Local Channels 119 Shutoff?

[Tom Speer]

There are also HD customers that have a 119 dish (e.g. SL5, AT9) and can watch both the HD or SD locals. That would be great for a signal loss, but SignalSaver has even made that redundant now unless you don't have a Genie.

That is one reason they have implemented SignalSaver, because fewer and fewer channels have SD duplicates.

 

[lordodogg]

Yeah, that’s true, but there are also business customers, a majority of which still have the H24 or H25 receivers and an SL5 dish. Unless they can somehow include SignalSaver in non-Genie boxes (and even then, many businesses don’t even connect their receivers to the internet), there will still be a need for both local and national SD duplicates. That is probably one of the very few reasons we even still have SD duplicates anyway. Heck, even a few HD channels moved to 101W over a year ago (FoxNews, CNN, MSNBC, HGTV, Hallmark), which further decreases the need for SD duplicates, especially of those particular channels.

 

[KyL416]

That move was made to put some of the highest rated channels in HD on the Ku band. So their MPEG-2 counterparts will likely still exist until no more accounts have active MPEG-2 only receivers.

 

[Tom Speer]

There's a difference between national channels and local channels. Although they paused a couple of years ago, they were actively removing SD duplicates of local channels. After they were able to remove the spotbeams from the failing T7S satellite at 119, they stopped shutting SD duplicates down. But they were shutting down Mpeg2 SD duplicates on markets served by 101 spotbeams also. A number of 101 spotbeam transponders have been shut down (transponders on specific beams, not TPN numbers).

 

[lordodogg]

Also, there are several national channels carried to met a public interest quota that are SD only (the C-SPANs are one example of this) and they’ll likely go to MPEG4 SD, or maybe HD for at least the big P/I networks (like C-SPAN) if they remove all SD duplicates.

I even modified a DMA map to display which markets still have SD locals. It’s in the TPN map thread, but I have reposted it here for reader convenience.

 

[Tom Speer]

Those P/I channels are not SD duplicates. They are SD only. In my opinion, there will continue to be many mpeg2 SD channels on 101. The whole DirecTV system is dependent on the metadata that exists on DSS modulated (Mpeg2 SD) transponders at 101. 4 transponders carry software, that is accessed at boot time, before the receivers acquire the information they need to tune to A3 modulated transponders. Many more carry the fast APG PIDs, also used at boot time. I don't see those ever going away, while DirecTV exists as a satellite service. There are a couple of transponders that can be converted to A3 modulation plus the spot beam TPNs can be converted to National A3 transponders on T16, after the SD duplicates on the spot beams are eliminated. That is not happening real fast.

 

[slice1900]

There are also HD customers that have a 119 dish (e.g. SL5, AT9) and can watch both the HD or SD locals. That would be great for a signal loss, but SignalSaver has even made that redundant now unless you don't have a Genie.

I highly doubt Directv cares about that. They probably don't even care all that much about the handful of residential customers who still have SD equipment. What they are worried about (or at least were back in 2019 as shown by that internal document I posted with their MPEG2 SD decommissioning timeline) are the commercial users like hotels, nursing homes and so forth that have SD headends.

Now that they have settled things with their core satellite fleet at 99/101/103, have a satellite at 119 to handle the remaining locals there that's got fuel life until 2034, and have no need for additional bandwidth, there isn't much point in going out of their way to shut down MPEG2 SD locals. There is little to be gained other than maybe shutting down NEUF.

Maybe this case is just part of their strategy - they'll keep them going so long as nothing breaks, but if some equipment failure takes out a local market if they can't get it resolved in a week or two they might just figure there's no reason to ever turn it back on. After a week or two, safe to say almost everyone who is affected by it has worked around it either by getting their Directv setup upgraded or leaving for another provider.

I wouldn't be surprised if those channels just disappear from the datastream. If they turned them back on at this point after over a month, would there be anyone to watch them?

 

[Tom Speer]

DirecTV has fixed the feed to 119 TPN 32 and the missing SD duplicates for Charleston, WV and Louisville, KY are back on 119.

 

[lordodogg]

I just PM'd Gary that they were back and told him to reinstate them in the next TPN Map.

 

[Tom Speer]

I just PM'd Gary that they were back and told him to reinstate them in the next TPN Map.

I notified Gary by email before I posted anything here. The Datadigesters team coordinates our work outside of this forum.

 

[lordodogg]

Ah, well it said he last read this thread on Wednesday 9/20, so I wasn't sure if he knew they were back