Why did analog c band die?

[Techfizzle]

I have been watching shepards chappel on Galaxy 16 for about an hour. I have my dished peaked and there is no sparkies. The only thing I can say is WOW, there is no compression, no artifacts, no bluring, just clean pure video. I think the PQ is much better then any digital system I have seen. Why did it get shamed upon and replaced by something that has worse PQ?

 

[Mr Tony]

easy...money

an analog channel takes up the whole transponder and costs a lot of money.....why have one channel when you can cram (example) 5 networks on one transponder.

Perfect example of analog-digital upgrade recently is both World Harvest (also on G16) and TBN (on G14/G5)
World Harvest use to be 1 analog chanel and 3 or 4 audio subcarriers...now in that same spot they have 3 video and 12 audio channels
TBN was one channel and 2 audio. Now they are 12 channels (the 5 TBN channels in MPEG + the same channels in AC-3 + a HD feed + a blank page)...that allows them to save money and use resources.

sure analog was a clean picture when tuned properly, but sparklies can make a picture look bad. Digital is either there or not. Also that same transponder they (the folks that own the satellites) can break that same transponder into 5 or 6 "mini" transponders for news feeds or sports feeds.

There is just more flexibility with digital then analog.

 

[eurosport]

One word....MONEY. Programmers can digitally cram 6-8 signals in the transponder space of that one analog signal so it's cheaper for them. They tell everybody it's "better" ...most fall for it, (not Satguys) and they- (in the case of cable-type channels) charge the same money for it. Just like this whole OTA digital transition thing, they claim better pic, while the govt. auctions off the extra spectrum for what? You guessed it...MONEY! The one thing I'd like to see is a 1080i HD feed broadcast on C-band in ANALOG. It'll never happen, but imagine THAT picture quality! :up

 

[melgarga]

One word....MONEY. Programmers can digitally cram 6-8 signals in the transponder space of that one analog signal so it's cheaper for them. They tell everybody it's "better" ...most fall for it, (not Satguys) and they- (in the case of cable-type channels) charge the same money for it. Just like this whole OTA digital transition thing, they claim better pic, while the govt. auctions off the extra spectrum for what? You guessed it...MONEY! The one thing I'd like to see is a 1080i HD feed broadcast on C-band in ANALOG. It'll never happen, but imagine THAT picture quality! :up

EXACTLY!
What really makes me want to hurl is the incessant propaganda commercials about how much better OTA broadcast tv is. Garbage! Newer is not always better. The public, aka John Q. Sheep are being terribly mislead all for the sake of the almightly dollar in the government's pocket (apparently they are running low on money to mis-manage)
I used to TVDX in the way-back when even got a few QSL cards from stations, back when they did that. Such low-level signal capture is impossible with digi-crap. Why does that matter? Well, after IKE I was out of power for 13 days, and 17hrs. I ran my 13 " tv on a loop ant off a 200w 12/120v inverter powered from the SUV. I also had a 5" fan for the muggy nights. That was my only link to news/developments for 2 weeks. I did buy a 6kw gen about 4 days into this to timeshare run the well and the frige/freezer, but the tv ran fine on the inverter, so the gen only ran a few hours a day with gas still at $3.50+ at the time.
Point is, no digtal signal would have been usable at the level I was getting, where are the 'cheap' same class as my old 13"er digital tvs? A converter box eh? Has anyone actually looked at the specs on these things? No way a digital signal is usable at as low a level as it's analog counterpart.
PQ is not clearer over analog, unless the back of the compression, which defeats the purpose.
And my final 'observation' is that since digital is much more managable with regards to encryption than analog, look for OTA to become the new pay tv frontier............
dont say I didn't tell you so........

 

[Techfizzle]

I have a digital tuner in my tv. The reception sucks

 

[Mr Tony]

reception here in Minneapolis is great...get channels that I normally got real fuzzy

 

[melgarga]

reception here in Minneapolis is great...get channels that I normally got real fuzzy

Must be reflecting and propogating off all that snow.......lol
Guess it could be that shiny spot on yer forehead..............
Leaf-less trees do wonders for digital receiption, just not that great of a thing for the trees.

 

[Mr Tony]

works great during summer too...even when the leaves are on the trees

but back to the topic of analog C-Band (and KU for that matter) it all comes down to money and how many channels you can fit on that transponder

 

[Techfizzle]

there is still a small, slight fuzziness to the pixture how do i clean it up?

 

[turbosat]

the answer

I call it greed, but yes, it was mostly about money. First the programmers all got greedy when a system came along that allowed others to view their cable-intended programming without paying anybody. Never mind that not everybody wanted, or was allowed to install a 10' satellite dish in their yard, they saw it as the beginning of their end and scrambled all the channels people were wanting to see. Yes, even the "Superstation" scrambled. After Turner wanted the entire country to be able to see his station! Remember when they called the Braves "America's Team" ?
Well, those were the days, and that (this) is progress.
I do enjoy the digital OTA stations, much better pq than I ever got before, living in between 2 mountain ridges. But, it gets iffy when it starts raining, and if there is any lightning-forget digital OTA until its over. Worse than dishnetwork in the rain,lol.

 

[jself1982]

Honestly I am ok with Analog subscriptions and such phasing out on the big dish, but I just wish everything had went to digicipher 2 instead of Powervu, with powervu never ever being an option, with that said, our 4dtv's would actually be more useful and the big dish industry would still be booming. I think that most of the 4dtv master feeds are very good in quality (not as good as analog, but close), imagine what it would have been like for everything to be available in master feed format on 4dtv with our nice flat screen 50" tv's!!

 

[melgarga]

Yes the OP was talking celestial not terrestrial. Same motivation, do more with less, and increase profit margin 6 fold or more. Thing is, when it comes to transponders, there is a finite amount of output to be shared across all inputs, so 'channelizing' a given transponder into 6 paths makes the power available for each 'customer' 1/6th of the total allocated to that transponder, to be fair to the rest of the users on that bird. So, in actuality, a service provider makes 6X the revenue reselling 1X of the product. The customer still has to compensate for the reduced signal at the earth station, and it is just considered part of doing business.
Sounds pretty lucritive, think maybe I'll put me a satellite up and start rakin' in the dough, right after I build that co-gen plant and that solar-cell farm.
....and it will be ALL analog........hehehehe

 

[tvropro]

I have to agree with Greed. Digital can look very good with NO compression but the programmers know they can make more revenue by cramming 10 lbs of crap into a one pound bag. Then use 50% of the station time to push infomercials.

Back in the day when everything was analog the signal looked fantastic. My OTA tv even looked great since I was in a good signal area. But when I got my C band system I hardly ever watched OTA anymore. If I wanted to watch the networks they all were on the birds ITC and looked superior to my OTA locals. (and my OTA's looked good) I got spoiled with the quality of analog satellite. When I got my 4DTV I got kind of bummed with some of the digital channels quality. While the masters looked quite good the reuplinks or over compressed channels didn't even resemble the quality of VHS tape in 6 hour mode.

I've learned to live with the shortcomings of compressed digital to a point and try to ignore the macroblocking and mosquito noise. Now when I watch a true old analog signal I get sad that what I took for granted is almost a memory.

 

[tvropro]

Honestly I am ok with Analog subscriptions and such phasing out on the big dish, but I just wish everything had went to digicipher 2 instead of Powervu, with powervu never ever being an option, with that said, our 4dtv's would actually be more useful and the big dish industry would still be booming. I think that most of the 4dtv master feeds are very good in quality (not as good as analog, but close), imagine what it would have been like for everything to be available in master feed format on 4dtv with our nice flat screen 50" tv's!!

I have to totally agree with everything you said. When I get the occasional DC-2 master ITC that they won't sell to us (you know the ones) I get blown away by the quality. The best DC masters in the sky that we can buy are the HBO (the works) masters. C band is still king there The PowerVu masters can look awesome also when I see them on ITC on my Pansat.

 

[updatelee]

Ive seen locals on DN with the video pid taking LESS then 1mb ! quality has to be like watching lego tv lol

 

[melgarga]

Ive seen locals on DN with the video pid taking LESS then 1mb ! quality has to be like watching lego tv lol

Hmmm........legovision. A new term for the television lexicon. You just might be onto something............

 

[Techfizzle]

Were other brands made?

The only analog receivers I have seen are:
Zenith
Toshiba
Undiden
President
General Instrument
Nextwave
Chaparal
Drake

Did:

Sony
RCA
JVC
Panasonic
Phillips
Magnavox
Mitsubishi
Yamaha
Ever make a cband receiver? I would think at least sony did, but I never seen one.

 

[tvropro]

Uniden and President are the same. There was Tee Comm, HTS, Echosphere, Luxor, MTI, Memorex, DX, Maspro, and more I can't recall right now.

 

[melgarga]

There were several variant of the Houston Tracker series, some had PS issues. I've got one, an HD (Home Direct) like that. If you go pre VC, I've got a couple of old Birdviews, a Toki, Uniden, and several other OLD, LNA based doorstops around here.
...and let's not forget the Echostar......5000 wasnt it?

EDIT - dang, how could I forget about the Luxor.....the most overpriced one of the bunch as I recall.

 

[tvropro]

Hmmm........legovision. A new term for the television lexicon. You just might be onto something............

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