New FTA service with 20 english channels

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Yeah but I think there real problem is they have no venture capital hence no real money yet for TP space on a satellite and hence the needto advertisers to pay up now. upfront before there even a product.
 
yeah, it would probably be easiest to start with just one transponder, put up a couple channels, and as the advertising dollars roll in, lease a few more transponders and put up more channels.
to start out with 3 transponders would require quite a large chunk of cash for a business just starting out.
 
how many channels per transponder?

Echo seems to get a bunch on those circular TPs

They try to pack to many on a tp which causes reduced video quality from over compression. They boast about "100% digital quality" when it's digital crap. Quality is gone before it reaches the up link and because mpeg compression is a lossy, not loss-less compression, the quality is not recoverable.
 
All one can do is wait and see what becomes of this and just speculate until then and enjoy the tv you already have now.
 
Has anyone contacted them to see if they are going to start with a few channels or a full slate? They are pretty good about responding to questions. I asked them the other day if they were going to add any HD channels, and they told me that they were going to start with HD about a year or two after they launch depending on the demand and response to the service.
 
blue sky:

I asked them the other day if they were going to add any HD channels, and they told me that they were going to start with HD about a year or two after they launch depending on the demand and response to the service.
Actually, HD would be quite interesting for the future.
Low cost cameras are here now, and will only be better down the line.
We have editing and processing equipment already, that's working pretty well.
(by that, I mean, we could probably produce a low-budget show at home!) - :cool:

You could not waste the bandwidth on mpeg, so h.264 would be the way to go.
Fancier STBs are showing up every year, and at reasonable prices.
That's what you build on.
If a $200 receiver was enough to get the HD signal, there'd be landslide sales of it! - :up
Regardless of its general FTA capabilities. (wink)

But, I waste my breath.
Whitesprings has -done- more, and -they- are off the air! - :eek:
 
These guys appear to be blowing lots of smoke and getting a lot of people excited over their "vapor-vision" service.

Their business plan appears to have been assembled by eighth graders without a lot of practical business sense.

I have been involved in start up tv networks before and believe me, this is no way to start out. They may just be trying to be honest, but I seriously doubt if this project will ever see the light of day. For example, lets says they secure space segment (for example, a 18 meg slot on AMC9 @ $400/hr x 24 = $9600/day x 365 = $3, 504, 000 per year!). I'm basing this on an 18 meg slot because of the amount of content (i.e. channels) that they need to mux together. Anything smaller would be suicide. There are other ways to get the signals out in a smaller carrier, but that involved statistical multiplexing. And, if they are planning on viewers to use traditional STB's (i.e. FTA receivers) then their transmission technology needs to be dumbed down.

The channels that they are going after are either public domain channels (NASA, etc.) They'll never get any of the major cable movie channels - only third, fourth and fifth tier cable programming. Further, there is still their playback infrastructure, which can be done on the cheap (i.e. RTV). But how are they going to fund this thing? They're not going to be charging a subscription fee, so the only other means of generating revenue is advertising. And we're not talking top flight advertisers here. I'm talking about Mesothelioma ads, etc.

I'm sorry to throw water on their fire, but the only thing these guys have done is managed to still up interest in something that'll never see the light of day.

Unless, they have someone with deep pockets that's willing to fund this thing, but that's doubtful.
 
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To me it seems like they have enough content to put out 1 well rounded channel with content. There are plenty of brokers who could rent out 1 channel on space on a tp , giving them a demo content and viewer ship to sell commericals to help eventually ake the other channels live.
 
"For example, lets says they secure space segment (for example, a 18 meg slot on AMC9 @ $400/hr x 24 = $9600/day x 365 = $3, 504, 000 per year!). I'm basing this on an 18 meg slot because of the amount of content (i.e. channels) that they need to mux together. Anything smaller would be suicide. There are other ways to get the signals out in a smaller carrier, but that involved statistical multiplexing. And, if they are planning on viewers to use traditional STB's (i.e. FTA receivers) then their transmission technology needs to be dumbed down.

But how are they going to fund this thing? They're not going to be charging a subscription fee, so the only other means of generating revenue is advertising. And we're not talking top flight advertisers here. I'm talking about Mesothelioma ads, etc."

I think the Horseshoe Casino might have their hand in on this...JMO.
 
"For example, lets says they secure space segment (for example, a 18 meg slot on AMC9 @ $400/hr x 24 = $9600/day x 365 = $3, 504, 000 per year!). I'm basing this on an 18 meg slot because of the amount of content (i.e. channels) that they need to mux together. Anything smaller would be suicide. There are other ways to get the signals out in a smaller carrier, but that involved statistical multiplexing. And, if they are planning on viewers to use traditional STB's (i.e. FTA receivers) then their transmission technology needs to be dumbed down.

But how are they going to fund this thing? They're not going to be charging a subscription fee, so the only other means of generating revenue is advertising. And we're not talking top flight advertisers here. I'm talking about Mesothelioma ads, etc."

I think the Horseshoe Casino might have their hand in on this...JMO.

Even if they have someone to bankroll their initial rollout, they're going to want to see a sound business plan that shows a return on their investment. No one is going to throw money at a project unless they have some assurances.
 
$400/hr divided by 20 channels would be $20/hr per channel. This is only for the satellite space, not other costs. If this was only a fifth of the cost and it was $100/hr per channel and they had commercials on 4 times per hour (every 15 minutes) and 4 commercials everytime, then that would still be $25 per commercial break, $6 per commercial. Sounds to me like there is money to be made in FTA if this is the case. They say 100 channels in the future so it would seem even better than this.
 
These guys appear to be blowing lots of smoke and getting a lot of people excited over their "vapor-vision" service.

Their business plan appears to have been assembled by eighth graders without a lot of practical business sense.

I'm sorry to throw water on their fire, but the only thing these guys have done is managed to still up interest in something that'll never see the light of day.

Unless, they have someone with deep pockets that's willing to fund this thing, but that's doubtful.

I have to agree there is actually no busines plan or a project chart as demonstrated by their timeline. 5 months down the line they should already be broadcasting even on a test basis to get commercial funding on board. 15th Jan 2010 they said "secured funding", what for, I can't believe any sponsor would be happy with progress to date.
 
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