Nimiq 5 Launch Scheduled for September 18

[TheKrell]

Yes that is what I am hearing. Then they dont need to swap those boxes out again in another year or two.

<salivation> Shall I activate my old 301 and my even older 4900 now or wait? I own these receivers, and I have the mixed arc setup.

 

[MikeD-C05]

1st I'm using 3 dishes. 1st time I had 2 dish 500's with single LNB adapters on 72 & 77 and .9 meter on 129. I have since gone to 3 large dishes .9 meter on 72 & .8 meter on 77. Also at one time had a 500 plus on 118 but that didn't work out so just sold it. It didn't have enuff SS for the KC lil to work well. So I've "moved" to Little Rock".

Curious what signal strengths you are getting on all of those 3 larger sat dishes?

 

[navychop]

OK, Scott and others: For those of us that have 501 or 508 non-8PSK DVRs, and don't plan to replace the unit, should we sell them now? IOW, I expect Dish to offer some sort of trade out for my 508, which I hardly use. I probably would not be interested in any trade, since such would entail some monthly cost to me. So perhaps it would be better to sell it now, to someone who might want to take advantage of such trade up offer?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Shall I activate my old 301 and my even older 4900 now or wait? I own these receivers, and I have the mixed arc setup.

I wouldn't do anything, I would wait for them to contact you.

 

[drdroo]

Speaking of old receivers, it's a damned shame I can't do anything with my 721. I think that thing supports 8PSK but they won't let me activate it anymore..

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

OK, Scott and others: For those of us that have 501 or 508 non-8PSK DVRs, and don't plan to replace the unit, should we sell them now? IOW, I expect Dish to offer some sort of trade out for my 508, which I hardly use. I probably would not be interested in any trade, since such would entail some monthly cost to me. So perhaps it would be better to sell it now, to someone who might want to take advantage of such trade up offer?

That is up to you, since none of what I am telling you has not been officially announced by Dish I am unable to give you advice here. So to answer your question at the moment your on your own, do what you feel is best.

 

[TheKrell]

I wouldn't do anything, I would wait for them to contact you.

I don't think Dish will ever contact me about these unactivated receivers. They'll happily let them become doorstops. In fact, I would wager they'll try to charge me $50 for new smart cards right now! (But I haven't tried to reactivate yet. Just going by what others have reported.)

 

[digiblur]

Missed one 72/77/129 It is unusual but can be done. That's what I am.

Very interesting setup Opposite of the 110/119/61.5 setup. You'll have to keep an eye on the uplink reports though as things could be weird one day, but I doubt it since it is the opposite of the supported 110/119/61.5 setup.

Seeing a decrease in signal strength by about 10 on all those transponders that were mentioned above . More bandwith less signals strength. Too bad I was getting real happy thinking I would be getting 70 and up on all my 72.7 transponders.

I did post somewhere that they would drop by 10-15 points. The signal strength actually didn't go down...just the quality of the signal. 10 points doesn't make all that much of a difference unless you under 20%. Compare the QPSK transponders on 110 to the 8PSK ones on 110 and you'll see the difference of what 8PSK does. Your tuner has to use more of the FEC.

 

[whatchel1]

Because of the LIL

Very interesting setup Opposite of the 110/119/61.5 setup. You'll have to keep an eye on the uplink reports though as things could be weird one day, but I doubt it since it is the opposite of the supported 110/119/61.5 setup.

I had 110/119/129 w/a Dish 500 to start with. Had the .9 meter on 129 back when it was the weak bird. So when I moved to the Little Rock, Ark. LIL I had to go to 3 dishes but didn't bother with switching one to 61.5 since 129 works just fine. Now I'm going to try and bounce an FTA feed off the 129 dish to 125 for PBS HD feeds on AMC-21. So I don't want to move the 129 dish.

 

[whatchel1]

SS

Curious what signal strengths you are getting on all of those 3 larger sat dishes?

On the 129 bird (.9 meter) lowest SS is mid to high 60's highest is close to 80. On 77 (.8 meter) lowest to highest are 53 to 60. 72 (.9 meter) low to high is 66 to 80. I might could peak just a little bit more but didn't feel the need at this time. Rarely ever have any rain fade issues. I'm thinking about switching the 72 & 77 dishes since 77 is a bit weaker in SS than 72 now w/ the new sat up.

 

[drdroo]

Rarely ever have any rain fade issues.

Somehow I'm not surprised by that..

 

[bf3000]

I live in MD and currently have a 722K with a 110/119/61.5 setup. I am assuming that Dish's plan is to eventually move everyone to either the EA or the WA. Does anyone have any idea when my current setup will become obsolete? I know when the EA first became available that there was no advantage in switching dishes to look at 61/72/77 - is that still the case? Also, is Dish offerring any kind of free upgrade to switch over to EA, or is that something that may be coming down the road. Sorry for all of the questions - I have been trying to keep up with all of the moves/planned moves, but it all is just becoming a muddled mess in my head .

 

[Voyager6]

I live in MD and currently have a 722K with a 110/119/61.5 setup. I am assuming that Dish's plan is to eventually move everyone to either the EA or the WA. Does anyone have any idea when my current setup will become obsolete? I know when the EA first became available that there was no advantage in switching dishes to look at 61/72/77 - is that still the case? Also, is Dish offerring any kind of free upgrade to switch over to EA, or is that something that may be coming down the road. Sorry for all of the questions - I have been trying to keep up with all of the moves/planned moves, but it all is just becoming a muddled mess in my head .

I have the same set-up. The only advantage to switching to EA would be for mpeg-4. All the channels on EA are mpeg-4 which saves space on your dvr and reportedly has better SD PQ. With the switch of WA to 8PSK (think mpeg-4 coming shortly after), there would be no reason to swap dishes unless for LOS issues.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I don't think Dish will ever contact me about these unactivated receivers. They'll happily let them become doorstops. In fact, I would wager they'll try to charge me $50 for new smart cards right now! (But I haven't tried to reactivate yet. Just going by what others have reported.)

Ahh I missed the unactivated part.

Yes you are probably correct.

 

[MikeD-C05]

The advantage for now is strong signals on the 72.7 sat , the newly launched sat, which is the equivalent of 119 on western arc. Also SD channels DO look much better to me than the western arc version using the same receiver, tv etc. I have both dishes and have used them both to compare. Also mpeg 4 takes up much less room on your internal hard drive and that is like getting a boost in hard drive size, without adding any external hard drive to the receiver.

The down side to me is that the 61.5 sat is now much weaker in comparison to the 129 sat on western arc for the same national hd channels. I get transponders strength from anywhere from a low of 35 to a high of 70 on the 61.5 sat , which has two older sats up there. Now the 77 sat, another older sat, was a real bitch to get 50 and above strength on because of that sweet spot you have to hit to get all 3 sats just right on the 1000.4 sat dish. But in my case I backed it up with a side sat dish ( 1000.2 sat dish with an lnb adapter for single or dual lnbs) for the 110 sat. So just in case I can't get 77 at all times, I have 110. If I had my way I would have western arc dish for 110/129 and use it with a 30" side sat for just 72.7 so I could get 72.7/110/129 sats in my check switch matrix. Then I would have strong signals on all sats. But that would mean spending more $$$ I don't have any more.

 

[digiblur]

Wow...you guys go to a lot of trouble to get a few points of signal. I'm too cheap and possibly lazy to fool with buying a 1000.2. I use a Dish500 for 110/119 and a Dish500 with an I-adapter for 129.

129 - TP 18 - 65
119 - TP 12 - 77
110 - TP 03 - 75

I could probably get things a little higher but it wasn't worth my fiddling time.

Now don't get me wrong...if someone walked up and said they would give me a Dish1000.2 or .4 for $15 I'd take it.

 

[rocatman]

Yes that is what I am hearing. Then they dont need to swap those boxes out again in another year or two.

My point from my previous post was that if Dish is going into an area to swap out QPSK receivers then why not just swap out all non-Mpeg-4 receivers so Dish only has to do it once and they can maximize bandwidth.

As a side note to this discussion about conversion to 8PSK and/or MPEG-4 receivers, Dish is going to need significant amount of CONUS space on the Western Arc in order to utilize all the spotbeam capability on E-14. Right now only 5 TPs on E-7 at 119 W are dedicated to spotbeams.

 

[digiblur]

My point from my previous post was that if Dish is going into an area to swap out QPSK receivers then why not just swap out all non-Mpeg-4 receivers so Dish only has to do it once and they can maximize bandwidth.

As a side note to this discussion about conversion to 8PSK and/or MPEG-4 receivers, Dish is going to need significant amount of CONUS space on the Western Arc in order to utilize all the spotbeam capability on E-14. Right now only 5 TPs on E-7 at 119 W are dedicated to spotbeams.

Exactly what I was thinking when I made up this layout:

http://www.satelliteguys.us/dish-ne...lite-utilization-information.html#post1842789

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,13 could all be used for spotbeams, not necessarily all of them have to be used. If I remember correctly they only have 21 licenses at 119 and DirecTV has the others.

 

[rocatman]

Exactly what I was thinking when I made up this layout:

http://www.satelliteguys.us/dish-ne...lite-utilization-information.html#post1842789

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,13 could all be used for spotbeams, not necessarily all of them have to be used. If I remember correctly they only have 21 licenses at 119 and DirecTV has the others.

You are correct about Dish having license for only 21 TPs at 119W. It also has license for only 29 TPs at 110 W. Dish currently uses 5 TPs for spotbeams at 119 W and 10 TPs for spotbeams at 110 W. This leaves Dish using 35 TPs for CONUS programming for the Western Arc using QPSK. (I believe there is also 1 CONUS TP at 129 W using QPSK). So to fully utilizing the spotbeam capability of E-14 at 119 W which requires 12 TPs, Dish needs to clear off 7 CONUS TPs basically off 110 and/or 119 W. A 25% increase in bandwidth from QPSK to 8PSK does the trick. Dish only needs to use 28 TPs in 8PSK to provide the CONUS programming that they currently provide using 35 TPs in QPSK i.e., 28 x 1.25 = 35.

 

[nrholland]

What if you have International channels off 118. Dish won't switch you to an EA dish when you have them because the EA Dish can't get 118.