Comcast DirecTV Lawsuit Settled

My HD looks better! No it doesn't, mine does! That's about the tone of last year's scuffle between Comcast and DirecTV over which company had the better looking high-definition channels. HD was used as a vehicle for comparison over the two companies as early adopters of the technology and partakers in the massive sales of high-definition products flooded the markets.

At one point Comcast made a statement about how two out of three survey respondents said Comcast's HD looked better than satellite... a statement that would have to be so qualified and defined as to have zero impact on anyone who understood the issues involved - in either surveys or high-definition. Unfortunately, most consumers are proficient in neither. DirecTV almost immediately decried the ads as false advertising and began looking into the matter, finally filing a lawsuit to stop them last Spring. It looks like an undisclosed settlement has occurred, however since Comcast is still allowed to cite the survey - our guess is that DirecTV got itself slapped down unofficially. All this really indicates is that it was a big waste of time and money - but the lawyers are likely very pleased with the results.

The battle over bringing high-definition to consumers is not, unfortunately going to boil down to quality. Quality is an issue, but only so far as to be dealt with on a level that avoids service cancellations. The real issue will be the amount of content. Be it channels or actual content itself (movies, TV shows, etc), what people can view on TV will trump how they view it every time.

Currently satellite is in a ridiculous lead over Cable. And CableTV seems to be (slowly) gearing up for IPTV and switched digital video, though neither of these appears to be in the works for the next two years on a massive (and successful) scale. As pressure mounts it will be very interesting to see how fast CableTV can get its act together. All the lawsuits in the world won't save them if satellite continues to add HD channels uncontested.