What do you mean Liberty Media won't have a majority stake in DirecTV? News Corp. has been calling the shots with the company with only its 33% stake!
The potentially best thing that can happen from this is that DirecTV will dump NDS as its DVR supplier once-and-for-all. The only reason why DirecTV went with NDS [at the expense of TiVo] was because Rupert Murdoch owned NDS and through his control of News Corp's stake in DirecTV "forced" them to favor NDS. NDS's wares have cost DirecTV customers who preferred TiVo as well as caused DirecTV to wait-and-wait-and-wait on that company to deliver their products. I doubt John Malone would use DirecTV to shore up other failing assets like Murdoch did [with NDS]. You know, like deliberately not enabling features present in other non-DirecTV TiVo models to make the DirecTV TiVo units look inferior to say NDS's wares.
As for a DirecTV/Dish Network (Echostar) merger, that was shot down by Congress just a few years ago. Many in the media said that was due to Congress's strong dislike of Mr. Ergin (sic) of Echostar...not to mention strong lobbying from Rupert Murdoch against it (so News Corp could acquire its stake in DirecTV).
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What do you mean Liberty Media won't have a majority stake in DirecTV? News Corp. has been calling the shots with the company with only its 33% stake!
The potentially best thing that can happen from this is that DirecTV will dump NDS as its DVR supplier once-and-for-all. The only reason why DirecTV went with NDS [at the expense of TiVo] was because Rupert Murdoch owned NDS and through his control of News Corp's stake in DirecTV "forced" them to favor NDS. NDS's wares have cost DirecTV customers who preferred TiVo as well as caused DirecTV to wait-and-wait-and-wait on that company to deliver their products. I doubt John Malone would use DirecTV to shore up other failing assets like Murdoch did [with NDS]. You know, like deliberately not enabling features present in other non-DirecTV TiVo models to make the DirecTV TiVo units look inferior to say NDS's wares.
As for a DirecTV/Dish Network (Echostar) merger, that was shot down by Congress just a few years ago. Many in the media said that was due to Congress's strong dislike of Mr. Ergin (sic) of Echostar...not to mention strong lobbying from Rupert Murdoch against it (so News Corp could acquire its stake in DirecTV).
There, my fingers have said enough.