HomeVideo Savant Picture Quality Claims Lead to Another DirecTV Lawsuit
Picture Quality Claims Lead to Another DirecTV Lawsuit
Video Savant Blog -
Broadcast and Pay TV
Written by Video Savant
Monday, 21 May 2007
DirecTV has filed suit against Comcast for a Comcast advertising campaign that claims viewers prefer Comcast HD picture quality over the HD picture quality available from DirecTV and DISH Network.
In the ad, Comcast cites a Frank N. Magid Associates study conducted in March 2007 that said respondents were shown high-def signals from Comcast, DIRECTV and EchoStar. and asked to rate each screen.
According to the Magid study, Comcast was the preferred choice of the three.
In a nine-page suit, DIRECTV asks the U.S. District Court in Northern District of Illinois to stop Comcast from "engaging in any further false advertising and promotion."
I detest these sorts of lawsuits, but in this case I think they could be a good sign for anyone who cares about the long-term direction of HD picture quality via cable and satellite.
When it comes to cable and satellite television, picture quality has always played a subservient role to programming quantity. More channels and more choice have been the name of the game since the early days of satellite TV. Picture quality, when it was mentioned at all, was clearly a secondary message.
Granted, having lots of viewing choices is a good thing, and I understand that cable and satellite have aggressively expanded their channel lineups over the past decade as a way of attracting more subscribers, and especially for new subscribers in specific niche markets. And I know that as a viewer I've benefited in having more channels to choose from.
But at the end of the day, I ultimately place a much higher value on picture quality than choice, and it's clear that as HDTV sales continue to grow, more and more viewers value quality over volume.
So, what's interesting to me about the recent spate of lawsuits, including one filed by a viewer against DirecTV in late 2006, is that picture quality is not just a hot topic, it could be the next hot battleground for product differentiation among the Pay TV players.
For the first time in a very long time, picture quality has attracted the attention of cable and satellite TV companies. It's clear that they know there are customers out there making purchasing decisions, based not just on the number of HD channels offered, but how those HD channels actually look.
At this point, cable and satellite are still in the "talk the talk" phase, but the fact is there's a real market opportunity for the service that "walks the walk" on picture quality. I think these lawsuits are a sign that DirecTV and its competitors recognize that the game is changing, but there's still a long way to go before HD picture quality is as good as it should be.
Let's hope this is a trend that moves out of the legal department and into the engineering and marketing departments, post-haste.
Video Savant 
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