OTA guide data from different market

[John864]

Hi Everyone, I'm new to the forums and happy to be here.
I'm having my 622 installed thursday. I live in the Phoenix market but receive all the Tucson HD's ota. I'm planning on subscribing to the Dish Phoenix HD locals. Will I get guide data for those Tucson stations?
I live 71 miles from the Tucson transmitters and receive strong ota signals and have trouble getting Phoenix whose transmitters are only 31 miles away.

[kb7oeb]

Based on what I've read you probably won't. I'm guessing you are south of south mountain? I've heard most of the signal is directed north.

[John864]

I'm in northwest Pinal county.

[James Long]

If you subscribe to your own locals (whatever market) you will be able to get EPG data for most any channel you can receive OTA ... if you can pull it in, E* will provide the guide. If you don't subscribe to locals you will not get local EPG data for any OTA channels.

There are some stations that E* has not linked the EPG for, and the data won't show up immediately when an out of market channel is added but the data should be there starting the next day.

(I got one OTA station from out of market and get good EPG for it.)

[Hall]

If you subscribe to your own locals (whatever market) you will be able to get EPG data for most any channel you can receive OTA ... if you can pull it in, E* will provide the guide. Can anyone speculate how Dish does that ?? Here in Dayton OH, many people pick up the Dayton locals and Cincinnati's locals via OTA. They pay for local channels, therefore they get guide data for the channels that E* carries, i.e. NBC, CBS, ABC, etc. They also get guide data for the Cincy channels that they pick up OTA, yet Dish really should know NOTHING about those channels since the customer is NOT in the Cincy market.

[James Long]

Dish has customers in the Cincy market too. :D

I can't be sure exactly how E* does the match, but when you add local channels the ViP receivers pull the name of the station from the PSIP information and likely use that to figure out what channel you are receiving.

One note. The out of market channel that I received did not immediately show up in the guide. It wasn't until the program guide refeshed overnight that I got the channel. The in market locals I receive did map immediately (except the PBS and subchannels - which still don't map).

[CABill]

I think it is something other than the name of the station that DISH uses to identify the digital (sub) channel to match to the big EPG. In Sacto DMA, PBS 6-00 (Sat SD), 6-01 (OTA HD) and 6-02 (OTA SD) all show KVIE when you add the channel, but the EPG correctly (thank you DISH!) shows three separate schedules for each. There is something unique in the PSIP data that they memorize (remember, you said speculate!) at the time the station is added and compare that to the Tribune supplied data. They do something similar for the SF OTA digitals but there, 9-00 shows as ANALO (a 942 and KQED isn't in my DMA) with no program guide info. 9-01 shows as KQED, but has different content and Guide info than the Sat provided / Analog KQED. 9-02 through 9-05 have "names" of ENCO, WORL, LIFE, and KIDS with their own content listings (which are generally correct). It just doesn't seem likely that they are matching the guide info to what they are displaying for station name. I sub to Sacto sat locals to get ANY guide data for OTA, but all SF stations that I can lock get their guide data - at least what DISH supplies to users in that DMA. Even if you have to rotate an antenna to the Tucson stations to get a lock once, you should have whatever DISH supplies for that OTA channel even when you rotate the antenna back to Phoenix and can't lock a Tucson station.

[James Long]

The stations that actually have subchannel information have a special EPG being transmitted by E* in the 14000 range. The channels themselves are not uplinked on the satellite, just an EPG.

They have to match something ... the PSIP name is the most unique - they could also match the channel number although there are a lot more stations using the same channel number than the same callsign. :)

The good news is that it seems that if you can pull a signal from another market you will get the same EPG that customers in that market get. It helps with channels that may not be offered as SV.

[Bill R]

I can't be sure exactly how E* does the match, but when you add local channels the ViP receivers pull the name of the station from the PSIP information and likely use that to figure out what channel you are receiving.

I think that is very likely how it works. Then, during the night when the receiver gets the new guide information it stores the EPG information for all the OTA digital stations that the receiver has in its local table. Most likely, it just matches the digital station call letters (the first four) to the satellite delivered local channels and retrives the listings for them. The nightly EPG contains listing for ALL the local satellite delivered stations as well as all the other stations DISH carries. Channels that DISH does not have the data for (for example, the CWCin station in the Cincinnati market on OTA digital channel 12.2) are just listed as "digital service".

[Ron Barry]

One point.. I know of a few people that live in certain zipcodes with multiple DMAs. In this situations people have reported not been able to receive EPG info.

Also, I wonder if anyone getting multiple OTA content that maps to the channel local channel and how that gets handle. Might not get handled at at all.

[CABill]

Thanks to JohnH:

14103 KVIE2 ADDED TO Tp 16 ConUS beam on EchoStar 8 at 110w

Nothing shows when searching for KVIE1 though - and it is different from KVIE"0" at 86xx.

It makes it easier to find the SF PBS as concatenating the subchannel onto the end of the call sign for the 14000 "name".

14015 KQED1 MOVED FROM Tp 29 ConUS beam on EchoStar 6 at 110w
TO Tp 8 ConUS beam on EchoStar 8 at 110w

14016 KQED2 MOVED FROM Tp 29 ConUS beam on EchoStar 6 at 110w
TO Tp 8 ConUS beam on EchoStar 8 at 110w

14017 KQED3 MOVED FROM Tp 29 ConUS beam on EchoStar 6 at 110w
TO Tp 8 ConUS beam on EchoStar 8 at 110w

14018 KQED4 MOVED FROM Tp 29 ConUS beam on EchoStar 6 at 110w
TO Tp 8 ConUS beam on EchoStar 8 at 110w

14019 KQED5 MOVED FROM Tp 29 ConUS beam on EchoStar 6 at 110w
TO Tp 8 ConUS beam on EchoStar 8 at 110w

They USED to duplicate 13-00 EPG info onto 13-02 and show Digital Service for 13-01. Now, they duplicate EPG info onto 13-01 and DS on 13-02 so I'm not clear on how they pick where it goes when they don't use a special 14000 range number.

In addition to all the "special" PBS subchannels above, I get the EPG info for all the regular channels from the other DMA - 02-01, 04-01, 05-01, 07-01, ....

EDIT - should mention this is a 942 just in case a ViP is different.

[Matt Beachy]

I'm planning on subscribing to the Dish Phoenix HD locals. Will I get guide data for those Tucson stations?

I subscribe to the South Bend/Elkhart, Indiana locals. I pick up both South Bend and Ft. Wayne stations via my OTA antenna. I get guide data for all the OTA stations I added on my 622.

[John864]

My 622 was installed today. The Tucson stations guide info appeared three hours after activation.
Late thursday evening several of the hd channels on 129 started breaking up and dropping out. Signal strength was fluctuating rapidly in the 40's to low 50's on all transponders. It wasn't raining and there was no wind. I checked it two hours later and everything was fine with stable signal strength ranging from 60 to 79 on various transponders. Was this a fluke or am I going to have to call the installer back out?

[Rob Glasser]

My 622 was installed today. The Tucson stations guide info appeared three hours after activation.
Late thursday evening several of the hd channels on 129 started breaking up and dropping out. Signal strength was fluctuating rapidly in the 40's to low 50's on all transponders. It wasn't raining and there was no wind. I checked it two hours later and everything was fine with stable signal strength ranging from 60 to 79 on various transponders. Was this a fluke or am I going to have to call the installer back out?

Welcome to DBSTalk.com

You just witnessed the known problems on the 129 Sat. There are a number of threads that talk about that here. Here are a few:

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=53697
http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=53981
http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=52356

[John864]

Thank you Rob. Those threads answered all my questions about the problems with 129. I'll just have to live with it like everybody else.