The BDA counterattacks on Frivolous HD claims

[Bobby Henderson]

Oh they're still mentioning it.

Dish Network broadcast their once about every quarter "Charlie Chat" on Monday night. One thing they covered was their 1080p Video On Demand pay per view movie downloads and the $2.99 pricing special on movies like I Am Legend and 10,000 B.C..

In fairness to Dish Network, what they're selling really is 1080p/24 based HD video. But it is not broadcast over a normal satellite channel.

The content must be downloaded to a ViP 722 or ViP 622 MPEG-4 capable receiver/DVR (after your TV passes a compatibility test). OTOH, the video quality isn't "Blu-ray Quality." It's not running at the kinds of bit rates typically seen on Blu-ray and the audio is just Dolby Digital 5.1, not a lossless next-gen format like Dolby TrueHD.

Here's the thing that had me rolling my eyes. The guys on the Charlie Chat show threw out a very stupid price comparison. "You can pay $30 for a Blu-ray movie or just pay $2.99 to see 1080p video on demand from Dish Network."

Couple big problems with their price comparisons. First of all, that $2.99 isn't the regular PPV price. That's just a special price for the two movies I mentioned. HD-quality PPV movies regularly cost $5.99. And that's for a mere 24 hour rental.

Their price comparison also attempts to imply that you cannot rent Blu-ray movie discs. I can get 5-day BD rentals from Hollywood Video for $4.99. Hastings charges $5.99 for a 7-day BD rental, but will give your account a $2 credit if you return the movie after 1 night. Those are better deals. On top of that, the video stores have a better variety of movies on BD than what I see available on the PPV menus.