Spaceway 2 Launch thread - It's up!

[LonghornXP]

The plan is this and as always things can change but as long as SW2 gets up before years end things should stay on schedule within a month. They plan on giving every HD customer a free or very very small upgrade fee around the summer even if your outside a market without the new HD local services. They will wait until around the summer for enough supply and customers will be upgraded between that time until the end of 2006. Next years Sunday Ticket customers will get upgraded before next years Sunday Ticket season.

They will swap out an HD Tivo for their new HD DVR box just so you know. A customer with an HD box can get an HD DVR if they pay the difference or they can rent the box at a discount if they return their existing HD box.

Next years football season will be all MPEG4 on the HD side and you will get a letter telling you that you must get your dish and boxes swapped within this time frame to get the HD games. If you don't comply you will not get a credit .

Once every HD box is swapped along with the dish by the end of 2006 they will convert everything into MPEG4. They will start offering extra national HD channels after the NFL season (this is for sure this year) in both MPEG2 and MPEG4 for those in those top markets. This will hold everyone over until everything gets switched over at which time they will start to add much more of what is out in the market. For now if your outside of the listed markets for HD locals you will not get an upgrade because of the supply at this point. Pretty much all new customers within the next six months or so will get the new dish and boxes from the start.

Also for customers within the listed markets for HD locals will get every current national HD channel in MPEG4 but they will remain in MPEG2 for now until everyone gets upgraded.

 

[hahler2]

Have you heard what national HD channels they are going to offer after football season is done? I just got HD and it's hard to watch anything but HD after you get used to it!

 

[LonghornXP]

Have you heard what national HD channels they are going to offer after football season is done? I just got HD and it's hard to watch anything but HD after you get used to it!

Firstly I must stress that these channel offerings aren't final and may or may not come to the lineup. They are looking at getting Cinemax HD, TMC HD and Starz HD on the premium channel sides.

They are looking to get InHD 1 & 2 (even if that means taking InDemand to court) as they see this channel getting more sports content in the future. The Voom suite will be something that would be a long term as in 2007 timeframe sadly. Besides these channels they will have TNT HD plus their Fox HD package that will have more information announced after the first of the year.

Just so you know TNT HD and the Fox HD suite are pretty much sure locks right now but the question will always be when they will be offered and not if they will be. ESPN 2 HD is an example of what I meant above.

They are also looking at MTV HD, FoodTV HD and NGC HD for the HD Package but those talks aren't in high gear like the others. Just remember that they are spending nearly all of their time and money on getting carriage deals for those LIL markets. Also keep in mind that say if you have one station that is owned by Sinclair that once DirecTV makes a deal with Sinclair that deal would provide carriage of all Sinclair owned stations in all markets even if they are different networks like say ABC in one market and a WB in another market. Also Sinclair does have a deal in place today with DirecTV for LIL HD carriage. Pretty much all of the top 20 markets or so are either owned by the network itself or by a bigger player such as Sinclair and Viacom for example.

 

[sltmag]

Cinemax and Starz HD alone would be great additions. With a good LIL selection, and INHD 1 and 2, I would have totally replaced Comcast as far as station selection. Hopefully the quality will be up to snuff.

 

[rad]

Longhorn, I'm trying to put your two latest posts together. So are you saying that the new national channels that you mentioned won't be coming until summer next year when they can start swapping out folks that aren't in the LIL-HD markets? Wouldn't it cause a lot of customer dissatifacation if they roll something like TNT-HD/FOX-HD out on SW1/2 in February but someone in Iowa City couldn't get it since they can't get the MPEG4 box and digh until summer?

Also, have you heard anything about adding the RSN HD channels when a market get LIL-HD? Since D* is sports orientated I would think that would be a big plus for them over E*. Thanks

 

[hancox]

Once every HD box is swapped along with the dish by the end of 2006 they will convert everything into MPEG4. They will start offering extra national HD channels after the NFL season (this is for sure this year) in both MPEG2 and MPEG4 for those in those top markets.

I've always wondered about this... Will D* simulcast the current MPEG2 HD set in MPEG4 during the rollout? If they do, and there's a BIG PQ difference, we might see a stampede of switch-outs.

 

[jabd]

LonghornXP,
When you refer to the "listed markets for HD locals", do you mean the top 25 DMA's?

 

[chewwy420]

So if they do simulcast the MPEG2 stuff on MPEG4 then I guess that means that you will not need the additional 2 LNB's since you will not need to pick up 110 or 119 any more, unless your locals are on 110 or 119. That would be cool!

 

[shappyss]

I've always wondered about this... Will D* simulcast the current MPEG2 HD set in MPEG4 during the rollout? If they do, and there's a BIG PQ difference, we might see a stampede of switch-outs.

I don't think they will for two reasons
1) I think spaceway is mostly spot-beam and they want to reserve the conus for future additions
2) at some point they will want to take it off spaceway and then everyone who cannot see 110 will complain that they used to get the channel and now they can't

 

[hahler2]

Longhorn. That's great news! The more HD the better. As always, thank you for your excellent information. We really appreciate it here!

 

[CWS_kahuna]

So it sounds like January could be a good month on the HD front. How many channels can D* realistically put up in Mpeg 2 HD once Sunday Ticket is done for the year? How long will Mpeg 4 upgrades be limited to what Mpeg 2 can handle? I could personally wait for channels like Cinemax HD, TMC HD & Starz HD because those are premium pay channels and I'd first like to see more HD package channels added for everybody. I do know that there is a demand for those channels though but I feel HBO & Showtime covers the need for now.

I'm kinda surprised Longhorn did not mention channels like WB & UPN, even PBS. I kinda figured those would be part of the whole Mpeg 4 LIL push and maybe they still will be. I also see there was no mention of the Outdoor Channel 2 HD will this channel ever find a home?

 

[hahler2]

I would agree with you there CWS_kahuna. While I think StarzHD would be especially nice, I would much rather see them add non premium channels to the HD pack and save the premium stuff til MPEG4.

 

[JustBob]

I still don't understand how DirecTV is going to add any new MPEG2 HD channels. They have just as many Sunday Ticket HD games as last year and we were guessing they'd use that bandwidth after the NFL season to add other HD channels but they didn't. How is this year going to be any different? They haven't increased their MPEG2 bandwidth. Anything new will have to be MPEG4.

-JustBob

 

[Smthkd]

We thought they were going to do it last year because they (D*) expected to have both SW1 and SW2 up and operational with MPEG4 by then, they were planning on having this years NFLST in MPEG4. Thats how they were going to provide more HD channels, the moving of the ST to MPEG4 would have made bandwidth available in MPEG2 but of course that never happened! But, now since SW1 is up and working fine with SW2 launching Nov 9th, its possible that that additional bandwidth my become free again after this years NFL season. Next year the NFLST will be imoved MPEG4 for sure allowing for more possible HD channels to take those unused spots!

 

[LonghornXP]

I'm going to explain how they are going to use these two new satellites which are SW 1 & 2. They will be using these two satellites as two big spotbeams. One satellite for the western US and another satellite for the eastern US. That was one of the big reasons why they only announced the first 12 markets because those markets are all eastern US markets. LA doesn't count because they are currently on conus today along with the NY markets. Once SW 2 got up and working they announced a total of about 24 markets. They had enough conus space if needed to provide the big 4 networks for the top 12 markets if SW1 didn't go up. Now that Spaceway 1 is up they announced the next 12 markets which again they can offer conus only just in case spaceway 2 doesn't go up. If spaceway 2 goes up and is fully working they will announce more markets. I hope this gives you a better understanding of why they are doing these the way they are.

So when both spaceway 1 and 2 are up and working as expected they both will fuction as two big spotbeams with each serving one side of the USA.

This allows them to fully use the satellite to offer many more channels and allow all markets to overcome rain fade which does have more problems with KA than KU so having one higher powered spotbeam just covering one side of the US takes less bandwidth than having many spot beams always adjusting the power from market to market. Making many spotbeams on the fly does take more bandwidth because of error correction among other things.

Because DirecTV will be offering nearby HD locals to many markets that makes things much easier with a big spotbeam system as well.

But as with anything this system needs both satellites working at all times to offer national HD channels. So for example they can add Starz HD (a national channel) on both satellites as a spotbeamed channel the same way they will for say the Boston local ABC HD feed. So they using this system can offer Starz HD in the same amount of bandwidth as offering those local HD channels.

Each of these two satellites can from what I hear offer about 400 or so HD channels via one big spotbeam give or take 50 channels each way. So even at worse they can offer 350x2 or 700 HD channels using this system.

So lets say if they put every national HD feed on these satellites and see what they would have left over for HD LIL channels.

12 total NFL Sunday Ticket feeds or 24 spotbeam channels.
HDNet, HDNet Movies, InHD 1 & 2, ESPN HD 1 & 2, TNT HD, Universal HD, Wealth HD, OLN HD, MTV HD, NGC HD, FoodTV HD, Fox HD suite (lets say 5 HD channels) and the Voom21 suite.

So each of these channels above must count as two spotbeamed channels so we get a total of 78 spotbeamed channels. Now add the 78+24=102. Now add another 8 spotbeamed channels for stuff like HD PPV and sporting special events. So we have 110 total spotbeamed channels. Now if we add in HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, TMC and Starz HD feeds we would get another 10 spotbeamed channels for a total now of 120 total spotbeamed channels.

So if we now take at worse case 700 total available spotbeamed channels - 120 spotbeamed channels for pretty much all national HD channels out today we would have 580 spotbeamed channels left. So lets say that each and every market has 10 total HD local channels including RSNs, WB and UPN channels. We all know that not all markets will have 10 total feeds to carry but hey what the heck.

So that leaves us with 58 total markets they can serve for HD locals and RSNs until one of two things occur. They get everyone upgraded to MPEG4 boxes this allowing all MPEG2 channels on current satellites to be removed and new bandwidth created with new channel offerings which will be in MPEG4. Or the second option would be the two next satellites going up working the sameway that have even more bandwidth being used this way compared to spaceway 1 & 2.

So I hope this now gives you sometype of idear how these new satellites will be doing what they will be doing.

Edit..Also next years NFL Sunday Ticket won't be offered in MPEG2 so after this football season they will add a few extra HD channels in both MPEG2 and MPEG4 until they can get boxes swapped out. They are planning to get all HD customers boxes swapped out first (even if your not going to get HD locals yet because they don't need to replace your dish) once supply picks up because even without the dish being replaced they can move all existing HD channels to MPEG4 so doing this and removing the bandwidth for NFL ST games after the first of the year would allow a great increase in bandwidth for everyone. Swapping out boxes would be much quicker than sending a tech to install a new dish for everyone. Now I hope you can see what their plans are and why they are doing things this way.

 

[raoul5788]

I'm going to explain how they are going to use these two new satellites which are SW 1 & 2. They will be using these two satellites as two big spotbeams. One satellite for the western US and another satellite for the eastern US. That was one of the big reasons why they only announced the first 12 markets because those markets are all eastern US markets. LA doesn't count because they are currently on conus today along with the NY markets. Once SW 2 got up and working they announced a total of about 24 markets. They had enough conus space if needed to provide the big 4 networks for the top 12 markets if SW1 didn't go up. Now that Spaceway 1 is up they announced the next 12 markets which again they can offer conus only just in case spaceway 2 doesn't go up. If spaceway 2 goes up and is fully working they will announce more markets. I hope this gives you a better understanding of why they are doing these the way they are.

So when both spaceway 1 and 2 are up and working as expected they both will fuction as two big spotbeams with each serving one side of the USA.

This allows them to fully use the satellite to offer many more channels and allow all markets to overcome rain fade which does have more problems with KA than KU so having one higher powered spotbeam just covering one side of the US takes less bandwidth than having many spot beams always adjusting the power from market to market. Making many spotbeams on the fly does take more bandwidth because of error correction among other things.

Because DirecTV will be offering nearby HD locals to many markets that makes things much easier with a big spotbeam system as well.

But as with anything this system needs both satellites working at all times to offer national HD channels. So for example they can add Starz HD (a national channel) on both satellites as a spotbeamed channel the same way they will for say the Boston local ABC HD feed. So they using this system can offer Starz HD in the same amount of bandwidth as offering those local HD channels.

Each of these two satellites can from what I hear offer about 400 or so HD channels via one big spotbeam give or take 50 channels each way. So even at worse they can offer 350x2 or 700 HD channels using this system.

So lets say if they put every national HD feed on these satellites and see what they would have left over for HD LIL channels.

12 total NFL Sunday Ticket feeds or 24 spotbeam channels.
HDNet, HDNet Movies, InHD 1 & 2, ESPN HD 1 & 2, TNT HD, Universal HD, Wealth HD, OLN HD, MTV HD, NGC HD, FoodTV HD, Fox HD suite (lets say 5 HD channels) and the Voom21 suite.

So each of these channels above must count as two spotbeamed channels so we get a total of 78 spotbeamed channels. Now add the 78+24=102. Now add another 8 spotbeamed channels for stuff like HD PPV and sporting special events. So we have 110 total spotbeamed channels. Now if we add in HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, TMC and Starz HD feeds we would get another 10 spotbeamed channels for a total now of 120 total spotbeamed channels.

So if we now take at worse case 700 total available spotbeamed channels - 120 spotbeamed channels for pretty much all national HD channels out today we would have 580 spotbeamed channels left. So lets say that each and every market has 10 total HD local channels including RSNs, WB and UPN channels. We all know that not all markets will have 10 total feeds to carry but hey what the heck.

So that leaves us with 58 total markets they can serve for HD locals and RSNs until one of two things occur. They get everyone upgraded to MPEG4 boxes this allowing all MPEG2 channels on current satellites to be removed and new bandwidth created with new channel offerings which will be in MPEG4. Or the second option would be the two next satellites going up working the sameway that have even more bandwidth being used this way compared to spaceway 1 & 2.

So I hope this now gives you sometype of idear how these new satellites will be doing what they will be doing.

Edit..Also next years NFL Sunday Ticket won't be offered in MPEG2 so after this football season they will add a few extra HD channels in both MPEG2 and MPEG4 until they can get boxes swapped out. They are planning to get all HD customers boxes swapped out first (even if your not going to get HD locals yet because they don't need to replace your dish) once supply picks up because even without the dish being replaced they can move all existing HD channels to MPEG4 so doing this and removing the bandwidth for NFL ST games after the first of the year would allow a great increase in bandwidth for everyone. Swapping out boxes would be much quicker than sending a tech to install a new dish for everyone. Now I hope you can see what their plans are and why they are doing things this way.

LonghornXP
Did I read you correctly, that D* will be offering SV channels in HD?

Chip

 

[charper1]

At what geographical point to we start saying WESTERN? Most people say the MS River as does the FCC, but lets say Houston or Dallas, TX because they will fight you to prove they are Westerners. These are the Western DMAs in the top 24 as of the latest list and this represents a lot of viewers and unlike the NCAA we don't want to see any East Coast bias. LOL!

10 of 24 or 42% of the top 24

#02 Los Angeles
#06 San Francisco-Oak-San Jose
#07 Dallas-Ft. Worth
#10 Houston
#13 Seattle-Tacoma
#14 Phoenix (fastest growing metro area)
#15 Minneapolis-St. Paul
#18 Denver
#19 Sacramnto-Stkton-Modesto
#23 Portland, OR

 

[LonghornXP]

LonghornXP
Did I read you correctly, that D* will be offering SV channels in HD?

Chip

If SV means significantly viewed as I think it does than yes they are indeed looking at doing this as long as that nearby market has HD locals up and running. So because the Boston HD locals will be part of the top 12 markets if your living in an area much outside of Boston where you qualify for the Boston HD locals via significantly viewed rules than you would get both the SD and HD feeds of those Boston local channels.

They also have plans to work with the local channels to give customers the closest nearby market that has HD locals available until they can get their own HD local channels because the local networks will understand that this would only be a short term deal. So from Sinclairs point of view they don't care which of the Sinclair stations a customer views only that they get paid for that customers viewing. As long as DirecTV has a deal with as many station owning companies as they can they can have a shot at being able todo this. The problem always was that Sinclair for example didn't want a national ABC HD feed being offered to a customer in a market where Sinclair owned that local ABC station because they wouldn't get any money from that customer. If Sinclair can get all the money they don't care.

It all evens out in the whole scheme of things. Some markets would lose a viewer but that station owner would make it up by getting money from customers they wouldn't normally get.

 

[LonghornXP]

At what geographical point to we start saying WESTERN? Most people say the MS River as does the FCC, but lets say Houston or Dallas, TX because they will fight you to prove they are Westerners. These are the Western DMAs in the top 24 as of the latest list and this represents a lot of viewers and unlike the NCAA we don't want to see any East Coast bias. LOL!

10 of 24 or 42% of the top 24

#02 Los Angeles
#06 San Francisco-Oak-San Jose
#07 Dallas-Ft. Worth
#10 Houston
#13 Seattle-Tacoma
#14 Phoenix (fastest growing metro area)
#15 Minneapolis-St. Paul
#18 Denver
#19 Sacramnto-Stkton-Modesto
#23 Portland, OR

DirecTV will decide what their borders are. Just understand that both spotbeams will at some point in the middle cover the same area so you won't have any areas that won't get serviced by this. Once both Spaceway 1 and 2 are up and working the markets will be added solely based on their DMA.

Edit...Don't worry the first 25 DMAs will be up way before summetime that is for sure but again if spaceway 2 say doesn't work once up that would greatly limit how many extra markets beyond the first 25 they can do as well as how many national HD channels they can offer in the short term future because they would use their only satellite as a spotbeam satellite with spotbeams created on the fly. Again to make best use of power and bandwidth they must rely on both satellites being up with one satellite having one spotbeam covering one half of the US and vice versa.

 

[Newshawk]

That was one of the big reasons why they only announced the first 12 markets because those markets are all eastern US markets. LA doesn't count because they are currently on conus today along with the NY markets.

Actually, Longhorn, there are two west coast markets on the first 12 list. You forgot San Francsico. However, as all the new dishes have the ability to see both of the SW satellites, I'm sure it'll be easy to put the SF spot on SW1 now and move it to SW2 when it gets handed over to D* by B*(oeing).