DirecTV Is Entering the Landline Game with Video-on-Demand

Implications: DirecTV's 16.8 million customers can choose pay-per-view channels, which have detoriated in quality and quantity over the past years, or they can get their video-on-demand from the broadband or internet connection.  This opens the door to multiple video-on-demand players, including all the Internet Service Providers and on to the Hollywood movie companies.

Analysis: Video-On-Demand by broadband, seems like we have heard this one before, right?  Dish Network is supplying ATT with Homezone (for non-Uverse customers).  Video downloads don't come by the dish, as the regular and high definition programming does, it comes by the 6mb broadband DSL connection part of Homezone's package.  DirecTV is mimicing this service, utilizing the digital video recorders (dvr's)of its standard and high definition customers (there is a lot of changing going on right now to the high definition dishes/set top boxes/dvr's.  This offering will be limited to those DTV customers that have a broadband internet connection attached to their set top box/dvr.  DirecTV customers will have a much wider assortment of movies to choose from than previously available, and their purchasing habits will be exposed, since their viewing habits can and will be reported upstream to DirecTV.  This means that the targeted advertising that the cable tv companies have been initiating will be again copied by DirecTV, and customers will see adds that match their purchasing habits.  One issue facing DirecTV customers using this service that are hooked on high definition, is that the dvr space used by high definition videos could severely limit the capacity of some older dvr's, sparking a dvr changeout to gain more space.  This changeout could be costly for DirecTV and painful to users.  Users of the old, now discontinued TiVo DirecTV service would have to give up their older dvr's and lose the TiVo capability, which many folks are in love with, compared to the way programs are stored today, which is lacking in the breadth and depth of the TiVo program search, in my opinion.  I suspect that this rollout will have its ups and downs, but it will be interesting and fun to watch.