Any way to tell if E* gets your locals via fiber or OTA?

[Chris Walker]

My locals that I'm getting since the distants were shut off don't look as good as the New York distants, but they look comparable to the Los Angeles distants. I assume NY and LA are via fiber, but does Dish get most of their locals through OTA? I assumed my locals were OTA, but after getting FOX from NPS activated last night and seeing an obvious OTA source, I am unsure. Anyway to tell by looking at the picture what source E* is using?

 

[Paradox-SJ]

Call you local station, speak to the eng. department and ask them...

Here is DMA 6 the HD locals are via OTA...

 

[Chris Walker]

Call you local station, speak to the eng. department and ask them...

Here is DMA 6 the HD locals are via OTA...

Ok I will do that. I am referring to the SD signals by the way, we don't have HD locals via Dish yet.

 

[sprintcarcrazy]

I would say the majority if not all are recieved via fiber. They would have to have an uplink station within 50-60 miles of that staion otherwise.

 

[Peter Parker]

I would say the majority if not all are recieved via fiber. They would have to have an uplink station within 50-60 miles of that staion otherwise.

Each provider hasa PoP in the DMAs they serve. the locals go from the PoP to the uplink center by fiber. the question here is how do ths stations get their signal to the PoP/ my guess is that it is a really mixed bag.

 

[Hall]

Call you local station, speak to the eng. department and ask them...

... and I bet most won't tell you. You might trick them with something like "I have Dish and your station is coming in very poorly for the past few days. Is there a problem with your fiber link to Dish's uplink?". If you're lucky, they'll reply "we ran diagnostics on the fiber link and there's no issues" or "Dish receives our signal via antenna, not fiber".

 

[kstuart]

I just went to the web sites of the 4 channels in my DMA.

The two channels that have relatively good PQ have direct email addresses for Engineering.

The two channels that have really poor PQ (worse than NPS!) only have one email address for the whole channel...

PS I'll let you know if any reply...

 

[kstuart]

Each provider hasa PoP in the DMAs they serve. the locals go from the PoP to the uplink center by fiber.

That's over a hundred "PoP"s. What are they - physically ? Are they closets in the back of a local Dish dealer ??

 

[Hall]

That's over a hundred "PoP"s. What are they - physically ? Are they closets in the back of a local Dish dealer ??

In some cases, they're "facilities" or equipment at one of the local TV stations. All the other stations get their broadcasts to that one station, via fiber, microwave, or OTA, and the TV station uplinks it to E* or D*.

Now, how do they get it to E* or D* ?? Do TV stations have equipment for sending to satellites or can they typically only receive ??

 

[Barry Erick]

In this market, the majority are received by OTA. This is because we are a hypheneted market and have transmitters and studios in 3 locals. Fiber is via phone or cable companies. Phone companies charge a full rate in each community, so monthly our charge to get to where Dish has the equipment would be 2 stations * 11 miles * $1200 is outrageous. For cable, the cable company has to have agreements with each company betweeen here and there. Sorry, but our company goes to the south and Dish is to the north with no common cable company.

An easy way to detect is the amount of noise or ghosting. If any, it isn't fiber from the studio. We feed fiber to the cable company and it is beautiful compared to the one that does not.

 

[Chris Walker]

I don't see any noise or ghosting on my locals, maybe they are fiber.

 

[DishSubLA]

Another factor is the fact that LA and NY are so big with a lot of subs, so Dish does give those bigger markets more bandwith resulting in a better picture. Dish phone lines would be overloaded if they provided LA and NY locals with the kind of high compression that the smaller markets have to endure.

 

[Clancy]

Each provider hasa PoP in the DMAs they serve. the locals go from the PoP to the uplink center by fiber. the question here is how do ths stations get their signal to the PoP/ my guess is that it is a really mixed bag.

You are correct in your statement and guess.

It really is to everyones benefit to get the best possible signal to the uplink station but some prefer to do it on the cheap and use their own rooftop antennas for broadcast stations.

The Atlanta and San Fran. signals are an example of this. Better is possible.
Some company executives are not able to see beyond the present to the long term.

 

[kb7oeb]

When I had Dish locals it was easy to tell because when a station went off air dish would retransmit static, when channel 8 would go off air you could see a weak image of channel 10.

Also, dish could be picking up some channels digital OTA. In my area cable picks up all the HD stations OTA and two stations simulcast their analog SD signal on digital for a cable company to use.