[James Long]

I'n not sure how the local stations are with this, but one key point is that the customer himself has to turn the PTAT on.

The key is it isn't distants. DISH is allowed by law to deliver channels into their own markets (with permission of the locals). In markets that are "short" a network or more DISH is allowed by law to deliver distants of the missing network (short meaning no network affiliate, not just an uncooperative one).

And the PTA feature records the big four feeds of the market regardless of if they are HD or not. In markets where there is no HD of a network a SD will be part of PTA.

 

[Lt Disher]

The key is it isn't distants. DISH is allowed by law to deliver channels into their own markets (with permission of the locals). In markets that are "short" a network or more DISH is allowed by law to deliver distants of the missing network (short meaning no network affiliate, not just an uncooperative one).

And the PTA feature records the big four feeds of the market regardless of if they are HD or not. In markets where there is no HD of a network a SD will be part of PTA.

You may be absolutely correct, but originally and at the CES the PTAT feature was only for markets that had HD locals. In some cases the SD is on another transponder anyway and PTAT relies on having all four networks on the same transponder.

 

[gtal98]

Yeah, everything I've seen has said PTA works on HD locals only. And as Lt Disher said, it works off being able to dump the whole transponder at once. In some SD only local markets not all locals are on the same transponder. I even know of one where they're not even on the same satellite (split between 119 and 110).

 

[James Long]

You may be absolutely correct, but originally and at the CES the PTAT feature was only for markets that had HD locals. In some cases the SD is on another transponder anyway and PTAT relies on having all four networks on the same transponder.

Hmmm ... I thought I saw a SD local with the PTA flag. In any case, there are plenty of transponders with HD and SD on the same transponder. If an affiliate in a market was not in HD (very rare for a big four) DISH could put them on the same transponder as the HD for the sake of PTA.

Glancing through the list I noticed several HD affiliates that do not have the PTA flag, even though they are on the same transponder as the other big four channels in that market. I suppose DISH will do an audit before they release the receiver.

The markets where DISH does not offer HD locals would not be a problem. One can record "an entire transponder" of SD just as easily as "an entire transponder" of HD. If a market is split just do some shifting, like they did with the HD locals, to get the big four together. It would be a shame if PTA was withheld from them until they got HD locals.

 

[jeffdb27]

Hmmm ... I thought I saw a SD local with the PTA flag. ...

Glancing through the list I noticed several HD affiliates that do not have the PTA flag ...

Where is this list with the PTA flags? Can anyone access it?

Thanks.

 

[P Smith]

In a stream - check SDT on PID_0x0011 at each transponder.

 

[jeffdb27]

In a stream - check SDT on PID_0x0011 at each transponder.

Oh, so that is something beyond the average user with a standard receiver?

 

[P Smith]

It's not beyond a user with cheap DVB-S card, Win PC and free TSReaderLite.

 

[James Long]

And if one looks at the transponder lists on my website ( http://uplink.jameslong.name/ ) they can see the data decoded.

I have not added the PTA flag to the local channel list.

 

[DavidMi]

Your site is down...

Gives the following error...

This is the default H-Sphere server page. From here you are able to access the following services:
Web Utilities:
WebShell4—file manager

If this page is not what you wanted to get, most probably, one of the one of the following situations occured:

Domain name refers to H-Sphere logical server, e.g., web.service-domain.com
Third-level domain name does not exist. Maybe, you typed it incorrectly, e.g., valeed-domain .example.com instead of valid-domain.example.com
Domain incorrectly points to this H-Sphere server.

 

[James Long]

Whoops ... not my site! Try http://uplink.jameslong.name/

 

[P Smith]

It's viglink screw it. See that thread http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=201419

 

[James Long]

It's viglink screw it. See that thread http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=201419

No, it was NOT viglink. I accidentally typed my site as a .com instead of a .name .

 

[P Smith]

Yes, it IS viglink - here is my try right now:

<Error>

AccessDenied

<Message>Access Denied</Message><RequestId>974FF6D68E5B2780</RequestId><HostId>3wEdfNm3morGCv6BTdRT0KiR8TT9kkXX9VMA1LDMWn2kp43821fBANkn6haEeLV0</HostId></Error>

 

[Shades228]

The link in post 211 resolved fine for me when I just tested it.

 

[DavidMi]

Whoops ... not my site! Try http://uplink.jameslong.name/

That works, thanks!

 

[VDP07]

Official Hopper/Joey consumer release date, March 15th.

 

[VDP07]

Existing customer's will pay $100-$200 for a Hopper and $0-$100 for each joey up to 3 depending on which plan they fall under. Plan A and B customers = $100 Hopper and $0 Joeys. Plan C customers = $200 Hopper and $100 Joeys

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Existing customer's will pay $100-$200 for a Hopper and $0-$100 for each joey up to 3 depending on which plan they fall under. Plan A and B customers = $100 Hopper and $0 Joeys. Plan C customers = $200 Hopper and $100 Joeys

How do you know which one you'd fall under?

 

[TomCat]

Just to note:

This part of your post describing "Conventional ad hoc digital satellite delivery" actually sounds like "Frequency Division Multiple Access" (or FDMA).

Therefore shouldn't the last portion quoted above read as;

It's both. Each of the four slots can be leased out for time segments as short as 5 minutes to individual customers. That's time division multiplexing, per slot. The slots themselves share 4 narrower slices of the wider transponder, each slice dedicated to a single slot. From the point of view of the transponder, that's frequency division multiplexing.

Sorry for any confusion. The point is that since the DBS company owns or leases the entire transponder, they can remotely reconfigure it to have one wide carrier centered on a single frequency rather than 4 narrower carriers adjacent to each other, and that is received by a single wide-band tuner, whereupon the 4 separate signals are separated out (demultiplexed) at eventual playback, or separated at reception for a conventional DVR.

So wideband single carrier (containing multiple programs in a single stream) vs narrow multiple carriers (with a single program in each) is the difference between how DBS sat and conventional sat works (with DBS usually having more transmit power to illuminate the smaller reflector), but the only real difference between a "Hopper"-style IRD/DVR and a conventional IRD/DVR is that the Hopper demuxes at playback but records all of the programs at once, while the garden-variety DVR demuxes at record to minimize the amount of HDD space needed for a single program.