Doug McDonald wrote: > Manfredi, Albert E wrote: > > >>But guys, they did! Dish and DirecTV tried to merge a >>couple of years ago, remember? They weren't allowed to. >> > > > > A legal merger is different from a physical merger. > > This is Craig's idea of a "spectrum utility" > applied to satellite, exactly. > > Right Craig? > > Doug McDonald One more thing: of course there is one "zinger" to sharing channels. This does not apply to "local into local". That is that some channels allow the satellite provider to insert their own ads. This would have to be fixed by splitting the feed into two for the duration of the ads ... easy with statistical multiplexing. OF course, this would today require one of teh two vendors to completely replace all boxes. For political reasons neither it, nor Craig's OTA utility idea, will happen. Doug McDonald ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.