The biggest event in the DIRECTV world is its annual Revolution show, held this year in Las Vegas. It's a confidential, dealer-only environment, so I can't talk about a lot of what was said, but I wanted to give a heads-up about the show in general and some of the things that can be made public.
First of all the show was busy. I was told over and over that it was the biggest show DIRECTV's had, and if DIRECTV's the world's biggest satellite provider and this is its biggest show, this makes it THE BIGGEST SATELLITE TV CONVENTION EVER!!! (echo: ever... ever... ever...) which is, in itself, pretty impressive. All the major players were there. Of course Mike White was on hand to give all the good news to dealers about all the cool programs and promotions out there.
There were a few other people who "just showed up" too... Peyton Manning was in the audience and as I expected, Hannah Davis aka "The DIRECTV Genie" came on stage. There was a meet-and-greet with her as well but I was too busy doing business and couldn't get over to see her. Oh well.
From the tech side, DIRECTV showed its HR44 Genie DVR and everyone is very excited about it. It's really only a little bigger than an H24 receiver and boy is it fast. There were demos of the new Voice Control app as well.
One thing you can say for sure is that DIRECTV is headed in the right direction. It looks like this will be a great year for anyone in an apartment or any other sort of "non-standard" install situation. DIRECTV looks like they will have some great programs for that.
You know what they say, "What happens in Vegas..." so it's hard to know what to put out there for our readers to see. I'll err on the side of caution and just say that DIRECTV is strong, it's exciting, and it's going to be a great 2013.