Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 6, 1991 TAG: 9104060552
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SCOTT WILLIAMS/ ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
SkyPix, his Kent, Wash.-based company, will go on the air sometime this summer beaming 80 channels of pay-per-view movies and TV programs onto the small satellite dish and home receiver he wants to sell you for about $700.
"Our business is really software, and in order to deliver the software, we have created a system of hardware to go with it," Greenberg said. "You really can't separate the two."
Most of those 80 channels will offer new movies with staggered starting times.
A remote control can be used to turn on the SkyPix home receiver and punch up a menu of options; the receiver is linked through telephone lines to SkyPix's main computer, where the customer draws against a prepaid "credit bank."
New movies will cost $3 to view, older releases $2, and for $10 the viewer can record the movie. The computer OKs the transaction and unlocks the home box at the proper time.
"The consumer benefits because the price is inexpensive," Greenberg said. "The motion picture company benefits because they don't have to make the cassettes, label them, box them, ship them, store them, the whole nine yards."
If there's a problem, the viewer punches the menu for customer service. The box calls SkyPix, and the screen tells you when there's a SkyPix service representative available to talk to you.
In addition to movies, Greenberg said, SkyPix plans to carry "free" channels: A children's channel, home shopping, a "how-to" channel, coming attractions and the service menu, as well as live events and a pay-per-month group of cable channels and superstations.
"But it's all optional," he said. "There's no tiering [of services]. You do that all at your box level."
The cone-shaped SkyPix dish, which looks like an oversized desk lamp, will have a diameter of 27 inches. A conventional parabolic dish requires a 36-inch diameter. Both will be adequate for most of the United States, he said.
The "corners" of the country at the edge of the Ku-band satellite signal will require a dish 40 to 46 inches in diameter. That's still much smaller than the 6- to 12-foot conventional C-band home dishes.
"Once you get a dish that's smaller than you are, that doesn't have to be set in concrete, that doesn't have to rotate and doesn't have to do a half-dozen other things, there doesn't seem to be any real problem with it," Greenberg said.
The SkyPix system on display at last week's convention of the National Cable Television Association in New Orleans will use digital signal compression technology to squeeze 80 channels into 10 satellite relays.
Greenberg says the home receiver will provide 480 lines of resolution, sharper than a Super VHS or video disc picture. He says it will also be immune from the "noise, ghosting, color smearing and snow" of conventional broadcasts and cable TV.
If there's a flaw in the SkyPix picture, it's that sometimes the digital compression can't keep up with the action on the screen. Motion across the screen occasionally looks stilted or stuttery.
"If the question is, is the picture absolutely perfect, the answer is God is perfect, we are not," Greenberg said. "If the question is, is it better than what you get today over any means that you've got, the answer is yes."
SkyPix last month signed a $30 million deal with the Home Shopping Network, obtaining $12 million to $13 million in HSN billing, credit card and check clearing services, and $17 million to $18 million in cash.
And it gets to carry the Home Shopping Channel.
Greenberg says there are nearly one million SkyPix antenna-receivers systems on order, which will be sold through retailers like Macy's, Dayton Hudson, The Wiz, Electric Avenue-Montgomery Ward, Magnolia Hi-Fi and others.
"Of the top 150 retail chains in the country, we have 120 of them," he said. "Most dealers want to use the signal to put in all their television sets because it makes the sets look better."
Greenberg plans to offer SkyPix to cable systems in early 1993. "I think you'll be seeing some announcement very shortly of some major cable systems joining with us," he said.
by CNB