NBC Feeds @ 103W

[Andrew K]

I'm trying to get the NBC feeds listed on Sathint from 103W. It shows a LNB skew that's 20 degrees away from normal. I was wondering if I could get these without having to go on the roof to rotate the LNB. I have a channel editor for my Openbox S10, but the audio and video PIDs listed on Sathint don't make much sense. It shows the audio PIDs as "discrete MPEG"... what's that?

 

[Jim S.]

A while ago, something happened to increase the signal strength, so some people can now get at least some of the NBC HD feeds without modifying the skew.

The audio setup on these channels is weird. Most channels will either have an MPEG stereo stream or a Dolby 5.1 stream, or both. These channels have three MPEG stereo streams, except they're not normal stereo streams that carry the totality of the sound in left and right channels. They're carrying a 5.1 channel set, paired up in the way that they appear on the analog outputs of a sound card. One is front left and front right, one is rear left and rear right, and one is center and subwoofer. The problem that you may encounter is that the front left and right don't necessarily carry all the sound necessary to understand a program. Sometimes, the production will be miked such that the dialog is only in the center channel, not audible in the left and right channels at all, and conversely the other sounds will only be in the left and right, not audible in the center channel at all. Not all programs are this bad. But, you can't always listen with the default sound channel that your receiver picks out, sometimes you have to try all the channels to find which one sounds best. There's no consumer receiver that reassembles the sound correctly from this style of transmission.

 

[Pixl]

A compromise some people use is to skew 10 deg. It is usually close enough to get 103, but not too far from the normal skew for the other sats. One more trip to the roof though!

 

[whatchel1]

A while ago, something happened to increase the signal strength, so some people can now get at least some of the NBC HD feeds without modifying the skew.

The audio setup on these channels is weird. Most channels will either have an MPEG stereo stream or a Dolby 5.1 stream, or both. These channels have three MPEG stereo streams, except they're not normal stereo streams that carry the totality of the sound in left and right channels. They're carrying a 5.1 channel set, paired up in the way that they appear on the analog outputs of a sound card. One is front left and front right, one is rear left and rear right, and one is center and subwoofer. The problem that you may encounter is that the front left and right don't necessarily carry all the sound necessary to understand a program. Sometimes, the production will be miked such that the dialog is only in the center channel, not audible in the left and right channels at all, and conversely the other sounds will only be in the left and right, not audible in the center channel at all. Not all programs are this bad. But, you can't always listen with the default sound channel that your receiver picks out, sometimes you have to try all the channels to find which one sounds best. There's no consumer receiver that reassembles the sound correctly from this style of transmission.

What NBC is doing on the audio as you describe it is discrete 5.1 audio. NBC uses a special IRD built and set up just for them. I formerly worked for one of the NBC stations and had to set up our sat receivers to get the audio correctly for decoding on air.