Some Thoughts About The Future

[dragon002]

Sounds like a pipe dream to me as those spots (99 and 103) are not DBS Spots which means lower powered satellites also meaning larger dishes (Aka the SuperDish)

This faced with the costs of moving almost every dish out there (plus all the new 5 LNB Dishes make it unrealistic.

The things I am seeing from DirecTV as of late SCARE the hell out of me, there are doing some STUPID things that I wouldnt even expect Charlie to do. (And Charlie does some STUPID things!)

what do you mean move all the dishes out there, hell if we went only 99,101,103 there would be almost no moves, and by 2009 both companies are going to replace EVERY IRD out there.

 

[Roger]

Care to elaborate? (Not calling you out. Just really intersted in your opinion.)

Ditto!

 

[rocatman]

If the ka is so much more suseptiable to rain and weather, why would they consider using that band ?

I use to use that band with my old BUD .

Jimbo

The original plans for the Spaceway Ka band satellites was for broadband access which for that application can tolerate data dropout with error correction and if needed reduced downlink speeds. Near real time video i.e., television programming can not tolerate the type of data dropout from rain fade. A few years back a determination was made that broadband access via satellite would not be financially feasible at the scales of the Spaceway satellites so because of the hundreds of millions that were already spent on the satellites DirecTV needed to come up with another use so it was decided to use them for television. Obviously your old BUD was much larger than even the AT9 dish so rain fade would be much less of an issue. Certainly the bandwidth efficiency of the Ka band downlinked to your old BUD was no where near what DirecTV is using with the Spaceway satellites icluding the error correction.

 

[Doctor Bob]

RONTGLMAO.... I can think of 1,786 stupid things that Charlie and Eddie did back in 1994... Just think how that number has grown in the 12 years, since they started!!!! Both Companies are doomed to Mediocrity, at this point in the game, simply because there is no preceived value in their product!!! But hey we are the ones that made them millionaires!!!

The first "Big" mistake that was made, was Charlie bringing a knife, to a gun fight, when he decided to drop the price of the system to $149.00 back in 1996!!! From that day forward, everything went to hell, and it still keeps going to hell...

 

[Stargazer]

Large price drop, free install, free this, free that. It is good for the consumer but bad in a way as a business decision. You attract a lot more high risk customers but you also attract customers that would have never signed up for service if they would have had to shell out a lot of money to have it installed. None of us want to have to pay a lot of money to get the service or to get upgrades. It all depends on how you look at it.

 

[pmayo]

Directv/ news corp may buy HNS

Your first premise is 100% wrong. DTV just sold it's remaining interest in HNS to SkyTerra. DTV no longer has any part of HNS. When GM spun off DTV there was never any interest by old Ruppert in the data side of Hughes Communications. The satellite business was sold off to Boeing by GM and now the remaining HNS operations in Maryland are part of SkyTerra.

 

[dragon002]

It is obvious that you don't understand some of the basics associated with what determines the size of a dish that is needed to receive Ka and regular Ku band. Smaller dishes can be used for DBS Ku band primarily because of the minimum of 9 degrees of spacing between DBS orbital slots. Regular Ku band and Ka band need larger dishes because the spacing between slots is much smaller, around 2 degrees and a larger dish is needed to clearly focus the signal. For example Dish's Superdish is as large as it is not because of the spread between 105 W and 119 W but because the signal from 105 W is regular Ku band. In fact, Dish folks found that they could rig a Superdish to get 105, 110, 119 and 129 W. This demonstrated that the Superdish was designed as large as it is not because of the spread between slots but because of the regular Ku band used. In addition, Ka band is far more susceptible to rain fade than Ku band and a larger dish helps with that. So what you propose probably would not reduce the size of the AT 9 dish much if at all.

rocatman......did you see todays news on the new smaller dish?????????:devil: