You guys are reading that wrong... it says Nimiq5 has 32. It does not say Echostar will have use of the 32. Nevermind... I skipped a part while I was skimming for 32 and 16
E* will have full use of all 32 TP's. Digital Home - Nimiq 5 satellite launches todayYou guys are reading that wrong... it says Nimiq5 has 32. It does not say Echostar will have use of the 32. Nevermind... I skipped a part while I was skimming for 32 and 16
In addition to announcing today's launch, Telesat announced that it has completed agreements with Bell TV and EchoStar Corporation which would see Echostar make full use of Nimiq 5 rather than splitting capacity with Bell. Previously EchoStar had contracted for just half the capacity of Nimiq 5.
Previously Telesat had said that Bell would be using a substantial portion of the satellite's 32 Ku-band transponders.
In a written statement issued today, Telesat says Bell TV has now agreed to utilize a new Telesat direct broadcast satellite which is planned for construction beginning in the first quarter of 2010. EchoStar, which had previously contracted for half the capacity of Telesat's new Nimiq 5 satellite, has now committed to use the entire available Nimiq 5 payload for the anticipated 15-year life of the satellite.
Nimiq 5 Second Burn CompletionPosted by ILS Communications Team, 5:06 p.m. EDT on 17 September 2009
As the Breeze M upper stage of our Proton M rocket continues its climb into space with the Nimiq 5 satellite, we have received confirmation that the 2nd burn of the upper stage occurred and shut down as scheduled.
The next events are scheduled for about 2 hours from now. The Breeze M upper stage will ignite for a 3rd time and burn for approximately 14 minutes; after that the additional propellant tank will be jettisoned, and the 4th burn will start and complete. All this will happen in a span of almost 20 minutes while the vehicle is again out of range of a ground station. We should reacquire the vehicle shortly after the 4th burn ends.
Well, I just did a quick cross reference between the original (and probably outdated) list of 72.5 DirecTV locals (http://www.satelliteguys.us/directv-forum/9614-directv-locals-72-5-sat.html) and their current HD locals list (DIRECTV: HD Locals, locals in HD)
I saw only one market on the original 72.5 list that does not seem to have at least some HD locals (and thus I would assume a full complement of MPEG4 locals): Johnson City, Tenn.-Bristol, Va. /Tenn.- Kingsport, Tenn.
And who knows, maybe they are on in MPEG4, but just not HD.
If DirecTV is forced to get it;s 72.5 Dish swap in gear, there would be no issues with Dish getting all of them. 32 CONUS TPs are enough for 224 HD channels at Dish's current 7/TP approach. Dish could easily dedicate all of 77 / Quetzsat-1 to locals.
I wonder if Dish will ever have a program to swap our 110/119/61.5 setups for 1000.4's or 1000.2's, so that Dish won't have to keep 61.5 and 129 mirrors on CONUS.
Continuing on schedule:
We have confirmed that the Breeze M upper stage has successfully completed its 3rd & 4th burns, as well as jettisoning its additional propellant tank. The vehicle is now in a 5-hour coast period, during which we will have nothing to report. The 5th burn is scheduled to start around 12:12 AM EDT, or 04:12 GMT. Separation of the Nimiq 5 spacecraft is scheduled to follow the 5th burn completion by about 15 minutes.