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HDTVFanAtic said:

Lyngsat, like the charts used for this thread, was done months ago.

They have since changed birds and the lyngsat info, like what was posted here - is seriously wrong and outdated.

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I can't determine that any of the Lyngsat information regarding these two satellites is wrong. The uplinked channels lists for Spaceway 1 was submitted in December of 2005, and I have no reason to think it is in error. The frequencies of the six transponders used there was posted in June of 2006, but since I don't even know the correlation between frequency and transponder designation, I can't determine that information to be in error either.

The information regarding Spaceway 2 was posted and revised variously from April through June, 2006, but it does not include specific transponder frequencies. It may well have changed, but I have no way of determining that. Lyngsat is maintained by volunteers. If a person who is sufficiently motivated wants to revise the info and can satisfy Mr. Lyngemark that he is reliable, then he can become empowered to revise the information.

HDTVFanAtic said:

It is still mindboggling that they disabled the transponders in the bios. A major outage of one bird and many at D* will be out of work for making that decision. Just stupid to disable your redundancy as both E* and D* have experienced outages in the past.

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Your concern is unfounded. DirecTV has two reasons to enable transponders: one is to test and adjust their coverage, and the other is to actually use them. DirecTV is presently undertaking an orderly process of incorporating 1,500 broadcast HDTV TV station's signals into its system. That entails setting up reception and processing hardware at its point-of-presence in each market, relaying the received signals to the chosen uplink facility, integrating the signals into transponder-width data streams and then uplinking them to the spot beam satellites. They also market, distribute and install the reception and processing hardware (AT9 antenna, MP4 receivers), which cannot be done all at once.

Once DirecTV has focused a beam so that they have optimized the trade-off between coverage of the market that is legally authorized to subscribe to the locals while minimizing the spill over into adjacent markets, they can shut the beams off and exclude them from the self-test regimen's display. If they ever have a beam failure on the new satellite, which is infrequent but it can happen, they already know what alternate routing they would use (these transponders are a lot more frequency agile than the earlier ones were) and if they actually needed to use a different spot to temporarily cover them during an outage, it could be turned on as needed, probably in a matter of seconds. Believe, me, these people know what they are doing. They know about a thousand times as much about what they are doing regarding this project as all of us together do.

We went through all this pontification over at DBSForums back when 4S was being analyzed. People didn't understand that the constraining factor on spot beam satellite capacity is the uplinking capacity, for example, and they thought that if their local spotbeam only had half a dozen channels in it, DirecTV was underutilizing it. They didn't understand that an uplink beam might have half a dozen of their locals and half a dozen of another market's in it, it was mirrored to two downlink spot beams, and in each market, the information regarding the channels that couldn't be legally subscribed to in each market was simply not incorporated into each guide, so there was nothing missing, just like when you toggle the "guide" button on a DISH remote between displaying the programs you don't subscribe to and excluding them.

DirecTV 4S can receive signals from just two uplink sites. Since DirecTV owns 32 transponders worth of Ku bandwidth at the 101 slot, for example, they have been allocated the same amount of uplink bandwidth in another frequency band. They can uplink 32 x 2 unique transponderwidth data streams, use 26 for CONUS programming, and still have 38 transponders available for local programming uplinking. 4S then "transponds" those signals to downlink them in 44 transponder-width beams directed at 27 geographic "spots". At the 119 degree slot, they own 11 transponders, can uplink from three sites (33 transponders), operate six as CONUS beams and then spot the programming of the remaining 27 (33-6) uplinked transponders at as many regions as is necessary to fully utilize the uplinked capacity. No one is being short-changed in that transaction, either. With Spaceway 1 and 2, and DirecTV 11 and 12, I think they receive programming from four uplink sites, and have a lot more frequency agility and beam re-aiming capability than do 4S and 7S.

I once explained much of this in a DBSForum's thread titled: "See spot. See spot beam quiz", but I think that thread got inadvertently lost when some work was done on DBSForum's data base. So much for all that bunk about everything we ever post being around forever.

I respect the knowledge you bring to the table, but let me cut to the heart of the matter where youR argument is wrong and that's what you and others are not getting the points I am making...

AntAltMike said:

Your concern is unfounded.

If they ever have a beam failure on the new satellite, which is infrequent but it can happen, they already know what alternate routing they would use (these transponders are a lot more frequency agile than the earlier ones were) and if they actually needed to use a different spot to temporarily cover them during an outage, it could be turned on as needed, probably in a matter of seconds. Believe, me, these people know what they are doing. They know about a thousand times as much about what they are doing regarding this project as all of us together do.

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This is 100% incorrect.

Only the first Ka satellite was enable in the factory bios. The firmware update to the H20 around the first of the year enabled the second Ka bird and its transponders in the H20.

The update to the bios that was done about 60 days ago SHUT OFF THOSE TRANSPONDERS IN THE BIOS LEVEL OF THE H20.

All stations were moved to 6 transponders on 1 bird. The others were shut off at the bios level - not in space. If you have not seen that, pictures were posted at the time. At that time, all the other transponders were made N/A.

To re-enable the transponder for reception, they cannot do it in seconds as you you suggest. They must SEND OUT A NEW UPDATE TO ENABLE THE TRANSPONDER TO ALL H20s.

Directv CANNOT send out a bios/firmware update in "a matter of seconds"....or minutes for that matter.

On top of that, if a AT9 is not installed properly (and have we seen documentation of many of those) it becomes harder to spot.

Furthermore, they have proven they can service 60% of the country with 6 spotbeam/transponders. That means they could have used sets of 6 transponders out of the remaining transponder pool to distribute every HD channel available today in MPEG4 to their customers until a new Conus MPEG4 bird is there, but they choose instead to shut down the transponders on in the firmware.

It's a very stupid decision.

And those 2 items are what I base my statements of stupidity concerning this move. They have 1) left out the emergency redundancy where they could switch in literally seconds 2) they are not using assets they have paid for to make additional money with added HD service, yet they pay for the assets just the same with no revenue derived from it.

As for lyngsat, the information listed on some of the HD-LIL came from before the second bird was operational and things were changed around. It's clearly from before they re-arranged the transponders for the update about 60 days ago.

As Edward Teller once said, "If you think one way and I think another, it is very tempting for me to conclude that you think differently because you are stupid."

DirecTV employs several thousand people with various degrees in broadcast engineering, computer science and business administration to formulate a plan to increase their program capacity. They have also invested billions of dollars in this project, and you think that because you have read your signal test meter a few times, that you have a better idea than they do how to manage their business?

DirecTV moves programming from tranponder to transponder frequently, without the customer detecting as much as a frozen frame. DirecTV reauthorizes entire classes of customers within a zip code the instant a blacked out sporting event ends. You don't know that DirecTV needs a bios or firmware update to back up a failed component in the transmission link. And you don't even know how much of what you see in your self-test or elsewhere represents the limits of what that bios or firmware can do.

DirecTV 4S, according to its press release, carries 6 onboard spare transponders. But there are 192 different uplink-to-downlink spotbeam transponder permutations (each of the 32 uplink frequencies can get transponded to each of the 6 downlink frequencies). So how do they do this? Do they only back up six of the possible 192 permutations and hope those are the ones that break? What do you think happens if the transponder 18 spot beam to Washington, DC fails? Do you think that the six spares are at six of the CONUS frequencies and that DirecTV is planning to knock off 14 channels of national programming to let me keep my locals?

I think the spot beam transponders on Spaceway 1 and 2 are about 60Mhz wide. I think that is enough bandwidth to carry six MPEG-4 HDTV channels. Last time I checked, my market only had 4 HDTV locals, so even if someone can show me on a spectrum analyzer that one of the other beams that has allegedly been masked out of my bios is still broadcasting an empty carrier here, then if the TWTA of the spotbeam I am receiving the programming from bites the dust, then the output of the transponder supplying that TWTA gets rerouted to healthy TWTA and now that beam all-of-a sudden is at a different frequency, namely, the frequency my receiver is looking for, and the link is reestablished without my receiver even knowing that it isn't getting the signal from the same transmitting antenna.

How do you know which transponders are physically "on" at present? Do you own a spectrum analyzer? Do you have a network of other people in other regions to simultaneously detect spot beam propagation of all of the beams that aren't targeted at your market?

TWTAs and batteries have finite lives that are depleted though usage. DirecTV won't have the infrastructure in place to market HDTV locals into most of the markets for a year. Why should they burn out their batteries and TWTAs for a year between now and then?

AntAltMike said:

As Edward Teller once said, "If you think one way and I think another, it is very tempting for me to conclude that you think differently because you are stupid."

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You seem to be living that statement and using 100% speculation instead of facts which if you had bothered to read and digest the implications you would get.

AntAltMike said:

DirecTV employs several thousand people with various degrees in broadcast engineering, computer science and business administration to formulate a plan to increase their program capacity. They have also invested billions of dollars in this project, and you think that because you have read your signal test meter a few times, that you have a clue what is going on here?

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Gosh, I guess you don't know how many degrees I have or that I don't know how to read a spectrum analyzer either.

AntAltMike said:

DirecTV moves programming from tranponder to transponder frequently, without the customer detecting as much as a frozen frame. DirecTV reauthorizes entire classes of customers within a zip code the instant a blacked out sporting event ends. You don't know that DirecTV needs a bios or firmware update to back up a failed component in the transmission link. And you don't even know how much of what you see in your self-test or elsewhere represents the limits of what that bios or firmware can do.

DirecTV 4S, according to its press release, carries 6 onboard spare transponders. But there are 192 different uplink-to-downlink transponder permutations (each of the 32 uplink frequencies can get transponded to each of the 6 downlink frequencies). So how do they do this? Do they only back up six of the possible 192 permutations and hope those are the ones that break? What do you think happens if the transponder 18 spot beam to Washington, DC fails? Do you think that the six spares are at six of the CONUS frequencies and that DirecTV is planning to knock off 14 channels of national programming to let me keep my locals?

I think the spot beam transponders on Spaceway 1 and 2 are about 60Mhz wide. I think that is enough bandwidth to carry 6 MPEG4 HDTV channels. Last time I checked, my market only had 4HDTV locals, so even if someone can show me on a spectrum analyzer that one of the other beams that has allegedly been masked out of my bios is still broadcasting an empty carrier here, then if the TWTA of the spotbeam I am receiving the programming from bites the dust, then the output of the transponder supplying that TWTA gets rerouted to healthy TWTA and now that beam all-of-a sudden is at a different frequency, namely, the frequency my receiver is looking for, and the link is reestablished without my receiver even knowing that it isn't getting the signal from the same transmitting antenna.

How do you know which transponders are physically "on" at present? Do you own a spectrum analyzer? Do you have a network of other people in other regions to simultaneously detecting spot beam propagation of all of the beams that aren't targeted at your market?

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Blah, Blah, Blah.....guess you better get a better idea of how spotbeams work as they don't go right up to a "state line" and once you step one foot over you magically are in the other's beam.

And yes I do I own a Spectrum Analyzer, yes - and it can be seen in this picture from my roof and anyone who knows what one looks like knows that is what it is. And why would I own a spectrum analyzer...hmmmm if I just knew how to look at a signal meter, lol.



and to put it bluntly, you can't spotbeam to a IRD on a transponder that had been turned off in the firmware.

AntAltMike said:

TWTAs and batteries have finite lives that are depleted though usage. DirecTV won't have the infrastructure in place to market HDTV locals into most of the markets for a year. Why should they burn out their batteries and TWTAs for a year between now and then?

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Actually, onboard fuel limits the life of a bird more than batteries unless the satellite is damaged. That fuel is being spent regardless of the number of transponders activated. So much for that arguement.

I have a Directv H20 licensed commercially in LA, NY and a unit that has never been subbed. The fact that I am on commercial accounts from NY and LA should tell you something, but whatever. The same upgrade turned off the same transponders on all boxes at the same time, including the unsubscribed STB. So much for another one of your grand speculative theories of activating transponders in the bios depending on location.

And I happen to pay attention to the status of a my IRDs immediately prior and after a firmware update. You might be wise to do the same and see what changes.

The rest of your statements show that you just don't get it and are purely speculative with no fact - including your assuration of my ability - so be it. I won't waste my time to debunk your unsubstantiated speculation piece by piece. It's clear you can read fact but putting the facts into real practice apparently is lacking.

I will be the first to admit that on many items I have a lot to learn. On other issues, I will put what I know against some of the best on this site. On this I have a 100% confidence level of what I am speaking of.

I am clearly changing my perception of what I thought you knew.

Can you tell me the transponders for Indianapolis that are active.