More Satellite capacity to Directv.

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rtt2

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Sep 8, 2003
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Is this Ka band or Ku band? will subs need new equipment or new dishes?
 

silversurfer

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Sep 8, 2003
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From what I have read it is Ka band, this could be huge! It is RUMORED that they could potentially have the capability for up to 1500 HDTV channels...things are about to get interesting..
 

SlicerMDM

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Sep 7, 2003
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Well I guess my questions about D* bandwidth issues have been answered. Goodbye Charlie and your buggy software!
 

mike123abc

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Sep 25, 2003
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E* has some Ka licenses (3 slots I think, 2 directly one through another company). The problem with Ka has been raid fade. That is why there has been more focus on the Ku-FSS band since there is significantely less rain fade in Ku than Ka.

DirecTV has a lot more Ka licenses through Hughes.

I would suspect that practical use of Ka band for DBS services is more than 2 years away.
 

Stargazer

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This is quite interesting how Dish Network has all of this space and a lot of people see that DirecTv is lacking on space and now it seems like it will be the other way around. DirecTv could have most if not all local markets in HD if they can put up 1,500 markets.

Seeing how most networks do not have an HD channel this would give DirecTv space to have a lot of the basic and premium channel content in HD and by the time the little bit of space is needed for the rest of the locals in HD they would have better compression and more space to do it with.
 

mike123abc

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Sep 25, 2003
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Well it will be interesting to see what DirecTV does. They have had the satellite slots for a while, but are they going to spend the mega $$ to build all the spot beam satellites to fill up all those slots and do HDTV LIL? I would bet they will not be going all markets LIL HDTV anytime soon.

In theory a single DBS slot could carry 500 HDTV channels (Ku spots are not as narrow as Ka can be ka could carry about 700). DirecTV-4s/72 have about 44 spots each... Imagine having to build satellites with 200+ spots.

3 Ku satellites could probably carry all channels in HDTV (probably more like 4 since spot beam reuse would be pretty hard). It would take 2 Ka, but probably 3 because of spot reuse factors.
 

Scott Greczkowski

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Sep 7, 2003
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Look for a Dish Network SuperDUPER Dish coming soon to compete. :D (It's just a joke!)

Not a bad idea DirecTV has. :)

At least they learned that you can have better use for KA then Broadband. Satellite Broadband will never be as good as landline based broadband solutions.
 

Stargazer

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There are still a lot of places that cannot get high speed internet access unless they get it by satellite and I would think that there are more profits in satellite internet using that space than HD locals, but in the future would be needed to compete with digital cable that will offer them in HD if they dont already.
 
G

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If all markets had LIL available, then D* has no need to offer any programming package without locals, They currently state that they charge extra for locals since not every customer

From the D*'s FAQ:
We don't distribute local channels via satellite in all areas of the country. Therefore, we charge separately for local channel service so only customers receiving the service have to pay for it.
 

geneb11

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Sep 18, 2003
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Anybody hear anything about the Stratellite?

http://www.stratellite.net/
 

Stargazer

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Wow, thats a whole new way of looking at satellite, only it would not really be a satellite. I wonder how this would effect things such as costs for companies using this to broadcast the signals (if it is a LOT cheaper for the companies then they could pass those low costs onto consumers being able to compete against other companies with low prices) and the type of devices such as dishes for receiving those signals, and the transmitter for two way internet. Perhaps this could allow smaller dishes to be used.

If we were to compare these balloons and where they are located in earth's atmosphere to orbital slots then then wouldn't the balloons have to be seperated even more to not cause interference from the other balloons? Also using two-way broadband with these balloons would have a bit less latency than it would with satellites since the signal would not have to travel nearly as far.
 

rtt2

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Sep 8, 2003
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I know that the US uses a balloon to bounce a signal off of into Cuba. It is for an Anti Castro TV station and radio station and democracy program funded by the government. Castro has to devote a lot of resources to block the signal.
I forget the name of the program but I do know it is transmitted out of Miami (used to be Washington DC until recently).
 

dlsnyder

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Sep 8, 2003
1,825
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Moreno Valley, CA
rtt2 said:
I know that the US uses a balloon to bounce a signal off of into Cuba. It is for an Anti Castro TV station and radio station and democracy program funded by the government. Castro has to devote a lot of resources to block the signal.
I forget the name of the program but I do know it is transmitted out of Miami (used to be Washington DC until recently).

That is TV Marti. They use an unoccupied TV channel and when the jamming gets too bad on one channel they can move to another. I also seem to recall hearing that it hasn't been very successful. Here is a link to a brief technical background:

http://www.amigospais-guaracabuya.org/oagmc145.html
 
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