Why don't you see HDTV channels on 110/119? The primary reason is that the bandwidth required to send a HDTV signal is equivelent to about 7-8 standard channels on DBS. Then, of course, the number of people who actually own a HDTV is small in number compared to the number of people who have regular TVs.
Merger, Bandwidth limits, and !!Why no HDTV on 110 or 119?
With the new Echostar satellite, does anyone know if Dish network plans to put any of its HDTV feeds on 110 or 119 satellites?
An extra dish and switch in addition to a receiver just for 2 or 3 extra channels is a little stupid for me...
Maybe a few channels at most would be great.... I would love to forgo half of the channels I view as 'crap' content and get HBO, Showtime, Discovery, and ESPN on HD.
It would make sense, so any dish 500 customer would be able to get HDTV just with a receiver upgrade.
If not now, do you guys think it will eventually happen?
I know the failure of the merger messes with possibilities for increased capacity for both networks, but I don't see how it should change the possibility for a universal receiver upgrade to take care of PSK (right? thats the newer 40% more efficient one) encoding. The unit cost difference between manufacturing 7-8 million and 20 million new STBs for distribution must be negligible. I bet with an efficient design, they could pump these units out at their cost of $10-$25/crack WITH HDTV decoding onboard -IF- they're doing 7-8 million of them at once. Hell manufacturers could compete for the business of DirecTV and Dish since they both want the same upgrade. The way I look at it, its a write off and a necessary expense to continue competing with Cable. Even at $50/unit cost, thats a one month revenue writeoff. Makes for one horrible quarter - who cares, the market will understand.
Hell it would be cheaper than the $600 million charlie supposedly has to pay hughes. What is that from anyway?
Much cheaper than launching a new satellite for extra capacity, right?
The way I see it, this likely failure of the merger only IMPROVES things for the customers. It keeps competition thriving AND it forces the satellite cos to agressively upgrade their networks to maximize capacity. Dish and DirecTV will compete to do this in order to offer more local channels, and HDTV. The way I see it, a merger would only slow the process down. Lets not be blindsided by the public claims of these large companies. They just want to postpone the inevitable by instantly gaining capacity with network combination.
An extra dish and switch in addition to a receiver just for 2 or 3 extra channels is a little stupid for me...
Maybe a few channels at most would be great.... I would love to forgo half of the channels I view as 'crap' content and get HBO, Showtime, Discovery, and ESPN on HD.
It would make sense, so any dish 500 customer would be able to get HDTV just with a receiver upgrade.
If not now, do you guys think it will eventually happen?
I know the failure of the merger messes with possibilities for increased capacity for both networks, but I don't see how it should change the possibility for a universal receiver upgrade to take care of PSK (right? thats the newer 40% more efficient one) encoding. The unit cost difference between manufacturing 7-8 million and 20 million new STBs for distribution must be negligible. I bet with an efficient design, they could pump these units out at their cost of $10-$25/crack WITH HDTV decoding onboard -IF- they're doing 7-8 million of them at once. Hell manufacturers could compete for the business of DirecTV and Dish since they both want the same upgrade. The way I look at it, its a write off and a necessary expense to continue competing with Cable. Even at $50/unit cost, thats a one month revenue writeoff. Makes for one horrible quarter - who cares, the market will understand.
Hell it would be cheaper than the $600 million charlie supposedly has to pay hughes. What is that from anyway?
Much cheaper than launching a new satellite for extra capacity, right?
The way I see it, this likely failure of the merger only IMPROVES things for the customers. It keeps competition thriving AND it forces the satellite cos to agressively upgrade their networks to maximize capacity. Dish and DirecTV will compete to do this in order to offer more local channels, and HDTV. The way I see it, a merger would only slow the process down. Lets not be blindsided by the public claims of these large companies. They just want to postpone the inevitable by instantly gaining capacity with network combination.
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I have heard froma few contacts that we COULD see Discovery HD get moved to 110 in the next few months.
Does that mean its gonna happen? Your guess is as good as mine.
Does that mean its gonna happen? Your guess is as good as mine.
The reasons I see Dish not putting HDTV on the main birds are:
1. limited interest, most do not buy DBS for HDTV
2. People interested in HDTV and want to buy the 6000 unit probably have the bucks to afford a second satellite dish and switches (i.e. pay anything for HDTV).
3. To put 2 HDTV channels on the main bird would require the loss of about 10 channels of STD. This is with enhanced HDTV. Old recievers cannot read the 8PSK data stream, so you have to change the entire transponder to hdtv (i.e. not one HDTV and 5 standard).
I would personally like to seem them move all LIL to the wings and use the main birds for HDTV. But, unfortunately they get more subscribers for LIL than they do for HDTV. The wing satellites are an ideal match for LIL since you do not have to duplicate programming on both coasts. But, people really hate to put up a second dish.
1. limited interest, most do not buy DBS for HDTV
2. People interested in HDTV and want to buy the 6000 unit probably have the bucks to afford a second satellite dish and switches (i.e. pay anything for HDTV).
3. To put 2 HDTV channels on the main bird would require the loss of about 10 channels of STD. This is with enhanced HDTV. Old recievers cannot read the 8PSK data stream, so you have to change the entire transponder to hdtv (i.e. not one HDTV and 5 standard).
I would personally like to seem them move all LIL to the wings and use the main birds for HDTV. But, unfortunately they get more subscribers for LIL than they do for HDTV. The wing satellites are an ideal match for LIL since you do not have to duplicate programming on both coasts. But, people really hate to put up a second dish.
I'd put up the 2nd dish in a heartbeat to get my locals if that's what it took. 2nd dish (I'd probably get a 24 " or 30") plus SW64 (or get a Twin and re-use one Dual LNB/ SW21's) isn't THAT unreasonable IHHO...
Does having Echostar 8 up along with Echostar 5 on 110 essentially add more transponders to the 110 position? or is there essentially a limit of the # of transponders at the 110 location? Doesn't E8 have spare capacity for HDTV channels?Originally posted by Mike123abc
The reasons I see Dish not putting HDTV on the main birds are:
1. limited interest, most do not buy DBS for HDTV
2. People interested in HDTV and want to buy the 6000 unit probably have the bucks to afford a second satellite dish and switches (i.e. pay anything for HDTV).
3. To put 2 HDTV channels on the main bird would require the loss of about 10 channels of STD. This is with enhanced HDTV. Old recievers cannot read the 8PSK data stream, so you have to change the entire transponder to hdtv (i.e. not one HDTV and 5 standard).
I would personally like to seem them move all LIL to the wings and use the main birds for HDTV. But, unfortunately they get more subscribers for LIL than they do for HDTV. The wing satellites are an ideal match for LIL since you do not have to duplicate programming on both coasts. But, people really hate to put up a second dish.
No. Both D* and E* have to have licenses for the transponder frequencies that they are using. This includes a uplink frequency as well as a downlink frequency. This is assigned by the FCC.Originally posted by scriabinop23
Does having Echostar 8 up along with Echostar 5 on 110 essentially add more transponders to the 110 position? or is there essentially a limit of the # of transponders at the 110 location? Doesn't E8 have spare capacity for HDTV channels?
There are 32 transponder frequencies at each DBS orbital slot. E8 helps because it has spot beams, so it can use the same frequency over and over for different areas of the country. So, in effect they get more capacity because the same frequency can have different channels in different locations. E8 uses 5 frequencies in spots, and reuses each of them 5 times on average. This gives an effective gain of 20 more transponders worth of information.
As nice as HDTV is, it wont happen unless there is a massive rush to HDTV on the consumer side. Its a very,very small market and a niche one to boot. Joe six-pack is happy with his cable..do you really think he is going to drop the $$$ required to go HDTV. Charlie knows this, and he isnt going to use his prime real estate on HDTV. He is putting it on the wing slots with the other niche programming (internationals)
BTW: as you likely know, there IS HDTV on 110 and 119. Just not with Dish. I see your in CT, the "other guys" have our locals, HDTV in the slots you want them in, just no Discovery HD (yet) but they do have HDNet.
BTW: as you likely know, there IS HDTV on 110 and 119. Just not with Dish. I see your in CT, the "other guys" have our locals, HDTV in the slots you want them in, just no Discovery HD (yet) but they do have HDNet.
Great - another Hartford guy. I went Dish because they had a great promotional deal. 3 months free + free install and $49 one time fee for a pvr 508. It works out to less than cable, and I'm on a high place so my over the air analog reception is just as good as regular cable was, if not better.Originally posted by PeterB
As nice as HDTV is, it wont happen unless there is a massive rush to HDTV on the consumer side. Its a very,very small market and a niche one to boot. Joe six-pack is happy with his cable..do you really think he is going to drop the $$$ required to go HDTV. Charlie knows this, and he isnt going to use his prime real estate on HDTV. He is putting it on the wing slots with the other niche programming (internationals)
BTW: as you likely know, there IS HDTV on 110 and 119. Just not with Dish. I see your in CT, the "other guys" have our locals, HDTV in the slots you want them in, just no Discovery HD (yet) but they do have HDNet.
Do you think we'll have much chance getting OTA HDTV from springfield when NBC/etc. starts broadcasting in early Nov? I'm holding off on buying a decoder until I can get a good nbc signal - i'm in Manchester, high up.
With my 6000 reciever I am able to get signal from stations around 100 miles away. I used an 8' UHF antenna up about 30 feet (top of 2 story house). The main problem I had was frequency reuse of some of the channels. I was recieving Dallas channels, but 18 and 35 were in use in my market (adjacent no less) so was not able to get a signal on them because the local overwelmed them.
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