DIRECTV 2010 Annual Report Download - page 17

we will be rolling out the next generation of that product, our
Home Media Center, late this year, along with greater time-shifting
capabilities and storage capacity. The Home Media Center will take
the connected home to another level.
Longer term, we are looking at a wireless connection between the HD
DVR and the television that will be a big plus for customers and reduce
installation time for our home service technicians.
connected customers have more fun
With DVRs now a mainstream technology—some 40 percent of U.S.
homes have at least one—it makes sense to go all in with this technology
to maintain our competitive advantage. As part of that strategy, we
want every new HD DVR to be connected to the internet. This is a clear,
strategic imperative and we expect to connect at least 40 percent of our
customers’ HD DVRs to the Internet by the end of 2013.
And why wouldn’t any customer want to hook up their box? With
a broadband connection, customers have a vast library of titles at
their fingertips. Today, our customers have access to more than 400
of the most popular movies, many of them available 28 days before
Netflix—add to that over 6,000 movies and shows on demand—all
with DIRECTV CINEMA.
Connected customers can also enjoy a panorama of popular apps,
like the five-day weather forecast, a live Earthcam, Facebook, and
sports apps like My NBA Team, where customers track their favorite
team, as well as an enhanced ScoreGuide. We have also developed
unique apps to support our exclusive and original programming on
The 101. Fans of “Damages” and “The Dan Patrick Show” can follow fan
posts in real time and see information about the show, its characters
and the actors who play them.
hd, 3d and social tv
And with a nod to our younger demographic, we are making more
“nontraditional content” options available, like free YouTube videos
streamed directly to the customer’s TV, streaming movies trailers, and
social networking apps like Facebook and Twitter. Our new “Social TV”
app lets you see what your friends are watching so you can directly
tune to that show or rate the show you are watching via a Twitter feed
without ever having to go online.
To showcase all this great content, we are launching a new
graphically rich user interface that will support our multi-screen
social and interactive applications for a really fantastic experience.
And finally, we will continue our leadership in HD, adding to the
more than 160 channels we have today and will continue to beef up our
3D platform. Like HD in its infancy, consumer adoption of this nascent
technology will develop over time, and when it does, we will be there.
We set the bar last year with our 3D broadcasts of the 2010 MLB
All-Star Game, the 2010 U.S. Open Tennis Championship, and several major
motion pictures in 3D, and we will continue to produce content for our
own “n3D Powered by Panasonic” channel with more to come this year.
watching tv anywhere
This is all great news for the vast majority of our customers who are
still watching TV the “old fashioned” way—at home on their 60-inch
LCD flat screen—but more and more viewers are also looking for that
“anytime, anywhere” experience outside the home.
We have been offering our NFL SUNDAY TICKET product for the
past few seasons for laptops and mobile phones users, but last year
we introduced our enhanced, rebranded NFL SUNDAY TICKET To-Go
service. It was available for the first time on the iPad and we had a
tremendous response from users who loved the experience.
With the proliferation of tablets and smart phones, we see a
terrific opportunity to provide services to customers who want to
consume more video on portable devices as a complement to the
traditional TV viewing experience.
We believe we are going to see tremendous benefits from our
“anytime, anywhere” initiatives in the form of more satisfied, loyal
customers, and that’s great, but our strategic rethink also told us
that we have a wealth of untapped opportunities to create new
revenue sources.
closing the revenue gap
First of all, we need to close the revenue gap between DIRECTV and
our competitors in pay per view and VOD. We did a fantastic job of that
in 2010, growing pay per view movie revenue by 20 percent. We are going
to do an even better job in 2011 with a sharper focus on marketing our
VOD offerings that includes the addition earlier this year of NBC on
Demand, a significant addition to our VOD lineup. Viewers no longer
have to go to the Internet to find favorite shows like “Law & Order,” “30
Rock” or “The Biggest Loser.” And it’s free.
Another area where we can close the gap on cable is local advertising.
We will do this by launching a new technology to provide addressable,
zone-targeted ad inserts in up to 50 cities on 50 channels over the