As I hinted at in the HDTV thread, I was considering Voom. And on Feburary 15th, the installer came. For those that don't know, Voom is a satellite service geared towards HDTV owners, with 21 original channels, and 18 HDTV channels from places like HBO, ESPN and Discovery. The rest of the lineup is the traditional channels nearly any pay TV service includes like USA, SciFi, TNT and such.

The install consisted of an off air antenna and dish aimed southeast. The off air antenna the installer chose is a square directional unit. His reason for doing so is due to every TV antenna for the area all being on top of Cheyene Mountain, so no need for a bigger winged one to get the best signal. Thanks to the in house wiring, the installer didn't have to route cabling all over the outside of the house to the living room.

The box they use looks like this on the front and this on the back. (Thanks to images.google.com for these). The installer powered the box on, got a great signal on the dish, and proceeded to tell the box what off air channels existed. Signals on all four looked good. Sadly, NBC here still doesn't broadcast in HD, and no local UPN or WB channel exists. But ABC, CBS, FOX, and PBS come in fine. Once everything looked good, he started the box on a firmware download, gave me a quick explanation of the remote, and left.

The remote is nothing fancy, but does make use of 4 colored buttons for context sensitive functions. It is a universal remote to control a TV and VCR, but nothing else. Not really much to talk about here.

To use the system, it has a "Voom" button that brings you to the main menu. It is basically a category view selection for the guide. The nice thing is that it is live, so selecting All HD shows my local channels a lot during primetime, but they are hidden during the day when they typically just air standard content. The downside to the menu and guide is that it doesn't hide unsubscribed channels. An update soon is supposed to add this. The receiver seems stable, as it has remained powered on since I got it due to using the ReplayTV for PVR functions. The size is quite large for a basic receiver, but at CES they showed a newer smaller unit, and a PVR unit inside the same size box I have.

Ok, now for a rundown of the service. The Voom specific HD channels offer a wide selection of older movies. If I want to watch a Kung Fu movie, I go to the Kung Fu channel. Every movie I have seen so far has been upsized to HD very well. The picture quality I would have to say is better then DVDs upsized to HD via an ATI All in Wonder card. Beyond the movie channels, they offer a 24 hour news channel, world sports, discovery like channel that shows places around the world, extreme sports/activities channel, concert channel, fashion channel, auction channel, art gallery channel, kids animation channel, and lastly, a music channel that displays HD visuals.

So far, out of the Voom exclusive channels, I have watched the news a bit and do like the fact that they take advantage of HD for weather and such. Instead of showing parts of the US, they can show the entire US with every county clearly visible. News wise, they need to partner with another news source, as their stories rarely cover everything. the concert channel has been interesting for a few shows. The discovery clone is very similar to DiscoveryHD, and I find myself putting on either one if I want an HD channel on. Once a PVR comes out, I'll probably record some of the other shows, since I usually don't watch a ton of live tv.

Now, the big advantage I have noticed on the service so far is the improved picture quality. I notice much less compression artifacts, and the box seems to do a much better job of upsizing the content then my TV does when it was being fed by the old Dish receiver.


Of course, I went into this knowing there would be the possibility of the service going down. Thankfully, install was only $1 with a six month commitment to $50 of programming. http://www.voom.com/ says "Voom has ceased taking new customer orders and will shut down by the end of March." But oddly, http://voomllc.com/ is up with a new phone number, and online ads are now going to that site. The customer service reps are being told Cablevision still owns voom.com and posted the message, while Voom HD LLC (the new company started by Charles Dolan) registered the new domain. They also went ahead with a service upgrade that changed over the encoders to be MPEG-4 ready. So it is really confusing right now to know how long the service will last. But at CES, March was supposed to be the month of added HD and SD channels, and the PVR, and so far the first part of that seems to be on schedule.

I'll hopefully update this review with some more information about the future PVR and new channels. Thus far, what they have shown of the PVRs is nice. It has two off the air tuners and two dish tuners, all capable of being fed into the box via one cable. And it networks to any of the standard receivers via ethernet or coax. You can tune to any live channel, or watch any recorded program on any unit in the house, even if the auxiliary units aren't cabled to the dish directly.

Very interesting. Thanks. I can only assume that the bumpy ride you speak of is the possible ride that's coming up, because it sounds like the actual install and use of the service has gone well for you. If you don't mind me asking, is the $50 your monthly contract? That's not too bad I suppose.

If you eventually get the PVR (provided they stay in business and release one), the only two questions I would ask at that point would be how much it costs and how nice it is to use. It'll take something significantly cheaper than the HD Tivo for me to give up a Tivo interface.

The confusion continues. An employee leaked two e-mails from Feb 28th. The first was from James Dolan stating Cablevision has not come to an agreement with Voom HD LLC and will begin shutting down the service. Moments later, an e-mail came from Charles Dolan that things were still up in the air, but looking good for Voom. So it looks like this entire mess up top could be a father/son fight. Kinda bizarre to see, but I tend to believe the second message due to an SEC filing today that states:

Quote:
On February 11, 2005, the Company and CSC Holdings, Inc. filed a Current Report on Form 8-K disclosing that they had signed a letter of intent under which VOOM HD, LLC, a new private company formed by certain Class B holders, including Charles F. Dolan and Tom Dolan, would acquire the business, assets and liabilities of the Company's Rainbow DBS satellite business not included in the agreement with EchoStar announced on January 20, 2005. On February 28, 2005, the Company announced that the letter of intent had expired, that the Company and VOOM HD LLC had ended discussions without reaching a definitive agreement, and that, as a result, the Company would close down the Rainbow DBS business.

The closing of the Rainbow DBS business has been delayed to allow VOOM HD, a further opportunity to explore its ability to present to the Board a transaction for VOOM HD LLC to acquire assets and liabilities of the Rainbow DBS business on terms that are satisfactory to the Board and a committee of independent directors. Charles F. Dolan is currently expected to report to the Board on this matter by March 7, 2005. There can be no assurance that such a transaction can be structured or that any such transaction would be approved by the Board or the committee of independent directors.

Very confusing. But at least it looks like things will be worked out. The transponder changeover that occured yesterday was the first step in not only adding new channels, but also a step needed to move over to MPEG-4. I have a feeling they are trying to push forward with the upgrade, since then even if they do stay on one satellite, the MPEG-4 move will allow them to add channels and still keep the quality that has me sold on the service.

Well, good news keeps coming regarding Voom.

Quote:
Tuesday March 8, 5:29 pm ET


BETHPAGE, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 8, 2005--Cablevision Systems Corporation (NYSE: CVC - News) announced today that it has entered into an agreement with its Chairman, Charles F. Dolan, and Thomas C. Dolan, pursuant to which the parties will work cooperatively to finalize the separation from Cablevision of its Rainbow DBS operation. The agreement allows Rainbow DBS to remain in operation and to continue to provide its VOOM service to subscribers while Charles and Thomas Dolan seek to arrange an alternate transaction that would avoid a shutdown of Rainbow DBS. Charles Dolan has agreed to fund any costs incurred by Rainbow DBS above those that would have been incurred under a shutdown scenario. The agreement, which was approved by the Board of Directors of Cablevision at a board meeting today and by a special committee of independent directors, terminates on March 31, 2005.

Hopefully that means no more cat fights that took the Voom site down for a bit. Voom.com is back to normal for the most part, except the web ordering part. All new orders must go to their call center, but installs are still going forward.

Also, starting last night, subscribers saw three new channels appear, all from Lifetime. Thus so far, they are holding to their new channels in March promise, all with no price increase.

I know at one point you mentioned that your plan was to use the STB as a OTA tuner should voom go off the air. Are you still of the impression that it would work as a tuner if the service stopped compleetly?

I'm in a who-to-sign-up-for dillema at the moment, and don't even own an HDTV, but plan to in the future. If there was a good chance of a free OTA tuner, it would offset the hassle of having to switch to something else.

Matthew

I don't have an easy way to tell what the box will do if it is lacking signal from Voom, since they combine the dish and antenna signal into one coax. Guess I could go cover the dish with a box or something :-)

And regarding new Voom news, thus far 19 channels have been added to the service after the technical upgrades, and most are viewable on the lower programming package. Thus far, I have enjoyed the return of BBC America to my TV.

And I have been making an hones attempt to watch more Voom specific content to give it a better review. Thus far:

World Sport HD : Well, any game they show on here will be in HD quality, unlike ESPN HD where it is HD some of the time. They cover the Junior League Hockey games (currently showing reruns of the big tournament in January), so I have my HD hockey fix even without the NHL. My friend really liked the soccer coverage they had when he came over, as it is his favorite sport to watch. Basicially they cover most non national US league games. For baseball, they show a lot of games out of Japan, and for basketball, they show Euro games.

Equator HD : Thus far this has been a decent channel to watch. The quality of it is near Discovery in terms of their documentaries. The benefit is that I can tune to it to get some goregous pictures of places around the world 24/7, instead of tuning to Discovery and possibly getting Trading Spaces in HD. If they would at least do Mythbusters in HD I could forgive them a little.

HDNews : It's still not as good as CNN for a quick summary of news, but is still nice to watch for what they do report on. Usually 10 minutes is good to catch the top sports, financial, world, and national news stories.

Lab: Still an interesting channel to leave on for background ambient filler. A friend described it as the channel to tune to if high at the time.

The themed movie channels: I give them high regard for not taking 2.35:1 films and cropping them to fill 1.85:1. Thus far though I haven't watched too many movies on them though, but I'm not a huge movie fan. The clips I have seen of older films show a very good HD upconvert.

Darn. They had promise. Maybe something will rise phoenix-like from those ashes.

Voom is dead, I was shooting some HD programming for them. They had a [censored] of cameras and editing facilities, but it looks like Dolan can't convince anyone to loose another billion in this dog. Dolan started HBO back in the day, and he really was on to something with Voom, just Voom came out too soon: HD penetration isnt quite there yet, VOD and cable broadband exploded and no one wants to have cable and satellite subscriptions with redundant programmming, the economy is bad if you really look at the numbers and the name of it sucked.

Check out www.inhd.com for additional HD programming, and there are some IP based HD services coming out soon.

Ah, but not in gLoRIOuS HiGH dEfiNiTIoN !

They had promise, but aparently not enough to convince even high end HD owners to buy into it. It's a shame too many people out there were "going to wait and see". Good old chicken and the egg problem, and it killed Voom.

Calling Voom results in a prerecorded message about the cancellation before talking to a CSR. HDNews (Voom's HD copy of Headline News) also had a short news clip about it. So it looks like it is official this time. The prerecorded message confirms no termination fees, and no billing for the final last weeks. No announcements about what they will do with equipment. The people who bought the boxes are concerned they may be stuck with them, and they are already discussing a lawsuit against Cablevision if they don't buy the boxes back.

Oh, was kinda disappointed that I didn't hear the news on the 8th. As of the 9th, they locked down all accounts from changing service. So I couldn't upgrade to their movie packages for free for 3 weeks.

The biggest disappointment for me is that I now have to degrade my service by switching to some other provider. Both Dish Network and DirecTV look hideous on HDTVs to me now that I have had Voom. And I am going to miss a few of the Voom channels I found I tuned into frequently. There is hope though that the "Voom 21" HD channels will be carried by another provider, as the content is oddly missing from any shutdown orders.

I'm considering DirecTV though for their HD service, since I'd be a new subscriber and could take advantage of deals they have. One big speedbump in the way though. The $1000 pricetag on the HDPVR, an HDPVR that hasn't been confirmed to support MPEG4, the likely format DirecTV is going to switch to in the future.

I've thought about the coming obsolescence of the HDDirecTiVo, and it actually will never be completely obsolete (probably) since it can still record OTA HD channels.

Ok, called all three of my possibilities today. All three have Discovery HD, ESPN HD, and HDNet. Can't say HDNet really excites me much as they offer less selection then the Voom HD lineup. Less sports in HD, less movies, and less other shows. Kinda a problem to shove 21 HD channels down to 2 I guess.

DirecTV: Deals on HD? Hah. It's a $1000 price entry no matter what on the HDPVR. Though the lady did say it should work fine past any upgrades, but she wasn't technical. I'd have to have a more assuring answer before going this route. Content wise, they do have Universal HD, a new favorite of mine due to them carying Monk and Battlestar Galactia.

Dish Network: I still have an active subscription to them only for reception of WB and UPN. And thankfully this doesn't impact my ability to upgrade to HD, since much like DirecTV, they don't really offer any deals on it anyhow. They have TNT HD, but lack Universal HD. Considering I rarley watch TNT HD, there isn't much of an advantage. Their HD PVR lacks name based recording, another negative. But the HDPVR is only $500 and name based recording may be added in the future.

Adelphia Cable: Well, they offer the least amount of HD, with no Universal HD, and no TNT HD. They do have an HDPVR on a lease only, and it's based on the Moxi platform so it has some good features. Problem is to get HD, I have to add a lot of other crap of theirs to get it, resulting in a high bill.


I really wish DirecTV had a cheeper HD PVR model, and that all the providers offered a plan to just pick what channels I want. The advantage of Voom was that they seemed to carry the channels that I liked, and not a ton of garbage cable channels to justify money for their packages.

Not sure what I will do at this point. I want to wait and see if indeed Voom 21 goes to another provider. I guess if April 30th rolls and I haven't made a decision, I can always upgrade Dish to get the basic cable channels since that will take 5 minutes.

Do you have a friend that works for CompUSA? Their employee price on the HDDirecTiVo is pretty darned good. Well, compared to the $1000 price, anyway.

Yeah. I think that's what all CompUSAs are like. But I was happy to get my HDDirecTiVo from them without giving them much money.

That's pretty much any retail store selling computer stuff they are all over priced.

Well, sitting here enjoying Voom in the background while doing some C# coding, I figured I'd post my final decision here for now.

I'm more and more bitter I am going to lose the service now. It's odd, but they still air commercials hilighting the new shows and changes the Voom 21 channels were undergoing. Showing shows I'd actually be interested in. Lab TV as odd as it is provides an interesting ambient/trance background at night, complete with interesting visuals to eye while thinking of a way to solve a coding problem.

I guess the best way to describe my fealings would be to equate it to the empeg. Imagine you bought an empeg Mark 2 with 1.0 software. You get it installed, start really using it, and hear about (then 1.1) 2.0 software coming in the future. Two months go by where you really get to like the empeg, and start anticipating 2.0. Then, just as some early leaks of 2.0 start showing up, it is announced the empeg is dead, and all existing units will stop working due to a license agreement and nothing can be done to keep it going. Well, thats about how I feel. Sure, Voom doesn't appeal to a ton of people, but honestly back in 1999, the empeg didn't either. It only appealed to a hardcore group that we all fell into.

So, keeping my feelings in mind, and not wanting to jump into something else without some benefit, I've decided to forgo any HD service at this moment. The provider at the top of my list is DirecTV due to them carying Universal HD, but the speedbump in the way is still equipment. If I go the PVR route, I invest in a $1000 box that at some unknown point in the future will not be able to record any newer HD channels DirecTV adds in MPEG4. There are hints of a migration path, but none detail what it is. It might be a free upgrade, it might not, and noone can say for sure. Noone can also say exactly when anything new will appear at all. If a new HDPVR comes out at $1000 for new, or $500 at tradeup pricing, thats a $1500 investment. If DirecTV did leasing on the PVR, I'd be signed up already. If I go the normal HD receiver and non PVR route, I still have an equipment investment cost that could be lost in the future.

Dish is a close second, but lacking Universal HD, I really have no reason to go HD with them now. They also have (for me an existing/past subscriber) a buy only option where I would have to buy any HD equipment. Thankfully Dish has been crystal clear on some things unlike DirecTV. Dish will not lease HD equipment to me until they make the switch to MPEG4. They will also not add any more HD channels until MPEG4 is working. They have no solid timetables on this, with the transition of Rainbow 1 to them still in federal red tape.

Adelphia would be tempting since I could lease equipment, but the problem is that I have to stack so much service on my bill to get HD. And they offer the least amount of normal HD channels, leaving me with a high bill for things I wouldn't watch.

So, come April 30th, I'll call Dish and upgrade my service to the Top 120 again. This gets me the cable channels I want to see shows on. And come April 30th, I will watch the occasional HD show off the local antenna, and wonder what happened to HD. With only CBS and FOX in true HD here, and problems with both, I'll see a very limited amount of HD TV. Apple has said this is the year of HD, but sadly other companies have said the same of HD as well, and it just hasn't happened. The picture is indeed awesome. But for now, it seems my HD investment simply resulted in a bigger screen that I can play computer games on.

I still don't regret getting Voom though. It showed that my TV is indeed capable of much. I just hope I have as much selection of HD content I want to watch in 2 years at least. Sadly I fear this might not come true, as the big providers will probably put more effort into ensuring ESPN2HD is added next, increasing the number of channels filled with american sports I have no interest in.

It is so much more simple in the UK where Sky has a virtual monopoly on satellite TV

Good wrap-up, Tom. If my family hadn't gotten the HDTivo a year ago, we'd be in the same position. Will you at least have a PVR for standard def programming?

Actually, do you Londonites know about a TV service that seems to run over ADSL? I saw an advert on the tube last time i was down there, it certainly looked like it was London only, probably due to the proximity to an exchange required for 8 meg ADSL.