Just wanted to report that our DTV was installed today. We are very happy and amazed at the picture quality! We did not realize it was so bad with Dish. Although we have all our locals (ABC, CBS, NBC, etc), we are a little disappointed that we can't get the Eastern ones as well! Someone told me that if you are able to get your locals through DTV, that you can't subscribe to the networks from another area. Is this true? I haven't called to ask yet.
DTV Installed today...
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This is pretty much the new law of the land. If you get locals, you can't subscribe to distant networks unless the local stations and any grade B stations grant you a waiver. Notice the wording. The stations in your DMA have to give you a waiver no matter where the station is or how good a signal you get OTA, and any stations that provide grade B have to give you a waiver before you can get distant nets. I'm fairly sure DirecTV pretty much stopped worrying about it altogether.
See ya
Tony
See ya
Tony
twinrocks said:
Dish has better picture quality across the board so if you were seeing poor PQ or an upgrade with Directv, you had something wrong with your setup when you had Dish.
Chris Walker said:
Sorry, but I just had THREE people I switched over to D* over the weekend, w/out ANY prompting whatsoever from me, remark they thought it was clearer than E*. And YES, ALL of them were hooked up EXACTLY the same as their E* boxes (either on composite or S-vid) so MY hookups were just fine, thank YOU very much!!!
They will be switching back once they see the d* price increase!!!dishrich said:Sorry, but I just had THREE people I switched over to D* over the weekend, w/out ANY prompting whatsoever from me, remark they thought it was clearer than E*. And YES, ALL of them were hooked up EXACTLY the same as their E* boxes (either on composite or S-vid) so MY hookups were just fine, thank YOU very much!!!
dishrich said:Sorry, but I just had THREE people I switched over to D* over the weekend, w/out ANY prompting whatsoever from me, remark they thought it was clearer than E*. And YES, ALL of them were hooked up EXACTLY the same as their E* boxes (either on composite or S-vid) so MY hookups were just fine, thank YOU very much!!!
I've got both services on my 52" plasma, the E* channels have far less compression and artifacts than the same D* channels do. I am not sure what "clearer" means, but if it means D* has more compression, they most certainly do.
juan said:
Right, since the WHOLE reason they switched was to get Lifetime &/or OLN back for the SAME amount they were (or WOULD be now) paying E* - yea, of COURSE they'll switch back to get LESS for MORE, whatever...
Sorry, but I don't think they've been hitting the E* Koolaid like some of you do...
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TNGTony said:
I looked all this up on the internet and saw that this regulation was inacted in 2000!! Here is what I found:
The new rules apply both to C-Band (large dish) and DBS (small dish) satellite service providers. Under these rules, six superstations carried pursuant to a statutory copyright license are subject to program deletions to protect the contract rights of local television stations. The six superstations are KTLA-TV (Los Angeles), KWGN-TV (Denver), WGN-TV (Chicago), WPIX- TV (New York), WWOR-TV (New York), and WSBK-TV (Boston).
So, a question! How can Dish still have these stations as well as our local networks, yet DTV does not have them?
twinrocks said:
I'm on DirecTV right now and the superstations is the one thing I missed. I have requested them and DirecTV seems to stonewall me about it. I know on the c band side, WPIX and KTLA analog will be discontinued at the end of the month. NPS will bring them back in the 4dtv format. I hope they will bring the others (WSBK & WWOR) (KWGN is in the D8 package, which I wonder if it could be sold seperate?) back as well in a superstation package.
twinrocks said:
First of all, D* DOES have Superstation WGN...
Second, the "Superstation" feed of WGN is NO longer considered a superstation, per se. It, like the "Superstation" feed of TBS, is now considered a "cable network", just like TNT, CNN, etc., because the programming on it is altered from it's off-air feed, to ONLY carry shows that have national copyright clearance, so cable systems do NOT have to do blackouts on any of it's shows. I get both WGN's & except for sports & news, the SS feed is vastly different from the local off-air feed. (the SS feed doesn't even carry the early morning news block & instead carries various syndicated shows)
The off-air feed of WGN is NO longer carried as a superstation feed in the US. (but it IS carried on one of the DBS providers in Canada) It used to be on C-band many, many years ago, along with the superstation feed - Netlink actually uplinked the off-air version & both feeds were sold thru various providers. Netlink dropped the off-air feed a couple years later.
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dishrich said:
I don't remember both feeds being on c band, I remember when WGN dropped WB on sat and went with alternative programming on the sat. Customers bitched, damn they bitched.
twinrocks said:
The 2000 law set the ground work but you could still get distant networks under the Grade B rule. ie, If you live in an area where you could not get a grade B signal from any station affiliated to a particular network with an OTA antenna according to the FCC approved prediction maps, you were eligible for up to two distant network feeds from that network from that network AND you local via satellite. If you lived within a grade B signal area of ANY affiliate of that network then you need a waiver from the stations that theoretically provide a signal before you can get a distant network.
The 2004 law changed that to say that not only did you need to get waivers from grade B stations, but you need a waiver from your "local" station as defined by the Nielsen Media Research co no matter what! At this point DirecTV basically stopped allowing distants when locals were available. Dish still allows them under the rules and via grandfathering rules.
The DirecTV could carry superstations if they wished. But they don't. However DirecTV does carry WB stations from Miami and San Diego in areas that do not have an OTA WB. This is done by contract and could be done for all the networks if the networks allowed it.
See ya
Tony
cablewithaview said:
This was WAY before the WB was around, around the early 90's as I recall, during the heyday of C-band.
The WGN Superstation feed (for cable systems) was on Galaxy 1, the Netlink "local" feed was on Satcom F1, where the Denver 5 was as well. Netlink, which also uplinked the D5, (& also uplinked the "Atlantic 3", BTW) was the main seller of the WGN local feed, so that they would NOT have to pay the provider of the SS feed (United Video at the time) for WGN; they just uplinked their OWN feed for less $$$.
As far as the Atlantic 3, they did this so their programming customers could get a Eastern/Central time feed of ABC/CBS/NBC, without having to pay PT24 for their 3 network feeds - they carried ABC Miami, CBS Washington & NBC Boston.
Ah, the good old C-band days - with these stations, along with PT24 East AND West feeds, you were all set for distant feeds from all across the country.
:up
dishrich said:This was WAY before the WB was around, around the early 90's as I recall, during the heyday of C-band.
The WGN Superstation feed (for cable systems) was on Galaxy 1, the Netlink "local" feed was on Satcom F1, where the Denver 5 was as well. Netlink, which also uplinked the D5, (& also uplinked the "Atlantic 3", BTW) was the main seller of the WGN local feed, so that they would NOT have to pay the provider of the SS feed (United Video at the time) for WGN; they just uplinked their OWN feed for less $$$.
As far as the Atlantic 3, they did this so their programming customers could get a Eastern/Central time feed of ABC/CBS/NBC, without having to pay PT24 for their 3 network feeds - they carried ABC Miami, CBS Washington & NBC Boston.
Ah, the good old C-band days - with these stations, along with PT24 East AND West feeds, you were all set for distant feeds from all across the country.
I got into c band around the mid 90's. I wasn't really into WGN, I eventually pulled it off the cable system I work in with only 2 complaints. I replaced it with a local WB that also carries JPSports. SEC games comes before WGN. However we do carry WSBK out of Boston and that has gone over pretty well. UPN, Red Sox, Bruins, etc. I carried this one years ago and we moved the dish to Fox Sports SE new home and never put WSBK back on until first part of last year. With the help of Cancom, we was able to bring it back. At one time, along with TBS we had WWOR, WSBK and WGN on back in the day.
TNGTony said:
I wish the FCC would listen to us and not Nielsen Media Research. I want timeshifting, I don't want "DMA's", no "must carries", no "cash for carriage". All this has done is limit what we can watch from where. Must carry, DMA and cash for carriage has done nothing but start fights with cable and satellite operators a like. We are the ones to suffer in not viewing it or in our wallet. This is getting old, what happen to competing for advertisers and leaving us out of it? I say let them fight it out among stations and let us decide what we like.
cablewithaview said:
There was an article in the Denver paper about a week ago about somebody who was upset because the Denver 8 package was going dark and they would be forced to switch to a DBS solution.
jayn_j said:
I found out earlier that KWGN can be sold separate as a superstation. The D8 is a new digital package that is offered to the 4dtv c band subscribers. The D8 is not going no where. D8 is uplinked by Comcast on the HITS platform. You need to reply to her article. The D5 analog left c band which was uplinked through Echostar.
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