How To Start A Small Cable Company

[tvropro]

I almost forgot that I took the pictures I promised of last week's dish find.

Here is the Pinnacle I found. As you can see, it has a few hail dents, and doesn't have the AJAK H-H mount.

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Here is the other one. I think it is probably closer to a 16 footer than a 20 like I originally thought. It has a Scientific Atlanta sticker on the side of the mount.

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If you look closely at the one picture you can see a motor. I can't believe this dish actually might move across the arc. I suppose it is possible.

Fred

The SA dish is probably a 4.5 or 5 meter dish. These were used at my old cable company back in the 80's.

 

[tvropro]

Thanks Tvropro,

That explains a lot to me. At least now I know what I am looking at as far as what equipment I might need. I have an outlet that sometimes gets used head-end equipment in off lease. I'll have to start exploring that further to see what they have and what they are asking for it.

Thanks again,

Fred

I've been into antenna systems since 1972 and learned alot about and worked with MATV & SMATV in the 80's and 90's. I have a mini Smatv system installed in my house.

There's more to it than meet's the eye. Rf signal, audio and video levels must be matched and maintained, You have to avoid adjacent and co channel interference once converted to RF. And there's alot more, tilt, dbmv etc. It's not plug and play. I have a lot of grey hairs from working with electronic jobs and problems over the years.

 

[linuxman]

I've been into antenna systems since 1972 and learned alot about and worked with MATV & SMATV in the 80's and 90's. I have a mini Smatv system installed in my house.

There's more to it than meet's the eye. Rf signal, audio and video levels must be matched and maintained, You have to avoid adjacent and co channel interference once converted to RF. And there's alot more, tilt, dbmv etc. It's not plug and play. I have a lot of grey hairs from working with electronic jobs and problems over the years.

I have been doing computers since 1990 and networks since 93. I have a few gray hairs myself when things don't go as planned. I have spent several all niters with problems.

If it was easy, everybody would do it. That's not saying I will end up doing it, but at least I am willing to explore it.

In the end, it might not be worth doing for such a small start, but at least it is worth looking into.

Fred

 

[osu1991]

I believe glenn posted a response to you on the hdtvok website.

 

[linuxman]

Hey osu1991,

Thanks for the response.

He did respond, and what he had to say doesn't look good for small town cable companies.

You can read his response on How to start a Small Cable Company here.

From what he has to say, it looks like he is going to shut his down in the near future and just be an internet service provider.

Here is just part of what he wrote:

The economics of cable and broadband in general have changed in the past 10 years and have made it impossible for a small town system to keep up while still making enough money to live on. Starting a system from scratch with enough programming to compete effectively with satellite today is just impossible. There are hundreds of channels, some with broad-based interest and some for a very specific market, yet you would have to offer all of them because there would be a few customers that would not subscribe to your service if you didn’t carry them. In a small town that would kill you right off the bat.

Well it was a good thought, and in an earlier time might have been worth a shot, but it looks like it is just another avenue for quality TV that is coming to an end.

I think that what he has to say should be an incentive to keep FTA alive. It may be the last best hope for having a choice in what we and our families watch.

Fred

 

[lumpkin666]

I barely imagine the cost involved in just the equipment required to receive and distribute the signals. When building a fiberoptics network in our small community, just the labor and materials (without the programming/equipment/home install/etc) cost millions for my company. We chose to go Fiber and offer TV/Phone/Internet, but the cost of hanging/burrying cable is going to be relatively the same (even at 1/2 to 1/4 the price for traditional cable, that's still millions of dollars)

 

[bill190]

When I was a kid and cable TV came to town, wanted to install a cable TV system in my city, I remember watching the city council meetings about all this.

The thing about it was it was a "monopoly" and a "franchise". They were wanting to be granted a monopoly and get a franchise to do so. They had all sorts of lawyers, charts, cost analysis, etc. to present all this to the city council.

So a big part of this is "local government" granting rights to have a cable company - at least in my area. And so far as I know, no other cable company can come in and run cables. If this was allowed, the utility poles would look a mess with 10 different cable companies running their cables.

So they just allow one cable company to do this. I wonder if you could go wireless to each house? Then not have these cable running problems?

Then so far as cost, when I was a kid, I once got a tour of a small town cable TV company which only re-broadcast the 6 or so local TV stations from a large city about 90 miles away. For just this, they had all sorts of microwave antennas and a "box" the size of a VCR for each channel to clean up and amplify each channel before it was sent out on the cable.

I remember they told me all these "toys" cost around $500,000.00 and that was in in the late 70's.

Here is a web site which has some of these things...
http://www.satcomresources.com

 

[linuxman]

Well after reading Glenn's response at the hdtvok website, I had pretty much made up my mind not to pursue it further.

If Glenn is barely able to keep a business that has been in existence for 25 years going, there is not much point in pouring money into something that will never be profitable, and no chance to sell to another company.

Thanks to everyone's response.

Fred