It's too bad the 24/7 news channels have decided image quality is unimportant and you get stuff that looks awful.
US Satellite TV's future?
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It's too bad the 24/7 news channels have decided image quality is unimportant and you get stuff that looks awful.
patience, grasshoppa. AMC-1 will be replaced soon.
to another posting: as for the 79 deg W slot, I wouldn't expect anyone to file for it - a glut of inventory in North America as it is (except for presidential election night).
I expect to see a lot of internet-fed crud video will be used from campaign HQ's due to lack of satellite capacity for that one night.
Unfortunately, few people care more about quality than they do about quantity. That is why even pay satellite PQ has gone into the dirt. Watching video on handheld devices has probably contributed to this, as even a low bitrate, blocky picture looks fine on the 2" display of a cell phone.
skysurfer said:
Actually, this technology looks fantastic! It is capable of full bandwidth high PQ HD.
This technology uses multiple 3G and 4G connections and manages the transport stream between multiple and similtaineous connections. If one connection is dropping packets it searches and connects to as many 3G and 4G as needed to support the desired bandwidth.
It can be used even while in motion. Something that isn't possible with satellite or terrestrial backhauls.
Many live event units are using technology like the LTN product to backhaul using public Internet. All you need is 25% more bandwidth headroom than your transmitting. The technology rebuilds the stream at nodes to provide error free and real-time delivery of standard or high definition material. Many of the major networks are using this and similar technology to backhaul their events. A friend is booking commercial fixed IP accounts for his network events such as the Republican Convention and sporting events. They have slashed their backhaul cost to pennies on the dollar and no longer have to roll trucks and crews with major overtime to major events.
Satellite backhaul trucks are still an important part of the live and short notice event technology. But technology is changing..... Quality is not an issue with these true broadcast quality products.
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As my friend who works on Verizon fiber says " Fiber is cheap, easy to work with, and lasts forever" The bandwidth is so huge on fiber that they can cram nearly anything on there.
I love my satellite system (C/Ku 55.5w to 139w), and I get plenty of HD and a lot of different shows off of it. But that does not negate the fact that satellites have to be designed, built, launched, maintained and replaced. Other than maintenance, none of this is required of fiber optics. In the long run, I just don't see the economics of satellite being there.
I love my satellite system (C/Ku 55.5w to 139w), and I get plenty of HD and a lot of different shows off of it. But that does not negate the fact that satellites have to be designed, built, launched, maintained and replaced. Other than maintenance, none of this is required of fiber optics. In the long run, I just don't see the economics of satellite being there.
But your neighbours to the north can get Cuban cigars. I just had a nice Monte Cristo last night, from a friend that just got back from Habana.
Our neighbors everywhere can travel to Cuba, buy Cuban cigars, whatever. We can, however, buy Cuban movies and novels, etc., without limitations or censorship.
Probably..LOL. And I'll have several nice 1.0 and 1.2 meter BIRDBATHS for sale!
Vultures gotta bathe, too!
Replace AMC-1? With what? There is nothing going up in that slot and SES-3 is long gone East. Unless they move a old used satellite to 103W, but that won't gain anything.
Same here. I went through MONTHS and months of growing pains and a massive learning curve before I finally was able to get anything working right.
I fought and fought to get White Springs on 129 and had a really tough time with it due to a loose pole.
When I finally figured it out, replaced the pole and got the dish aimed and tweaked, Whitesprings went bye bye.. :cry:
Same thing with Equity on 123. Same exact scenario. There was a lot of awesome stuff on there and for a very brief time, I was as happy as a clam at high tide..
Then, yep. Same thing again. Bye bye...
Then RTV butchered their picture quality by dropping to from DVD resolution to VHS resolution and putting massively heavy compression on the video.
I fought for months to get C-band going by struggling with a mangled 6' dish (I mangled it) and it was a no-win situation. I was able to piece together a 10' C-band dish and make it work, amazingly enough.
That however has been working wonderfully for me!
Losing Bio and History on 101 really stunk. That was a good, long free ride while it lasted. Again, bye bye... *waves*
Thank goodness for my C-band!!
BUT, Darth Vader recently welcomed me to the Dark Side. I became a Dish Network customer, I now get the AT250 w/Blockbuster package, HD and DVR.
Even so, with all the channels, there's some stuff I can't get on Dish, namely MeTV, ThisTV, RTV and PBJ. I can get MeTV on a local OTA sub but the quality is not very good, the local broadcaster compresses it a lot so it looks pretty shabby.
My dish tuner has a built in ATSC tuner and it will record ATSC and satellite to DVR.
But I don't bother to watch MeTV via my local OTA source because of the low quality. So every night I switch from Dish to C-band at 10pm to watch The Twilight Zone and I watch MeTV the rest of the night until 3am when I switch to ThisTV to watch The Outer Limits, Highway Patrol, etc..I can't and won't live without those two channels and the only way I can get them and get them with a quality picture is via my 10' C-band dish. So that dish is staying to the bitter end and it absolutely will be used a LOT, every single day.
I sure miss the day when there was so much stuff on ku that it was simply unthinkable to even consider subscription TV!
Oh, as to 30w. They DO play some things that are VERY current. TOO current..
A year or so back I aimed at 30w and I was shocked to see them playing the latest Resident Evil movie in high quality (not HD but really decent PQ) while the movie was still playing in US theaters.
The movie had only been released to US theaters a few weeks earlier and those silly guys with their silly green army looking clothes, dirty beards and stinky sticks were airing it on TV for the whole of their population to watch for free.
The only thing was that it had Spanish subtitles but the movie was letter boxed and the subtitles were below the picture and down in the black area. You could have recorded it then cropped it and had a decent copy. The spoken language was 100% English. Many of the movies they air are done that way. Sometimes the subs overlap the video but hey, the price is right..
A year or so back I aimed at 30w and I was shocked to see them playing the latest Resident Evil movie in high quality (not HD but really decent PQ) while the movie was still playing in US theaters.
The movie had only been released to US theaters a few weeks earlier and those silly guys with their silly green army looking clothes, dirty beards and stinky sticks were airing it on TV for the whole of their population to watch for free.
The only thing was that it had Spanish subtitles but the movie was letter boxed and the subtitles were below the picture and down in the black area. You could have recorded it then cropped it and had a decent copy. The spoken language was 100% English. Many of the movies they air are done that way. Sometimes the subs overlap the video but hey, the price is right..
So how hard is it for a guy up in Minnesota to get 30W? I know people here do it, but if it's feasible, it totally sounds like a fun spring project with a dish.
I'd say it is easy to get, but even with a 1 meter dish 30W seems a bit more sensitive to rain fade than anything else we watch. My 30W dish is mounted upside down, looks strange that way.
Disco,
Shouldn't be a difficult project if you have the LOS for the sat (no trees or buildings or what-not in the way).
Use the Sun Outage Calculator so that you can determine if there are any obstructions to the LOS for this sat at your location. The time is coming up in a few days to check this. If you have never used this calculator before, it is quite self-explanatory, just select the sat, enter your earth site coordinates (or select the city), select Ku band, select the dish size, select SPRING of 2012, but be sure to use PC LOCAL TIME for the time zone selection and then just click on CALCULATE.
I calculate that at 7:49 am on 3/3/2012 the sun will be perfectly aligned with 30W from your location. So, if you stand in front of your dish on that day at that time and look towards the sun, that is where the sat will be (dead center in the disc of the sun). Note that there is about one week at least when you can play with this, but on the 3rd at 7:49 it will be most perfect.
Your EIRP is 1 dBW less than what it is for my location, so you are in a slightly lower power zone, but your dish elevation is 1° higher than me (that helps a little).
If you are using a fixed point dish then:
Your dish elevation should be approximately 10°, LNBF skew (polarization) should be ~ -41.8° and true azimuth should be ~109.6°. You won't need the azimuth if you just point your dish towards the sun on the day I specified earlier (3/3 at 7:49 am).
If you are using a motorized dish then:
You don't need to concern yourself with any of the specific angles if your dish is already tracking the arc.
However, you will have to use DiSEqC 1.2 motor positioning (not USALS) to locate the sat.
I think you are between 3° to 4° too far west to be able to use USALS for this satellite.
You will have to step the dish to the east until the signal pops in.
Enter the TP 11.884 V SR 27500 for this satellite and monitor for a signal from this TP.
The minimum recommended dish size is 76 cm. If you have a 90 cm dish or larger, you should definitely have no problems (barring a clear LOS).
RADAR
This is true because from our vantage point, we are looking through a lot of the earth's atmosphere across the low part of the horizon. But, this bird transmits really strong, so it is a lot easier to detect than you might think. As long as it ain't pouring rain to the east.
RADAR
There are lots of foreign channels on Galaxy 19 and Hispasat, and for what reason does all this exist???? Isn't it available so that people outside of that country can view that programming? I could care less about the programs in the Middle East, although it's an oddity to be able to watch that. Why would these broadcasters have any other reason to switch methods? Anywhere you can set up a dish, which is anywhere in the world except for the north & south poles, you can pick up something.
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