Future locations for HD content

[Tom Bombadil]

Just thinking about the future of my satellite dishes.

What is the expectation for where Dish is likely to locate national HD channels?

I'm fuzzy on the details of the SuperDish. Isn't it able to only pick up signals from three birds, with the options being 110, 119 and either 105 or 121? If so then it would seem unlikely that Dish would use 105 or 121 for national HD channels, but could use those for spotbeaming HD locals.

Continuing, if this is true, shouldn't we then expect all national HD channels to be coming off of 110, 119, and/or 61.5 & 148 - possibly mirroring channels between the last two to cover both coasts? With the bulk (or maybe all) of these HD channels coming from 110 & 119?

I guess these national HD channels could also be mirrored off of 105 & 121 and still be picked up by a single one dish solution for all locations.

Are there any estimates about how many HD channels could be handled off of 110 & 119, given their continued use for SD channels, once mpeg-4 is implemented?

 

[David_Levin]

There's been much speculation and rumors. No announcments.

A 3 slot DBS dish was on display at CES in Jan (110, 119, 129). Much speculation has been around what 129 could be used for.

 

[rocatman]

Dish has yet to get approval from the FCC to move the E-5 satellite to 129 W. E-5 has suffered some failures whereby additional propellant usage is needed to maintain attitude control and the FCC is concerned about this and the overuse of other attitude control components on the satellite. The other problem with putting national programming at 129 W is the low look angle that folks would have in the northeast region of the U.S. Dish could mirror programming at 61.5 W but this would waste bandwidth. The use of MPEG-4 should allow Dish to increase the number of HD channels per TP to at least 6 instead of the maximum of 3 HD channels that they use now. There are 3 TPs at 110 W that are dedicated to HD right now and there are also 3 TPs worth of non-distant network local channels at 110 W that most likely will be moved to spotbeams once the E-10 satellite is launched hopefully later this year. There is also another TP at 110 W that is barely being used so Dish could have as many as 7 TPs available at 110 W to use for national HD programming for a total of at least 42 channels.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

Will MPEG-4 also enable them to increase the channel density per transponder on SD channels? If so, then that could free up even more transponders at 110 and 119.

I'd forgotten about the 129 location. I'm not overly excited by the prospect of having yet another dish option.

What is the current speculation on what Dish is doing at 61.5 and plans for Rainbow-1? Niche/foreign channel programming? It seems unlikely that it would be the long-term home for the VOOM channels, or any other national HD channels. I still can't believe that Cablevision tried to sell a national service based out of 61.5.