118.7 (Dish Plus) Migration Notes

[Scott Greczkowski]

ANIK-F3 Satellite/118.7 Migration

The new ANIK-F3 satellite will be in its final position at 118.7 on April 30. After five days of signal verification, all international customers at 118.7 will be transferred to programming from the new satellite. This transfer will take place overnight and is a way to have as little impact as possible to our customers. Because the new satellite has a different signal pattern, there may be a few customers with marginal installation who lose signal once programming is shifted to the new satellite. Our analysis shows this should not be significant. There will be a greater impact on 8 MAs in southern portions of California, Texas, Louisiana and Florida who will convert from SuperDish to D500+ for installations after the changeover. The offices serving these MAs have already been notified and will receive a separate, more detailed communication on requirements for the change.

Updated with the downloadable TIB which give you lots more information about the new satellite.

 

[mike123abc]

I wonder if this will let them use all 24 Transponders now. I wonder if they are going to have capacity now to add more LiL HD markets on 118.7...

 

[rocatman]

I wonder if this will let them use all 24 Transponders now. I wonder if they are going to have capacity now to add more LiL HD markets on 118.7...

Actually the Anik F3 satellite has 32 Ku band TPs. The frequency width of these TPs is narrower than the 24 Ku band TPs on the AMC-16 satellite currently being used at 118.7 W. I am not sure how this affects channel capacity per TP but it will be interesting if Dish adds more HD LILs at 118.7 W or perhaps some more HD RSNs. Certainly the footprint of the Anik F3 satellite should be better than AMC-16 since it was specifically designed for 118.7 W.

 

[Smith P.]

"who lose signal once programming is shifted to the new satellite" - hope it will short 'once' midnight interruption.
Digiblur ? Time to prepare for night shift .

 

[pabeader]

please Dish put up more MOVIE channels. People who want old fashion tv should get it the old fashioned way. With an OTA!!

 

[pdxsam]

Doubtful they'll put HD RSN's on .7. The cost of converting and entire region to 500+ dishes is not worth the expense just for an RSN. The HD LIL sounds like more of a plan since they're just updating a "city" rather than multiple states to get regional sports.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

You will not see any national HD (such as movie channels) on 118.7 as it requires a special dish.

However by next Wednesday night Cinemax HD should be on for all.

 

[mdonnelly]

...
However by next Wednesday night Cinemax HD should be on for all.

Cool! I thought that I would have to order it, and pay for it, but I guess not!

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Err, for all tht subscribe to Cinemax that is.

 

[plumfam4]

Pittsburgh hd lil are on 118 i haven't seen where FSN pittsburgh HD is to be added but it would seem the 118 would be spot is there any word on it?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

OK I just added a PDF to the first post which contains LOTS of information on the new satellite.

Its worth downloading it if your an info junky.

 

[lakebum431]

You will not see any national HD (such as movie channels) on 118.7 as it requires a special dish.

However by next Wednesday night Cinemax HD should be on for all.

Whoa!!!! This is huge. Did I miss another big announcement somewhere? All I remember is a little hint in the Pub area. I can't wait!

 

[mike123abc]

OK I just added a PDF to the first post which contains LOTS of information on the new satellite.

Its worth downloading it if your an info junky.

Interesting they are going to get about the same amount of data through the new TPs as the old one even though they are going from 24 to 32 TPs. This will essentially give them 8 more TPs. They were not using a bunch on the other satellite either. They could add a lot more HD LiL markets on 118.7 with a single dish solution.

Looking over current 118.7 use looks like room for around 7 more HD LiL markets.

 

[kstuart]

Looking over current 118.7 use looks like room for around 7 more HD LiL markets.

Are you taking into account the new 6 HD channels per transponder encoding ?

 

[levibluewa]

Scott.....

any idea what the hold-up might be on carrying The Movie Channel HD? Is it going to be a long wait like it was with Cinemax? Any ideas?

Thanks.

 

[mike123abc]

Are you taking into account the new 6 HD channels per transponder encoding ?

Actually on this satellite they are getting 2 HD channels per transponder. This is not a DBS satellite, but a Ku-FSS satellite that they are running with a lot of error correction turned on to work better with a smaller dish. They are turning down the error correction a bit with the standard definition channels as noted in the attachement Scott posted. But they are still running a lot more error correction than on the DBS satellites.

They are effectively squeezing more HD out of each TP for HD since they are allocating less bandwidth to each TP (going to 32 TPs vs 24 TPs over the same amount of spectrum), but keeping the same # of bits flowing per TP.

Essentially they will have 14 of 32 TPs unused after they move from the old satellite to the new one. At 2 HD channels/TP that would give them 7 markets, but they could have other plans for some of the TPs, giving them fewer markets.

 

[Derwin0]

Interesting they are going to get about the same amount of data through the new TPs as the old one even though they are going from 24 to 32 TPs.
...
Essentially they will have 14 of 32 TPs unused after they move from the old satellite to the new one. At 2 HD channels/TP that would give them 7 markets, but they could have other plans for some of the TPs, giving them fewer markets.

I believe American use of TP's is limited to half of a Canadian satellite, due to Canadian rules and regulations. Therefore Dish might only get to use 16. Same deal with 129 when Ciel gets it's bird there. So there might not be much gain at all for Dish, other than signal gain.
No such 50% limit currently, since it's an American satellite temperarly parked there.

 

[Kru83]

scott does this mean, i will have to update my super sat buddy with new software ???. so i can peak the dish in better.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I am guessing the SatBuddy will need a software update for the new tranponders and frequencies.

 

[rocatman]

I believe American use of TP's is limited to half of a Canadian satellite, due to Canadian rules and regulations. Therefore Dish might only get to use 16. Same deal with 129 when Ciel gets it's bird there. So there might not be much gain at all for Dish, other than signal gain.
No such 50% limit currently, since it's an American satellite temperarly parked there.

The use of half of the TPs is only for Ciel-2. This does not affect Anik F3 at all, Dish gets use of all 32 Ku TPs on it from 118.7 W. Actually for Ciel-2, Dish is guaranteed half of the TPs i.e., 16 but could get use of more if there is not interest from Canadian companies for all of the other 16 at the time the Ciel-2 satellite is launched.