Cablevision Goes After The High End With Satellite TV Launch
from the I-must-be-in-the-HDTV-section dept
There's been a lot of hype and skepticism surrounding Cablevision's plans to become the third satellite TV provider. Most of those questions had to do with whether or not they could compete with the established players of DirecTV and EchoStar and (more importantly) whether their one and only satellite could actually get signals to the western third of the United States. Today, Cablevision unveiled more detailed plans about the offering, which is being branded as Voom. They don't have much to say about the western part of the US, but in order to compete, it appears they're going for the "high end niche" target audience. The service is going to broadcast an awful lot of high definition programming. Their thinking (and this might not be totally out of line) is that more and more people have been buying up HDTVs in the last few years - but there's relatively little HD programming offered to them via their current providers. Of course, that's a limited time problem. As demand for HDTV grows, more broadcasts will be offered in HD and more providers will offer HD options to consumers. Still, it's an easy way to target an unsatisfied niche who appear to have money to spend on high quality TV. I'm sure there will be plenty of high definition TV junkies who sign up, but whether or not they can keep the long term advantage remains a big question.
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