New AMC-15 bird?

[Jimmy J]

Hey y'all, new to the forum. Love this site! I've learned a bunch in a very short time. I'm a fairly new customer to E*, was with D* for 5 years prior. I'm not all that up to speed as far as sat locals and such, but what I'd like to know is what great things can E* sub'rs expect from the placement of the new AMC-15 bird?

 

[rocatman]

Welcome to the forum. Perhaps you read it elsewhere but AMC-15 will replace the existing satellite at 105 W. Speculation is that Dish will put a lot of new HD programming there. If you have locals from the 105 slot, the signal strength should improve quite a bit so you don't lose your channels as easily from rain fade.

 

[Jimmy J]

Thanx Rocatman. Just what I wanted to hear. More HD programming!!!

 

[K R Kimmel]

Of course the speculation about adding HD to the new 105 bird may be wrong. They may just use any additional capacity for more locals.

I've also seen speculation that capacity may be used to comply with the new "all locals in a market on one dish" requirement. Moving the extra channels for split markets off the wings and onto 105.

We'll see what happens.

 

[ken]

OK, but what about the Ka part of the bird. Thats what makes it so special and also how many transponders can they use of the Ku, I don't think they have the licenses for all Ku frequecies ?

 

[rocatman]

OK, but what about the Ka part of the bird. Thats what makes it so special and also how many transponders can they use of the Ku, I don't think they have the licenses for all Ku frequecies ?

AMC-15 has Ka band spotbeams but I don't think Dish will utlize this for live video, at least not near term. For the Ku band, there are 24 TPs licensed just like AMC-2 but I believe they can use a greater frequency range and therefore AMC-15 has more channel capacity than AMC-2, the current satellite at 105. It has been posted elsewhere that Dish should be able to put 16 SD channels or 3 or 4 HD channels per TP. AMC-2 has 12 SD channels per TP on it. By comparison, Echostar-9 (E-9) at 121 is also a Ku band satellite with 32 TPs each with up to 12 SD channels per TP. Now Dish just recently received permission to use KuX band at 83 W, 109 W and 121 W. It has been posted elsewhere that E-9 also has KuX band capability so will see if Dish utilizes that near term.