Clearly, lack of 129 LOS won't be an issue by the end of the month.
MPEG2 Western Arc shutoff
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The info is coming directly from DISH via Josh, and while he is not the one doing the switching of things I would say the information is reliable. But as always sometimes what is planned does not always happen like you planned so their could always be some deviations. But I think they are track.
Maybe I missed but what is to become of the satellite. Will it be used for other services? Is it at the end of service life to be decommissioned?
end of lease. SES owns and runs it through a subsidiary(used to be ciel group but they changed itto a different subsidiary a few years ago).
SES has a large satellite fleet serving many many customers so it could end up staying where it is or move to a different location.
From what I've gathered from this thred, Dish is leasing TPs on 129, so Dish doesn't own the sat. It hasn't been up there long enough to be at EOL, as I remember when it was launched and it wasn't all that long ago, maybe 8 years or so ago? So someone else owns it and Dish is using MPEG4 encoding to compress the data and migrate channels off 129 to 110 and 119 so they can stop paying lease fees...
We are watching one of those historical dish events.
148w was the first slot they left after satellite failures (abandoned permit). It did not need to be replaced after the very versatile ciel 2 came into service.
Then they moved off their 77w Quetzat satellite (apparantly because the two other eastern slots fullfilled their needs.
Now we see a similar move off Ciel 2 at 129w with the two other western slots fullfilling their needs.
148w was the first slot they left after satellite failures (abandoned permit). It did not need to be replaced after the very versatile ciel 2 came into service.
Then they moved off their 77w Quetzat satellite (apparantly because the two other eastern slots fullfilled their needs.
Now we see a similar move off Ciel 2 at 129w with the two other western slots fullfilling their needs.
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Based off of this list, the following SD video channels on 129 are not listed as being converted to MPEG4, at least not yet:
72/104/282/883, VALUE
821, CLAN
824, BABY
839, ANT3
842, CRCOL
864, CSONY
998, Dish Business Info
And the part that I find interesting - Dish has 64 transponders on Eastern Arc as they have all the transponders on both satellites, but on Western Arc, they only have 50. And they are able to accomplish what they need to on Western Arc.
Didn’t someone make an estimate of how many MPEG4 HD channels would fit on a single TP for a guesstimate of total compactly? I can’t seem to find that.
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Right now Dish is putting 16 HD channels per transponder pretty frequently. On 119, TP 12, 14, 17, 20, 21 have 16 HD channels, as does 110 TP 19 and 22.
Right now my documentation has one transponder with 17 HD channels, but that might be a housekeeping mistake on my part.
So, as a very back-of-the-envelope guesstimate (ignoring SD channel bandwidth consideration for now), 16 channels for 50 TP is 800+ max channels for the WA. Do we know how many channels the WA is currently supporting?
The other thing is that only 28 of those transponders are ConUS and 22 are spotbeam. A lot more can be put on the spotbeams but focused on a certain area of the country, so it is hard to quantify those.
I would look at the 28 x 16 = 448 as being the theoretical max of HD channels. But then as you said, there are all the SD channels and music channels. There are also the 4k channels up there as well as programming guide data and other things I am not aware of. Then Dish seems to always keep a transponder or 2 free in case of emergencies.
I don't have a full list of everything, but excluding the channels used for out of market sports package, there are about 170 full-time national HD channels. That is just a ballpark estimate.
Would there be a benefit if I swap my 1000.2 Dish and put the old Dish500 with the Duals back up there for even better signal? If so, do the old Duals still work nowadays, especially with my DPH42 switch?
Would need to be DP duals, very cheap. Don't know that you'd get a whole lot more signal.
I remember the excitement of HD followed by the cringe that it was going to 129- Had trouble enough just getting 110/119 LOS for cx's. DiSH gaveth and definitely tooketh. Like when they went behind my back to saddle all my cx's with Superdishes to sell them locals.
I still have a DP Dual. But if it isn't worth the effort, I'll leave it be. I am blessed with a wife that doesn't care about what I put on the roof. So a mad scientist project would be a right down my alley.
A commercial place might use 2 larger single dishes, one on 110 and the other on 119, to minimize weather downtime. Those could use either dp dual or single. Actually a D500 into a DP switch could use DP singles (if they made those, don't remember), DP duals (only need one of the 2 outputs per LNBF), DP Twin or DPP Twin.
Unless you are having signal issues you probably shouldn't waste your time.
I would consider going back to DISH when they come out with a new Western Arc dish for the 110 and 119 locations. To get 129 required a dish on the roof at my location and since I had shingles replaced, I am not doing that again.
I considered the neighbor's offer to take an old dish 500 off of their roof but it has been up there for almost 20 years in the Texas sun and heat and may not even work.
I considered the neighbor's offer to take an old dish 500 off of their roof but it has been up there for almost 20 years in the Texas sun and heat and may not even work.
Not likely they'd bother with a new WA dish. They will likely come out with a WA dual LNBF for the 1000.2 though, similar to the EA LNBF.
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