[dmodemd]

Can someone explain how E*8 is used for backup?

Does that mean that most of its capacity is on standby? Is it used for anything else?

I have an idea:

Why not use that capacity and bring all the channels back up to pre-must carry compression levels / picture quality.

If an outage occurs then it shouldnt take long to turn the compression up.

Complications?:
- Moving channels from sat to sat is not trivial. (But dont you have to do that anyway for an outage?)
- Changing compression can't be done at the flick of a switch?

Could this work?

Lee

 

[David_Levin]

Doesn't make much sense to me either. All spots on E*7 and E*8 are on different markets. If they lose one, they are still in trouble.

 

[DarrellP]

Lee, maybe someone else can explain this in detail, but Dish is limited to the number of transponders that they can use in each satellite location. They can't just throw up a satellite and ignite all the transponders that the system has capacity for. It would be nice if they could but they can't.

As far as their compression goes, it is dynamic and constantly changing based on the needs of all the channels sharing the same transponder so the channels with the highest bandwidth requirements at that moment are getting it. I agree it needs some work, but for the most part it works well.

The PQ is fairly decent but lacks detail. As more people buy digital sets they are going to have to crank up the bitrate or people will be dropping them like hot potatoes.

 

[HTguy]

Originally posted by dmodemd
Can someone explain how E*8 is used for backup?

Lee

The spot beams on E*8 overlap the ones on E*7. So if E*7 were to fail they could keep the LIL's up in most of the major markets. That's also why they're only talking about adding a few cities when E*8 goes on line.

Also, as DarrellP mentioned they can't just light up every transponder they have. If E*7 were to fail they could even move E*8 to 119 in it's place and turn E*5 back on at 110.

Also, E*6 is now in standby @119 but it can't reach Alaska & Hawaii. E*4 is sleeping at 148 backing up E*1.

At least that's how I understand the current satellite constellation configuration.

 

[Mike123abc]

What it means is that Charlie wants to slow down LIL to try to make the merger look better. E7+E8 could probably do the top 80 markets. Notice he does not want to move stuff off of the wings yet either. Why make it look good without the merger?

If the merger is not approved they will probably put up a bunch of new LIL. If it is approved, they will probably not put up any more LIL on either system until they start to redo the system after the merger. By making people have to buy new equipment to get LIL they will save costs of having to replace a bunch of equipment themselves.

I would expect new LIL after the merger to require a new box/dish setup. Since you are "not having to pay for anything you had before", i.e. new packages, you can pay for the new box/dish/lnb/switches.

If they roll out 50 new markets with LIL right after the merger that is 20 less markets worth of equipment they can save on (provided people upgrade to get local channels).

 

[JohnH]

EchoStar 4 is still at 119.

The backup Charlie was referring to is most likely the Conus Capability at 110 will have full redundancy with EchoStar 5 and EchoStar 8 at that location.

Slowing down LIL does not seem to be the case with the announcement of Reno, Fresno, Waco and Harrisburg to be within the next 2 weeks.

The original plan for these Spotbeam satellites did not include the channels on the side slots and it is not likely that problem will get much better with EchoStar 8 on line. The plan seems to be more cities not pulling in a substantial number of the side slot channels. Case in point is Fresno will have 2 channels on 148 at launch.

I doubt you have seen anywhere that EchoStar claimed the second dish was a temporary solution.

 

[MrAkai]

With a 148 view very difficult from where I live, I would hope they'd use E8 to move the locals to the core....

Oh well.

Wishful thinking.