# An OTA Guide Data / Dish 9xx question.



## Skyburn (Nov 30, 2004)

This may have been answered in the past, and I did do some cursory searching in this forum, but didn't find an exact answer.

I also don't quite understand all this, so bear with me.

I'm not in this situation, but while away for the holidays in Montana, I thought of this problem and wondered what other people think.

I was in Helena, MT, and was helping my brother get an antenna setup on his new 50" DLP (with an OTA tuner in it). Helena isn't exactly a city with copious amounts of local tv stations, so you are in one of a number of boats for digital TV: cable, dbs, OTA -- where for OTA, you can basically pick up 1 or 2 stations (NBC was pretty good). If you are a DBS sub, you'll get ABC, CBS and Fox waivers because those stations don't have a presence near Helena that you can easily pick up -- they all grant waivers to DBS subs, and so Helena folk get national feeds for those stations. NBC has a local station/transmitter, though, and they won't grant a waiver.

Let's say you are a Dish subscriber with a 921/942 HD receiver. You get national feeds for ABC, CBS and Fox, but you don't get NBC because you can't get a waiver.

So, you pick up NBC via an OTA antenna, plug that into your 921/942 and the rcvr puts OTA NBC into the guide. I've heard that if you don't subscribe to local channels (i.e., pay the fee) Dish doesn't downmap the guide data; they don't pickup and use the PSIP data either, so basically, you don't get any guide data for NBC OTA.

Now, I realize in the above situation, you would be paying for locals for ABC/CBS/Fox -- in that case, maybe Dish will downmap NBC for you as well.

But, what if you're in an area, where you don't have any close local TV stations, but nobody will grant you waivers -- say there are repeaters that give you good OTA signals and you can get all the major networks via OTA; without waivers to be able to sub to locals, aren't you sorta screwed for guide data?

Just curious....
- Joe


----------



## n0qcu (Mar 23, 2002)

No SORTA about it, you ARE!!!!


----------



## Skyburn (Nov 30, 2004)

Huh -- well that sucks the big one for people in that situation. I'm surprised (now, should I _really_ be surprised?) that Dish would let that happen...ah well.



n0qcu said:


> No SORTA about it, you ARE!!!!


----------



## kb7oeb (Jun 16, 2004)

It would only work if they carry the NBC station you want guide data for. Where I live I get guide data for all my locals except for pax since dish doesn't carry my pax station.

It might be changing soon but I think you would qualify to get distant hd for the other networks with directv.


----------



## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

Here is one for the left field. Now with the MPEG-4 technology, if a person subscribes to the locals regardless of their DMA, how about inserting the HD programs for the locals that are not broadcasting HD? It would be a matter of switching so (heaven forbid) we would not miss the DMA's commercials and news.


----------

