Why are there MPEG FTA channels?

[aaron01]

Nice pic.. that set someone back a few bucks!

 

[Wholeshoe]

Yup but they can deliever up to 35 satellites with one dish. Right now they are looking at 10. But should the need arise they can just add a feed and get a whole new satellite.

I was quite the expierence to put one in. I am glad they send a guy along with the dish to tell us how to assemble it and point it for us. We did all of the grunt work while he told us what to do. He pointed it and aligned all of the feeds. It is working great.

Wholeshoe

 

[Wholeshoe]

Bucks? You don't want to know what one costs installed.

 

[W_Tracy_Parnell]

He probably will not get CBC once the analog signals are switched off. The digital signal of the Canadian channels are very low powered. I think CBC Toronto is only 38kW. I am about an hour east of Toronto and can get the analog signals, but nothing of the any of the digital signals. Have a look at this link for station power levels:
http://www.remotecentral.com/hdtv/index.html

Larry,

I have heard that once the stations stop running both digital and analog that they will up the power on digital-hope that is the case.

 

[sharris]

The canadian gov't, unlike the US, never has mandated HDTV signal switchover, so as far as I know, the HDTV thing up here is just for the picture and to get the masses to watch their channels instead of the analog ones.

My memory is good but short....Did the US not make law that all analog was to disappear 2012 or something like that, and HDTV was to be the broadcasting standard?

 

[Shawn95GT]

The canadian gov't, unlike the US, never has mandated HDTV signal switchover, so as far as I know, the HDTV thing up here is just for the picture and to get the masses to watch their channels instead of the analog ones.
My memory is good but short....Did the US not make law that all analog was to disappear 2012 or something like that, and HDTV was to be the broadcasting standard?

The US didnt' mandate HDTV either - just digital.

HDTV is just gravy.

 

[mdovell]

From what I understand February 19th 2009 (it was supposed to be this year but delayed a bit) is when the turnoff of the analog would be. they want to use that spectrum for emergancy responders. The concept being is that during 9/11 the 911 systems, police channels, fire dept, ems etc were nearly jammed with so much usage.

Freeing this up at least in the governments eyes means people have better looking tv and we have better communications.

Of course with this being I don't totally agree with all the licenses being given to the same older companies for hardly any money....but at least things will look better.

I don't think that cable or satellite will go 100% hd for awhile simply due to the demand. The sports, nature, major networks and movie channels are already hd. But the demand for say a G4, Oxygen or tv land might not be as much.

I agree though that if most was put FTA and had commericals the audience could be totally huge.

 

[Tron]

There's also a bandwidth consideration for cable TV when adding HD channels. Cox Cable here in New Orleans can add 6 digital SD channels for every analog channel's bandwidth. They can only add one or two HD channels in that bandwidth.

 

[ftarock]

Remember the story happened couple months ago regarding the channels on G10R Ku got encrypted because they found out some can watch NFL FTA without buying NFL package???? Perfect example....

Once FTA becomes anything more than a niche market in the USA, expect ALL transmissions other than raw feeds or religious and infomercials and government propaganda (foreign and domestic) to be encrypted.
The entities who own the broadcast rights, for example the other UPN affiliates who have bought exclusive rights to air a specific program in a specific market, will not tolerate people getting the same signal from somewhere else while bypassing their local advertisers.