My Neighbor’s Dish

For years I’ve coveted my neighbor’s satellite dish. And while there’s no explicit commandment against it, I knew it wasn’t good for me to imagine him, smug in his vibra-chair, watching unusual and exotic programming–sumo wrestling from Japan, I bet, or The Larry Sanders Show reruns–while I was stuck with $50-a-month basic cable plus HBO and no pay-per-view. Last week, I’m delighted to say, I found an excuse to get my own direct-broadcast satellite TV. EchoStar, the second-largest DBS provider in the U.S., has just rolled out a promising new product called the DISHPlayer, a satellite receiver with an integrated WebTV that lets you surf the Net, send e-mail, play video games and watch more TV shows than there are hours in the day. The system, including a satellite dish, wireless keyboard and DISHPlayer receiver, is only $199 (the cost is subsidzed by Microsoft, which owns a big piece of WebTV, and by EchoStar). Naturally, you also have to subscribe to EchoStar’s service and pay extra for Net access.

I’ve been wired to the satellite for nearly a week now, and I’m generally happy with the DISHPlayer and the DBS service. The TV signal is as brilliantly clear and reliable as cable. And I get far more programming for my $50–including Disney, six HBO channels, Showtime and Cinemax–than I ever got with cable. I was especially pleased to find those Larry Sanders reruns and relieved that although the program airs inconveniently at suppertime, the DISHPlayer gives me a choice of two different ways to eat my cake and have my Larry too: I can record the show on my old VCR by simply pointing and clicking at a weekly, onscreen program guide. Or–this is an especially cool feature–I can pause the program (or even a live event) for up to half an hour by storing it on the DISHPlayer’s capacious hard drive.

Unfortunately, the DISHPlayer still relies on a telephone line–and a sluggish 56K modem–for the WebTV component. But soon users will be able to get selected, enhanced Web pages (with audio clips, say) beamed down from the satellite at way-faster-than-modem speeds.

According to EchoStar, the DISHPlayer will evolve over time without your having to go out and buy a new one. The company uses the satellite to update the deck’s software automatically. In the fall, for instance, it will turn all those DISHPlayers into digital VCRs, so that instead of just pausing shows, users will be able to store stuff for later playback. By the end of the year, an upgrade will turn the player into a jukebox, so that CD-quality music that’s currently beamed down in real time can be stored for playing later over your stereo system (assuming you’ve hooked your TV to a stereo). The connection is so fast, says an EchoStar spokesman, that entire CDs could be transmitted in a few minutes.

The WebTV component, however, isn’t really for me; I don’t like surfing the Net when I’m in my passive, TV-watching mode. And call me a traditionalist, but I think e-mail belongs on a PC in the office, not on the big screen in the living room. By law I still can’t get local programming on the satellite dish, although Congress is expected to overturn that ban, possibly at the end of June. What I will never get via satellite is my neighbor’s vibra-chair.

For more on direct-broadcast satellite service, visit our website at timedigital.com Questions for Quittner: jquit@well.com