Dish Network

DISH Network today made the winning $320 million bid for the bankrupt Blockbuster, the onetime leader in brick-and-mortar physical movie rentals left reeling by the rise of Netflix and the more recent explosion of streaming services.

We talk a lot about DTV and HDTV.  If you've bought an HDTV, you probably know if your set is 1080p or 720p, but if you don't normally watch Blu-ray, you don't have much 1080p programming to view. DISH is changing that.

Isn't patent law fascinating? TiVo has owned the patent for, well, TiVo'ing. Their ability to time-shift while recording a show was a patented process, and DISH's DVRs were violating that patent. The damages stretch back over two years. The first decision was appealed by DISH.

Dish Network is following the lead of DirecTV by adding a 1080p on-demand movie service and bringing its overal HD lineup to over 150, including TurboHD.

Voom HD has a bone to pick with EchoStar, now a division of DISH Network. A $1 billion bone.  Mighty big bone.

Back in May, DISH dropped Voom HD, a collection of 15 HD channels, all commercial-free. Apparently, they forgot that they had a 15-year contract with Voom. Oops.