Special Hurricane Idalia Coverage on DIRECTV Satellite

[Tom Speer]

The path of the storm along the coast will determine how much threat there is to North Carolina. If it tracks just off the coast, it creates a strong NE wind, which for the New Bern, NC area, where I spend the colder months, creates serious flooding for my neighbors. A strong NE wind blowing over the relatively shallow Pamlico Sound pushes water up the estuary of the Neuse river, which narrows like a funnel. The Trent River which joins the Neuse at New Bern can rise 8 to 10 feet. My home there is well above any flood level, so we are not concerned. But about 500 homes in our little community of River Bend were flooded in Hurricane Florence a few years ago. The other threat will be river flooding a few miles inland, regardless of the exact track of the storm.

 

[videojanitor]

One possible explanation for why they are carrying the SD versions of those local channels. The SD feeds to the T9 spotbeams for the Tampa area are uplinked through the LABC. The HD feeds are uplinked through the SWUF and NEUF. It may ave been easier to patch those SD versions onto the mix and severe weather channels within the LABC.

Can you expand on the meanings of LABC, SWUF, and NEUF? What would be interesting is if someone here is in the Tampa area, if they could report what they‘re seeing if they tune to WTVT or WFTS. If they look like “normal” HD, then we would know that DirecTV has access to those feeds,

 

[lordodogg]

Can you expand on the meanings of LABC, SWUF, and NEUF?

LABC = Los Angeles Broadcast Center
SWUF = Southwest Uplink Facility
NEUF = Northeast Uplink Facility

 

[videojanitor]

LABC = Los Angeles Broadcast Center
SWUF = Southwest Uplink Facility
NEUF = Northeast Uplink Facility

Thanks. I just tuned in and now seeing WFTV (Orlando) for the first time — it’s also stretched SD.

 

[harshness]

Why wouldn't they offer these to Stream customers?

Perhaps because Stream customers have direct access to their local stations without putting DIRECTV in the middle?

 

[lordodogg]

Or see post 14!

 

[harshness]

Or see post 14!

I'm not sure what you mean by "moving box" but I suspect that's not a problem for streaming devices as that's typically how their UIs are built.

 

[lordodogg]

I'm not sure what you mean by "moving box"

I’m talking about the blue (previously yellow) highlight box that’s shown around whatever channel you highlight on a mix channel. Here is a pic of the sportsmix (205) I found where you can see it. It’s on 239 AUDIENCE:

It’s really not possible to include those on phones and tablets since you would have to either include arrow buttons or make it so you can move the box over to another channel by swiping where the channel number and name of channel is. It’s a different story though for streaming boxes since there’s limitations (e.g. Apple doesn’t allow developers to include embedded HTML content, a category something like this would fall under, in their Apple TV apps)

 

[KyL416]

They also added WTOC Savannah into the rotation this morning. The Tallahassee stations are showing regular programming again

So far only the Tampa and Orlando feeds have been SD, every other market has been HD

 

[KyL416]

They now have WFOX Jacksonville in the rotation.

 

[Tom Speer]

LABC = Los Angeles Broadcast Center
SWUF = Southwest Uplink Facility
NEUF = Northeast Uplink Facility

Thanks. I just tuned in and now seeing WFTV (Orlando) for the first time — it’s also stretched SD.

Just as DirecTV reuses the same tranponder frequencies for spot beams to different geographic areas, their uplinks reuse frequencies by uploading from different parts of the country. Each National or spot beam transponder on the satellites is hard wired to one or two receive antennas with a narrow reception pattern. The link between the Transponder and it's uplink is documented in the Satellite Transponder tables inthe technical resources forum.

 

[videojanitor]

Just as DirecTV reuses the same tranponder frequencies for spot beams to different geographic areas, their uplinks reuse frequencies by uploading from different parts of the country. Each National or spot beam transponder on the satellites is hard wired to one or two receive antennas with a narrow reception pattern. The link between the Transponder and it's uplink is documented in the Satellite Transponder tables inthe technical resources forum.

Thanks for the info -- much appreciated. In thinking about this particular situation though, the uplink and/or spot beams are part of the DirecTVs final distribution to customers -- the issue here appears to be with the path the local stations use to get their signal TO DirecTV.

Example, when I worked in TV (retired a few years ago), DirecTV carried our station in SD and HD -- however, we only sent them an HD feed (via fiber). Somewhere in the bowels of their operations center, they downconverted the HD to create a separate SD version.

What's interesting about the presentation on 361-2 is that there is obviously a human sitting there, monitoring the various channels and switching between them (with fades no less) at will. The feeds they're looking at should be what is INCOMING to them, which would not involve satellites at all -- hence it's odd that any of them would be SD. But hey, I'm not going to dwell on it -- it's just interesting to try to figure out.

 

[Tom Speer]

They downconvert the HD feeds to SD and send each to its respective uplink facility, multiplexed with the other channels on that transponder. Any humans switching those severe weather feeds are at tthe LABC. My only point is that the SD feeds may be more readily available for this quick temporary provisioning of the severe weather channel, for reasons that I don't understand. Tallahassee, Savannah and Jacksonville no longer have any SD duplicates on DirecTV, so they only had the HD feeds to switch in.

 

[KyL416]

All the stations went back to regular programming tonight, so the Severe Weather Channels have been removed.

 

[lordodogg]

Will this thread be locked now that they’re gone?