GI and HITS Fill Niche Market with Satellite Product

Jim Barthold

It was a market waiting for a niche product, so General Instrument Corp. and Headend In The Sky (HITS) obliged.

GI's satellite business was flagging; HITS was finding resistance from smaller cable operators to pick up the costs of digital headends to receive its streams of compressed technologies. Last week the two companies announced that GI would produce satellite boxes that also receive analog cable signals and that HITS would deliver 140-plus channels of satellite programming.

Called HITS2 Home, the service is aimed at the shrinking group of "small cable operators who basically consider themselves channel locked," said Martin Stein, GI's associate VP-marketing, advanced video networks. It also gives cable a competitive entry with DirecTV, which is working with operators to deliver its satellite programming along with cable service.

GI, in addition to the satellite/cable receivers, also provides a Ku satellite dish that measures no more than a meter in diameter. The company also authorizes the digital signals.

"We're not taking existing boxes and re-modifying them. This is a purposely built box just for this application," Stein emphasized.

If things go according to plan, subscribers will never know whether they are watching a HITS-generated digital channel or an analog channel from their cable system, with the exception of a "small acquisition time for a digital channel," Stein said.

"We built a box that takes the analog into the one box and the digital and we did all the work on the guide so that we distribute the guide data over satellite but it includes the analog line up," Stein said. "You don't have the slow rolling guide on the analog side and the nice, nifty guide on the digital side; you have the nice guide for your whole lineup."

Stein said that the service would give GI's satellite business a boost because it's analog C-band business is "stable, but it's obviously not growing."

The system also provides operators with the opportunity for local branding, Stein concluded.