Anyone else with missing NHL Center Ice channels?

[ttomni6]

Here in Hawaii on a Hopper 3 with an already purchased and paid for sub for this season...

Only 9 of the team channels show up in the “All Subscribed” menu. All of these channels are marked that they are the HD feeds.

From past experience, at least here in Hawaii, about 97% of the feeds are only available as SD.

What's listed is 475-01, 02, 07, 11, 12,16, 26, 30

Wouldn't all of the SD “sub-channels” be coming from the same satellite as the HD feeds? DISH tech support connected to my DVR yesterday and checked things out. They re-authorized the box and we reset several times with no change.

The Montreal/Toronto game last night was supposed to be on 475-06. When entering that channel manually, it skips to and highlights 475-07.

DISH scheduled a tech to come out next week but I'm thinking it might be more of a configuration issue on the DISH side. For example, a year or so ago, I had an experience where a game was scheduled for a particular channel but the game actually playing was incorrect (my game was not showing on any of the other channels). After calling DISH, an hour or so later, the feed was corrected.

 

[zippyfrog]

Dish dropped all the SD channels for Extra Innings, NBA League Pass and NHL Center Ice and made those packages HD only (even though when you purchase it it says both SD and HD). I don't remember, but I feel like Hawaii can't receive the HD channels that are on the 129 satellite. All the SD channels were on 110 or 119, but most of the HD is on 129. So I would guess that any of the channels coming off of 129 wouldn't be available in Hawaii...

 

[NYDutch]

I'm watching the Hurricanes/Redwings game in HD on 475-04 on the 110 sat.

 

[ttomni6]

Dish dropped all the SD channels for Extra Innings, NBA League Pass and NHL Center Ice and made those packages HD only (even though when you purchase it it says both SD and HD). I don't remember, but I feel like Hawaii can't receive the HD channels that are on the 129 satellite. All the SD channels were on 110 or 119, but most of the HD is on 129. So I would guess that any of the channels coming off of 129 wouldn't be available in Hawaii...

That would help explain it but Oh, no! I bought this to get the Rangers and Islanders games. Neither of those teams seem to have any of the HD channels assigned to them.

But DISH IS giving us 475-26 and 475-30 which are assigned to California teams that are always blacked out because California is supposed to be our RSN's - which we don't get.

I wonder if there's a way to get DISH to reassign those channels.

Yeah, I know we also get NHL-TV online access but it's more convenient to record some games and watch later than deal with streaming.

 

[zippyfrog]

That would help explain it but Oh, no! I bought this to get the Rangers and Islanders games. Neither of those teams seem to have any of the HD channels assigned to them.

I just checked - I don't have a Hopper, so my channels for the Rangers/Islanders game is 5341 and 5342. It is in HD and coming off the 129 satellite - the MSG feed.

 

[ttomni6]

I just checked - I don't have a Hopper, so my channels for the Rangers/Islanders game is 5341 and 5342. It is in HD and coming off the 129 satellite - the MSG feed.

Thanks for the info. I seem to recall those channels a few years ago when I still had a VP722-k. The 5000 channel range does not show up in the listing on the Hopper. One of the DISH reps had me try typing that in manually when we were on the phone and the unit will not accept an entry in that range.
As an example, to try to type in 5341, once I got to 534 it would not accept a fourth digit and the entry numbers on screen would just disappear.

 

[ttomni6]

Dish dropped all the SD channels for Extra Innings, NBA League Pass and NHL Center Ice and made those packages HD only (even though when you purchase it it says both SD and HD). I don't remember, but I feel like Hawaii can't receive the HD channels that are on the 129 satellite. All the SD channels were on 110 or 119, but most of the HD is on 129. So I would guess that any of the channels coming off of 129 wouldn't be available in Hawaii...

In my original post, I stated that here in Hawaii (and I'd imagine Alaska also) we're receiving 9 NHL Center Ice channels. However, it seems that DISH can reassign them at will.

Yesterday, one of the 9 we received was 475-07. Today, that has been replaced with 475-08.

What I can't understand is - if this reassignment is possible, why is DISH giving us 7 of the 9 channels that have no games being played. They're just blank. Plus, Kings & Ducks will always be blacked here.

 

[AntiMoz]

Edit: I just reread your second last post and you already knew about NHL.TV. Ill leave this up for others. I can understand why you want to DVR the games given the six hour time difference.

Your NHLCI subscription also comes with a subscription to NHL.TV. If you can’t figure out the issue with your Hopper and have a good internet connection you could at least watch your games on a tablet, fire stick, rogue, etc. Use the instructions below to link your account.

 

[pattykay]

In my original post, I stated that here in Hawaii (and I'd imagine Alaska also) we're receiving 9 NHL Center Ice channels. However, it seems that DISH can reassign them at will.

Yesterday, one of the 9 we received was 475-07. Today, that has been replaced with 475-08.

What I can't understand is - if this reassignment is possible, why is DISH giving us 7 of the 9 channels that have no games being played. They're just blank. Plus, Kings & Ducks will always be blacked here.View attachment 149859

Dish does reassign them at will, pretty much on a daily basis, but it is not for the purposes of optimizing the package for Hawaii. Dish shuffles the channels around to different transponders (and often to different satellites) in order to balance the load, so to speak. In other words, they can cram a bunch of channels that are not actually being used onto one transponder, while spreading out the ones that actually have games over several other transponders. The problem is that you are not receiving any of the NHL Center Ice channels from the 129 satellite. So, you would only see the ones that happen to be on the 110 satellite and/or the ones on the 119 satellite that day. From today's uplink report, here is the change that you noticed:

Uplink Activity Updates » Blog Archive » 1/15/21 at 6:14am ET (v06) – 12 changes seen

uplink.jameslong.name

Sports Channel Changes
5335 NHL NHL Center Ice moved from 110° TP 14 to 129° TP 27 (HD Hidden)
5336 NHL NHL Center Ice moved from 129° TP 26 to 110° TP 14 (HD Hidden)

(Note that the uplink reports usually only show the root channel number (for ViP receivers) not the mapdown channel number for Hopper receivers.)

So, 5335 (your 475-07) moved to the 129 satellite, taking it away from you. Meanwhile, 5336 (your 475-08) moved from the 129 satellite to the 110 satellite, making it available to you. You can check the uplink report site linked above each day for the daily Sports Channel Changes, which usually post around 6:14 AM Eastern Standard Time (12:14 AM in Hawaii) each day. When you see any moves similar to the ones I linked above, that will tell you which channels you should expect to appear or disappear, as the case may be.

 

[NYDutch]

Dish assigned "permanent" Center Ice channels to each team before last season. The Wings for instance are always on 475-04. Occasionally a game is only broadcast on the opponent's assigned channel though.

 

[pattykay]

Dish assigned "permanent" Center Ice channels to each team before last season. The Wings for instance are always on 475-04. Occasionally a game is only broadcast on the opponent's assigned channel though.

The channel numbers may be permanent, but the actual satellite and transponder used to broadcast each channel is definitely not permanent, as I showed above. Today's uplink report has a similar move, that would result in taking away one of the NHL Center Ice channels, and replacing it with one of the NBA League Pass channels instead.

 

[NYDutch]

The channel numbers may be permanent, but the actual satellite and transponder used to broadcast each channel is definitely not permanent, as I showed above. Today's uplink report has a similar move, that would result in taking away one of the NHL Center Ice channels, and replacing it with one of the NBA League Pass channels instead.

Yep, good point...

 

[pattykay]

Sports Channel Changes, which usually post around 6:14 AM Eastern Standard Time (12:14 AM in Hawaii) each day

Also, a minor correction to the above. I adjusted for the time difference wrong. Since we are all on Standard time, it would be a five-hour time difference, so 1:14 AM in Hawaii. When we are on Daylight Saving Time here in the Eastern time zone, Hawaii would be a six-hour difference, since they stay on Standard time.

 

[ttomni6]

Also, a minor correction to the above. I adjusted for the time difference wrong. Since we are all on Standard time, it would be a five-hour time difference, so 1:14 AM in Hawaii. When we are on Daylight Saving Time here in the Eastern time zone, Hawaii would be a six-hour difference, since they stay on Standard time.

First of all - THANK YOU crodrules for all the great information you provide. I haven't checked for quite awhile, but last I checked a year or so ago, Hawaii received our signals over spotbeam 55 on the 129 satellite. I'll have to investigate further. If Dish is not feeding NHL over the spotbeam that hits Hawaii - bummer 'cause it's still $115 subscription.
Anyway, as far as the time zone stuff - a year or so ago we had the issue of the wrong game appearing on the scheduled channel. The first Dish rep I was speaking with at that time tried to tell me that the reason my game wasn't on was because the game I wanted was supposed to start at 7 pm but it was only 2 pm where I am located! It took awhile to convince them that I get the game "live" but this is a different time zone.

 

[ttomni6]

Apparently Dish is feeding NHL Center Ice on a transponder that does not reach Hawaii (possibly Alaska?)

The Dish tech was here and we had to speak with Microcom headquarters in Alaska. We're told that NHL Center Ice is being fed on transponders higher than 20 on sat 129. Only transponders lower than 20 will reach Hawaii.

crodrules explained in an earlier post that Dish is moving these channels around between sat 110 and 129 in order to "balance the load"

I asked if there was enough bandwidth available on the transponders that DO reach Hawaii and was told that there is availability.
So now I have to figure out a way to get in touch with a Dish rep that might possibly be able to help work this out.

Do folks with the NBA and MLB packages also have this problem?

 

[pattykay]

For what it's worth, Dish may have a lot more transponder space available on the entire Western Arc starting later this year, as they continue to remove SD duplicate channels. This is being done in an effort to finally convert everyone still using SD-only receivers over to HD-capable models, so that Dish can completely phase out those older SD receivers. At that point, Dish may be able to allocate more (hopefully all) of the out-of-market sports channels to transponders that will reach Hawaii. As it stands now, Hawaii and Alaska do not even have access to Dish Scapes, which is just a single HD channel. So, I kind of doubt there is already enough bandwidth available to put the full NHL, NBA, and MLB packages there.