Why would Dish turn off the HD feed in the middle of a baseball game?

hokie74

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Feb 24, 2008
180
23
I was watching the Reds - Nationals game today on Fox Sports CN - 427 HD. In the 4th inning the HD feed shut down and went back to the infamous "check back later" screen with the Musak audio. I think the game was rain delayed. Dish must only enable the HD feed when the guide shows the game is on. If the gane exceeds the alloted time then screw us; it is turning off. This is very annoying they need to get their act together and fix this. This also happens on extra inning games.
 
I hear a lot about this issue....probably because Dish Network is retarded.
Go with DirecTV?
 
I am assuming that considering their limitation on bandwidth, sporting events on game only HD channels is pulled from a pool of shared bandwidth. When other scheduled HD sporting events come on at their previously scheduled (overlapping) time, they need that bandwidth and get it. The bandwidth was scheduled to go to them at say, 4PM EST. It wasn't the fault of the fans of the other team who were waiting for their HD game that your team had a rain delay. If they (Dish) don't have the bandwidth, what are they going to do?

Thank God I am not a baseball fan. I suppose when the day comes that hockey has more of their games in HD, I will find this to be a problem too (only with DirecTV, not Dish). But I only get 20 or so HD games of my team a year. Those are the special treat games that I mark on my Outlook Calendar to be sure to watch, so I am pissed when one is messed up. Cable, on several occasions, would forgot to turn the switch on for the HD feed on the game only channel. I used to get so mad.

Think though about that pool of HD bandwidth set aside for sports. There is a lot of stuff going on right now. Baseball, Nascar and other racing, olympic qualifying events, Wimbeldon Tennis, golf, the Coney island hot dog eating contest. That is a lot of bandwidth to bring the fans the HD feeds.
 
I am assuming that considering their limitation on bandwidth, sporting events on game only HD channels is pulled from a pool of shared bandwidth. When other scheduled HD sporting events come on at their previously scheduled (overlapping) time, they need that bandwidth and get it. The bandwidth was scheduled to go to them at say, 4PM EST. It wasn't the fault of the fans of the other team who were waiting for their HD game that your team had a rain delay. If they (Dish) don't have the bandwidth, what are they going to do?

Thank God I am not a baseball fan. I suppose when the day comes that hockey has more of their games in HD, I will find this to be a problem too (only with DirecTV, not Dish). But I only get 20 or so HD games of my team a year. Those are the special treat games that I mark on my Outlook Calendar to be sure to watch, so I am pissed when one is messed up. Cable, on several occasions, would forgot to turn the switch on for the HD feed on the game only channel. I used to get so mad.

Think though about that pool of HD bandwidth set aside for sports. There is a lot of stuff going on right now. Baseball, Nascar and other racing, olympic qualifying events, Wimbeldon Tennis, golf, the Coney island hot dog eating contest. That is a lot of bandwidth to bring the fans the HD feeds.

Agree
 
I am assuming that considering their limitation on bandwidth, sporting events on game only HD channels is pulled from a pool of shared bandwidth. When other scheduled HD sporting events come on at their previously scheduled (overlapping) time, they need that bandwidth and get it. The bandwidth was scheduled to go to them at say, 4PM EST. It wasn't the fault of the fans of the other team who were waiting for their HD game that your team had a rain delay. If they (Dish) don't have the bandwidth, what are they going to do?

Thank God I am not a baseball fan. I suppose when the day comes that hockey has more of their games in HD, I will find this to be a problem too (only with DirecTV, not Dish). But I only get 20 or so HD games of my team a year. Those are the special treat games that I mark on my Outlook Calendar to be sure to watch, so I am pissed when one is messed up. Cable, on several occasions, would forgot to turn the switch on for the HD feed on the game only channel. I used to get so mad.

Think though about that pool of HD bandwidth set aside for sports. There is a lot of stuff going on right now. Baseball, Nascar and other racing, olympic qualifying events, Wimbeldon Tennis, golf, the Coney island hot dog eating contest. That is a lot of bandwidth to bring the fans the HD feeds.

Yup, it's bandwith. I think all of the RSN's only have 1 or 2 transponders to share. That's really not much room for error.

Sometimes, if a Met game goes real late (into the early AM), Dish will leave the feed on (since all of the other baseball games are over) and not turn the feed off until the postgame is over. It all depends on what's going on and how badly they need the space.
 
I am assuming that considering their limitation on bandwidth, sporting events on game only HD channels is pulled from a pool of shared bandwidth. When other scheduled HD sporting events come on at their previously scheduled (overlapping) time, they need that bandwidth and get it. The bandwidth was scheduled to go to them at say, 4PM EST. It wasn't the fault of the fans of the other team who were waiting for their HD game that your team had a rain delay. If they (Dish) don't have the bandwidth, what are they going to do?

They need to stop offering service they can't maintain until they get the capacity to do so. That means committing HD availability only to the number of events they can handle by having a safety margin. Fans may become upset because their team isn't in HD as often, but I guarantee you they are more upset when the HD is turned off mid-game.

I had the NHL Center Ice package last year and I was disappointed with the number of games in HD. Sometimes Dish, in all their wisdom, would have the same game in HD on three different channels -- the two RSN's of the competing teams and HD Net. Common sense would dictate having 3 games in HD rather than one using the same bandwidth capacity, but common sense was not used...
 
Yup, it's bandwith. I think all of the RSN's only have 1 or 2 transponders to share. That's really not much room for error.

Sometimes, if a Met game goes real late (into the early AM), Dish will leave the feed on (since all of the other baseball games are over) and not turn the feed off until the postgame is over. It all depends on what's going on and how badly they need the space.

I suspect there may actually be some manual intervention in this. I was watching a Cubs game a couple weeks ago that was running a bit late. The second the game was over (literally, immediately after the final out), the HD feed cut - they could not possibly have timed that through automation.

Personally, if it is a bandwidth thing, I would rather start watching the game in SD than lose HD before the game is over.

On a related note (not meaning to hijack the thread), has anyone else noticed a siginificant decrease in PQ on the RSNs? I was watching the Cubs/Giants game the other day and the artifacting was terrible! If they can't carry the games in HD, why waste HD bandwidth?
 
I suspect there may actually be some manual intervention in this. I was watching a Cubs game a couple weeks ago that was running a bit late. The second the game was over (literally, immediately after the final out), the HD feed cut - they could not possibly have timed that through automation.

They did this a lot with the Center Ice broadcasts. The games would be terminated within 60 seconds of completion, so manual intervention was definitely there. However, when a game ran beyond it's scheduled slot (which, I believe, they reduced to 3.5 hours from 4 of 4.5 hours the year before) they cut off whether or not the game was completed.

Generally, this was not a problem as a game would not exceed the time allotment unless there had been a special lengthy pre-game ceremony or an emergency situation during the game (power failure or major injury to a player). Presumably, this wasn't done on a manual basis...:rolleyes:
 
I can accept manual intervention

If it is indeed a bandwidth issue and a person actually makes a decision to terminate the signal based on whatever reason then I can accept that. What would pis me off is if it is a preprogrammed timer that they are too lazy to monitor.
 
***

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Total: 1, Members: 0, Guests: 1)

Who Read This Thread (Total Members: 1)