AMC 14 Satellite Launch Failure - What now for Dish?

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SatelliteGuys Pro
Jan 7, 2008
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Just a thought here. Pardon me for speaking out of school here but if memory serves isn't Dish building a network of terrestrial repeaters for mobile reception?

If it came down to it and the FCC made a big deal about the 1 dish concept and it would take too long to re-build AMC-14 couldn't those repeaters somehow be used at fixed locations?

Yea, I know probably way too expensive of a work-around and probably doesn't address the HD issues either.

Or alternatively could dish scrap all SD programming in favor of all HD, all the time?


Oh well back to the drawing board. :D
 

drdroo

SatelliteGuys Pro
Sep 20, 2005
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Bangor, ME USA
First time I ever heard that said!

Yeah it's extremely rare.. I kinda felt dirty saying it.. :) The US had their share of learning (like others said here), but we've seen some pretty great results because of it.

The private guys will have to learn and evolve too. The problem, of course, is that when they change their config, they have to learn again, as you're seeing with the Briz-M.

I'm glad I don't have that job. I think I'd hope someone would just finish me off if I wrecked a billion dollar sat+launch campaign. I take stuff a little personal in those situations. :)
 

drdroo

SatelliteGuys Pro
Sep 20, 2005
1,195
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Bangor, ME USA
Single Dish applies to locals only. All locals must be received on the same dish.

Thanks for the info.

Marketing wise it is better to have a single dish for everything since people do not want 20 dishes sitting on their roofs.

Agreed. I do think this is probably their objective for this reason.. But not due to government force as I previously thought.
 

teneightyp

SatelliteGuys Pro
Mar 16, 2008
233
1
Duluth, MN
Charlie needs to concentrate on adding quality and quantity national HD channels. Who cares about locals? OTA is higher quality anyway. Get a good antenna and it's the highest quality you can get.
 

dijohn76

Pub Member / Supporter
Mar 14, 2008
476
1
Montana, SW of Great Falls
maybe if enough people call they will do something about it, I have emailed rainbow media about the lack of cc, because I really do like Monster HD, but have a problem catching everything that is said, I also emailed Dish and was told that I should contact Vooms owners (rainbow media) which I have a number of times with no response.
 

webbydude

SatelliteGuys Master
Feb 6, 2005
5,339
1
Akron, Ohio, United States
Charlie needs to concentrate on adding quality and quantity national HD channels. Who cares about locals? OTA is higher quality anyway. Get a good antenna and it's the highest quality you can get.


That's fine and dandy. But you're assuming the majority of the customers residing in their respective markets are able to receive HD via OTA. I know for a fact here in Ohio, most are not. Truth be told, I get more complaints/questions about the absence of local HD than I do about national channels.
 
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drdroo

SatelliteGuys Pro
Sep 20, 2005
1,195
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Bangor, ME USA
Charlie needs to concentrate on adding quality and quantity national HD channels. Who cares about locals? OTA is higher quality anyway. Get a good antenna and it's the highest quality you can get.

Nice idea, but our FOX station is only available in SD Digital. If I had cable, I could get it in HD. DirecTV will have it in HD soon, Dish should step up to the plate as well. It's either that or Dish should try to sell the FCC (again) on allowing people to get HD Distants until they get here. I'll gladly take Boston's locals, I prefer them even.

If you don't live within 30 minutes of my city, you won't get anything over the air, especially not in digital.

Don't get me wrong, National HD does matter, but I'm sure people would like to see their My Name is Earl, American Idol, House MD, E.R., etc. too.
 

drdroo

SatelliteGuys Pro
Sep 20, 2005
1,195
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Bangor, ME USA
maybe if enough people call they will do something about it, I have emailed rainbow media about the lack of cc, because I really do like Monster HD, but have a problem catching everything that is said, I also emailed Dish and was told that I should contact Vooms owners (rainbow media) which I have a number of times with no response.

You'd think there would be captions available for a lot of the programming they have, just that they aren't inserting them. These movies should have readily available subtitle data in most cases I would think.
 

dijohn76

Pub Member / Supporter
Mar 14, 2008
476
1
Montana, SW of Great Falls
I know CC is off-topic for this discussion, I was just mentioning lack of it as a reason for Dish to get rid of VOOM if that was something they wanted to do, but, does anyone know of a discussion for CC issues?
 

TalonDancer

SatelliteGuys Pro
Jun 13, 2006
933
157
Charlie needs to concentrate on adding quality and quantity national HD channels. Who cares about locals? OTA is higher quality anyway. Get a good antenna and it's the highest quality you can get.
I'm always bemused by the "I get my HD locals OTA. Why doesn't everyone?" posts. BTW I'm looking forward to one of you folks coming on over to help put up the 200'+ high mast for my OTA antenna :rolleyes:

If I switch to D* it will be all about the lack of HD Locals, NOT HD Nationals :eek:

Talon Dancer
 

HobbyTalk

SatelliteGuys Pro
Sep 4, 2007
434
206
SW Florida
For those wondering about why US companies do not do launches it should be noted that Sea Launch does launches and is a limited liability corporation with Headquarters and Home Port facilities in Long Beach, Calif. The company is owned by Boeing of Seattle, Wash. (40%); RSC-Energia of Moscow, Russia (25%); Aker ASA of Oslo, Norway (20%); and SDO Yuzhnoye/PO Yuzhmash of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine (15%). Financing for the venture is provided by these companies and through debt financing arranged by Chase Manhattan Bank in New York.

I also have read that launch windows are better obtained outside the USA and that safety is also a concern with a much higher insurance rate.

Sea Launch has had 3 failures in 27 launches.
 

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SatelliteGuys Pro
Jan 7, 2008
434
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I'm always bemused by the "I get my HD locals OTA. Why doesn't everyone?" posts. BTW I'm looking forward to one of you folks coming on over to help put up the 200'+ high mast for my OTA antenna :rolleyes:

If I switch to D* it will be all about the lack of HD Locals, NOT HD Nationals :eek:

Talon Dancer


If you need a 200' antenna just how "local" are they? :D

Or are there a lot of tall buildings or mountains in the way?
 

DishSubLA

SatelliteGuys Master
Apr 9, 2006
5,450
1,416
They probably moved them when they launched a new satellite like E10. E10 had a lot more spot beams, meaning they were able to reuse the same transponders in more places around the US allowing them to both turn on more cities and move existing cities from the wing satellites (61.5/148), and superdish (105/121) to 110. People really hate 2 dishes. The fewer markets that require them the more happy customers.

The idea of duplicating 110/119 on 61.5/77 is so that those in the NE could get a single dish for all their chanels (including HD) since 110/119 are full and 129 is too far west to be seen reliably. 61.5 and 77 work to allow all the HD on one dish with all the content from 110/119.

Yes, the name of the game is for Dish to put as much as they can on their 2 core sat positions, since almost everyone has a Dish 500, this is the most economical route. It seems to me, although certainly not in the next year or two or three, Dish's long-term strategy is to put EVERYTHING on 110 and 119, but that would require the elimination of all Legacy boxes and anticipated substantial improvements with future generations of MPEG4 encoders. We really don't know how efficient MPEG4 encoders will be in 5 years time, but it could reach a level that at present seems impossible. I think that is why Dish went to a lease solution with AMC. All these extra slots are temporary, in the long run of 5 or so years.
 

drdroo

SatelliteGuys Pro
Sep 20, 2005
1,195
0
Bangor, ME USA
What about the soon to be freed up SkyAngel bird? Any chance that can help to relive some of the bandwidth issues caused by whoops over the weekend?

There isn't really a 'bird' for Skyangel, there's some transponders that will be freed up that could potentially help with National HD.
 

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