DVR. I've had access to DirecTV's beta VOD for about 6 months, and frankly, I hardly use it. Over 90% of what's offered is in SD (standard definition). As DirecTV delivers its VOD service over the Internet, it remains to be seen how successful it will be in delivering on a sizeable scale HD VOD content.

I believe the file size of an HD feature film is about half a gig (500 MB). While an HD movie might take 15-20 minutes to download, it might take several hours due to congestion over the network. In addition, it remains to be seen how the cable & telco carriers are going to respond to the demands DirecTV VOD model is going to place on their networks. Bottom line, I question at this point how successful DirecTV VOD service will be to lure additional customers who have been weaned on cable's VOD service for years.

DirecTV Dumps TiVo, I Dump DirecTV

Continue to be a DirecTV customer, but can sympathize with your decision, though a ReplayTV, not a TiVo owner. DirecTV's HD DVR continues to be a work in progress.

I think it's decisions like your and others like you that will eventually wake up DirecTV's "mis"management. Right now they are riding the wave of their investment in HD programming. But as soon as the other carriers catch up, subs will leave DirecTV unless it can once again offer the value it once did in terms of pricing of program packages.

The consumer, IMHO, is tapped-out when it comes to increasing monthly subscription fees. In response to the industry's claim (including the MSOs) that the consumer now gets more services for his buck, my counter is the consumer has no choice. Give the consumer the choice to go with a lower priced package, & one that is not necessarily tiered, whereby before you can subscribe to one package requires subscription to a base package.

All this points to a la carte pricing to some degree, at some point in the future.

ReplayTV Sold to DirecTV (Huh?)

Most likely, they bought Replay for its patent portfolio, & at an attractive price since it appears D&M and its principal investor wished to liquidate their investment in Replay.