Team Summit General Assembly Notes

[MikeD-C05]

ONce it is out of someones mouth you can't retract it- especially when you are the Ceo of the company. What is the big deal. It actualy sounds like that Dish has a plan to not only compete with cable and Directv the turd bird ,but to pass them up with more hd and possibly better picture quality using mpeg 4.

[navychop]

So, does this TR40 receiver only receive OTA HDTV (8VSB)? Or does it also receive QAM? And can it receive / subscribe to any Dish Network services?

No, it cannot receive Dish services. To qualify for the $40 coupon, it must be an OTA only receiver, with only an antenna input, and no HD output.

Also, where does this MPEG 2 > MPEG 4 transition leave Sky Angel?

Just where they are today. At 61.5 in MPEG-2. And they'll stay that way. Anybody know when that agreement/settlement expires? And anybody want to hazard a guess as to if Sky Angel will still be in business by that time?

[Foxbat]

No, it cannot receive Dish services. To qualify for the $40 coupon, it must be an OTA only receiver, with only an antenna input, and no HD output.

The photos Scott took of the TR-40 (almost half of a TRS-80) show it has composite output in addition to the RF out. Too bad id doesn't have S-Video, though, as ATSC has such nice colors and chroma-crawl will probably be fierce! It is interseting to note that there appear to be three RCA-sized connectors covered by plugs. I wonder if there won't be a version of this box that has Component-out for HD-Ready sets?

[navychop]

Composite is fine. No HD there.

The government has a list of forbidden features on these converter boxes, features that if present will make it ineligible for the $40 coupon. The links are posted elsewhere.

But maybe they could sell the component enabled boxes separately.

[Foxbat]

After I looked at the picture some more, it may be that the RCA header the Dish uses in manufacturing its receivers has those R-G-B RCA jacks closest to the circuit board. It's probably cheaper to source the one part (and put covers over the unused jacks) than it is to buy a limited number of the R-W-Y-only RCA headers.

[Jhon69]

ONce it is out of someones mouth you can't retract it- especially when you are the Ceo of the company. What is the big deal. It actualy sounds like that Dish has a plan to not only compete with cable and Directv the turd bird ,but to pass them up with more hd and possibly better picture quality using mpeg 4.

Come October we want you to address Directv by their new name.Directv the king of everything that is HD.

[dfergie]

Come October we want you to address Directv by their new name.Directv the king of everything that is HD.

Unless they change their tune (coming from an 11 year DirecTv sub) King of HD Lite...

[Scott Greczkowski]

I am willing to bet that DirecTV won't have more theb 50 national HD channels (part time ones don't count)

Of course I don't expect dish to have that many eaither.

Its all just marketing hype. DirecTV has been talking about 100 hd channels for 2 years now.

While Dish has not publiclly advertised any number of HD channels for the future.

I think no matter what company your with more HD is coming and that's not a bad thing.

[mike123abc]

The key item that stuck out was:

On these two Satellites they will be relaunching Dish Network in FULL MPEG4. All current Dish Network Channels will be available in full MPEG4. And everything will be receivable with just one 18 inch dish.

This is pretty much saying that the satellite(s) have to be on the Ku-DBS band since a larger dish would be required on a Ku-FSS or the KA band.

Just speculation based on the above would suggest that a new slot would be used and 2 satellites launched to it.

E11 is supposed to be a spot beam satellite with steerable slots. Steerable spots would allow it to go to a variety of locations and still be able to aim the spots at the right cities.

There has been notes of SES building a Ku-DBS satellite for Dish with a TBA slot (mentions in Dish's SEC filings).

So, if the SES satellite is CONUS Ku-DBS and E11 is a spot beam satellite that can go in a variety of slots, it is possible they are going to a new slot. Either a foreign slot (like 129 is Canada and 77 is Mexico). Or perhaps a new slot that the FCC is going to open up (although you would think there would be more public announcements out of the FCC about this).

With CONUS from SES, spots from E11, 8PSK and MPEG-4 they could have a single satellite location with 2x+ the capacity of a old technology slot.

When they say 1000 standard definition channels, I believe they are counting the channels on spot beams.

I also wonder about national HD content, if that would require a second satellite location. To serve 200 cities with SD locals and 100 cities with HD locals, that would take a lot of spot beams. This means that they would probably have to have a bunch of transponders used for spot beams to cover all this. One would almost have to have 10-15 TPs just for locals. This would leave 17-22 TPs for CONUS. 17TPs * 25channels/TP is 425 channels of standard definition CONUS not allowing for any CONUS HD.

This is of course all speculation. Other alternatives could be a combination of KU-DBS and Ku-AUX which Dish has licences for too, perhaps they could come up with a slot that uses 32 Ku-DBS and 16 Ku-Aux TPs, for a small dish to work they would have to have 4 degrees of separation from adjacent slots... This would let them do something like 16 TPs for spots, 16 TPs for 400 standard def CONUS and 16 TPs for HD (64-96 CONUS HD channels).

[Jhon69]

Unless they change their tune (coming from an 11 year DirecTv sub) King of HD Lite...

HD is HD is HD.HD lite is just a technicality.