New switches?

[RonRN18]

I'm curious if Dish Network is coming out with switches that handle more than 3 satellites.  It seems to me that they are adding new locations, depending on what type of programming you want.  What if you want it all?  What if you want 61.5, 110, 119, 148 and whatever other satellite locations are being added.  Are they going to make a DP44? or better?  If you get one of their new Super Dish 500's, it aims at 105, 110 and 119... if you wish to keep either 61.5 or 148, that will be at least 4 different slots you need to switch.  If you want 61.5 AND 148, that would be 5. 

[BobaBird]

It will be a DPP44. The 2nd P is for Plus which will make it possible to connect a dual tuner receiver to a single switch output. See the description and photos near the bottom of http://www.dishretailer.com/ts2003/.

[RonRN18]

Sweet... does anyone know WHEN this switch will be available? 

[boba]

Probably about the same time as the rest of the Team Summit products. Definitely don't hold your breath, you will be quite blue before most of it gets to market. SONY stands for Soon Only Not Yet, We need to figure out something for DISH the only problem is some of their announcements never make it, or never work as designed.

[jhall]

well, for an unknown reason, the receivers won't be happy with 61.5 and 148 connected at once. I don't know why.

[P Smith]

jhall,

because of unexpected using - primary the sats is mirrored, so you have a huge overlap and overload a memory of your receiver.
Officially Dish never install both sats for customers.

[MikeJ]

Originally posted by P Smith
jhall,

because of unexpected using - primary the sats is mirrored, so you have a huge overlap and overload a memory of your receiver.
Oficially Dish never install both sats for customers.

CBS HD East and DISH Demo Channel are on 61.5 and CBS HD West and my local channels are on 148. So I have to get both satellites as well as 110 and 119. So it is not an exact mirror. Both 61.5 and 148 have mirrored HBO, Showtime and Discovery HD. Your receiver has a problem in you try to scroll from one to the other because thay have the same channel numbers. I use the Program Guide to change to 9420, 9430 and 9440.

[Geronimo]

There are DISH/Sky Angel subs who need both locations too. I don't think that it is true that DISH never installs both sats.

[P Smith]

Geronimo,
please post your facts regarding official installation dishes for both satellites ( 61.5 and 148 ) for one customer.

[Geronimo]

Sorry but I am not particualrly interested in playing that game.
I mentioned that there are resaons why people would want both 61.5 and 148. In fact I gave tou a pretty good example.

There are people who need all three locations because the Sky Angel programming is not mirrored at 148. If you would like do a search in this forum on Sky Angel and you will see a number of threads discussing this. One in particular even discusses coverage in the manuals.

Please post your source for it never being done. After all you are the one that asseerted that this policy exists.

Sky Angel is not hugely popular but, despite it's location, it has some western subs and if they have locals on 148 they need 4 locations. I don't think that DISH asks their western subs to chosse between Sky Angel and their fullset of locals.

[jhall]

ok, well last I knew, and admitedly that was a year ago, people trying to perform a switch test would have the receiver get very unhappy about seeing all four sats, or even three of them on an SW-64. The software has gotten more stable of late and they may have allowed that condition.
My recommendation for mirroring is that the receiver should perform a test to see which transponder is stronger and show you the version from that one. It will take a little longer to change to mirrored channels because potentially 3 must b e tuned, first, second, then primary if primary was first, then a knob should be inserted to say if signal strength falls below x go look at the other one to see if it is better. If the receiver had two tuners and the other was not in use, a hot-cut situation could occur so the viewer would not notice the change. If we assume distance from the viewer's antenna and the satellite is not constant, the receiver should be able to buffer a few frames and accurately determine the drift between propogation. It would be intresting to know whether drift changes over time or not. Of course it also might be that linux scheduler latency got in the way, but the new scheduling improvements in 2.5 might help you.
In any rate, it would be a fun project, and if the storm, or whatever is causing a violation, only effects one satellite, the viewer need not be concerned with momentary LOS. Users receiving uncorrectables might be able to fill in the errored frames from the good stream would be nice. It would add some latency, of course, hopefully that could be kept to a minimum--what is the maximum amount of drift likely to be seen? In my recent latency tests, the DD5.1 stream (and HD picture) were competing nicely with my local OTA signal latency-wise and I was quite impressed--total latency from the broadcaster to me was just under 400ms. This assumes a certain amount of constants in that the analog path I received locally was at some point synced with the digital path I was monitoring for latency.
The SDTV results are quite dismal, I regularly see on the order of 3 to 5 SECONDS, MORE for locals, and the total latency went up to 6 seconds when stacking began.

[chelsea]

You can only have 3 sat locations at one time. I can show both
61.5 & 148 together, and a third choice, being either 110 or 119.
To show four at a time, I was told by an installer it would cost me
almost $200, to do it with a 43 switch.

[Geronimo]

Again there are people with four locatiosn. There are several threads discussing it. I don't know what switch they use or whether it is cascaded but it is done. Perhaps some of them can come forwarda nd explain it here or others can search for these earlier threads.

[MikeJ]

Originally posted by Geronimo
Again there are people with four locatiosn. There are several threads discussing it. I don't know what switch they use or whether it is cascaded but it is done.

I have 61.5, 110, 119 and 148. I input 110, 119 and 148 to a SW64 switch and then take one output from the SW64 and feed it together with 61.5 to an SW21 switch and then to my 6000. It works fine. To use the SW21 you have to check the 129 satellite in the setup before running the switch check. I understand people in Philadelphia get locals on 129 so they need four locations if they also want 61.5 for HDTV . So I think the new software makes it easier to get four locations.

[BobaBird]

129 support is on the 3900, 4900, 6000, 301, 501/508 and I think the 721. Don't know what a 43 switch is, as MikeJ said it's done by cascading an SW64 and SW21.