The two Spaceway sats were built for two-way Internet use then inherited by DirecTV and not built to any of their specs. The Spaceway 1 battery failure should have nothing to do with the rest of the DirecTV satellite fleet.
Hughes/DTV really had no choice but to re-purpose the Spacways for TV linear service because it would take too much time to start from square one and design, build DBS sats and then obtain DBS licences and slots, and that would allow Dish to have large lead. The Spaceway satellites were hastily re-purposed from ISP via satellite use (that is why it was a Ka band sat in the first place) to DBS use and efficiencies by Boeing at the swift direction of Hughes with DirecTV being only a brand/moniker then, not a separate company, yet. So, it really wasn't an inheritance by DTV as DTV did not exist as a separate company, yet. DirecTV was just a brand/moniker, but DTV was always Hughes owned and operated. Hughes/DTV decided to abandon their big plans to use the mighty constellation of Spaceway sats for the planned massive DirecTV ISP service and, instead decided to invest in High Definition TV capacity. Subsequently, News Corp, became the then new owner of Hughes--and the DTV service still not a separate company, yet--and News Corp had kept Spaceway sats after the sale of Hughes Network Systems to Boeing.
After DTV made public its ISP intentions without any emphasis on High Def investment, Dish, likely feeling safe to show its cards after DTV's plans for ISP made public, announced that they would NOT go down the ISP road as had been speculated, but instead would invest in High Def channels capacity. Just two weeks
after Dish made its plans for High Def public, DTV, announced a change in its plans: it would abandon the mighty Spaceway for ISP and, instead, invest in High Def, just as Dish was planning, but it would use its Spaceway sats to achieve this. Hughes/DTV had to re purpose the Spaceway Ka sats because starting over again trying to build more DBS sats and obtain additional DBS licences and slots would take too much time and allow Dish to have a lead in offering more HDTV.
It was an odd time for both Dish and DTV back then. There were very few, nearly zilch High Def programming at the time, so it was widely thought that DBS simply had to provide some form of internet service both to offer some sort of bundle to compete with cable TV or at least to provide the more advanced TV services such as On Demand viewing and guide enhancements with access to the internet (instead of the current manner in which a sat box is connected to the customers separate, terrestrial, in most cases, ISP). Neither Dish nor DTV could do both; they had to choose ONE because the costs for just one or the other would cost Billions. Invest in ISP, which seemed a sure bet, or invest in High Def capacity in the belief (or hope) that High Def TV content would become ubiquitous in the years it takes to build and launch sats and have room for HDTV capacity growth.
As usual, Charlie made the best bet for the time. Ergen had said publicly at the time that his customers didn't seem to want Dish to provide internet as part of their TV services (and they were seriously considering integrating access to internet to improve the TV service), but customers did seem to say they want MORE HD--at a time when there was hardly any HD content. It was a "chicken and the egg" conundrum for both Dish and DTV, and was interesting that DTV was betting on ISP.
It was kind of sad to see DTV abandon the Spaceway for ISP because the specs looked so good at the time, but after Dish made its public announcement that it was going all-in for HD, DTV must have felt that they could not allow Dish to offer lots of HD, while DTV could not. It was a wise, but sad, decision for DTV to abandon the ISP route for future HDTV bandwidth to stay competitive with Dish.
Of course, even with the changes made to the Spaceway fleet to better deliver live linear TV, DTV was stuck with its acquisition of Ka licences--and slots. Ka's lower power compared to Ku DBS was not seen as a terrible compromise for
INTERNET use because the user (browser/router) could easily request for any dropped packets to be resent. That was and still is how the internet works. However, for Live linear TV streaming DBS providers having frequent dropped packets is unacceptable because it results interruptions of the live TV stream where dropped packets are gone for good and the TV channels having no way of re-sending dropped packets. However, even with alterations made on the Spaceway sats, the lower power Ka band would present problems during inclement weather, and to this day does haunt DTV's HD content on its Spaceways compared to Dish's more powerful Ku DBS sats it uses for almost all its SD and HD content (Internationals on Dish use Ku FSS, not DBS spectrum).
The unreliability of the HD content during rain--in areas with fair amounts of rain, not the drought or infrequent rain areas--was the only complaint I heard about DTV
BEFORE the AT&T acquisition. DTV back then was a good, premium service. However, since the AT&T Death Star acquisition, they are more complaints and louder sounds of dissatisfaction from DTV reaching the level of Comcast.
spacenews.com
