Harrisburg & Pittsburgh Beams

[shilton]

Hi,
Can someone tell me (I know you can) what transponder #'s Dish uses for Harrisburg and also Pittsburgh and on which sats??? I know I can catch both beams at my house, but I want to check the signal strength of each.
Thanks!!!

[BrettR]

Check here: http://ekb.dbstalk.com/dishlist.htm

[wstanko]

In Pittsburgh the spot beam is #2 on sat 110, and I have a strength of about 118. That is a knock your socks off number, but that does not translate into a knock your socks off picture.

The locals are "watchable" but not nearly as sharp as one would think with 118 as signal strength. They are very soft, hiding detail that is present on some of the national channels.

At least they do not have cable "noise" rolling around the screen. :shrug:

[TopCat99]

I was b*tching and moaning about that the other day--then I saw cable at the doctor's office and was nauseated :lol:

My complaint with the Pgh locals is the same as everyone else's locals: compression artifacting. Short of moving some to 61.5, we're stuck with it.

I get 116-119 on 110/2 as well. Note this is with A LOT of Pam on the dish, as we have 2 inches of snow right now ;)

[bryan27]

Pittsburgh locals are also on 110 TP8
TP2-KDKA(C), WTAE(A), WPXI(N), WPGH(F)
TP8-WNPA(U), WCWB(W), WQED(P)
61.5-WPCB

Harrisburg locals are on 119 TP3

[shilton]

So I hear Pittsburgh PQ is somewhat "iffy"...does anyone know about Harrisburg's PQ? I basiaclly could "move" either way and I wanted to know which would provide me the better of the 2. Also, does anyone know how Dish actually receives the locals from their source> IS it by fiber optic lines, is it just picked up off of an antenna and retransmitted to Dish or what?

Thanks!

[bryan27]

It depends on the station and how the station sends the signal to the POP.

The stations are probably sent the same to each provider.

For D* the Pittsburgh locals are received like this and is probably the same on E*:

KDKA(CBS)-Fiber
WTAE(ABC)-Fiber
WPXI(NBC)-Fiber
WPGH(FOX)-Fiber
WQED(PBS)-OTA
WCWB(WB)--OTA
WNPA(UPN)-OTA
WPCB(ind)-Satellite

PQ for Harrisburg is probably slightly better. Both TP2 & 8 for Pittsburgh has 11 channels and TP3 for Harrisburg has 9, but I wouldn't doubt that a couple channels get added to the TP.
It comes down to this. Do you want 8 channels (soon to be 9) from Pittsburgh or do you want 7 channels from Harrisburg.