Local Channels

Sorry, the issue is more legal than technical. The dish is capable of picking up all sorts of locals. Unfortunately the laws allowing local channels is very limiting on what you can receive without the consent of the TV stations in question and the TV stations that have copyrights in your area.

So...the current law states if the satellite company offers your locals, that is all you can have. You can ask your local NETWORK stations (ABC, CBS, NBC Fox ONLY) for a "waiver" (they are waiving their exclusive copyrights of their programming and allowing you to get other network affiliates), but these are hard to get. If you do get a waiver, Dish currently offers the big 4 networks from NYC, Atlanta, Denver, Chicago and LA nationwide. They also offer the big 4 networks from Portland, OR, Jacksonville, Kansas City and Dallas within the local spot beam area.

There are also "superstations". TBS and WGN Superstation are not superstations any more. They are cable channels that call themselves superstations. WTBS Atlanta rebreadcasts the cable channel and not the other way around.

In most areas of the country, Dish offers WPIX (WB), WWOR (UPN) New York, KWGN (WB) Denver, WSBK (UPN) Boston and KTLA (WB) Los Angeles. You can buy these stations for $1.50/mo each or $5.99/mo the set. These are the last 5 stations that are specifically exempt from copyright laws and syndicated exclusivity for the most part. It is a vestige left over from before Congress stepped in to enforce copyright and syndicated excusivity contracts the stations had. These stations have 4 years to live IMHO. When the next version of the SHVA/SHVIA/SHVERA is written, I believe these stations' exemptions will not be reauthorized.

See ya
Tony
 
I forgot to add a morally ambiguous way to get channels from another market. You can "move" by changing your SERVICE address and leaving your billing address alone.

See ya
Tony
 
TNGTony said:
I forgot to add a morally ambiguous way to get channels from another market. You can "move" by changing your SERVICE address and leaving your billing address alone.

Just a note for Thunderjett922 ... if you are considering doing this you may want to be aware that you will probably only get locals in the region you are "moving" to if you are in their satellite spotbeam. There is a map of Echostar's spotbeams at http://ekb.dbstalk.com/297 and you can cross-reference it against info in dischchannelchart.com to be sure you are going to get what you want before moving.

All the best...

Roadrhino
 
roadrhino said:
Just a note for Thunderjett922 ... if you are considering doing this you may want to be aware that you will probably only get locals in the region you are "moving" to if you are in their satellite spotbeam. There is a map of Echostar's spotbeams at http://ekb.dbstalk.com/297 and you can cross-reference it against info in dischchannelchart.com to be sure you are going to get what you want before moving.

All the best...

Roadrhino

Excellent point. And, of course, not all satellites are operating with spotbeam techonology. The 105 and 121 satellites are not using spotbeams.
 
Correct, same with 61.5 and 148.
Pretty much all the cities with all their locals on 105, 121, or 148 are CONUS.
No cities have all their locals on 61.5, and also the new R1 satellite there is spotbeam capable.
All this can change though when E10 (mother of all spotbeam satellites) is launched later this year.
 
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