BCE Sells Telesat; New BEV Nimiq 5 to be at 72.5!

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diogen

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Technically it probably will be.
But at 30/6=5Mbps not counting overhead, it won't be anything we'd call high quality.
I don't think so.
They will charge as for HD. The receiver will ajust the signal to your equipment.

Diogen.
 
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/December2006/18/c8244.html

Good news. At least we know Bell is serious about expanding its satellite television service.

-Mike
 
Well I think its a little to good to be true for free for all for MPEG4 receivers, but they can make money off those old receivers.

I don't mind paying $50 - $100 for the update. It would be well worth it.

Sigh, I always wanted to keep the TV bill under $100...
 
Wow! Are you saying that going with 8PSK (or DVB-S2) increases the efficiency of bandwidth usage by 50%?
No matter how you slice it, 27/6=4.5Mbps is not exactly hidef bitrate. Even with 2-3 pass encoding.
The sorry state of H.264 encoders and the fact that real-time encoders will be used doesn't make for a pretty picture.

On a different topic.
I don't believe a single SD channel will be converted to MPEG-4: too much work for little return.
I think Nimiq 1 (or whatever replaces it) will stay MPEG-2/QPSK up to the end. The other satellite will have HD in MPEG-4/8PSK
and maybe some (most valuable) SD channels in MPEG-2/8PSK (mixing MPEG-2 and -4 can be done, see for example EchoStar3).
Everybody who subscribes to any of those would need their receivers to be replaced. 8PSK solves BEV's security issues.

Diogen.
 
Essentially yes. There's quite a bit involved in determining overall efficiency etc. But the basics are QPSK is 2 bits per symbol and 8PSK is 3 bits per symbol. Therefore, for the same symbol rate (a symbol is basically the actual electrical waveform representation) 8PSK is 50% more efficient than QPSK for bit rate.

There's more to it than that though. Becasue Forward Error Correction is used, there's additional overhead. For example, if you have a 7Mbps bit stream and you put a rate 3/4 FEC on it, you end up having to transmit 9.3 Mbps of data. The benefit here is that the FEC provides what is called 'coding gain' which means you need less power to maintain the same bit error rate in a given signal. the result is smaller dishes, smaller transmitters, better rain fade margins etc. It all depends on how the link is designed. It's more complicated than just that since both the DVB-S and DVB-S2 standards use what are called inner and outer codes and bunch of overhead information regarding different information streams that make up a single channel.

The amount of coding gain is typically dependant on the type of FEC used. DVB-S2 uses what is known as Low Density Parity-Check (LDPC). This FEC tends to provided higher coding gains than the Viterbi/Reed-Solomon FEC that I believe is used in the DVB-S standard.

What this all means is that by moving to DVB-S2, they can increase channel efficiency by ~50% without having to change the power levels or dish sizes. They could use 8-PSK without migrating to DVB-S2, but they would have to increase transmit power in order to maintain their margins.

And a move to 8-PSK would only solve BEV's piracy problems temporarily. Until either people start hacking the BEV boxes or FTA receiver manufacturers start building receivers with 8-PSK demodulators in them.
 
Correct Diogen,

Telesat wouldn't build a Nimiq without committment from BEV. 17Ghz stuff is a fair ways out since there are no licenses that have been approved for that spectrum.
 
I wonder if this will be Nimiq 5i? Or will DirectTV be using it at this position temporarily? Not sure how to read this.

DIRECTV Enterprises LLC has filed a request for Special Temporary Authority (STA) for a period of 180 days. DIRECTV seeks to perform telemetry, tracking and command (TT&C) functions during the drift of its DIRECTV 1R satellite from its current orbital position at 100.85
 
Thats interesting...

But they expect the entire digital/SD line up will ALL have HD versions in 8 years (2007-2015 = 8).

What about all the little local stations.

Or will this be sub-par HD.

And not nearly "true" HD.

Will it all be HD, then they will have a "Super" Hd pack..

Lol, I perish the thought....
 
http://www.broadcastermagazine.com/issues/ISArticle.asp?id=63521&issue=12182006

Since all current BEV y-yoke dishes (2 LNB per dish separated by 9 degrees) are aimed for 82 and 91, this would mean a significant re-rigging for present customers. Also a satellite at 72.5 is pretty well useless in most of Western Canada so Nimiq 5 would apply only to the East. Very interesting...
 
The Ciel Broadcast Market Capacity Demand Study scrooloose linked to on the first page,
is less optimistic (more realistic ?) about the time frame to switch to HD.

They claim this will happen by 2020 (Telesat claimed by 2015). By 2010 25%/75% (Ciel/Telesat) will be in HD.

Ciel forcasts that by 2020 BEV will have 425/290 HD/SD channels and StarChoice - 368/220.
For 2010 those numbers will be 100/382 and 37/312 for BEV and StarChoice, respectively.
Both providers will need 2 more satellites in addition to their current fleet.

Ciel predicts that the average bitrate on a HD channel will be 7Mbps, and 2.2Mbps on a SD channel.
Switch to MPEG-4 (and probably 8PSK from QPSK) is expected to start for HD next year and take 3 years
(StarChoice is expected to do the same with 1 year delay).

No predictions about eliminating BEV security problems.
It looks like this "free TV" feast might continue - at least for SD - until 2010.

Diogen.
 
That is very interesting. It looks like Telesat has been over to Joe Bobs used satellite shop again. Either Dircet just has an old satellite sitting there in case of emegencies or it is one of the old style satellites and they would like to fill the slot with one of the new spot beam super birds.

It would help if they had mentioned when they planned on doing this. Sounds like sooner rather than later though.

It mentions at Lyngsat that DirecTV 1R was launched with Zenit 1999-10-10.
That makes it 6 years old or so. So probably half way through it's life expectancy.
http://www.lyngsat.com/tracker/dtv1r.html

I don't have the plugin so I can't see if all of the transponders are working or not.

This mentions that they definitly are building a new N5. Though I see the positions of the satellites are off by 0.2 degrees. I don't know if that is significant or rounding error.
http://www.telesat.com/news/2007/07-01.htm
 
The time frame to switch to HD is anyone's best guess. Even after the FCC shuts down all SD OTA broadcasts, it has no effect on satellite or cable operators. Contents producers and broadcasters are also resisting the switch HD becasue advertisers are unwilling to pay more for advertising on an HD channel versus an SD channel. Considering the huge investment they have to make in order to switch to HD, it's no suprise that they are resisting.

The launch of Nimiq 4 and 5 really isn't going to provide a significant capacity increase for BEV as Nimiq 4 is simply going to replace Nimiq 4i. And while Nimiq 5 is apparently destined for 72.5, Nimiq 3 is nearing the end of its life (launched in 1995 as a DTV bird, 2007 puts it at 12 years old), keep in mind that Nimiq 5 probably won't be in service until 2010.

SC isn't in any better shape. Anik F3 is set to launch in April, but is already completely sold out. And the Ciel bird, when it launches, will probably just replace the AMC bird sitting at 127 which is apparently providing service to Echostar.

MPEG 4 is probably the best bet for a channel capacity increase. 8PSK will help, but it will affect users on the fringe of the footprint as well as rain fade margins since the required Eb/No for an 8PSK signal is higher than QPSK.
 
My guess is that any eastern programming on 82/91 would be moved to 72, 82 would handle mostly Canada wide stuff and 91 would handle most of the western stuff.

The question becomes, after N4 goes up what do they do with the 2 crippled birds that are there? Park them as backups? Give the one they are borrowing back. Move them to 72 until N5 goes up etc?
 
A typical BellExpressVU QPSK TP runs at 30mbps. A few months ago BellExpressVU was testing an 8PSK TP at 82W. An 8PSK TP is more efficient than QPSK but due to the needed 2/3 FEC the yield for is about 40 mbps. Not a bad gain though. I'm suprised BellExpressVU hasn't switched to 8PSK already for the HD services.
 
I'm guessing that when they put up Nimiq 5 at 72.5 they'll redisperse the other Nimiqs so that Easterners would use 72.5 and 81.5 (82) with their nine-degree dishes, while Westerners would use 91 and 100 with theirs. Just a guess, with no facts to merit it... ;)

Here on the west coast I have to use a 24" separate dish for 82 and even then only a couple of transponders show up at 100% at that. An 18" dish is pretty useless for 82, especially in the rain. Some people out here use bigger than 24" dishes for 82. With a redispersal maybe BEV will even out their signal strength coverage properly.
 
Don't forget that Telesat owns the satellites and is now an independent company.
BEV just stops paying rent for the old birds.

Diogen.
 
Are there any channels besides the movie channels and LEAFTV that are East or West only?

An entire bird is not necessary for those.
 
West: Movie Central.

East: TMN

Toronto region ONLY: leafts TV.

I think Canucks, Oilers, and Flames PPV may be regional....
 
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