Spaceway 2 Launch thread - It's up!
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The list Greg referenced gave me another thought. If they are really just going to turn the Spaceway's into 1 big spot, then I can "move" to what ever city I want in my half of the country. For example, I have relatives in Indy which is scheduled to come on line on 4/1. If it is one big spot, I can get Indy locals here in WV.
Sounds like a good deal, but an awful lot of people are going to be "moving" again.
Sounds like a good deal, but an awful lot of people are going to be "moving" again.
I just want this "bird" in the sky. Nothing is going to change until its up & going.
Detroit is doing "beta" testing & until SW2 is up.........my area is going to be awhile.
I think D* knows about "future" competion from phone companys & their fiber optics (haven't even pushed that to its limit or even offered what it can do).
I just pray that D* does the video/audio as it should, thats something that alot of us want done right.
As soon as we have HD on a disc..........that will push D* to send a program that is worth paying for.......1080P is here somewhat.....
Its D*'s job to launch the sat & offer the programming., they don't do the job....&..if its not up to our standards......I think they know this....or I hope they do!
Barney
Detroit is doing "beta" testing & until SW2 is up.........my area is going to be awhile.
I think D* knows about "future" competion from phone companys & their fiber optics (haven't even pushed that to its limit or even offered what it can do).
I just pray that D* does the video/audio as it should, thats something that alot of us want done right.
As soon as we have HD on a disc..........that will push D* to send a program that is worth paying for.......1080P is here somewhat.....
Its D*'s job to launch the sat & offer the programming., they don't do the job....&..if its not up to our standards......I think they know this....or I hope they do!
Barney
If Fiber Optics gets going in the US like it has in some countrys in Europe the cable and Sat companys will have to give away service, They will never match Optics for speed and quality.
The existing copper has enough bandwidth to blow away DBS - but cable still hasn't got their act together.
I doubt fiber will be a real concern here for a long time. There is practically only one landline phone company and one cable company for the whole state and DSL is $40-$45, cable internet is $57 and OTA HD is broadcast from a coat hanger.
I doubt fiber will be a real concern here for a long time. There is practically only one landline phone company and one cable company for the whole state and DSL is $40-$45, cable internet is $57 and OTA HD is broadcast from a coat hanger.
However, I don't expect turning Spaceway into one big CONUS spot. It is counter-productive.herdfan said:
I expect the Spaceways to be used just like DirecTV 4S and 7S. After all, it is capable of spot-beaming, independently-steerable spots, and independently-sizeable spots. Covering half the US with a spot-beam makes no sense, especially if there is enough bandwidth to carry 35 cities in the next six to eight months.
Surprisingly, the Spaceway satellites will also be used to deliver SD locals in remote places. SkyReport.com states DirecTV will be adding the three Alaska markets and Honolulu by the end of this year on Spaceway.
Greg Bimson said:
Nor do I. It would be a horrible waste of capacity. But I am not the one who said it. Longhorn did in post #35 Specifically:
I don't think what he was told was incorrect, but I think it was either partially told or misinterpreted.
Where 7S can accept uplinks from 4 locations (IIRC, but it may be 8), the Spaceways can accept uplinks from 112 locations. That means each transponder, or in the case of Spaceway, each 36mhz band can be used 112 times. Now this would be overkill and I don't know that you would need to reuse it that often, but it would be possible.
The Spaceways do not have CONUS capacity as well know if from other D* satellites. They have a phased array antenna with many different configurable spots. So they can be configured to cover the CONUS either by making each spot bigger and therefore using more power, or they can use several smaller spots each with the same programming. But then these spots lose the ability to be used for anything else and the uplink benefits.
Since it has been announced, and does seem logical for STSF to be in MPEG-4 next year, the Spaceway's will need to be able to deliver some form of CONUS signal. Here is where the concept of the 2 Big Spots come into play. Each Spaceway will use perhaps 12 transponders (A SWAG), or 36 mhz bands, to cover half the country. They will each provide the same programming. But the Spaceways will be able to reuse these transponders on the other side of the country as spot beams. So lets say for example, transponders 1-12 are used to supply national channels to the east coast, they can't be used for spots on the east coast. But they can be used, based on the Spaceway uplink capacity 111 more times on the west coast. And extreme example, yes, but it makes the point.
So lets say it takes 10 spot transponders to cover the country as a CONUS beam would, those transponders are lost for any other purpose. D* has 48 transponders at each slot 99,101,103. But since the 101 is only being used for internal D* purposes, I won't count it. So there are a total of 96 transponders, but if it takes 24 of them to cover the CONUS, then 25% of the total bandwidth is being used for National channels. (Fine by me, but D* execs tend to think differently). So if you take the 4 uplink centers that I know of, you have the ability to have 312 effective transponders. (72x4)+24=312. Given previous statement that Spaceways will have the capcity for 700 HD channels, then 700/96 = around 7-8 channel per transponder which is about right considering MPEG-4 is supposed to be twice as efficient and so is the 8PSK modulation. So lets just say 7 channels per transponder or one market with the big 4 a couple of netlets and an RSN (which really needs to be CONUS, but we will ignore it for this example)
So if Spaceways were to be used for nothing but locals, then in theory they could handle 96 markets of 7 channels each. But throw in using 25% of the transponders as CONUS, you drop to 72 markets. Consider that the bigger markets will have in excess of 10 channels and the number drops even farther.
But if each Spaceway dedicates 12 transponders to doing CONUS on half the country, then you get to reuse those 12 transponders 3 more times (4 uplinks) on the other side of the country. This is a net gain from both Spaceways doing the same thing of 72 transponders that can be used on the other side of the country from the half CONUS beams.
These number were used as an example and may or may not compare to the actual numbers, but the theory remains the same.
herdfan said:
Again as you all know I don't quite know the technicial end of how this would work and I can only say on a general level how it will work. I expect the system to work more in a way like your post says than say in the way I said it. Now it still could be different than your way but I'm saying what they will do in very simple terms even though it will be done in a more complex way. Also the RSNs do have plans to be conus in simple terms so they can use those feeds for the sports packages HD games. They want to go this route for many reasons because they want to be the sports leader period and this means simply that they are working to offer all of their Fox SportsNet HD games as part of their sports packages. They will offer them to cable but most cable companies don't have enough bandwidth today to carry them all so this would give D* another sports edge without even being exclusive.
Some givens:
The Spaceway birds were primarily designed for Directway internet use and not primarily for video. Amazing capabilities in uplink and spotbeam features.
Using them long-term for CONUS is somewhat wasteful.
Directv 10 and 11 are primarily designed for video, more conventional mixture of both CONUS and spotbeam capabilities.
D* will be required to support more HD, certainly by 2009--though it very easily could have been 2006 had Congress and FCC pushed a more aggressive digital timeline.
So from all this and all the comments well said in this thread I'm wondering if the timeline/plan is something such as:
Now: Bring up HD LIL on the spaceways (ok, this is also a given, we're watching that happen in Detroit and the lucky 12)
Jan: (After NFL is done) release that CONUS Mpeg2 for new CONUS HD chans
Mid 2006: waste some spaceway capacity for even more CONUS HD (if there are chans to launch that is...)
Fall 2006: waste some more spaceway capacity for NFL STSF in MPEG4 (meaning all us STSF users will have to switch even before our DMA HD LIL launches.)
2007: launch Directv 10 and 11
later in 2007: CONUS moves off Spaceways onto Directv 10 and 11
In other words just a short-term waste of the spaceway capabilities, and somewhat in line with how fast D* can really deliver HD LIL to the nation in terms of installing new dishes, receivers, etc.
And this plan supports all the insights LonghornXP and others have been sharing with us. Thanks, btw!
Did I miss something (quite likely, I'm willing to admit.)
Cheers,
Tom
The Spaceway birds were primarily designed for Directway internet use and not primarily for video. Amazing capabilities in uplink and spotbeam features.
Using them long-term for CONUS is somewhat wasteful.
Directv 10 and 11 are primarily designed for video, more conventional mixture of both CONUS and spotbeam capabilities.
D* will be required to support more HD, certainly by 2009--though it very easily could have been 2006 had Congress and FCC pushed a more aggressive digital timeline.
So from all this and all the comments well said in this thread I'm wondering if the timeline/plan is something such as:
Now: Bring up HD LIL on the spaceways (ok, this is also a given, we're watching that happen in Detroit and the lucky 12)
Jan: (After NFL is done) release that CONUS Mpeg2 for new CONUS HD chans
Mid 2006: waste some spaceway capacity for even more CONUS HD (if there are chans to launch that is...)
Fall 2006: waste some more spaceway capacity for NFL STSF in MPEG4 (meaning all us STSF users will have to switch even before our DMA HD LIL launches.)
2007: launch Directv 10 and 11
later in 2007: CONUS moves off Spaceways onto Directv 10 and 11
In other words just a short-term waste of the spaceway capabilities, and somewhat in line with how fast D* can really deliver HD LIL to the nation in terms of installing new dishes, receivers, etc.
And this plan supports all the insights LonghornXP and others have been sharing with us. Thanks, btw!
Did I miss something (quite likely, I'm willing to admit.)
Cheers,
Tom
tibber said:
That is pretty much what their plans are. I've also found out that not all the transponders will be a spot that covers half of the US.
I've been told that a few transponders would be sized to cover one half of the US to cover new national HD offerings in the near future until the last two satellites go up. Besides those few transponders the rest of them will be true spots created on the fly for those few areas that have HD locals. From what I've been told is that their claim of 150 national HD channels will require DirecTV 10 and 11. 100 of the claimed national HD channels will be on DirecTV 10 and 11 while they will have room for the last 50 on the two spaceway sats.
I hope that gives you an idea of their plans. As you did say it will take almost a year to get every customers dish and boxes upgraded if not a little bit longer so with that said we won't get a whole lot of national HD channels until we get switched over.
Of which up to 14 of which will be reserved in some form for STSF given that all games are supposed to be in HD in 2006.LonghornXP said:
I am pretty sure D* is not happy with all the delays given they were not by them. I would hope sea launches are the given choice next time.
herdfan said:
Actually very few transponders will be needed for this for two reasons. It seems that more than 3 HD channels can fit on a transponder. The second reason is what not all the games are on at the sametime. I think they will only need three or four transponders for all the ST games once they are all on spaceway.
tibber said:
Some of the bandwith reclaimed after ST is gone will most likely be used for NHL (OLN-HD) and NBA games. I guess we'll see how much...
~Alan
LonghornXP said:
I believe it was Tandberg that had a press release (or some sort of patting on the back) that announced that their MPEG4 encoders (like the ones DirecTV is using) allowed DirecTV to put SIX HD channels on a transponder.
I do not remember if it was said that the six was the number for how many HD channels they can put on a KA transponder, or on a KU transponder.
~Alan
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