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2000 Consumer Electronics Show READ ALL ABOUT IT! PAGE 4 DBS Helps Drive Digital Demand DBS is the player to beat in the heated contest to bring digital TV into America’s living rooms, consumer electronics industry hands and analysts said during a series of panel discussions yesterday. DBS services “were the first guys to offer digital content to consumers,” Dataquest consumer electronics analyst Jay Srivista said during a speech. “Unless digital cable rolls out very soon, [cable subscribers] are going to continue to shift to DBS,” he added. Big screen TV retailers also praised DirecTv and EchoStar Communications, saying the services have contributed badly needed nationwide delivery of high-definition programming, which helps spur HDTV sales. Both DirecTv and EchoStar’s DISH network carry high-definition programming from HBO. “With DirecTv, now we have the ability to offer HDTV to other areas than those that can get HDTV terrestrially,” said Randy Wilson of Wilson Home Theater in Los Angeles. Tweeter Home Entertainment Group Vice President of Marketing Noah Herschman agreed. “People are coming out with DirecTv bundled receivers with HDTV terrestrial tuners, which we expect to increase our [HDTV] tuner sales substantially,” he said. Cable operators have been slow to react to DBS’ digital lead, the panelists said. Even as operators belatedly upgrade their cable TV systems to carry digital programming, the resulting product so far has been unsatisfactory, they added. “In a lot of cases, it's not as good as the original analog signal” that cable operators were transmitting before they upgraded, Wilson said. “All they’re trying to do is fit as many channels in that pipe as they can,” he said, noting the digital compression operators use to do that degrades the quality of the signal. Satellite Industry News Briefs Motorola completed its acquisition of General Instrument following GI shareholders’ approval of the $17 billion deal at a special meeting yesterday, Motorola said in a statement. As a result of the merger, GI will become the Motorola Broadband Communications Sector, which will include interactive TV, Internet, wireline and wireless telephony, as well as its satellite TV businesses. BACK TO PAGE 1 OTHER ISSUES: Thursday, Jan. 6, 2000 Saturday, Jan. 8, 2000 Sunday, Jan. 9, 2000   Please direct questions about this site to general.mail@satbiznews.com q 2000 Satellite Business News Inc. All rights reserved.