I don't think its so much going to cost me salary being in house. PI has been working well for me, bonus every paycheck since it started except one. Although it is virtually impossible to advance now with PI, I'm pretty happy where I'm at now.
New Receiver DISH 311K
- Thread starter Scott Greczkowski
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I wonder if they implemented anything in the new MPEG-4 receivers which would make it easy to convert them to something beyond MPEG-4 when new advancements come again.
I would think compression advances would require new chips to be designed, as HW is usually faster than SW.
Didn't Dish Network "upgrade" some receivers in the past that was returned to them? Why couldn't they make receivers that could have easily swapable parts in them or replace the chips? Cost too much?
Yes, it costs too much. The purpose of 311k's is to utilize otherwise obsolete inventory. 322's are pretty much said and done, but 311's are still a large portion of the market. Converting a 322 to 311 is cheaper than purchasing additional MPEG4 at free upgrade to the customer base and extreme expense to DISH. There's no benefit in offering a free upgrade where you don't have to.
As far as the technicals; a new compression scheme requires a board replacement. It's not a pair of chips you can swap out.
I can see a few benefits of the 311k receiver.
One benefit is an extra tuner in case one fails? Does it still have two tuners and allow either one to be used?
Another benefit is the UHF functionality built in. The 301/311 never had built in UHF. You had to get a uhf upgrade kit. This would be nice for someone that may want to use a splitter and run two or more tv's off of the receiver that do not need to watch different things at the same time.
Maybe these things would allow the receiver to be preferred over the 311 for some. I imagine it will only come with the IR remote control. Even the 211 does not have UHF functionality but am not sure if the 612 does or not. Reminds me of the 4900 receiver that had UHF functionality built in.
One benefit is an extra tuner in case one fails? Does it still have two tuners and allow either one to be used?
Another benefit is the UHF functionality built in. The 301/311 never had built in UHF. You had to get a uhf upgrade kit. This would be nice for someone that may want to use a splitter and run two or more tv's off of the receiver that do not need to watch different things at the same time.
Maybe these things would allow the receiver to be preferred over the 311 for some. I imagine it will only come with the IR remote control. Even the 211 does not have UHF functionality but am not sure if the 612 does or not. Reminds me of the 4900 receiver that had UHF functionality built in.
yay more crap boxes but will give dish the thumbs up on letting us install hd gear on new accounts without needing hd programing or hdtv to be proactive. giving the customer the choice to upgrade ez.
With Dtv if customer wants 1 tv they get just sd gear and 101. if they want to add Spanish programing a tech will have to come out and change the dish. then customer gets a new HD tv boom another tech and new dish and new box.
Sorry for the venting had that happen in the time frame of 2 months with a customer and D* was ready to let the customer walk out on our dime thank god we had some old hd gear we bought cheap
With Dtv if customer wants 1 tv they get just sd gear and 101. if they want to add Spanish programing a tech will have to come out and change the dish. then customer gets a new HD tv boom another tech and new dish and new box.
Sorry for the venting had that happen in the time frame of 2 months with a customer and D* was ready to let the customer walk out on our dime thank god we had some old hd gear we bought cheap
The key here is CHURN!
Dish network generally churns at the rate of 1.5% per month, which is 18% per year, or over a 5.5 year period you are basically replacing the entire customer base.
So what has happened is that enough customers have either already upgraded, or enough customers have churned with older equipment to make it worth while to upgrade the ones who will keep on paying every month and never upgrade.
As far as using MPEG 2 equipment, its Free since its all been used previously on a leased account. Even if they got to go back and change it out again in 5 years, its better to use what they got and worry about the future later.
Keep in mind most of customers who get an equipment upgrade for something like this, are offered a DIU with a new 2 year contract. When a customer declines the committment, why reward them anyways by doing it with no committment? at that point all Dish is obligated to do is upgrade them enough only to get by.
Dish network generally churns at the rate of 1.5% per month, which is 18% per year, or over a 5.5 year period you are basically replacing the entire customer base.
So what has happened is that enough customers have either already upgraded, or enough customers have churned with older equipment to make it worth while to upgrade the ones who will keep on paying every month and never upgrade.
As far as using MPEG 2 equipment, its Free since its all been used previously on a leased account. Even if they got to go back and change it out again in 5 years, its better to use what they got and worry about the future later.
Keep in mind most of customers who get an equipment upgrade for something like this, are offered a DIU with a new 2 year contract. When a customer declines the committment, why reward them anyways by doing it with no committment? at that point all Dish is obligated to do is upgrade them enough only to get by.
Read the clue I posted above again... 8PSK.
If they convert all the SD on the Western Arc to 8PSK then they gain around 40% of their bandwidth back.
They currently pull about 32 megabits with 7/8 FEC QPSK...if I remember right 8PSK goes to about 41.
It would pull the exact same amount of bandwidth as MPEG-2 8PSK.
QPSK/8PSK are modulation/FEC schemes. MPEG-2/MPEG-4 are video compression schemes. Two different animals. QPSK/8PSK have to do with how much bandwidth each transponder is capable of. MPEG-2/MPEG-4 have to do with how much bandwidth a channel needs, for a certain picture quality.That being said, generally, MPEG-4 is twice as efficient as MPEG-2, so theoretically, you could fit nearly twice as many channels at the current quality, or, have more channels, but also with better quality.
That was the answer I was looking for. I thought it might have been the same bandwidth but more compressed to allow more channels / higher quality. Double the channels is a huge improvement. I know both allowed more channels to be fit on a transponder.
I think the numbers you are looking for are like this...
32 meagbits of mpeg2 converted to 40 megabits with the 8PSK move. Now since mpeg4 is almost a double gain you can basically say it compares to 80 megabits of mpeg2...but in reality it is 40 megabits.
32 meagbits of mpeg2 converted to 40 megabits with the 8PSK move. Now since mpeg4 is almost a double gain you can basically say it compares to 80 megabits of mpeg2...but in reality it is 40 megabits.
THese are not for everyone, but for people with 501's and 508's these receivers make cents... (dollars and cents)
As r10fret mentioned, why would Dish replace a 501 or 508 with a 311k? The 311k is not a DVR.
