Can NPS offer HD networks as well??

[Drycreek]

Can NPS offer HD networks as well??

What sort of limitations would prevent this bandwidth/uplink/feeds??

 

[lakebum431]

Well, they only have 1 transponder leased from Dish. So there wouldn't be enough room.

 

[Drycreek]

What is a transponder's channel limit HD/SD???
If they wanted to expand to HD, does Dish have the spare bandwidth to offer??

 

[lakebum431]

No, Dish really doesn't have any spare bandwidth to offer. Right now you can put about 4 HD channels on a TP. I'm not sure about SD.

 

[alebowgm]

Although they could always lease another transponder (and they could do it on a different bird if they had too), which would give them the room... I think they are able to provide Distants in HD, they just choose not to do so... But someone may have more solid information...

 

[bowens]

Although they could always lease another transponder (and they could do it on a different bird if they had too), which would give them the room... I think they are able to provide Distants in HD, they just choose not to do so... But someone may have more solid information...

That would be nice. My wife keeps complaining about not being able to watch the BCS Championship in HD. She's a big Gator fan and our local FOX is not broadcasting HD.

 

[Voyager6]

I hope that I get this correct. I believe that E* gets 12 SD channels per TP. NPS is leasing 2/3 of a Conus TP for 8 SD channels. E* currently gets up to 4 HD channels per TP. NPS would have to lease an additional 2 Conus TP's to have 8 HD channels. I don't know what the cost of that would be.

 

[navychop]

Actually, I think Dish has some unused space on the Rainbow satellite at 61.5. Not that it's a great choice for covering the whole country, but Voom did it that way.

 

[mdonnelly]

Wouldn't there also be uplink and MPEG-4 encoder issues?

 

[navychop]

I believe they got the uplink facility also. The sats are "bent pipes" - they can pass any encoding- MPEG2, MPEG4 or whatever.

 

[mdonnelly]

I believe they got the uplink facility also. The sats are "bent pipes" - they can pass any encoding- MPEG2, MPEG4 or whatever.

But if the OTA is MPEG-2, and they need MPEG-4 to fit onto the transponder, wouldn't they have to re-encode the signals into MPEG-4, like Dish does?

 

[Mr Tony]

I hope that I get this correct. I believe that E* gets 12 SD channels per TP. NPS is leasing 2/3 of a Conus TP for 8 SD channels. E* currently gets up to 4 HD channels per TP. NPS would have to lease an additional 2 Conus TP's to have 8 HD channels. I don't know what the cost of that would be.

NPS has the whole transponder. If Dish had any part of that TP15, then there'd be issues with the whole lawsuit thing

but if I remember right
12 SD channels (there has been 13 on some spotbeams)
2-3 MPEG2 HD
4 MPEG4 HD
audio is like 6 audio to one video

 

[photoman76]

It probably doesn't make financial sense for NPS to offer HD distant locals. In addition to the Echostar transponder lease, they have to get the local HD channels to Echostar's uplink center. NPS is currently leasing space on two Cband satellites to get the standard definition SF and Atlanta locals to Echostar. Leasing Cband transponder space is not cheap. Eight HD channels would require an additional 3 to 4 Cband transponders. I suppose fiber could be an option, but I doubt if it would be much cheaper.

 

[Chris Walker]

I wouldn't even want to see the quality, they'd probably look like Dish's SD.