FaxUpdate April 1, 2005: VOOM Shutdown Could Be Announced As Early As Today

[Sean Mota]

I give little credibility to this article. Dolan and Ergen meet yesterday? Come on. Do you think that Ergen would receive Dolan after his petition to FCC? Dolan filed that petition for one reason: the negotiation with Ergen failed weeks ago.

Let's not discount it completely. There is some thruth in the article. It may not be 100% but there's some truth. I want to see where this will lead. Remember that they also called for a shutdown on a specific date before and were wrong. But I will not discard them completely.

 

[txdude]

Don't worry guys. This is just SatBizNews' April Fool's joke

I'm glad this is a joke... I was already thinking of ways we could kill the bird (Rainbow-I) so that E* can't use it. If voOmers can't have it, I sure don't want anyone else enjoying it :dev

Edit: I'll keep working on this plan just incase

 

[vurbano]

Scotty Aim the ship for Spaceway1 and initialize the self destruct sequence

 

[Walter L.]

Chuck *was* in Denver yesterday according to many sources I know.

Can you list some?

 

[AxE]

I'm glad this is a joke... I was already thinking of ways we could kill the bird (Rainbow-I) so that E* can't use it. If voOmers can't have it, I sure don't want anyone else enjoying it :dev

It's not a joke.....lets see what happens.

 

[niceprophet]

You ask why Ergan would meet with Dolan? If he is worried the FCC might not approve the license transfer, he might be willing to negotiate.

Either way, from where I sit, this article is more or less on the mark.

 

[Walter L.]

If AMC-6 was both technically & economically feasible as a compliment to Rainbow-1, why wouldn't it be stand-alone? In fact, it may be more feasible than using the 2 sats because it won't require elliptical dish and it would be easier to peak.

 

[shanewalker]

Hey, 'niceprophet', you were claiming a week or so back that you were in the know and had concrete knowledge that Chuck was going to pull this thing off--it was just a matter of the play unfolding before us and the rest of us being patient. Can you illuminate what's going on?

 

[Sean Mota]

If AMC-6 was both technically & economically feasible as a compliment to Rainbow-1, why wouldn't it be stand-alone? In fact, it may be more feasible than using the 2 sats because it won't require elliptical dish and it would be easier to peak.

Technically, I do not know much about it. But you need to look at the specs of both and see if AMC-6 can do the same job as R-1 with what it is currently on R-1. Not only Tp wise but also at the "Mb/s". This may give you insight as to why E* is very reluctant to let go of R-1.

 

[niceprophet]

Hey, 'niceprophet', you were claiming a week or so back that you were in the know and had concrete knowledge that Chuck was going to pull this thing off--it was just a matter of the play unfolding before us and the rest of us being patient. Can you illuminate what's going on?

Um... no... I'd check again. I never said that Chuck was going to pull this off. In fact I stated several times that I had serious doubts he could pull it off.

The only thing I ever claimed to be "in the know" about, was that the financing part of the deal was in place (e.g. the money to buy back the system and operate Voom.) If Ergen does not want to sell it back, or if the Cablevision board doesn't want to sell the other assets to Chuck, there's not much he can do about it.

 

[Walter L.]

Good point Sean. The bandwidth per TP of AMC-6 could be much less than Rainbow-1.

 

[shanewalker]

So you were just 'in the know' about locked up financing--not sat access/disputes. Seperate concerns, gotcha. Your sources on one angle don't have access to the plan on the other? C'mon, we're all friends here .

 

[philhu]

Good point Sean. The bandwidth per TP of AMC-6 could be much less than Rainbow-1.

No, I do not think so. TP bandwidth is pretty constant, since the signals and frequencies are pretty standard. Although, isn't AMC-6 a KA band satellite?

 

[niceprophet]

Quoting myself:

3/17/05: You may think that I'm one of those head-in-the-clouds optimists. But I'm not... I'm actually very skeptical that this can be pulled off.

3/20/05: But think of this: A huge part of Voom's future depends on whether they can continue operating on Rainbow 1, or moreover whether they can take over the FCC licenses that Cablevision owns the rights to.

3/21/05: Suffice to say, I am still slightly pessimistic about Voom's chances. I am still convinced the funding is in place, but that the legalities and logistics are massive and perhaps insurmountable. This is Chuck's dream, if he could make this happen with shear willpower alone, it would be a done deal. Would I be surprised if he could pull a last minute rabbit out of his hat, and get the deal done? No. Chuck is great at that.

 

[Walter L.]

Quoting myself:

Your point?

 

[Sean Mota]

No, I do not think so. TP bandwidth is pretty constant, since the signals and frequencies are pretty standard. Although, isn't AMC-6 a KA band satellite?

So you think the transmittion power will be the same or equal by compensating with a bigger customer dish. With 16 Tps in AMC-6 could they do the 30+ HD channels as it is in R-1 right now.

 

[niceprophet]

Your point?

My point is that I've been skeptical for weeks, and pointing out that the fate may be more so in E*'s hands than V*'s.

 

[Voomer55]

Will Walter and niceprophet please stop? This is getting ridiculous... Sean, please step in...

 

[Walter L.]

Will Walter and niceprophet please stop? This is getting ridiculous... Sean, please step in...

There's nothing to stop. niceprophet was trying to make a point which I initially didn't get so I asked. Then he explained his point. What's wrong with that?

 

[rocatman]

So you think the transmittion power will be the same or equal by compensating with a bigger customer dish. With 16 Tps in AMC-6 could they do the 30+ HD channels as it is in R-1 right now.

The transmission power is less on AMC-6 but using a bigger customer dish would solve most of those problems. The advantage that AMC-6 has over Rainbow-1 is the frequency width of each TP is wider, therefore more channels per TP is possible. There have been discussions over in the Dish forum about when AMC-15 replaces AMC-2 at the 105 W location. AMC-2 is much lower power (60 watts/TP) than AMC-15 (140 watts/TP) so Dish uses greater error correction and limits the number of SD channels per TP on AMC-2 to about 12 similar to most DBS TPs. It has been speculated that AMC-15 could do 16 SD channels/TP and easily do 4 HD channels/TP with MPEG-2 because of greater power and the need for less error correction. It was also designed for the 105 W location, AMC-2 was not. Now these channels/TP are based on how Dish does it, Voom has different encoders and other things that allow them to get more capacity from their TPs. The Ku band on AMC-6 is similar to AMC-15 but slightly less powerful at about 110 watts/TP. Based on these disccussions, I would think that each TP on AMC-6 should have at least if not more channel capacity than Rainbow-1 in CONUS mode.