Is it legal for a cable company to rebroadcast Dish's signal?

[miguelaqui]

My little local 3,000 sub cable company seems to be rebroadcasting Dish's signal my channel 71, CSN, has error 744 on it.


Can they do this? I guess it would be cheaper than buying their own C-Band dishes receivers, etc..

 

[Mr Tony]

isnt error 744 a DirecTV error message?

 

[damaged]

From what I gather on google, if it is a D* message, it is/was the message given when a (illegal) access card was blacklisted.

Due to the no hack talk rule, I will not post the specifics, the google query however can be found below:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=directv 744

 

[miguelaqui]

isnt error 744 a DirecTV error message?

Might be, but...


Its the... Attention "This prgram is not available for viewing in your area."

I'm sure it's Dish. It has that green and white box that was on the Dish 400, etc.. receivers.

Is owner just subbing to Dish, then using the receivers in his head end?

Doesn't that violate some rule since Dish doesn't really know how many people are seeing their commercials?

 

[cybertrip]

Actually, Echostar does resell their signal to cable companies. However I'm not familiar with what equipment they use. I'm assuming it's some kind of rack mount and would not show this error on the video output. They are probably illegally broadcasting this signal.

 

[noremac]

Can they do this?

Anything can be done if all the parties have a legal contract agreement, and if it's not otherwise illegal. I supposed your local cable system could have made a deal with E* and CSN. If they're just doing it on the side, they could get in lots of legal trouble.

 

[Mr Tony]

I know we use to have a low powered MTV2 station in MInneapolis (before it became Univision) and we use to see the old green "searching for signal" screen when it rained

 

[AntAltMike]

DBS satellite can be used for "transport" of programming without receiving a per subscriber cut. In fact, until about 2003 or 2004, DBS satellite was prohibited from selling programming on a per subscriber basis to programming resellers. I believe there had been a ten-year sunset clause in that prohibition. A couple of years ago, one of my customers got a soliciaation from DISH to use them as a source for resellable programming. I called them up to find out the particulars of the prohibition having expired, but as is often the case in this industry, there was no one available who had been with the company for more than a couple of months, and they had no idea what prohibition I was talking about.

Around 1999, both DISH and DirecTV established transport programs whereby cable companies would pay them a small, flat amount per channel for allowing their use in a headend. The deal is brokered by a programming reseller, like SMS, 4COM, or, until they went bankrupt, WSNet. I have a couple dozen customers who pay 4COM a per customer fee for programming that is resold, plus a modest monthly flat transport fee per channel carried via DBS. The fee used to be about $10 per channel per month. The programming broker relies on subscriber counts furnished by the customer and has the right to access for unannounced subscriber audits.

Nearly all popular Basic Cable channels are available via DBS transport from both DISH and DirecTV. As recently as a couple of years ago, some of the premium movie channels and a few of the more recent start-up channels were only available via transport through one DBS service or the other.

The stick-in-the mud in all of this is Comcast, which will NOT allow its programming to be carried via DBS transport in my market, (Washington, DC, or any other markets I have checked out, including Chicago and New York City. I have two SMATV customers who are receiving their Comcast Sports Channel on large C-band dishes using expensive Scientific Atlantic commercial receivers that are registered in something called the Security Pool. Depending on the antenna situation, I would probably have to charge a customer $5,000 or more to add Comcast Sports to their channel lineup.

 

[AntAltMike]

My local, low-powered Telemundo affiliate, which broadcasts on channel 64, also broadcasts the DISH Network national feed from a low-powered transmitter a couple of miles deeper into the city, on channel 23. When I first started picking up DISH Telemundo on 23, I had assumed that someone was modulating it in their residence on channel 23 and backfeeding it through their off-air antenna input lead to another room and inadvertently broadcasting it out, off their reception antenna, but that was not the case. I suspect that they at least have the capability to insert their own local commercials into their retransmitted national feed, but I never compared the two, side by side to confirm that suspicion.

 

[mecro]

My apartment complex rebroadcasts DISH television...I get ads for DISH pay per view, and I get the "This program is unavailable in your area" when a baseball game is on our useless RSN.

 

[AntAltMike]

My apartment complex rebroadcasts DISH television...I get ads for DISH pay per view, and I get the "This program is unavailable in your area" when a baseball game is on our useless RSN.

But until two years ago, your apartment complex's system operator could only distribute it from DISH or DirecTV, without enlisting a programming broker, as free-to-guest, a status originally intended to accommodate hotels and motels, but which was eventually interpreted to cover any multiple dwelling situation in which all occupants had access to the programming at no per subscriber charge.

 

[dishcomm]

isnt error 744 a DirecTV error message?

Yes it is....Good call...

 

[VinceT3]

My community has a wacky deal like that with some company that rebroadcasts directv thoughout in analog. No discount from d* unlike we use to have with adelphia.

 

[pbrown]

A lot of local TV stations are now using E* or D* to power their remote translators... much cheaper to operate then a massive network of ground based microwave transmitters.

 

[oldGreg1012]

744 is a Dish message too - it is displayed usually when a sports event is blacked out due to either a local network, regional network, or national network buying out the rights to broadcast the event - and yes the satellite signal can be sold to cable companies. When I was in an apartment last year the cable company I had would have error messages from dish and even leased out their HD equipment. This can also be seen as a Dish commercial account for MDUs (multiple dwelling units) or complexes/apts.

 

[DishSubLA]

Well, there were some very small cable companies that were illegally down linking then retransmitting Dish sat signals. When Dish learned of it, Dish sued and immediately put an end to it, and those companies faced regulatory sanctions.

Agreed, Dish DBS packages, channels that it retransmits may NOT be retransmitted by any cable company as the content providers don't allow this. (there are exceptions such as on 9/11).

HOWEVER, many smaller cable companies do sign up to receive Dish Network's IP service. It is essentially, pretty much the same packages and channels as the DBS service and offers many of the same channels as the DBS, and of course up-linked at Dish's Cheyenne and Gilbert facilities. The IP service is like a head-end in the sky for smaller cable cos. Dish is continues to sign up more companies for its IP service, so one may well see Dish promos, advertising, etc. on some cable cos. or MHU's.

BUT, ASFAIK, no other party may access the DBS sats, and use a DBS STB to then retransmit onto is cable system.

I would suggest forwarding this info about your small cable co directly to Dish Network, and if you cable co is doing something illegal, Dish can take action.

 

[Slamminc11]

wow, a three and a half year old thread...cool!

 

[Mr Tony]

why do idiots do that???????

 

[Bobby]

Because they're idiots, morons, and few other lowly things...

 

[dishrich]

Nearly all popular Basic Cable channels are available via DBS transport from both DISH and DirecTV. As recently as a couple of years ago, some of the premium movie channels and a few of the more recent start-up channels were only available via transport through one DBS service or the other.

Local channels are also available - one of the small cable co in my area was doing this, at least some time back ago. They even had a 105 SuperDISH on their headend "shack", which was where our SD locals used to be when they were first launched.