Dish Also Fights BIT rule

[Scott Greczkowski]

A lot of folks are talking about how Charlie told the FCC that Dish Network would not be ready for the analog to digital local transition.

But one key point was missed.

Read this below

"EchoStar also protested a proposed FCC rule that might require it to pass through all bits transmitted by a TV station, a policy which might ban the use of bandwidth-saving signal compression technologies.

“It would freeze innovation and cut off the use of future technologies critical to maximizing the efficient use of finite bandwidth,” EchoStar said."

This comes to us from http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6475069.html

What are your feelings on this?

 

[Greg Bimson]

That rule would put all multichannel providers in a bind. Almost everyone is in some sort of capacity constraint as it is, and forcing a raw broadcast feed from the stations would easily eat up the largest chunk of their bandwidth.

 

[BigTimMN]

does this involve the sub-channels that are out there that in generally don't show much content. (repeating local news, NBC Weather Plus) are 2 examples in the Twin Cities market.

If it means they will have to show those via dish as well, I am all in favor of Charlie fighting it. that would be a huge waste of Sat Space.

 

[TuxCoder]

I hadn't heard of that proposed rule. Such a requirement would be ridiculously stupid in my opinion. Unless maybe another rule was passed that required all TV stations to use the absolute latest compression technology.

 

[David_Levin]

Unless the rules have changed, as of today, cable also cannot downconvert digital to keep the analog signal alive. I have to think they will change this before the turn-off.

I'm not sure what "keep all bits" means. Can they convert to mpeg4 as long as they keep the resolution (1920x1080)? I doubt they'd force the type of compression being used. Do we know if the new mpeg4 encoders can do 1920x1080 ?

I'm pretty happy with E* latest 1440x1080. It's not a bad compromise for the space saving.

Does anyone know what E* receives from the provider? What compression is used when they receive the signal?

Personally, I hate 90% of the fcc rules. The providers should be able to supply what they want. As long as there is competition the better one will win.

 

[Cyclone]

A lot of broadcasters were sold on the switch to digital transmission due to the extra value that is gained by being able to leverage their extra bandwidth. Whether it was through advertising on sub-channel, or other data services this bandwidth is theirs and they see this as rightfully theirs due to the cost they footed for the digital conversion.

I'm sure that they will want all the cable & DBS companies to carry whatever services they provide via the digital signal.

Dish on the other hand will want to use as little bandwidth as possible for every station. Expect some serious head butting over the next few years.

The only solution that I see is a ton of spotbeams that will allow DBS to carry all of the 19.x Mpbs signals in each market.

 

[pdxsam]

Does anyone know what E* receives from the provider?

In a majority of locations E receives the signals from an off air antenna.
Here in Portland, they also take that DTV signal and downconvert it for SD use.

I'm not sure if they compress here for backhaul or the compression is done in Spokane.

 

[rad]

Unless the rules have changed, as of today, cable also cannot downconvert digital to keep the analog signal alive. I have to think they will change this before the turn-off.

David, so you're saying that cable and DBS can't take the ATSC channel and down convert it to 480i SD for folks that don't have HD STB's? If not then aren't E*/D* going to need to upgrade everyone to MPEG4 STB's so they can receive the HD LIL channel?

 

[mike123abc]

Dish is in a real bind here. If they cannot convert the signal to MPEG-4, they will go from 4-6 channels per TP (using MPEG4) to 2 channels/TP using full bandwidth MPEG-2. Bye, bye 1/2 the LiL HD markets, and with must carry probably 2/3 of them.

DIRECTV may not have this constraint once they have all their satellites launched. Only issues might be in markets like LA/NY where there is a very large number of stations. Smaller markets should not be an issue.

 

[AdamGott]

I think that this would be a great idea if they get rid of the BS local networks only garbage and let us pick and choose which city we want to receive. Dish could just carry one network (at full bandwidth) for each timezone and then they wouldn't have to carry as many cities. This could possibly SAVE them some bandwidth.

 

[TNGTony]

This rule was something I mused over long ago. Bit-for-bit pass-through of a signal.

IMHO, the bit-for-bit rule is a good thing over all. This would assure that whatever the channel is putting out (whether it's a super hi-def picture or 5 480i SD channels) will be carried by the multi-channel carrier. Does this put cable companies in a bind? HELL NO!!! Currently each analog channel is using a 6MHz slice of bandwidth on cable. With the new rule all digital OTA channels will use 6MHz of bandwidth on cable. There is no gain, no loss. Just patching though what cable is supposed to pass through.

Is this going to be a problem for satellite or national (non-localized) carriers? Yup. My stance is "so what?" Locals via satellite has always been the most idiotic waste of bandwidth ever in the first place. But if Satellite wants to carry locals, they should carry local channels, not untra-compressed, pixellated, dark, bad audio versions of the local channels. 6MHz in, 6MHz out!

See ya
Tony

 

[rad]

This rule was something I mused over long ago. Bit-for-bit pass-through of a signal.

IMHO, the bit-for-bit rule is a good thing over all. This would assure that whatever the channel is putting out (whether it's a super hi-def picture or 5 480i SD channels) will be carried by the multi-channel carrier. Does this put cable companies in a bind? HELL NO!!! Currently each analog channel is using a 6MHz slice of bandwidth on cable. With the new rule all digital OTA channels will use 6MHz of bandwidth on cable. There is no gain, no loss. Just patching though what cable is supposed to pass through.

Is this going to be a problem for satellite or national (non-localized) carriers? Yup. My stance is "so what?" Locals via satellite has always been the most idiotic waste of bandwidth ever in the first place. But if Satellite wants to carry locals, they should carry local channels, not untra-compressed, pixellated, dark, bad audio versions of the local channels. 6MHz in, 6MHz out!

See ya
Tony

NP with the rule for the HD channels going to HD STB's. But what will D*/E* do, replace EVERYONE's STB with something that can do MPEG4 so they can continue to watch locals on their Monkey Wards 19" color TV?

 

[waltinvt]

This rule was something I mused over long ago. Bit-for-bit pass-through of a signal.

IMHO, the bit-for-bit rule is a good thing over all. This would assure that whatever the channel is putting out (whether it's a super hi-def picture or 5 480i SD channels) will be carried by the multi-channel carrier. Does this put cable companies in a bind? HELL NO!!! Currently each analog channel is using a 6MHz slice of bandwidth on cable. With the new rule all digital OTA channels will use 6MHz of bandwidth on cable. There is no gain, no loss. Just patching though what cable is supposed to pass through.

Is this going to be a problem for satellite or national (non-localized) carriers? Yup. My stance is "so what?" Locals via satellite has always been the most idiotic waste of bandwidth ever in the first place. But if Satellite wants to carry locals, they should carry local channels, not untra-compressed, pixellated, dark, bad audio versions of the local channels. 6MHz in, 6MHz out!

See ya
Tony

I agree and besides, this shouldn't be a problem for Dish - haven't they always maintained they always pass on what the station sends them?

However..........locals has always been a key component in satellite's competition with cable and in Dish's case it's the only way to get network programming to their customers since they no longer have a distants license.

 

[drdroo]

Let's face it. Many of us only take locals in our local market because we have to. I have no interest in my locals from my market (they're crappy quality and the ads are annoying as hell). I liked it much better when I had FOXE and FOXW on E* before they took them away from me.

The reason why we can't just have NY and LA locals (like back in the old USSB days) is because the broadcasters are a bunch of whiners and want to force us to watch their crappy ads. It's the same reason why we had blackouts on cable for certain TV shows, like when WSBK TV38 on cable would be showing Judge Judy as well as the local CBS Affil. here. They'd black out the TV38 feed on cable, usually using some graphic/text thing generated by a Commodore 64. I know this because sometimes someone would forget to load the program after restarting it...

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

IMHO, the bit-for-bit rule is a good thing over all. This would assure that whatever the channel is putting out (whether it's a super hi-def picture or 5 480i SD channels) will be carried by the multi-channel carrier. Does this put cable companies in a bind? HELL NO!!! Currently each analog channel is using a 6MHz slice of bandwidth on cable. With the new rule all digital OTA channels will use 6MHz of bandwidth on cable. There is no gain, no loss. Just patching though what cable is supposed to pass through.

I do not believe this to be the case, the HD my local cox carries is compressed, using 256 QAM. In fact I believe that they have 3 full HD channels squeezed into one 6 Mhz Carrier.

 

[digiblur]

Ouch! If they have to pass bit for bit would they have to pass the entire stream? 19 mbps per local channel. If so, we'd go to 2 HD LIL channels per TP! And it would be MPEG2 to boot!

I don't see this passing.

The cable companies would be in a bind too. They'd have to devote one QAM256 per each two local channels. Most cable co's don't have the room to do this right now. But as we all know, most cable co's are going to ride the analog OTA wave and say "analog is gone...the FCC said so..now you have to rent my box...how about a DVR?...how about a digital phone?..." So they might have the bandwidth to do this then.

 

[AllieVi]

… IMHO, the bit-for-bit rule is a good thing over all. This would assure that whatever the channel is putting out (whether it's a super hi-def picture or 5 480i SD channels) will be carried by the multi-channel carrier. …

I agree. The program producers make a product and hand it over to the OTA, cable and satellite carriers for delivery. They have a right to expect it to arrive as produced, not “fiddled with” for the benefit of the carrier.

 

[digiblur]

I do not believe this to be the case, the HD my local cox carries is compressed, using 256 QAM. In fact I believe that they have 3 full HD channels squeezed into one 6 Mhz Carrier.

Cox in this area runs the HD's at two per QAM256 carrier. They use the rest of the bandwidth left over to run one or two SD's. The Charter market next door to us runs 3 HD's on one QAM256....and I thought that was bad until Dish did the 4 HD's in the same amount of space.

 

[cparker]

Would the fiber-to-home carriers be affected by this? I have always been under the impression that fiber has huge capacity. Is FIOS snickering up their sleeve and saying, "Take THAT, satellite and cable.... take THAT.)

 

[Hall]

This issue has been discussed over at AVS for a couple of years now, specifically in that the analog shut-off really does apply (affect, more accurately) the cable and satellite companies. The current rule says the re-transmitters, i.e. cable and satellite, can't "degrade" the OTA signal and pass it on to customers. When the only thing coming from a TV station is digital, how will they cableco supply analog to their non-digital customers ?? They'd have to degrade it and they're not allowed to. No one can dispute that taking a digital signal and converting it to analog is degradation ! What will probably happen is the cableco's will move to all-digital right along with the broadcasters and then they can blame the FCC !!

Now, D* and E* are moving towards MPEG4 obviously. Is taking an MPEG2 signal and converting it to MPEG4 a degradation ?? That's open to argument. Now, what if D* or E* writes in the contract that they will be doing this and the station gives the okay ?? If the station is okay with it, and the last thing they really want is for the channel to look poor, why would the FCC overrule ??