New D* Satellites for Local HD

[mjschuyler]

It is my understanding that D* is launching several new satellites so D* can offer local HD stations. I have a few questions:

1) How many satellites (and how much do they cost) to service the entire US with local HD?

2) Why bother with all the individual locals, why not just a "national" feed? Sure some local sports would be lost but teams are all going to their own networks like the Yankee's "YES" network anyway.

3) After D* wanted to charge $99 for NFL HD won't they need to ask for a large increase to pay for all the new local HD satellites?

 

[LonghornXP]

It is my understanding that D* is launching several new satellites so D* can offer local HD stations. I have a few questions:

1) How many satellites (and how much do they cost) to service the entire US with local HD?

2) Why bother with all the individual locals, why not just a "national" feed? Sure some local sports would be lost but teams are all going to their own networks like the Yankee's "YES" network anyway.

3) After D* wanted to charge $99 for NFL HD won't they need to ask for a large increase to pay for all the new local HD satellites?

Clearly you have no clue how the american TV system works on your second question. One reason why D* or any provider won't offer national feeds is because the local tv stations will not allow them and unless they allow them the providers can't give them to you without breaking the law.

No onto question 1 it costs I believe about a billion for all the satellites going up but for some crazy reason a billion seems a little much but I think its still in that range.

Question 3 = D* is charging what they are because they can because they are the exclusive provider for the NFL Sunday Ticket until 2010. Now they will still pass the bill to us HD customers (passing the bill on and screwing NFL customers are two very different things Mkay) but they will be unable to screw us HD customers in both the short and long term because they unlike their NFL Sunday Ticket deal have other big companies competing againt them. This isn't very hard to figure out and when looked at from a rational point of view this is a very simple business.

 

[charper1]

To answer #2 in the nut shell.

Blame the NAB and your local affiliates that fight like rabid dogs to maintain the illegal monopolies they have in retransmitting network programs, which keeps us all in the current scenario of DMA thus forcing satellite to carry them to be competitive. I too have said for years (many letters to the FCC and congress) that we should end the DMA scenario and allow the networks to beam their own feeds to cable and satellite for each time zone & allow the end user choose when and how they want to receive them; ALL of them, not just one specific time zone offering. Let the local affiliates stick to reporting local area news, weather and sports on their own private dime and fight to stay alive to gain their own local advertisers based on their local content and stop clinging to the coat tails of the networks and screwing it up for the consumers.