Why not local radar on dish?

[Cyclone]

I completely understand why Dish does not attempt to carry a 24/7 Radar for each market. Although they likely could do it with a very low bandwidth feed. Static images like Radar maps compress very nicely. I would expect that just going to regional radars would work ok. North East, Mid atlantic, South East, etc..... They likely could get away with a dozen feeds instead of 150+.

But even then, with digtial sub-channels, I currently have 4 Weather Plus, Weather Now, Digital Weather, Super Doppler, etc.. channels that are 24/7. So I really haven't felt the pain. If anything I have more weather info than I need.

Still, this would be a good application for the VIP receivers with their Ethernet ports. Just plug it into your broadband connection, DHCP an IP, and then download radar info from a E* server.

 

[Van]

Not all local markets carry such a 24/7 feed of weather radar and stats, plus if every market carried such a channel then dish would have to have enough transponder space available to carry one single channel for every 320+ dma in the country plus you would most likely end up having to pay more for this addition.

 

[Stargazer]

Dish Network and DirecTv would have to carry the channels in all of the markets vs. the cable company only providing it in the one area with one channel but Dish and Direct is one large provider providing for the whole U.S. instead of just one much smaller area. Eventually they will probably get it especially if they get IPTV figured out. It is probably not enough to influence most people's decision to not go with or stay with Dish/Direct.

 

[afigbee]

why do you have to have it on your TV? You do have internet acces and can get radar images anytime you want.

Because I'm not always at the computer.


In most areas at least one digital OTA signal has some sort of radar sweep on a subchannel. ABC and CBS in my area do this.

I had no idea. A couple of years ago, for logistical reasons, we did away with the regular antenna and rely only on the locals over DISH. Couldn't they make this secondary feed available? It would be like adding one more channel per locality.

 

[jegrant]

Where there is room on spot beams, I bet local stations who already operate local news/weather channels would jump at the chance to have them added to E*. At least in our area, they all sell advertising and would probably charge E* less or the same amount, since they'd make more money off the ads.

 

[Van]

Couldn't they make this secondary feed available? It would be like adding one more channel per locality.

In your area yes if that local station that provides the weather radar opts to be on dishnetworks service but they have to submit an application to dish and would probably only do it if enough local residents went to that stations office and requested that they make the channel available on dish.


But again as I said above one local station added to each market such as yours would add up to around 320 + channels added and there is not enough space on the satellites for a low rated channel such as a weather radar display except in agricultural area's, resort markets, and aviation locations.

 

[afigbee]

Even a single radar map of the whole US would be handy, maybe with a scroll and zoom function.

In fact, that would probably be even handier.

 

[Purogamer]

Who in their right mind wants to wait for dish home to load that??

I don't know why, if I load dish home and exit out, then press the button again, it has to re-download even though it's only been 3 seconds since I was using it. Weird...

The less Dish tries to do in terms of interacting with us beyond cashing our checks, the better...

 

[Cyclone]

That is rediculous, especially on a DVR.

 

[Sassan]

maybe they could do a national radar sweep?

 

[Van]

National radar sweeps are not able to provide specific detailed visual info about your location sthat a localized radar can and after a few months people will be complaining about that issue right there.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

The only time I've loaded Dish Home in the last 6 months was a couple of days ago when I read this thread. I couldn't remember how it worked, except for remembering how insanely slow it was, so I checked it out again.

 

[eckertman]

Why not just link-up WTC with the itv channel 100 and have a kind of radar there, unless that would be the afformentioned 150 spotbeams.

 

[afigbee]

I could take it a step further and suggest that Dish create a gizmo that attaches to the dish and reads out the temperature, humidity and so forth. They could market the whole thing as your ideal home weather center.

You can buy a thing like this for $30 at Radio Shack. But Dish could put it on the tv.

 

[afigbee]

There might even be a way of monitoring the incoming signal that would tell how far away lightning is.

 

[Van]

There might even be a way of monitoring the incoming signal that would tell how far away lightning is.

Not possible, lighting strikes are tracked through the ground by sensors.

I could take it a step further and suggest that Dish create a gizmo that attaches to the dish and reads out the temperature, humidity and so forth. They could market the whole thing as your ideal home weather center.

You can buy a thing like this for $30 at Radio Shack. But Dish could put it on the tv.

Something else for people to complain that they should get for free just like everything else they think they should get for free.

 

[afigbee]

I don't think I should get it for free. I think you should pay for it.

 

[Van]

That is your view point but it is not one that is shared by the vast majority of people unfortunately.

 

[Peter Parker]

Calling thids ublic safety issue is obscene. The info is available elsewhere.

 

[OoTLink]

I don't see why they just can't make it a menu option in the main menu, like on a lot of cable boxes - that would be a billion times better than "INSTANT" weather (hahahahah).

Instant weather lists some odd cities but doesn't have ours *sigh*