"Digital" locals in Alaska

[mboron]

About six weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised to learn from this site that Dish was going to light up the three main local areas in AK (Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau)with HD locals on June 8th. After returning from vacation yesterday, I went to dishchannelchart to see what was up. I saw that they did indeed add the three areas as "digital" locals. I was dismayed to see that Fairbanks and Juneau are on 148. And my local, Juneau, only has one HD channel-5688. After the whole distant debacle this winter when we all had to rush around in the snow and set up another dish at 110 to get locals, now we have to set up another at 148? Dish of course promised to do the 110 thing for free, but that did not happen for most of us that don't really have dealers in our area. Despite many postcards and emails saying they would, it never happened and we all did it at our own expense. I'm trying to figure out what we would really gain from another $100+ to setup and hit 148 except one HD channel. The other channels are listed as "digital". Aren't all satellite channels digital? At least for the Juneau market it seems like a lot of hype and anticipation for nothing. I didn't really care about having to hit 110, because that also gave me the HD package, but this 148 thing seems bogus except for the one channel. If this keeps up, my backyard is going to look like some NASA tracking station! Sorry for the long post but I am very interested in anyones knowledge and input on this. Thanks.

 

[alebowgm]

What they have done is uplinked the stations which you would potentially see if you had an ATSC tuner. So KJUD-DT 1 and 2, which are the available channels for the time being, have different content on the 2 different channels. A quick WIKI search shows the following on what is on KJUD-DT 2

In September 2006, KJUD began to show programming from The CW Television Network on its digital subchannel. The subchannel is known as Juneau CW.

So if you point over to 148, you will get the -DT version of ABC from Juneau, as well as a local version of CW.

 

[Geiz]

I wish Anchorage HD were on 148

I live near Anchorgage and can't receive the 110 sat because of mountains in the way. The elevation for 110 is 12 degrees and 148 is 22 degrees. I get 148 good on a 30" dish, signal in the 80's on my 622. To hell with the spotbeams, just put all the HD on 148. Lots of room there. And lots of moiuntains here to get in the way..

 

[configsys]

I get the locals in Anchorage but I don't understand why I don't get them on all my receivers. I have 2 HD 211 and 2 SD 510 receivers. On one of my 211 receivers I don't get any channels in the double digits (i.e. 2,4,11, etc.) but I do get them on the other 211 receiver. The other one also fails to get channel guide information 3 hours out.
It was quite a shock to pay $450.00 to get 2 dishes installed here in Anchorage especially after finding out later I couldn't even get all the channels in the Dish 200 package. I was forced to go down to the 100 plus package. Hopefully, I don't lose the signal every time the weather goes bad. We'll see...