Audio Video News

Voom HD has a bone to pick with EchoStar, now a division of DISH Network. A $1 billion bone.  Mighty big bone.

Back in May, DISH dropped Voom HD, a collection of 15 HD channels, all commercial-free. Apparently, they forgot that they had a 15-year contract with Voom. Oops.

Voom is claiming damages after the original deal that provided Voom with a $3.25/month license fee for every HD subscriber who received Voom was dropped.

See what both parties are saying.

In its court document, Voom stated, "EchoStar had no right to terminate the affiliation agreement on the basis of a trumped-up and pretextual claim of breach simply because it no longer liked the deal it struck. Unable to prevent EchoStar from 'pulling the plug' on Voom, Voom HD now has been forced to bring this suit for breach of contract to recover well in excess of $1 billion of damages that it will suffer as a result of EchoStar's wrongful and improper termination." Voom stands to lose $1 billion because of the termination.

EchoStar has alleged that Voom had breached their deal, claiming that Voom HD didn't meet its investment requirement.

The following note is posted on the Voom website. "To our DISH Network viewers, thank you for contacting us about the VOOM HD channels. We truly regret that our world class suite of 15 high definition channels is no longer available to you and other Dish subscribers, but this decision was made solely by the Dish network and is something we urged them not to do. We hope that you will be able to view the VOOM HD channels again soon. If you would like to express your dissatisfaction with Dish's decision to drop the VOOM channels then please contact them directly."  Ouch.

DISH/Echostar still carries plenty of HD options, but probably felt the limited veiwership of Voom warranted the move. However, replacing Voom with channels such as the World Fishing Network HD? I don't care how good it looks in HD, I don't wanna see Bubba and his buddies floating in a boat. -Leslie Shapiro

Via Multichannel News