FOX HD reception problems and DirecTV news that is good:

[LonghornXP]

DirecTV just announced that within the next few weeks that they would have reached a deal which would allow them to carry on DirecTV the FOX HD O&O stations in which customers served by a FOX O&O station in their market can get FOX HD from DirecTV and customers only have to have a total choice package with local channels (local channels is the big part here). Now since our local FOX station WTVT-DT is indeed an O&O station than those of you who have trouble picking up this station will soon be able to watch all current widescreen shows and HD shows in the future from DirecTV via satellite. FOX is the only station I have trouble with and now that I can get this from DirecTV than I will never switch from them.

Oh and you don't need waivers or anything like that if your in the tampa bay area and have DirecTV with local SD channels and an HD box than you will soon have a channel pop up which you can just tune too.

[hsuthard]

That's fantastic! I hate having to switch tuners to OTA or DirecTV and back. It confuses the Tivo.

Did I read somewhere that CBS-HD would be coming soon, too? I've been reading too many posts lately . . .

[LonghornXP]

CBS HD is coming soon but Tampa will not be able to get this because our local CBS station is not operated and owned by CBS. This change is for currently CBS and FOX and DirecTV customers who live in a market where CBS and/or FOX is operated and owned by the network you will be able to get the national feed.

The only station in the tampa bay area that is an operated and owned station is FOX (WTVT-DT) so you will soon be able to get the national New York feed via DirecTV.

Our local CBS station (WTSP-DT) isn't owned and operated by Viacom so you won't be able to watch the national feed on DirecTV. So we will only see FOX in ED and HD on DirecTV without an antenna until DirecTV offers local channels in HDTV which from where we are right now is very possible and sooner than later. If you haven't hard yet DirecTV has said that they are getting out of the high speed internet business and will be using their state of the art satellites that aren't up yet to offer HD locals but this may require a new LNB or a new dish and may even require a new HD box but may just need a software update or nothing but only time will tell. The SpaceWay satellites are 3 seperate satellites with the first scheduled to be up very soon while the other two should be up by the end of 2004 and if what I read is correct these satellites can do uplinking on the fly without having to have uplink stations spread throughout the US which limit how much they can offer or reuse the same frequency space. The more uplink centers the more local channels they can offer with existing space. Now these satellites are spot beam satellites as well and can allocate bandwidth on the fly to whatever area needs it at that time.

From what I read these satellites can offer like 1500 HD channels and if this is true than even if every single station goes HD in the county it still wouldn't total 1500 stations. So if every PBS, NBC, CBS, FOX, ABC, WB and UPN station went HD that would be around 1000 HD channels which leaves 500 left for anything else. So with that said it could be very very possible that DirecTV may have all HDTV local channels on satellite without even touching existing satellites or using existing satellites.

[bdraw]

Wow!

Thanks for the great synopsis. I have seen too many posts to read them all about D* and their new sat's, you did a great job of without making it too long to read.

Thanks.

[LonghornXP]

I thought I might have gone too far but I'm glad to hear that I didn't. Now this is what I heard they can and plan to do but that doesn't mean they will actually do it but I would think that with the good chance that they will have to offer LIL HD channels in the future (whether it be must carry or just to compete) this seems to be the best system to offer it without having to alter quality, get rid of channels and/or not add new channels so with that said I see DirecTVs future as having a real SuperDish as opposed to Dish Networks SuperDish because from what I think since this dish uses KA and not Ku the dish may have to be larger so it won't have more problems with rain fade which means we might be seeing a dish in the size range of their DirectWay dish and it could be a little bit bigger. This dish will have to pick up at least 4 sat locations if not 5 because one of the new spaceway sats will be at I think 99 degrees while another three will be what we have now (101, 110 and 119) and the other two I don't know. I'll have to check where those sats are going.

I found the site for those of you who want to read it. Also the launch date of 2003 is now 2004 as you might know but it will launch soon and we know the estimate timeframe of the other two sats even though they say TBD on the website but this website will give you all the details you need to know. Also the tree sats combined cost over a billion dollars to make.

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/bss/factsheets/702/spaceway/spaceway.html