Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, December 22, 1994 TAG: 9412230046
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TOM SHALES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Yes, I said Channel 989. No, I haven't gone mad. I've gone digital. As an early Christmas present, a dear friend has given me the new Digital Satellite System (DSS) from RCA. It brings 150 channels of TV into my living room with stunningly clear pictures, superb stereo sound, and more movies and basketball games than you can shake a remote control at.
Utopia. Nirvana. Heaven on earth. I may never leave the house again.
DSS, introduced early this summer, came about through the merging of two technologies: Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) TV, and digital signal compression. To get TV channels from outer space you formerly needed a giant dish in your backyard and an investment of $5,000 and up. But DSS uses a small dish, only 18 inches in diameter, which can attach to your roof or the side of the house, plus a receiver, smaller than a VCR, that goes on top of the TV set.
The system sells for under $1,000, including professional installation, but once installed, you have to pay a monthly fee to a program service in order for something to appear on all those channels. You can subscribe to DIRECTV, which gives you all the basic cable networks, plus oodles of pay-per-view movie channels, for $29.95 a month, or United States Satellite Broadcasting (USSB), which brings in HBO and Showtime and virtually all other premium services for $34.95 a month.
Or you can be a gluttonous gourmet (like me) and subscribe to both. Since about three dozen channels are devoted to pay-per-view movies, usually at $2.99 per showing, and several more channels offer sports packages like NBA basketball for added fees, it's easy to imagine the monthly bill rising to $100 and beyond. But the system includes a feature that will impose a monthly spending cap of your choice if you're worried you might pleasure yourself into bankruptcy.
There are limitations. You need a clear shot at the southwestern sky for the dish to pull in the satellite signal. To get the maximum flexibility from DSS, you need a phone jack available near the set; this makes it possible to order movies at the push of a button on the remote. Literally.
And if a real big storm comes between your dish and the satellite, which hovers over the earth 22,300 miles up, you may temporarily lose all those channels at once. Zzzzrp.
Even so, DSS is ``far more reliable than any cable system in the country,'' insists Stanley Hubbard, 33-year-old president of USSB. ``So far, since signing on in June, we've had outages less than two-tenths of one percent of the time,'' Hubbard says.
The combined investment in DSS is over $1 billion but business appears to be booming. A spokesman for Thomson Consumer Electronics, owners of RCA and makers of the dishes and the receivers, says the company will make good on its vow to ship between 500,000 and 600,000 units by the end of the year. Other sources put retail sales so far, not counting Christmas purchases, at just over 300,000. Even at that rate, the company would have more than met its goal of surpassing first-year sales of the VCR - a mere 209,000 units in 1977.
Dave Hauspurg, co-owner of two video stores in the Washington, D.C., area, says he's been selling DSS units as fast as he can get them. In fact, faster. ``It's the single most universally pleasing product we've ever had,'' Hauspurg says. ``So far there have been no complaints - not a peep,'' other than a couple of dishes that blew down in the wind.
``One reason it's doing so well is consumer backlash against cable,'' says Hauspurg. ``There are so many unhappy cable customers out there. When I got my DSS system and called to cancel cable, I was thrilled. Of course, they kept me on hold for 30 minutes. That's one reason I'm glad to be rid of them.''
Whether DSS is the technology of tomorrow is hard to say, but at my house, it's definitely the technology of today. It's something wonderful and fabulous and amazing that's not ``just around the corner'' but is right here, right now. So leave me alone, will you? I'm watching television like I've never watched it before.
- Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB