It's more confusing when your dish mover is a 4DTV. You have to deal with old name, new name, sat position and 4DTV name. If you are not a drinker this will make you one.:
I feel sorry for the 4DTV users, who have to put up with that, but I also feel sorry for the rest of us who have to try to interpret the 4DTV language.
GI/Motorola has taken the major set of the old TVRO community, who were proud of knowing the ins and outs of the hobby, and decided to dumb them down to a mentality similar to the DTV/DN users. It's sad, but I guess it the way all phases of business operate these days.
Abstract sat names is nothing new to TVRO'ers, what with most old receivers only being able to accomodate 2 key names, like G5, F3, S2, etc, however they old manufacturers didn't try to indoctrinate users into thinking that these were the actual accepted names of these sats.
I used to get annoyed by all the changes in sat names, and refused to accept the new ones until I saw NASA, and later Space Command refer to the sats by the new names. NASA generally didn't update their database, but Space Command (now [SIZE=-2]US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM))[/SIZE]is pretty quick to change, so I've given in and try to use the new names when possible. I guess the government organization responsible for tracking the sats has been changing as fast as the sat names.
But that's the government for you. I worked for the federal gov for over 12 years, in the same building for all but the first year, and I think the name of the organization I was in changed like 8 times in those 12 years, and has changed another 3 or 4 times since I left. When I left, I moved to Maine, and it took me a couple years to learn the names of all the roads in town, then the State told us that we had to change the names of over half the road names in town.Back to the original point, maybe all this change is why I HAVE become a drinker, as you say.
