I wanted to "move" to NJ to receive the NYC channels in HD but I read somewhere that the 61.5 sat will be going to spotbeam. Is this correct?
That's the speculation based on some recent tests on E12. Search the site for Rainbow1 spotbeams to see if you are in range of the NY spotbeam.I wanted to "move" to NJ to receive the NYC channels in HD but I read somewhere that the 61.5 sat will be going to spotbeam. Is this correct?
The Ciel-2 satellite going to 129 has massive spotbeam capability. I haven't heard yet what it's CONUS capabilities are, and if it will need to be supplemented by something like E8.I remember back when Rainbow first announced their sat, they said they would have spotbeams for all major US markets, including Los Angeles. Any chance Dish is going to make us LA area folks repoint to 61.5 for HD, or are they going forward with their spotbeam plans at 129?
In looking at the above post from December as it pertains to the possibility of spotbeams from E12, I see that spotbeam 3 has an associated 7 channels (?) associated with it. I assume that spotbeam 3 is for NYC? If 4 of the channels were to be for the networks, what would the other 3 channels be for?
Then again, I could be out to lunch in my thinking and would appreciate someone in the "know" to help out here.
Thanks, gerry
You are confusing channels with transponders (TPs). For example the E-12 spotbeam for the N.Y. City area could use as many as 7 TPs. Currently on some TPs Dish has 6 HD channels so Dish could provide up to 42 HD channels in the N.Y. City area spotbeam. This spotbeam though also covers Philadelphia so Dish would use this spotbeam to provide HD locals to Philadelphia and probably other surrounding cities. Now Dish may not use all 7 of these TPs for spotbeams at least initially. Some may remain as "CONUS" TPs for national programming.
In an early post in this thread someone stated that Dish would only use 4 TPs for spotbeams at 61.5 W. That may or may not be true. Dish currently uses 4 TPs in CONUS mode for HD locals for Boston, N.Y. Philadelphia and Washington D.C. Dish could change these to spotbeam mode and then reuse the TPs in other spotbeams to provide HD locals to other cities without affecting the other programming from 61.5 W. It must be recognized that after AMC-14 is launched and operational at 61.5 W, Dish probably will have use of 5 more TPs there than what they currently have. There are 3 TPs there that neither E-12 or E-3 can provide signal from now because of E-3 failures and E-12 design limitations. Dish should also have full use of the 2 Sky Angel TPs. Some of these 5 could be used in spotbeam mode. In addition, AMC-14 has the capability to operate TPs in double power mode. This may allow Dish to reduce the signal error correction which increases the useable bandwidth. As a result Dish might be able to increase the number of HD channels per TP from the current 6 to perhaps 7 or 8.
There was mention of the spotbeam capability of the Ciel-2 satellite at 129 W. I believe this satellite will have CONUS capabilities. In addition, Dish should have E-6 avaialble that is currently parked at 110 W as an in-orbit spare and will probably be freed up when the E-11 satellite is launched to 110 W. Dish can also pair 129 W with 148 W using a D1000 dish for HD local use.