Dallas Spot Beam - 20?

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przywara

Active SatelliteGuys Member
Original poster
Pub Member / Supporter
Apr 28, 2009
20
8
Delaware
Greetings, I am spending a several weeks on the east coast for business. The house I am in has Direct via a 5LNB slimline with excellent signal. My question is I bought a Direct tuner, opened a new commercial account at the home office (they'll pay) but I can't get local Fox 4. I know, it seems like a great deal of effort, but this assignment will be much easier if my wife can relax with Good Day.

All the maps show transponder 20 on sat 101. The only transponder one I'm not getting is 28. The signals for all the rest are rather good. I called and activated, and reactivated and reset and power cycled. I just get error 727 (this program not available in your area), the upper channels are fine, but none of the locals.

Any help or guidance will help maintain domestic harmony. :eek:

thanks...
 
That transponder is likely being reused for a different city's locals where you're located. That's the point of spotbeams. You may get signal on a given transponder, but if you're halfway across the country the signal will be different.
 
Perhaps I didn't understand the spot beams. I thought it was beam and service address dependant.

The beam, transponder 20, really does only send NJ locals to where we are. When we are home, a different beam, picked up by transponder 20, actually recieves a different signal which contains the Dallas locals? I expected the beams to be the same. I assumed the reciever activation cleared the path for Dallas at home, and Newark locals for the Turnpike folks of Jersey. Am i right? or does the old phrase about 'assuming' come into play?
 
A transponder in the physical sense is basically a radio. In terms of transponders in your signal strength menu, it refers to a specific band of frequencies. Think of a particular transponder in the same way as you think of a regular over the air TV station you'd pick up with your antenna.

Satellite companies are assigned their frequencies, or transponders, on a nationwide basis. Before the advent of spotbeams, satellites sent the same signal over the entire country. This meant that anything on any particular transponder would be received at any location in the country, and the signal would be exactly the same. This was fine when satellite TV was only delivering national TV channels and everyone was getting the same thing. As a matter of fact, it was hugely efficient and is why satellite had/has more channels on average than cable.

Several years ago satellite TV companies started carrying local channels. Due to copyright laws and contractual issues, only viewers in a local channel's home market can view those particular channels. However, due to the way that satellite technology works, those channels were being beamed to the entire country. It was very very inefficient. Now, that doesn't mean that viewers in NY could see LA TV stations. Using smart cards and conditional access they were/are able to block viewers from seeing out of market channels.

Engineers saw how inefficient it was and realized to cover a large majority of the country they would need more transponders. Since there is a limited number available in any particular spot, they arrived at spotbeams. The spotbeam basically is a signal that is narrowly aimed at a particular geographic area. So, in a "CONUS" (Continental US) beam, one antenna beams a huge radio signal that soaks the entire country. In a spotbeam, several antennas shoot a small beam over just the targeted area. The point of this is that with separate antennas and beams, they can send the locals for Dallas on the TP20 beam covering Texas and the Philly locals on TP20 on the beam covering Pennsylvania. This way, they don't have to waste bandwidth sending locals to areas that cannot view them. It works in the same way that there's a TV channel 6 in say Birmingham, AL but not in Atlanta, GA; but there is a TV channel 6 further up the East Coast. Because the signals are far enough apart to not interfere, they can send different content on the same channels.

Here's an even more in depth explanation with pictures: http://www.sadoun.com/Sat/Products/Dishnetwork/Dishes/Spot_Beam_Short.pdf
 
New Orleans beam

Are the new orleans locals on spot beam or conus? I am wondering if I could potentially receive them in Houston.
 
All locals on DirecTV except NY and LA are on spotbeams. Regardless, federal law prohibits DirecTV from giving you locals from outside your area. Just because you can receive the signal doesn't mean you will get those locals. DirecTV uses your home address to determine what channels you are eligible to receive and sends a signal to your receivers to prevent you from receiving channels you are not authorized to get.
 
Thanks, it all makes sense now

I appreciate the outstanding response. Although not a n00b, I really didn't understand it before.

Thank you for your help, my wife will have to rely on Tivo. Perhaps our son can reconnect the slingbox for her.

thanks again...
 
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