# 129/61.5 fyi



## no1cwbyfan (Mar 11, 2003)

I heard that all new and upcoming HD programming (including locals) will be seen on both the 129 and 61.5 so if you have 61.5 now you won't need a dish 1K


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

NATIONAL HD will be mirrored (we've been talking about that for months) between 61.5 and 129 but getting your own locals in HD via satellite will not be mirrored.

You will need the right dish(es) for your area.


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## tnsprin (Mar 16, 2003)

James Long said:


> NATIONAL HD will be mirrored (we've been talking about that for months) between 61.5 and 129 but getting your own locals in HD via satellite will not be mirrored.
> 
> You will need the right dish(es) for your area.


Which brings up the question for about 1/2 the country. Which dish for my area.


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

61.5 will be the satellite for the northeastern part of the U.S. and Florida and the southern half of Texas . The 129 sat does not work in those areas. Now in the future if they can work a triple satellite dish for 110/119 /? then they might move the programming to elsewhere . Presently New York is definately on the 61.5 sat for hd programming like Voom and hd locals for New York too.


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## ckinninger (Jul 23, 2005)

Mike D-CO5 said:


> 61.5 will be the satellite for the northeastern part of the U.S. and Florida and the southern half of Texas . The 129 sat does not work in those areas. Now in the future if they can work a triple satellite dish for 110/119 /? then they might move the programming to elsewhere . Presently New York is definately on the 61.5 sat for hd programming like Voom and hd locals for New York too.


Mike,

that's interesting to me. i was trying to picture why the 129 would not work for texas as you were saying. something JL said in another thread came to mind. he said that e5 was designed for 110. then moved to 129. the footprint would seem to be one shape if you're at 110 and another at 129. so if you move the e5 to 129 then the shape is going to be crooked. so far ok? i don't know which satellites, if any, have the ability to reshape their footprints. if you can get 61.5 from l.a. then to me it must mean that the footprint for the rainbow sat is better shaped for national coverage than the e5 for 129 position.

the fact that you say southern texas can't get 129... it's pretty far west compared to pennsylvania and va (locals on 129 now) must mean that the part of the footprint needed for the tip of texas maybe over the gulf of mexico since it was moved to 129. houston gets 129 (locals on it now) but that is not in the tip of texas. also the same for florida... pointed east of bermuda now.

is that about right?


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## olgeezer (Dec 5, 2003)

I thought 129 was originally for Canada. Maybe that's why it won't work in South Texas or Florida.


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## BoisePaul (Apr 26, 2005)

olgeezer said:


> I thought 129 was originally for Canada. Maybe that's why it won't work in South Texas or Florida.


129 is a Canadian slot, but the bird that's there (E5) was most certainly designed to be ConUS.


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## Marriner (Jan 23, 2006)

getting a strong signal from 129 (90 plus) in southeast texas (houston)


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

Anwhere from Victoria Texas dma and down south is not under the 129 satellite footprint. Check the echostar knowledge base for the satellite foot prints for a Dish 1000 and you will see for your self exactly which areas can and can't see the 129 sat. It should be listed as a link on the home page of this very website.


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## BobaBird (Mar 31, 2002)

Here are the direct links to Dish 1000 and coverage maps.


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## lakebum431 (Jun 30, 2005)

This is strange to me. I live in the Atlanta area and 2 or 3 of the must carry channels here are on 61.5. So if they are going to use the Dish 1000 here they are going to need to replace every dish where people want the HD locals. However, if they put Atlanta on the 61.5 slot there would be much fewer Dish replacements. Thoughts?


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

lakebum431 said:


> This is strange to me. I live in the Atlanta area and 2 or 3 of the must carry channels here are on 61.5. So if they are going to use the Dish 1000 here they are going to need to replace every dish where people want the HD locals. However, if they put Atlanta on the 61.5 slot there would be much fewer Dish replacements. Thoughts?


Logical. Depending on when E* plans on doing Atlanta locals they could (and most likely will) move the 'must carry' to spotbeams on the new E10 and have the freedom to choose 61.5 or 129 for LIL HD. If there is already an installed base of users with 61.5° in the Atlanta area it could lean the decision in that direction.


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## tnsprin (Mar 16, 2003)

lakebum431 said:


> This is strange to me. I live in the Atlanta area and 2 or 3 of the must carry channels here are on 61.5. So if they are going to use the Dish 1000 here they are going to need to replace every dish where people want the HD locals. However, if they put Atlanta on the 61.5 slot there would be much fewer Dish replacements. Thoughts?


I suspect the 1000 will NOT be used everywhere 129 can be seen. For those locations where the locals are on 61.5 now, it would be silly for them to move to dish 1000.


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## BoisePaul (Apr 26, 2005)

tnsprin said:


> I suspect the 1000 will NOT be used everywhere 129 can be seen. For those locations where the locals are on 61.5 now, it would be silly for them to move to dish 1000.


While it would seem silly to move, if the only solution for one-dish locals is to put those locals on 129 due to a lack of room at 119/110, then it starts to seem less silly. Of course, they could move all of the locals for that market to 61.5, but so far this hasn't happened.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

They are banking on E10. Several market's extra channels have already been mirrored over to 129° (from 148° and 61.5°) but there have already been a lot of moves from 148° and 61.5° to 110° (including some that were mirrored on 129°). I'd count on anything left split on the wings and probably some more of the mirrored splits going to 110°.


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## BoisePaul (Apr 26, 2005)

True, but with the deadline for one-dish locals looming, that's a pretty big gamble. I would think that after E4's problems, E* wouldn't put all of their eggs in one basket.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Worst case scenario they go to 15 channels per TP on 119° and 110° and put the overflow on 129°. Hopefully everything goes well over the next few months and we won't find out the contingency plan.


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## rocatman (Nov 28, 2003)

BoisePaul said:


> True, but with the deadline for one-dish locals looming, that's a pretty big gamble. I would think that after E4's problems, E* wouldn't put all of their eggs in one basket.


The biggest risk is a launch vehicle failure. Today's newer satellites have so much built in redundancy, their failure is a much smaller risk than it was when E-4 was built. Fortunately, the E-10 satellite is being launched on one of the most reliable launch vehicles in the Zenit-3SL. One thing Dish has in its back pocket if something happens to E-10 is moving AMC-16 to 118.7 W. The application for this move has been sitting at the FCC but my guess is that it was pursued just in case. Certainly having to use a FSS satellite like AMC-16 requiring a Superdish to resolve the one-dish for all locals in a market would be a big blow to Dish but it is still a viable back up plan.

One thing I do question about Dish's strategy was to mirror some of the wing SD locals from 61.5 W to 129 W and giving folks especially new subscribers a D1000. I could see some folks who had a D1000 installed having to have a D300 installed as well because I have to believe Dish will want to use the spotbeam capabilities of Rainbow-1 at 61.5 W for a large number of HD locals. Recognize that Dish will free up about 5 TPs on E-3 at 61.5 W when the split locals are moved and therefore most of HD national channels could be moved off of Rainbow-1 so that more of its spotbeam capability could be used for HD locals. I have to believe that if E-10 goes as planned, many if not most of the SD locals on 129 W will be moved to E-10 spotbeams. This will also free up many TPs at 129 W but certainly E-5 at 129 W will have no where near the capacity for HD locals as the Rainbow-1 spotbeams. On second thought perhaps moving the wing SD locals from 61.5 W to 129 W is part of a pre-emptive backup plan for a E-10 problem.


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## BoisePaul (Apr 26, 2005)

And of course the other issue is that the FCC still hasn't given their blessing to launching and operating E10 in any case. With the bird on its way to the equator, I wonder if E* is starting to sweat a bit about approval of their application.


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## rocatman (Nov 28, 2003)

BoisePaul said:


> And of course the other issue is that the FCC still hasn't given their blessing to launching and operating E10 in any case. With the bird on its way to the equator, I wonder if E* is starting to sweat a bit about approval of their application.


Check out this thread for the problems at the FCC:

http://www.dbstalk.com./showthread.php?t=51609

By the way Dish did update an E-10 FCC application on 1/25/06 which was after DirecTV submitted their comments. Not sure if it addressed the intereference issue but I have great doubts whether Dish and DirecTV are having any meaningful discussions on the issue. Hopefully we will see some FCC movement this week for at least a Special Temporary Authority to launch and test E-10 at 138.5 W.


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