Is Spirit Dead?

[drfreeman]

have not had 9706 for almost 2 days now.........
anyone know anything about whats going on??

 

[Mr Tony]

looks like the transponder went ouot yesterday...here is some notes from www.dishchannelchart.com

4/15/06

TRANSPONDER 32 ON 61.5 (SKY ANGEL SERVICE) HAS BEEN UP AND DOWN SEVERAL TIMES SINCE LAST NIGHT. AS I TYPE THIS, TP32 IS BACK UP AND WORKING, HOWEVER 9706 (SPRT), 9710 (3ABN), and 9715 (EAGLE) ARE NOT AVAILABLE as of 1530 MST.

 

[drfreeman]

thanks for the info........
is this a sign of things to come???
i mean i know that sat is getting old..

 

[Mr Tony]

I really don't know....Weird that only a couple channels are off and the rest are on..

Maybe issues at a uplink or something?

 

[GeorgeLV]

Assuming TP32 is dead, is Echostar required to give SkyAngel a working transponder on Echo 3?

 

[Mr Tony]

the Tp isn't dead...it's back up

 

[jegrant]

My question now is, how dead is "dead" enough to force E* to give SA* a different (functional) transponder? I would assume that famous contract the two providers have would contain some sort of service level agreement.

 

[Mr Tony]

oh there probably is....and since Dish has to comply with the "one dish rule" for locals here pretty quick, they should be able to free up a TP if they need to give one back to Sky Angel

They've been moving channels off 61.5 to 110 spotbeams so they should be able to free one up pretty quick

 

[Wescopc]

Channels 9706,9710,9715

This is my first post - it is 10PM PDT and the three bad channels are still down

 

[Mr Tony]

welcome wescopc

Hopefully they come back up sson.

 

[dstrouth]

Wished we had more information... like exactly what the malfunction is, etc....

 

[JeffH]

With the great reliability of our electricity, telephone, satellite (cable?) services, sometimes we are supprised when a problem occurs, but technical problems can and will happen even with our best efforts to prevent them. My only hope is the best for Sky Angel, our household uses their service, both radio and television extensively.

Technically, do more channels multiplexed on a transponder require more of that transponders resources? Someone with a technical background in this technology please respond.

As far as the restored channels are concerned, maybe they brought the most popular channels back on line as well as channels such FNC and Hallmark that charge for carriage?

It may also be that they brought the religious channels back on line that offered the most Easter specials? Just a thought.

The best thing to do is pray for and support Sky Angel.

Jeff

 

[Mr Tony]

Technically, do more channels multiplexed on a transponder require more of that transponders resources? Someone with a technical background in this technology please respond.

not really. All it does is use bandwidth. The more channels on the transponder, the less bandwidth each channel gets. No more resources are needed.

I've seen analog tranponders, which is one channel for the whole transponder and the quality is amazing! On digital, depending on how much bandwidth they buy and how many channels they have on the TP makes the difference

 

[GeorgeLV]

I theory they might have lowered the symbol rate or the FEC to get the transponder working at a lower power which would mean less bandwidth forcing channels to be dropped.

 

[Mr Tony]

The symbol rate for DBS slots is 20000 (that seems to be the common)...HD can be 21500

FEC is the same...I think it has something to do with the uplink...and with it being a holiday weekend, they may not know about it

 

[mattb]

Just food for thought, EchoStar receives spirit off the same dish that they receive TVU from (TVU and Spirit are both uplinked via C-Band (the big big big large dishes) on the same bird and transponder.

But,

None of us know why skyangel did what they did or how they handle what they handle (their never been willing to share to much info that would look upon them negitivity anyways)

Personally I would had turned off one of the hallmark channels and let Spirit come back up! But I dont work for skyangel so my opinion does not count.

I suspect Skyangel's agreements with some channels require them to be up on the service before others are fixed... but that's just speculation.

Honestly if it wasnt for TVU and Spirit, I would probally put my Skyangel in a box and not even have it.

 

[MellowYBird]

Spirit channel isn't even listed on my program guide anymore. When I manually put in 9706 it autimatically goes to 9707.

 

[mattb]

This is either a problem at Skyangel or with Dish Network who controls the uplink for skyangel.

I can assure you Spirit is NOT dead. My advice is to email skyangel and complain until they put it back up. They could easly bump angel two and put Spirit there until they get their act together....

That's my two cents.

 

[mwgiii]

Spirit channel isn't even listed on my program guide anymore. When I manually put in 9706 it autimatically goes to 9707.

Per JohnH over at DBSTalk,
9706 Spirit, 9710 3 Angels and 9715 Golden Eagle have been removed from the System

That means that the channels are completely gone, at least for the moment, from Sky Angel.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I will be meeting with SkyAngel on Friday and will try my best to ask them whats going on.