EchoStar (DISH) due to spin off hardware business?

As Doug mentioned this morning, EchoStar (NASDAQ: DISH) has purchased SlingBox for $380 million in its quest to gain some kind of interactivity with its customers. You see, although EchoStar's DISH Network is popular along with DirecTV as standalone satellite services, cable and telecom companies are pushing harder than ever into two-way services meant to hook customers to more and more product offerings.

But outside of the SlingBox acquisition, EchoStar looks to be spinning off non-core assets at the same time. The company is reportedly looking at spinning off its non-Pay TV services into a different company. Along with the "view anywhere" technology it will gain from the SlingBox purchase, does EchoStar foresee large changes coming to its industry? Some would say yes, or that it is just implementing some type of preventative maintenance to remain competitive.

At the same time it would be rolling out cool services like SlingBox to its customers, the company would spin off the division of EchoStar responsible for set-top boxes, manufacturing, and its satellite centers into a new publicly traded company. Oddly, the SlingBox product line would remain with the core company, even though it is a "set-top box" of sorts. The reason? EchoStar Chief Charlie Ergen says that separating the consumer and wholesale businesses would unlock shareholder value, and the SlingBox product is most definitely a consumer product. Ergen also stated that he would serve as CEO of both companies.

The last question is this: what is DirecTV doing? It's had problems rolling out HDTV channels through its satellite network so far, so it could be the one left floundering here if EchoStar's position as two separate companies with a hot-company acquisition all goes through soon.