I upgraded from two Hoppers to TWO HWS's at absolutely no cost. I don't find the commitment a problem and never have because the competition can't provide us what Dish does and the FREE upgrade for TWO HWS's was an example of some loyalty at my AEP level appreciated by Dish that will make me think twice before leaving because of how well we have been treated by Dish in recent years. They have been very reasonable, and I can tell you the competition in my neck of the woods is NOT. Now, after the 2 years is up, the competition might offer more, but customer service will probably be inferior, so that will be a factor in evaluating Dish and the competition, but I'm fine until then.
8PSK Conversion Update as of 6/9/15
- Thread starter Scott Greczkowski
- Start date
- Latest activity Latest activity:
- Replies 83
- Views 22K
Oh, this is for ALL Standard Def channels on the Western Arc, so it will include the locals on spot, but as stated, Dish may change those over last to avoid customers having a Kinipshin.
Dish is NOT cheap when it comes to the tech and the best PQ they can achieve. Dish will spend the money there and have. It is the one thing Charlie is serious about and is part of his pride and money does not stop him to achieve that mission of best possible video and quality, and the Hopper is a good example of how serious Dish will spend the money on the tech and customer experience to provide the best DVR and whole home they can. This is the case with DirecTV, as well. Both sat companies have put QUALITY at the top of their lists, and that has never been cable's attitude. I suspect all the locals will be 8PSK and any change-outs wherever has NEVER stopped Dish from providing the best quality they can muster. They change-out encoders every generation that can provide benefit. New encoders are just the cost of doing business for Dish.
Dish won't spend money on $34 million salaries, wood paneled offices for the officers of the company, etc. Charlie will book 3rd party contract coders to fly Coach (maybe even the lower fare night flights) and have them stay at the Days Inn. Dish surely wanted to find a less expensive way to address bandwidth issues on the WA, but made the decision to do a very COSTLY exchange program on their dime totally. They could have done what cable used to do: just put up the channels and forget about quality.
I suspect (and considering how so many subs have complained about the poor quality of their LIL's) the LIL's will also be converted to 8PSK, and with notable improvements in quality.
HD LiLs are already 8PSK and MPEG4, so it is limited to SD improvements only.
If Dish really wanted to spend money, they should drop all the SD receivers, then they would not even have to worry about this.
Sure, it'd be great if Dish could do that but it would be a huge expense for them to do so at least if they tried to do it all at once. There are a lot of commercial headends still out there that are using SD equipment but are at least 8PSK capable. Then there's the fair number of home customers that are in the same boat, as a lot of customers have just one HDTV and a few other SDTVs and haven't seen the need to upgrade their entire home. Dish will likely do a migration to MPEG4 over time as they slowly convert locals from MPEG2 to MPEG4 and other measures to start the migration. It's not something that they're going to do all in one shot.
I know in Chicago that would be greatly appreciated. WWME, which is METV, channel 23, it is a pixelated mess on a relatively consistent basis. Yesterday I had Brady Bunch on and the characters were very blurry and pixelated. But the OTA feed of it on another TV in the house was perfectly fine. With the exception of 61, all the other channels are HD, so it is really a small number of channels that are this bad.
Scott - I see nothing noted for July 1. Is there no uplink planned this week at all, or is just saying the uplink won't have any 8PSK conversion stuff in it?
I was referring to SD LIL's not HD.
Also, spending more money to replace boxes to all MPEG4 may be foolish and irresponsible way to spend money when HEVC is about to become operational for the consumer, and could have a far more efficient codec providing far more bandwidth as a result within 5 years by passing on a MPEG4 change-out today. With HEVC, MPEG4 is becoming the MPEG2 of the new era. Foolish to spend lot more money to change everyone over to "yesterday's" high efficiency codec. 8PSK for SD's on the WA can give us a bridge to a possible change to HEVC and no longer providing SD services (or just a few hold out channels) if HD versions exists.
Dish would still have plenty to worry about after spending all the money on MPEG4 that will become obsolete, with the coming implementation of HEVC on CE devices, sooner than we think for the bandwidth starved DBS companies. On the other hand, MPEG4 can serve the far more bandwidth rich MSO's for quite a while, which is why they are only barely finishing their complete line-up of channels to upgrade to MPEG4. MSO's don't really need HEVC, but DBS does, quite desperately, but when legacy exists, there is rarely an easy solution.
I can see Dish adopting HEVC for 4k channels. They have way too big of an investment in MPEG4 now to switch HD over HEVC any time soon.
Umm, I did say at least 5 years out, and NO they don not have too much invested in MPEG4 when they lose the bandwidth at the leased satellites and leased sat positions. With that looming, HEVC for ALL channels makes sense because changing out reflectors and LNBF's for when Dish is scheduled to lose 129, as one example, could be even MORE expensive and certainly more PAINFUL, and they may have no choice but to implement HEVC for everyone and that could mean they can do well without the leased slots and sate they use today.
I thought Dish had plans for "tweener" sats to address the looming loss of bandwidth, but I've not seen anything about that lately, although DirecTV seems to have firm plans in motion for "tweeners." Rather, Dish has too much invested in the nearly 14 million subs to just lose the bandwidth to support MPEG4/8PSK, especially if 4K channel proliferate, NOT to switch to HEVC, IF THEY HAVE NO OTHER ECONOMICAL OPTION. Satellite more than cable have invested more in each generation of encoding and other tech that increases bandwidth because satellite has so much LESS of it to begin with. The real question is if TV services and content delivered via internet may see Dish less dependent upon satellite and make do with what they will have when their leases slots and sats come to an end. Dish might be more about SlingTV than Dish satellite by then.
They'll have 129 for at least as long as Ceil 2 lasts, it was launched in early 2009 with projected 15 year life. Shaw nor Bell wanted the slot, it is Canadian, but the CRTC and FCC gave Dish/Echostar their blessing.
Huh? You do nothing but ask for things you do not have. If you already had it, why would you need to ask for it?
No. Scott's first post lists conversions still going on next week - July 22. In fact, July 22 has a ton of channels listed.
On the condition that at (I thought at 15 years period, but I can't remember exactly so life of Sat may be the case) the end--of 15 year period or sat--the slot MUST be used for Canadian services/uses. That was the demand of the Canadian Govt. FCC went along only because Canadians were OK with it. Does anyone know if this--the condition--changed? If so, let us all know.
Satellite has always moved faster to next gen tech than even the MSOs because DBS has more limited bandwidth. But times are a changin' and Dish may be re-evaluating if they even ever want to reclaim capacity at 129 using HEVC or other means (Tweener slots?) for all channels IF it makes economic sense in the years to come. By then, maybe SlingTV will have evolved and become the core for Dish's TV services.
