PQ improving on Starz & HBO????

[charper1]

I would agree.

 

[dfergie]

Sig strengths for me with the Samsung 360 ... Sat A= 75, B=90, and C=71... whats weird though is I sub to distants and am getting "locals" now for some reason...Not noticing any difference in PQ on the Hd Pack, or the Hd distants and both the D* and E* "locals" PQ sucks... (gonna have to tweak it for better signal strengths)

 

[LonghornXP]

I'm going to go home tonight and take a good look at my signal strengths.... I'm still blown away by the fact that at .5 degrees seperation a LNB can still get enough of a signal. In my infantry days we learned just how far off course you can walk by being 1-10 degrees off your azimuth when you are looking at 1-5 miles.

Now, my trig is very rusty but I think (think, mind you) that a .05 degree of seperation at 22,500 miles would net you a difference of 1,125 miles on the ground. Isn't that a big reach for small dishes and LNB's?

On national coverage its not enough to screw much up. Its still going down and those extra miles are most likely reducing ocean coverage which means nothing. As long as the signal can hit the dish the dish will bounce it onto the LNB at the right stop. If the East and West Coast can both pickup a signal at 101 and 119 I don't see a problem with this. Again its not like the signal has the hit the LNB right on it only has to hit the dish which it will and the dish itself is curved to reflect the signal onto the proper LNB depending on the angle the beam hits the dish. That change of angle won't be enough to throw it off. The only reason the new dish will have 5LNBs is not so much because of the new orbital slots but because the signals will be KA and its best to have a seperate LNB for that. If Spaceway 1 was KU they most likely could use the current dishes in the market today.

 

[charper1]

both the D* and E* "locals" PQ sucks

I never use SD locals as a gauge for PQ because we are NEVER aware of just how or what quality signals the affiliate is actually providing the DBS company. Believe it or not, I think some of these jackasses purposely provide crap because they would ultimately prefer that you not use DBS to receive them. I still think most affiliates are in bed with their local cable companies thanks to the NAB, and want you to leave DBS. They hate DBS achieving a 100% level playing field.

 

[rad]

Did D* pick up some slightly used harmonic encoders from a recently defunct DBS company?

 

[cr0mag]

GOOD question Rad.... Although I would have thought that E* would get first dibs on anything in the V* yardsale.

 

[dfergie]

I still think most affiliates are in bed with their local cable companies thanks to the NAB, and want you to leave DBS. They hate DBS achieving a 100% level playing field.

The Local "digital" cable's locals Pq is about on par with The Charlie Chats Pq ( terrible) and Hbo ....

 

[cr0mag]

On national coverage its not enough to screw much up. Its still going down and those extra miles are most likely reducing ocean coverage which means nothing. As long as the signal can hit the dish the dish will bounce it onto the LNB at the right stop. If the East and West Coast can both pickup a signal at 101 and 119 I don't see a problem with this. Again its not like the signal has the hit the LNB right on it only has to hit the dish which it will and the dish itself is curved to reflect the signal onto the proper LNB depending on the angle the beam hits the dish. That change of angle won't be enough to throw it off. The only reason the new dish will have 5LNBs is not so much because of the new orbital slots but because the signals will be KA and its best to have a seperate LNB for that. If Spaceway 1 was KU they most likely could use the current dishes in the market today.

Now that makes sense... A CONUS beam shift of several hundred or even 1,000 miles shouldnt' affect reception. For some reason I have "Spot Beam" on the brain... perhaps I'm just dreaming of the future....

 

[slacker9876]

I can say that stuff is being moved around but from and where to I can't say. From what I've been told is that the new encoders are both MPEG2 and MPEG4 SD and HD encoders. So these encoders will be used for all current D* offerings both now and into the future and one benefit of them at least for current national and LIL SD offerings is that they can have much better error handling which results in an increase in bandwidth because they can use more bandwidth on each xponder for actual bits instead of error correction. Just that little bit of difference will increase picture quality across the board on the SD side. Also it seems that some if not all of the HD channels will be moved onto D* 8 because it has higher power on the KU side of things so that combined with the new encoders would both increase picture quality and bandwidth. Now how much of an increase is unknown at this time. What is known is that this is more of a testing aspect and also is needed to prepare for upcoming LIL and national HD offerings.

So it is safe to assume (ass-u-me) that DirecTv 8 is in fact hot, and based upon your post above even 2.5 degrees seperation is fine since the beam is so wide anyway ... is this correct?

GOOD question Rad.... Although I would have thought that E* would get first dibs on anything in the V* yardsale.

Based upon the 1B debt they just secured it is not like they cannot afford more

 

[cr0mag]

Oh my, I think we're onto something good here... This is going to be an interesting summer!

 

[LonghornXP]

So it is safe to assume (ass-u-me) that DirecTv 8 is in fact hot, and based upon your post above even 2.5 degrees seperation is fine since the beam is so wide anyway ... is this correct?

That is indeed correct at least with Conus signals. Now like was said above if your dealing with spot beams that could become a problem but even at a 2.5 degree shift spot beams should still be fine. Again remember when dealing with conus that 1000 miles is nothing when the signal is covering the entire USA from the north, south, west, east and everything in the middle. Its flat out nothing of a difference. Vooms satellite was way away from 100 degrees and as such people in the north west had quite a bit of trouble picking up conus Voom channels while people on the southeast coast had nearly perfect signal strength because Vooms orbital location had its gspot right in the southeast. If you were in the southeast playboy in HDTV was perfect. You box couldn't miss that gspot. That was why Florida customers Voom boxes kept overheading and rebooting.

 

[slacker9876]

Well that being said ... spaceway 1 is close enough! Tell 'em to fire that her up and ship us some new hardware LMAO! cr0mag ... this will be an exciting summer. Heck I am going to add the HD pack back tonight just to check this out and see. Perhaps my portion of boycott funds (in relation to the HD Tax) are about to be returned to D* .......

 

[slacker9876]

You know from the tracker page it shows the following ... and this is almost "live" data

DirecTV 1: 101.11
DirecTV 1R: 101.81
DirecTV 2: 100.75
DirecTV 4: 101.06
DirecTV 8: 103.42
SpaceWay1: 107.19 (not in geostationary orbit)

I could be wrong but 2.5 degrees out of position would indicate that some of us are hallucinating unless they moved programming off to the 110 & 119 slots. Which does also seem logical.

I am at the office right now but I'll have to check this out tonight. It would go a long way to explain how they lit up the Active services too.

Well speak of the Devil ... Lyngsat is listening too!!! they just updated and SpaceWay 1 is now at 109.70!!!! It would be nice to see the actual for DirecTV 8 since their last update for this bird was on Thursday (050623). Okay this is weird the date still shows data from 6.24.05 ... but the position is way updated ... I know I have not lost it (my mind) yet.

 

[beast37799]

it seems that spaceway is moving the wrong way

 

[slacker9876]

it seems that spaceway is moving the wrong way

Now it is at 109.98 .... it is listed as not being in geostationary orbit ... what it is slot?

 

[beast37799]

i think closer to 101

 

[slacker9876]

now at 110.05 ....

 

[slacker9876]

this is kind of cool to watch. They never actually MOVE ...

check it out!
http://www.lyngsat.com/tracker/space1.html

Java required

 

[beast37799]

directv8 is now exactly at 101 why is space way taking so long to get into geo orbit i would think after 2 months it would have reached orbit

 

[slacker9876]

wow we actually caught directv in a lil thruster action ... this kicks ass! i am still seeing D8 at 103.48 ...