EchoStar President Cautious on Prospects for Cable Deployment of its tru2way-Based T2200S HD DVR

In a conference call with financial analysts, Monday, following the company's release of its second-quarter results, EchoStar Technologies president, Mark Jackson, provided a fairly cautious-sounding update on the prospects for a cable deployment of the T2200S, a tru2way-based, "Slingloaded" (note: the latter is a term that has been trademarked by EchoStar to designate its non-Sling Media-branded set-top boxes that offer TV place-shifting and other Sling Media capabilities), multi-tuner HD DVR that has been designed specifically for the US cable industry (note: for an extensive overview of the box's features, see the article published on itvt.com, April 7th). "There are numerous beta tests going on with that product right now," he said in reply to an analyst's question. "So we continue to test it with a bunch of different cable companies...and we will have to see in the future which ones decide to roll it out, if any...We are hopeful that we will have some announcements before the end of the year," he continued in response to a follow-on question. "But I can't guarantee that we will see that or not."

According to a T2200S product sheet that was obtained by Cable Digital News's Jeff Baumgartner, the box includes a previously unannounced feature, designed to make it more attractive to cable operators concerned about legal problems resulting from customers using the box to violate content owners' copyrights: it allows operators to limit its "Slingloaded" capabilities, for example by restricting it to "slinging" video only to PC's and other digital displays in the home, or allowing placeshifting only on a channel-by-channel basis, Baumgartner wrote--adding that an EchoStar spokesperson recently confirmed that the limitations were put in place following discussions with cable operators.