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Technology Events BLOG Archive:
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September
12th,
2004 - VOOM's DOOMED I have just finished a report on HDTV Service Providers for The Diffusion Group. We've had to revise this report several times times because of the recent announcements in the HDTV space. DirecTV announces 4 new satellites targeting HDTV. They'll deliver 500 HD channels in 2005 and 1,000 more in 2007. This is a huge jump in the number of HD channels that will enable local-to-local HD broadcasts throughout the US. The second announcemnt was VOOM's SEC reports on their weak sales and split from Cablevision. The Satelliteguys have alot of comments about this and their problems. Most agree that VOOM is doomed and I concur. To find out my reasoning, you'll have to buy the report from TDG. What I want to talk about in this log is my own personal experience with VOOM. I signed up when I saw one of VOOM's commercials for no contract and no installation fee. Subscribing turned out to be a big headache as I will go into. Here's a brief summary:
I couldn't sleep one late night and was flicking the channels. I stumbled on one of our weaker stations like UPN and saw VOOM's infomercial. They were claiming zero money down, no contract, see HDTV in person. It was a compelling proposal - one of those that is too good to pass up but probably not true. Well, it was true all right. It was such a good offer that tens of thousands of people signed up. So many signed up that VOOM couldn't service all of them. When the actual installer scheduled me, it was going to be over a month before they could get over to my house and install the set-top box with an ATSC tuner for OTA signals. I'd be able to receive Denver's local signals as well as all of VOOM's original programming. Sounded great, but I'd have to wait. A month went buy and I got a call saying that they'd be even later. I ordered my service on May 19th. It would be June 30th before the installer finally came. Strike one. When the poor guy finally showed up, it took him three receivers and two visits before he finally got it running. Motorola's receivers seemed to have some basic problems and it took a long time to figure out that he had two bad receivers that had new firmware. He finally gave up and had to come back another day with a receiver that he knew worked - one that had the old firmware. This second visit caused quite a bit of consternation on my wife's part. Just like for the original installation, my wife got several calls to coordinate VOOM and their local installer. They'd call and leave conflicting messages and continually got their lines crossed. My wife, who is a customer service representative, was ready to cuss them out when they kept canceling and saying the installer wasn't coming, but he inevitably did come when he said. The second time the installer came, it went pretty quick. The tried and true receiver went in fine except for the fact that it didn't fit in my entertainment cabinet below my TV. I have worked with other set-top box manufacturers and one of the basic requirements is that it needs to be less than 15" deep. I couldn't close the glass doors on my entertainment cabinet. I wasn't going to buy new furniture for this new service. Strike two. The installer finally left at like 8:00 and I sat back to enjoy my new HDTV! I got 6 DTT signals and they looked great - vivid colors, no artifacts, and crystal clear signals. The only station I didn't get was Denver's channel 7 which broadcasts at extemely low power. I had the experience that Mark Cuban had when he first watched HDTV. You could sit back and watch for hours and not believe what had showed up in your living room. VOOM did a great job of highlighting the benefits of HDTV too with channels exclusively designed to show you how cool HDTV is. Flights over the Mediterranean, mountain bikers falling down cliffs successfully, and video art. I've always been a fan of the video art since I have created some of my own. VOOM's clarity was awesome. I did a quick comparison between DTT and CDTV. I was watching Wimbledon through my VOOM box which had the nice clear picture. I switched my television to pick up the local analog broadcast and saw how crummy of a picture I had always watched was. The most obvious difference was in the dark green panels that lined the Wimbledon court. I'd been to Centre Court before and know that it is a top notch facility. On NTSC, the green panels looked like they'd been in beaten up over 20 years of play. White and gray artifacts were all over the panels. Ghosting and non-uniformity were from the analog transmission and reception. The DTT signal showed immaculate forest green panels with no marks. It was amazing. While the picture was good, many of the programs were a waste of time and I had trouble finding things worth watching. Without my PVR, I had to start watching programs in the middle and endure commercials - except for VOOM's 21 exclusive HD channels which were commercial free but not promotional free. It came down to the simple fact that I would rather watch SDTV with a PVR than HDTV without. The quality was great, but the content is way more important. I'd rather watch a good football game on SDTV than a blowout on HDTV. Content is king, quality is second. Another problem with VOOM was their electronic programming guide. To find a show, I'd have to push several buttons to get to the screen I wanted and then it would takes seconds to pan through teh channels. I used Favorites, but it was still exceedingly slow. I longed for my Dish Network again with a PVR. VOOM's PVR is awesome but unavailable. Strike three - VOOM's out! After my first month's trial, my wife and I agreed that Dish Network offered a much better service with a PVR. I called to cancel and it took them 4 days to show up to remove the receiver. I left the DTT antenna up and they just took the box away. Dish later took the dish and the antenna down for me when they installed their two-dish system. Lots of other people came to the same conclusion that I had. VOOM was seeing a 30% churn rate. That is 30% of their customers were leaving in droves. DirecTV and Dish experience about a 20% annual churn rate and have moved towards PVRs to stem the tide. Most VOOM subscribers were leaving because they couldn't receive DTT signals. I didn't have that problem, but it was still worth noting. Others canceled because they couldn't get all of the non-network programming that they were used to. Even though I had cancelled my service before my first month was out, they de-installed it on the first day of the second month. I was getting charged $105 which consisted of two months at $39.50 for the service, $9.50 for the equipment rental plus tax. I called customer service on August 20th and told her of the problem and she ended up changing my bill to only be charged until August 20th, the date I called. The service had been disconnected on July 30th. I called again, but they're still working on the billing issue and they haven't gotten a penny out of me yet. I'll pay but they say many of their subscribers have not. Their free offer got them many dead beat customers. My experience is not alone as can be witnessed in online forums. VOOM isn't winning customers one at a time and they aren't winning the larger battles in the marketplace. With DirecTV's matching of broadcasting power, they might as well pack their bags and go home. Rainbow Media Enterprises - VOOM's new holding company - should scrap VOOM and start licensing their HD content to other providers like DirecTV who know how to please customers. Send any feedback for posting to info@broadent.com.
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