Let’s not get too weird here folks. This is drifting pretty far from the original topic. A new thread would be more appropriate.
MPEG2 Western Arc shutoff
- Thread starter RTCDude
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I have been a Dish Network customer for over 20 years. I originally purchased my own Dish 500 system with a single tuner no DVR and installed it myself. In 2015 or 16 they said it would be obsolete and they would replace it at no cost which they did with a 311 receiver. For the past 5 years I have been a snowbird and only use my dish 5 months a year and put it on pause during the winter. Last fall I got an email that said my equipment was going to be obsolete again and they would replace it at no charge to call them and arrange it. Since I was already gone I waited until I got back here the end of May had my service reactivated and have lost a good amount of my channels. So I called and was told that yes they could upgrade me, tried to get me to take a hopper and a DVR, I emphatically told them no I wanted a single tuner no DVR and he finally said okay then wanted my credit card number and was talking about a two-year contract and I told him no I did not want that and ended up hanging up in the meantime I have purchased a Wally and a dish 1000.2 and I'm going to get it installed next week when the Wally arrives.QUOTE="riveryakker, post: 4791809, member: 190998"]
I'm confused about the equipment replacement process needed for the western arc MPEG2 shutoff. A DISH tech pulled in my drive one Sunday afternoon and said he was going to replace my equipment (a VIP222 and two 311's) at no cost to me and that there would be no changes to my bill. He also told me the new boxes would be mine and not leased. I talked with a CSR yesterday and was told there would be an upgrade fee for the 311's and a small change to my bill because the new receivers would be leased.
Also, I received an email a couple of weeks ago at 8:52 PM that informed me a tech would be at my house the next morning to replace my equipment. The message mentioned that I would have to sign an agreement and included a link to the agreement that resulted in a "404 not found". A call to the number in the email got me a CSR who had no idea what I was talking about.
Can anyone tell me, or provide a link to a document, that spells out exactly what the facts are?
Any idea what's in the agreement I'll have to sign?
Is the replacement really at no cost?
Will my bill really stay the same?
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Since you have the Wally , I would just activate it on your account and make sure you get them to list you bought it or it is purchased. Then you can turn it on and off as you want . Then have them deactivate the 311 and DISH will tell you to throw it away, since they don't want it back and because it is obsolete. But I have read in the past that the Wally will still have an additional receiver fee even if it is the only receiver on your account. But you could always ask for the loyalty dept and see if they will drop the additional receiver fee.
This is one of the reasons I have not upgraded my two VIP211k's to Wallys - there is no first receiver fee built into the cost of the programming package for the Wallys. I was told that I would have $14 of fees instead of $7. Right now since I own both VIP211k's, I only have a single $5 charge for the 2nd receiver.
I am not currently paying any receiver fees. I have cut back to the flex pack 57.99+locals$12=69.99 plus fees and tax...$75.00. It goes up $5 year no matter what package you have.
That really is the best deal across the industry, even more so if you can pick up your locals with an antenna.
Just curious, with eliminating MPEG2 and all the room savings, will Dish be adding any more HD channels or converting any SD premium movie channels to HD?
Something must be wrong with your account. December last year, I upgraded a relatives setup from a leased 722 to dual purchased Wally’s, of which only one is being charged $5 for. I know for a fact that this is the case because I was the one to make the install and call in to activate the receivers, and I also have access to their online dish account because I help them manage other things like phone and internet.
In case it matters, this is a 10+ year old prepaid account, on one of the Latino packages. Only receivers on the account are the two purchased Wally’s.
Right, I remember them going in big on "prepaid"- did that work out for them?
I think that remains to be seen. There might be some new HD content added, but I’m guessing not a lot. There’s so much HD content already.
I could imagine some SD content could be converted, that would benefit from it, such as movie or sports channels. But for other SD channels it may depend on the kind of content and what kind of retrans contract Dish has with the content provider.
Some of this may depend on popularity. For example, I would love to get the NASA channel in HD, but I doubt we ever will. It has very low viewership (according to what I’ve heard), and Dish provides it just as a public service. So they’re unlikely to allocate the extra bandwidth.
Then again, Dish could surprise us!
Unfortunately I am in the middle of no-man's-land. I can pick up "some" locals, "sometimes".
I agree with you (specially about NASA), but I would love to see some "love and care" in "curating" the channels provided in SD, if they are not going to be converted. Case in point, there are a bunch of SD channels which are shown 4:3 by simply cutting off the edges of the image (of what I would think is an original HD broadcast), so you really miss part of the picture image and action, even the channel's call image on the bottom-right part of the screen is cut off. (Also, I believe there should be no excuse to having premiums in SD
)
Keep in mind that 129 will be going away, the same as 77 went away on the eastern arc. Taking away MPEG2 and changing everything to MPEG4 allows for more channels to be placed on a transponder. So, all those channels that were on 129 are going to be placed on existing transponders on 110, 119 that now have more room on them because of the changeover. The idea that there will be more room to change SD channels to HD is not quite fantasy but close...
Exactly. And before the switch, the national HD channels were already MPEG4 on 129, and MPEG4 with their current compression algorithm allows for a maximum of 14 HD channels per transponder. With those national HD channels, it is a 1 to 1 switch - to move something off of 129 requires the same space on 110 or 119. No space gained there.
Where Dish has reclaimed space is that they have eliminated the SD duplicate channels that they offer in HD - which as of right now is just north of 100 SD channels they have eliminated. Assuming about 20 SD channels in MPEG2 format per transponder is about 5-6 transponders worth of space.
It might seem like a lot of space, but the other reality is that Dish had licenses to all 32 transponders on 129; they are moving all those channels to 2 satellites where DirecTV holds the licenses to 11 transponders on 119 and 3 transponders on 110. When Dish eliminated 77 on EA, it had all 32 transponders on 61.5 and 72.7.
All that to say - Bobby is correct. In the end, although it feels like they gain a lot of space with the MPEG4 conversion, Dish won't have much space to add more HD channels. There are definitely things they could do to gain more space, but I don't see it happening.
I second getting the NASA channel in HD!
Let me start off by stating that I realize that many of you know way more about all of this stuff than I do (although no one knows as much as what's going on as the folks at Dish - all of us are only speculating).
However, what about this:
I'm only counting 19 transponders on Echostar 11 currently being used for Dish, even though it has 29 transponders available (obviously some are being used for other things).
However, Echostar 23 has 32 transponders. How many of them does Dish have the license for?
From someone not in the know, this sure looks to me like once this transition is complete, there are going to be way more transponders available for Dish to transmit on (and hopefully considerably more in HD than what they are doing currently).
I was doing a quick browse through the channel guide and it looks like all of the duplicate SD channels are now gone with the exception of 406-01 and 407, just two channels.
And while I didn’t do an exhaustive search, the only SD channel I found still on 129 was SD 406-01.
Does anyone have a list of what channels are still left on 129? And do we know how many channels (if any) are still in MPEG2?
And while I didn’t do an exhaustive search, the only SD channel I found still on 129 was SD 406-01.
Does anyone have a list of what channels are still left on 129? And do we know how many channels (if any) are still in MPEG2?
I am definitely not an expert on satellite TV as this is just hobby of mine off to the side - there are some way more knowledgeable folks here than myself! And there are some laws of physics that limit what can be done because my thought was "why not make a satellite with 100 transponders - why stop at 32". But the part I do know is Dish is limited to 29 transponders available at 110 (even though the satellite is capable of 32) and there is hope that someday Dish could obtain those transponders and use them. With those 29 transponders, not all have video. I know that some of the transponders are used for guide data, they always have an extra transponder or two for testing or emergencies if something fails (we saw that a couple of years ago where something failed on a satellite), plus some of those are spotbeams that only cover a portion of the country and not the entire US. I would have to have someone who is more knowledgeable than me jump in and give more details.
And the Weather Channel on 214 still has an SD duplicate. But yes, Pac12 Network (409 in VIP receivers, 406-01 on the newer interface) and Longhorn Network, 407, are the only other ones left that have HD duplicate channels.
I still see quite a few a channels on 129, 123 over 10 transponders to be exact. And Bobby is going to be checking later to see if the 4k is still on 129 or not. (Note - there could be more - these are just what I see based off of my subscription level)
34 HD Channels
59 Music Channels
39 SD Channels
I don't know what is in MPEG2 vs MPEG4 though.
Thanks for the correction/update. I didn’t expect quite that many, but we’re not at July yet.
Otherwise, the transition looks to be well under way.Do you know the exact SD/HD channel list?
