Las Vegas -- EchoStar Communications Corp.’s Dish Network is mounting an aggressive expansion into local HD channels this year by offering such programming via satellite to as many as 50 markets, with plans to reach roughly 50% of U.S. homes in 2006, company officials said Thursday.
Dish also claimed that with the addition of five new channels from Voom HD Networks, as well as ESPN2 and Universal HD, it will have 25 national HD services, making it the largest HDTV package in the nation.
That will be effective Feb. 1, when the distributor starts transmitting the new additional HD channels in MPEG-4 (Moving Picture Expert Group).
Consumers will pay $54.99 per month for the 25-channel HDTV tier.
In terms of local HDTV channels, Dish’s effort will kick off in February in Los Angeles, New York, Boston and Chicago, EchoStar president Michael Neuman said during a press conference at the 2006 International Consumer Electronics Show here.
In markets where Dish can’t deliver local HD channels by satellite, it will provide subscribers with off-air antennas to pick up those signals.
Last year, Cablevision Systems Corp. sold its “Rainbow 1” satellite to EchoStar for $200 million and closed its Voom DBS service. EchoStar got a 25% stake in Rainbow’s Voom HD Networks and agreed to carry them for 15 years.
Dish had been offering 10 Voom HD channels, but it will add five new ones, bringing its total to 15, officials said Thursday. Dish also plans to add five to 10 more HDTV channels to its 25 later this year.
During its press conference, EchoStar said it will launch a new satellite this year, “EchoStar X,” and it unveiled its new line of receivers, the “ViP Series,” which combine MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 signal capability.
One of those set-tops, the “ViP622 DVR,” is a multiroom HDTV and digital-video-recorder box that lets customers have their primary TV receive HDTV signals and their secondary set get standard-definition signals, providing independent TV viewing at two TV sets.
Such a Dish subscriber would not have to pay for a secondary receiver.
Dish’s plans also include a special “Winter Olympics Mosaic.” Mosaic is Dish’s entrée home page to its service, and it includes six TV screens with different networks simultaneously displayed. During the event, Dish will put the NBC Universal channels offering Olympic Games coverage up on its Mosaic screen.
