D* Future HD Plans With New Satellites - Page 29  

If you get good quality OTA, consider yourself lucky. Many of us can't get it. I'm in the LA market, but still 65 miles from LA (farther still from the transmitter) I spent a lot of money getting the biggest winegard deep fringe antenna I could find and raising it way above my place. For that i got a couple stations. I ended up taking it down, selling it, and just using D* for the west coast feed of fox, cbs, etc....

Also, there are plenty of people living in condos, townhouses etc, 30+ miles from the transmitter that have the option of putting a dish on a south facing side of the building, but not an antenna.

Does anyone know the answers to the following?

1) Who is the STB manufacturer for DTV Mpeg4 Box.
2) When is DTV releasing there Mpeg4 STB, that H2O is all crap. I spoke to DTV technical ppl and they told me that "H2O does not EXIST"

3)would anybody be technical enough to know what kind of chipset they are using in Mpeg4 STB. Is it broadcom ?

Do hope somebody would be able to answer these queries correctly

1) LG, Thomson, & Humax will manufacture this receiver.
2) August or September. Robert of Value Electronics has seen a pre-production model in operation. Whether the final product is called H20 or something else is irrelevant.
3) This STB will reportedly have the 5th gen. OTA ATSC chipset by LG which is said to deal with multipath problems better than previous versions.

The "Phase 1" MPEG4 dish will reportedly be 24" x 36" and capable of receiving from the 99, 101, 103, 110, & 119 sats. Later, when 110 & 119 have been relegated to specialty usage, a smaller Phase 2 version (maybe 22" x 28") that will receive only from the 99, 101, & 103 sats will become the standard HD dish.

But these wouldn't be DVRs right?

Why bother with an OTA chipset, particularly a new one which is probably costly?

Isn't the point of this receiver to provide you HD LIL?

The DVR is expected a few months later.

Previous STB's have had OTA capability, so I guess D* wanted to continue that for subscribers that get reliable OTA reception, rather than trying to force everyone to subscribe to HD LIL (which I'm sure is going to cost a few bucks extra).

I am more interested in this receiver's ability to give us up to 150 national HD channels.

Well I thought the primary use of these MPEG4 receivers, at least at first, was HD LIL.

Are there even 150 national HD channels? Bet a bunch of them would be premium or PPV.

The OTA tuners are needed because all LIL HD won't be up until 2007.

I'm sure that competition from cable, which is already delivering local HD stations, makes HD LIL the motivation behind this quick implementation of MPEG4.

Even if D* creates some VOOM-like proprietary HD channels, the grand total of national HD channels would be less than 50 right now. That 150 capacity is nice to have as others like SciFi, USA, etc. add HD. Most new HD services would probably be grouped in the HDTV package, which someone posted might go up in price from $11 to $20 at some point. My guess would be a first jump to $15 to see how that flies. The premium HD movie channels like HBO HD will continue to require a subscription to the individual movie service, but each of these services will probably offer multiple HD channels in the future.

The PQ of OTA HD channels, IMO, looks better than D*'s HD channels. I would like to have the option of continuing to receive my locals OTA. They are free and the PQ is better!

I think everyone agrees with that, unless of course your affiliate multicasts the heck out of their channel.

Even when they offer HD-lil for me, the antenna(s) stay.

http://www.arianespace.com/site/news...ase_index.html

Maybe D* will stick with sea launch for future birds. This is getting ridiculous!

"Maybe D* will stick with sea launch for future birds. This is getting ridiculous"

This has to due with COST and SCHEDULES, personnal I'd not do business with these folks (they have had lots of issues in the past), but I'm sure D* had good reasons. Though in reflection it, makes little sense right about now. :(

to add-


They also only plan the big 4 to start.

They have not commited to carying all the digital channels- Just the HD ones.

They may not carry sub channels and sub people might want the local radar or some such.

So OTA will be required for a while.

And this launch is for the satellite that was scheduled in place of the Spaceway 2 launch. I have not seen anything for a couple of weeks regarding the launch of SW 2 and it's troubled companion.

The OTA tuners are needed because all LIL HD won't be up until 2007

Staying with D* (for me) depends upon how the switch is implemented and a few other misc. factors, and OTA onboard is one.
Here in Texas an OTA is a required piece of equipment. With thunderheads often towering 35-45 thousand feet, a weather dropout is quite common even with signal strength dialed in at 97-100 on all 3 LNB’s.

I don't have space in the component rack for a standalone digital/analog OTA tuner, nor room for a bigger rack; so whichever SBC provider I use, having OTA onboard the STB will remain a prerequisite for me.

The PQ of OTA HD channels, IMO, looks better than D*'s HD channels
Reason Two: Unfortunately with all the degradation OTA allows this should never be the case. But it has been my experience very often that this also is true.

DTV is smart to keep all three of the following as launch partners:

sea launch
russians
french - arianspace

They get to play them off against each other.

Also, look at it this way. Let's say the recent sea launch of the spaceway failed. Then maybe sea launch would have suspended launches for 6 months or a year while they sorted things out. (As you point out, the French have certainly done that after their failures). And if DTV's eggs were all in the sea launch basket, then right now they would have NO spaceway satellites in orbit.

The way DTV has arranged their launches, now they have 1 spaceway in orbit while the other is delayed. It could have gone the other way. Sea launch could have delayed while the French launched. Either way, DTV maximized the chances of one of their birds getting up there.

Because it's a new series of satellites, they probably wanted at least one of the birds up there for a few months while they ran extra tests.

Also notice that they gave the other recent satellite to the Russians to launch. I believe the Russians have the best record. So it makes sense for DTV to entrust them with their most important satellite short term. The Spaceways are the future, not the short term.

Yes, it is rocket science. It's also good business to do what DTV did.

That's a matter of opinion (I hardly think you play these guys off against each other, it's about cost and schedule which did not work out too well with this example). Remember it was NOT D* bird that screwed this up but they paid the price anyway.

D* is smart only in the fact that they are not likely to go out of business like Voom. HD, picture quality, and time line are another matter.

So, when is Spaceway2 going up?

End of August or September.

Thank you aaronwt. Are you from another planet?

Like Virginia? :p

Does anyone know, with this multi-LNB dish, how many wires are going to be required to go into the house? The reason I don't have HD now is because I have only one wire from the roof and don't want more, so I stack and destack as necessary, but this only works with the 1 LNB dish. Is the 5 LNB dish gonna need FIVE wires going into the house? Or will they get smart and stack it at the dish and destack at the receiver?

A Wall Street analyst downgraded Tivo today because he predicted that D* would roll out their own DVRs in August or Sept and that these would have all kinds of enticements and advantages, including likely to be given away for free vs. $50 for the DTivo.

So if we're that close it seems there should be definitive plans by now. ARe all the satellites up to start up HD LIL?

The current 3 LNB dish has the mutliswitch at the dish so if you have only one cable, coming in, that is all you need for all three dishes.

Well that's actually one coax cable per tuner, so the dual tuner D* Tivo boxes need two cables.

The new HMC servers are rumored to have 4 tuners, so unless D* comes up with some new stacking scheme, wiring could get ugly.

The R15 DVR which D* will reportedly be releasing soon is SD only. Their HD model isn't expected until late in 2005.

Looks like Spaceway 2 will not be going up until September:

From www.space.com/spacenews:

PARIS — Orbital Sciences Corp. expects to complete repairs on Indonesia’s Telkom-2 telecommunications satellite and return it to its French Guiana launch base in late August, Orbital Sciences officials said. The satellite could be launched in September.

The poster only asked if the multi LNB dish had 5 LNBs would he need 5 cables to receive all 5 LNB's. The answer is no. Nothing was mentioned about TiVos.

"The new HMC servers are rumored to have 4 tuners, so unless D* comes up with some new stacking scheme, wiring could get ugly. "

That's right. Right now, we need one wire per tuner, or one wire per LNB. I have four tuners in my house, one of them being a TiVo. For HD, I'd either need three wires coming into the house, or 5, since I can't stack HD. Under the new scheme, I'd need FIVE wires coming in period. That's ludicrous. The technology exists to stack them; it needs to be included on the dish. Does anyone know if it will be?

Quick question. hope its not too of topic:

I have a HD receiver (D*) in my "viewing" room. I just bought a new TV and DVD player for my bedroom and am not sure if my old standard receiver is still active. If I were to purchase another HD receiver for my bedroom would they replace it when the new receivers and programming become available or would I have to purchase another?

I do not want to waste any money as I don't have too much to start with and we have our first baby coming within the next 3 months. It is hard for me to justify spending on another HD receiver for $399 because of the lack of programming so far...but if D* will replace it when the new stuff comes out I may be able to swing it.

Thanks in advance!