Ouch, D's new Advertising Graphic
- Thread starter bkushner
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Very true! You got me there. Let's enjoy all the HD that Dish will give us and not throw any away.
Your either the leader or you follow the leader. Dish USED to be the leader with HD but I still think they have better hardware. If it would not have been for that I would have already left.
If satellite is a game of poker, Charlie would be the guy that appears non-threatening through every round and then slams you at the end with aces full. Let's not discount Charlie just yet. He's making some big plays with a lot of the satellite slots he's been positioning himself with. I expect that he's going to have lots of bandwidth and will be turning the screws on DirecTV soon. He probably realizes that there's a lot of customers that are shuffling back and forth between the various services and he ought to be ready just as a lot of DirecTV 24 month commitments expire. Keep in mind that cable still holds the greater share and when it comes to HD, both services tend to beat up the cable companies' limited offerings in most markets. So Charlie is still positioned to scoop up cable subs, although there is that giant ogre picking mushrooms in the same field as he.
2009 will be the year that Charlie puts the pressure back on DirecTV.
2009 will be the year that Charlie puts the pressure back on DirecTV.
Unless 100 more channels go HD by then DirecTV will have plenty of bandwidth and then some. DirecTV already has nearly every HD channel that is available and just launched a new sat with another on the way in 2009. Charlie can certainly catch up if he gets the bandwidth but he certainly isn't going to be putting any pressure back on DirecTV in terms of passing them. But he'll get close I hope as competition is good for everyone.
I don't know what DirecTV's transponder count is on their Slimline but there's some things to be considered. They have 32 transponders on 101 but its all MPEG2 and they would have to nearly every box to go MPEG4 on that one. Then 110 only has 3 transponders and 10 transponders on 119. I don't know how many transponders they have on 99 or 103.
Dish has 50 transponders on 119/110 and 15 on 129. That's 65 TPs on one dish. Then on 61.5 they have 32 plus 16 more on 72.5 soon, for 48 transponders all MPEG4 or going to be MPEG4. 148 has 32 transponders and a dish aimed there can get 129 so that's 48 transponders on that dish. TeleSat is applying for 138 and if they get that, they'll probably lease up to 15 transponders to DISH same as they did with 129 and 72.5, giving a Western Arc dish set up for 129/138/148 with a total of 63 MPEG4 transponders in that case.
Then there's that 700Mhz spectrum they won. It remains to be seen what they do with that. Internet is the main speculation.
Also, I haven't considered the bandwidth DISH has available from 118.7 and 121.
All of them.
In KA no less and they are only putting MPEG4 there.
They already have over 100 HD channels on 103 alone. Plus dozens and dozens of local HD already up there. D11 just launched to go to 99. This will add capacity to 50 more national HD and the rest of the country in local HD.
And now D12 is going to launch in 09 adding yet another 50+ national HD capacity, slot to be announced. Which also means they could launch yet another sat to pair up at the other slot for 50+ more national HD channels.
There is no real way to compare DIRECTV's Ka capacity with Dish's Ku capacity. DIRECTV's Ka capacity you can think of as an array of tiny overlapping ovals covering the US, think of a honeycomb. They were satellites meant for internet access with transmitters going up from under each of the ovals. They were adapted for TV usage (just one uplink per oval).
They can map DMAs by picking which ovals get the signal for each DMA, but they have to have the same channel on multiple frequencies since the ovals overlap. Which means that they use up more capacity for a local channel since they have to use multiple channels for the overlapping ovals to cover a DMA. Dish uses one spot and one frequency for a local channel. To do a national channel on Ka, DIRECTV in a sense sends the channel down in every spot. Since the spots overlap, they have to send the channel down in several frequencies (I suspect 5).
DIRECTV has the advantage of a fine granularity of the spectrum usage, Dish has a standard of 32 frequencies, each of the transponder frequencies then carries multiple channels.
Ka band is also 1GHz where Ku DBS is 500MHz, so 2x the bandwidth. But Ka is a higher frequency making for more rain fade, so needs more error correction, more power or a larger dish.
So, in essence it is really hard to compare, DIRECTV has more satellites and bandwidth, but they are forced to repeat channels multiple times tying up more bandwidth. Dish has less bandwidth, but much more efficient use of it.
They can map DMAs by picking which ovals get the signal for each DMA, but they have to have the same channel on multiple frequencies since the ovals overlap. Which means that they use up more capacity for a local channel since they have to use multiple channels for the overlapping ovals to cover a DMA. Dish uses one spot and one frequency for a local channel. To do a national channel on Ka, DIRECTV in a sense sends the channel down in every spot. Since the spots overlap, they have to send the channel down in several frequencies (I suspect 5).
DIRECTV has the advantage of a fine granularity of the spectrum usage, Dish has a standard of 32 frequencies, each of the transponder frequencies then carries multiple channels.
Ka band is also 1GHz where Ku DBS is 500MHz, so 2x the bandwidth. But Ka is a higher frequency making for more rain fade, so needs more error correction, more power or a larger dish.
So, in essence it is really hard to compare, DIRECTV has more satellites and bandwidth, but they are forced to repeat channels multiple times tying up more bandwidth. Dish has less bandwidth, but much more efficient use of it.
