# HD Locals for Atlanta area



## salem66 (Feb 1, 2006)

Can someone point me to a listing of what satellite the Atlanta local HD feeds are pointing to? I believe it is 129. I do not have a Dish 1000. I have a Dish 500 and a wing dish pointing at 61.5. From what I can tell, alot of the new uplinked locals are being put on 61.5. I know we have had reception issues with 129 here in Atlanta and am wondering if the locals will ever be mirrored to 61.5?


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## garys (Nov 4, 2005)

No plans have been announced for moving existing HD locals.


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## vahighland (Mar 29, 2005)

salem66 said:


> Can someone point me to a listing of what satellite the Atlanta local HD feeds are pointing to? I believe it is 129. I do not have a Dish 1000. I have a Dish 500 and a wing dish pointing at 61.5. From what I can tell, alot of the new uplinked locals are being put on 61.5. I know we have had reception issues with 129 here in Atlanta and am wondering if the locals will ever be mirrored to 61.5?


The Atlanta HD locals are on the 129 satellite. I doubt that Dish will ever mirror or move them to 61.5.

Before the Atlanta HD locals ever existed, I used to have a wing dish pointed to 61.5 for the VOOM channels and for some of the Atlanta SD channels like PBS and a couple others that I can't seem to recall. Wow, what a signal! It was very strong and reliable.

At that time, many Dish SD customers had a two dish setup. One dish pointed to 110/119 and the other to 61.5. I have no idea why Dish decided to put the Atlanta HD channels on 129. It made no sense since most of the customers were already setup with 61.5. The other problem with 129 is that it sits low on the horizon compared to 61.5 and someone forgot to tell Charlie that we have very tall trees in Atlanta. That makes getting line of sight to 129 very difficult for many folks.

The recommended configuration is to stay with a two dish installation for HD for the best possible signal given the crappy 129 satellite. One dish for 110/119 and the other dish dedicated to 129. Don't succumb to a single Dish 1000 installation.


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## booger (Nov 1, 2005)

vahighland said:


> The Atlanta HD locals are on the 129 satellite. I doubt that Dish will ever mirror or move them to 61.5.
> 
> Before the Atlanta HD locals ever existed, I used to have a wing dish pointed to 61.5 for the VOOM channels and for some of the Atlanta SD channels like PBS and a couple others that I can't seem to recall. Wow, what a signal! It was very strong and reliable.
> 
> ...


I live 2 hours north of ATL, in South Carolina. 129 has been in an out for me. Last night I was HD channel surfing and was losing signal. I assume that most of our HD is on 129 so correct me if I'm wrong. I'm having the same problem. 110 & 119 signal strength is great but 129 not so good.

If I call Dish and tell that my signal is fading on my Dish 1000 and sat 129, will they send out a tech without charge? I may install a separate dish myself for 129 or would Dish do this without charging me?

Thanks,


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## tedb3rd (Feb 2, 2006)

HD ATL locals are on 129. I have unusual setup (1000 Plus) pointing at 110, 118, 119, and 129. (I pick up some German channels off 118) I have not had any unusual problems w/signal strength because I have clear line-of-sight. I used to have a Dish 1000 (110/119/129) and I have noticed that signal strength is higher with my current dish compared to the older--especially w/129. The signal does not drop nearly as fast during rain as it did compared to before.

Vahighland is right--if you can have one dish for 110/119 and a second dish for 129, go that route. With the Dish 1000, the 129 is always the first to be lost in rain. With a separate dish, that's less of a problem.


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

tedb3rd said:


> HD ATL locals are on 129. I have unusual setup (1000 Plus) pointing at 110, 118, 119, and 129. (I pick up some German channels off 118) I have not had any unusual problems w/signal strength because I have clear line-of-sight. I used to have a Dish 1000 (110/119/129) and I have noticed that signal strength is higher with my current dish compared to the older--especially w/129. The signal does not drop nearly as fast during rain as it did compared to before.
> 
> Vahighland is right--if you can have one dish for 110/119 and a second dish for 129, go that route. With the Dish 1000, the 129 is always the first to be lost in rain. With a separate dish, that's less of a problem.


Dish installed a separate dish for 129 when I upgraded. It still continues to be a problem when it rains because the signal strength is so low. When I had a dish pointed at 61.5, the strength was very strong. ATL locals are on 129 tp4.


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## BobaBird (Mar 31, 2002)

I see several people missed post #11 in the Uplink Activity for the Week of 4-1-8 .... thread. The 4 majors and WPCH have been uplinked to a 61.5° spotbeam.


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## booger (Nov 1, 2005)

Is it a good rule of thumb that east coast HD locals will end up on 129 as apposed to 65.1?


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## BobaBird (Mar 31, 2002)

If you transpose the slots, as well as 65.1, you might be on to something.


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## garys (Nov 4, 2005)

booger said:


> Is it a good rule of thumb that east coast HD locals will end up on 129 as apposed to 65.1?


A lot of the Northeastern United States cannot see 129, they have to use 61.5.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Anyone living east of Colorado should be prepared to get their HD locals from 61.5. 

I wouldn't suggest you spend money on it now (unless you're having problems with 129) but 61.5 is going to become a desired satellite.


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## salem66 (Feb 1, 2006)

Thanks for the info!!! Hopefully they will be lit up on 61.5. The old lady is not going to want a third dish.:lol:


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## vahighland (Mar 29, 2005)

BobaBird said:


> I see several people missed post #11 in the Uplink Activity for the Week of 4-1-8 .... thread. The 4 majors and WPCH have been uplinked to a 61.5° spotbeam.


BobaBird, thanks for pointing this out. I didn't realize this was happening. Great news ! I'm not too familiar with the uplink reports. Does that mean it's available now? Can we use 61.5 to get our HD locals?


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## vahighland (Mar 29, 2005)

booger said:


> I live 2 hours north of ATL, in South Carolina. 129 has been in an out for me. Last night I was HD channel surfing and was losing signal. I assume that most of our HD is on 129 so correct me if I'm wrong. I'm having the same problem. 110 & 119 signal strength is great but 129 not so good.
> 
> If I call Dish and tell that my signal is fading on my Dish 1000 and sat 129, will they send out a tech without charge? I may install a separate dish myself for 129 or would Dish do this without charging me?
> 
> Thanks,


I'm not sure if they will charge you for a second dish. If it's a new installation, then they probably won't charge oyu. When I had my HD installation done, I already had two dishes. I refused the Dish 1000 and told the installer to swing the dish that was pointed to 61.5 to the 129 sat. He also replaced the switch and lnb.


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## lakebum431 (Jun 30, 2005)

vahighland said:


> BobaBird, thanks for pointing this out. I didn't realize this was happening. Great news ! I'm not too familiar with the uplink reports. Does that mean it's available now? Can we use 61.5 to get our HD locals?


They are not available yet. There is talk that they will be available on 61.5 as part of the Eastern Arc service that has been talked about.


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

lakebum431 said:


> They are not available yet. There is talk that they will be available on 61.5 as part of the Eastern Arc service that has been talked about.


I can't wait to dump 129.


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## tedb3rd (Feb 2, 2006)

...as long as 61.5 is a mirror and not a move for ATL, I'm OK. I used to get 61.5 but then the trees (in the neighbor's yard) grew!


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## cboylan3 (Jan 26, 2004)

maybe i'm confused or just way off base, but wasn't there a ruling a while back that dish had to do away with the second dish and put the customers on one dish?

That being said, I had dish 500 and got all my channels, then upgraded to HD and they put dish 1000 up and I get all my channels


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## ssmith10pn (Jul 6, 2005)

> maybe i'm confused or just way off base, but wasn't there a ruling a while back that dish had to do away with the second dish and put the customers on one dish?


That rule goes out the window with HD.

Atlanta SD locals are on a 110 spot.
Atlanta SD customers can get everything with a Dish 500.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

cboylan3 said:


> maybe i'm confused or just way off base, but wasn't there a ruling a while back that dish had to do away with the second dish and put the customers on one dish?


The rule is all SD locals for a market must be on the same dish, all HD locals for a market must also be on the same dish ... but the dish for SD locals and HD locals does not have to be the same dish as each other AND it does not have to be the same dish that is used for other programming.

As long as the satellite carrier treats all SD locals equally and separately all HD locals equally they are OK. What they can't do is what they were doing a few years back where the "good" SD channels in the market were on one dish and "other" SD channels in the market were on a different dish.

And, for the future, DISH is allowed to phase in HD carriage of all HD channels. This will allow them to carry some channels in HD and others in SD in the same market for the time being. Which should be OK under current law as long as SD receivers don't get partial locals.


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## cboylan3 (Jan 26, 2004)

James Long said:


> The rule is all SD locals for a market must be on the same dish, all HD locals for a market must also be on the same dish ... but the dish for SD locals and HD locals does not have to be the same dish as each other AND it does not have to be the same dish that is used for other programming.
> 
> As long as the satellite carrier treats all SD locals equally and separately all HD locals equally they are OK.


thanks for clearing that up for me.


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## crouton75 (Dec 20, 2007)

BobaBird said:


> I see several people missed post #11 in the Uplink Activity for the Week of 4-1-8 .... thread. The 4 majors and WPCH have been uplinked to a 61.5° spotbeam.


This is frac'in cool! Thanks for pointing this out.

I've been an ATL Dish customer since '97 and because of the trees blocking 129, I dropped them late last year trying D* (also blocked) and Charter Cable (awful service). Ended up going back to E*, because they gave me at least the 61.5 HD channels for N/C since I couldn't get 129 HD (locals, FSN and SportsSouth). I've complained to E* on several occasions, including as reason I dumped them, about not having our locals and RSN's in HD on 61.5, so this is great news.

Also, FYI for others in ATL Metro, AT&T U-verse is coming quick. People went door-to-door around here Friday and Saturday looking for switchers saying that it's now available. If BobaBird didn't post this, I'd have been tempted to switch - Whew, saved by the 'Net.


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## lakebum431 (Jun 30, 2005)

Interesting about U-verse. What part of town are you in? I'm up in Roswell.


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## vahighland (Mar 29, 2005)

I'm interested in U-verse as well. I live in the Virginia Highland area.


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## crouton75 (Dec 20, 2007)

I'm in Roswell too - on the north side. Not sure what other subdivisions they've hooked up yet.


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