[mili]

On the 4th Dish will introduce 5 local markets for 5 cities in HDTV. The catch is that to receive them in HDTV you will need a 211 a 222 or a 622 receiver and a Dish1000 dish which is by the way backward compatible with DP and Legacy receivers which detect it as an SW64 switch.
These 221, 222 and 622 are replacing any previous receivers, upgrading for subscribers carries a $50 price tag. The new receivers and the new HDTV channels will use the 129 degree satellite and the transport used will be MPEG 4 instead of the now used MPEG 2 system. Their built in cards' number starts with S019 in these new receivers which means they are not ROM 101 102 or 103 cards. Lets hope they were dumb enough to use Nagra 2 card circuitry in them. In a year DIshNet is planning to migrate ALL HDTV channels onto the MPEG 4 platform. Until then all HDTV receivers can receive channels in HDTV except these new locals. These new 221, 222 and 622 receivers are backward MPEG 2 compatible by the way. DishNet is raising their subscription price and they are planing to sell their 121 and 105 satellites I guess that will go some way covering expenses. What does it mean for us?
First of all FTA receivers will be out. For FTA manufacturers to make and market an FTA receiver that does MPEG 4 will be an enourmous risk as no satellite provider other than DishNet broadcasts their signal in MGEP 4 and they are an encypted subscribtion service. I wonder how the hell will FTA makers explain what their receivers are for? Never mind unlockers in courts, I can't wait to hear the explanations for making an MPEG 4 FTA receiver.
If the card in these new receivers is a Nagra 2 then DishNet just spent a ton of money taking FTA out of the picture (maybe as them Chinese have no shame) and learned nothing from their past.
If it is an another card that is bult in then there will be a lot of time for the FTA pople to reverse engineer it and once again release a hack into the wild looking all innocent and pretty. So the sky is not falling only things are changing.

[tobyguy]

Why would FTA need to explain why they are making an MPEG-4 based receiver?? Anymore than why an ATMEGA or an AVR-X card manufacturer would need to explain as to why they manufacture those cards (or ISO readers or unlockers, etc.). As in all of the cases above the physical devices themselves are not illegal.

Even if they needed to do some explaining, which they don't, all they would have to say is that it's future use - and they want to hit the market early.
And also, MPEG-4 is a standard/open video format, there's nothing wrong with supporting that - last I checked, Dish didn't own the patent on that one. This is the exact same argument that HDTV manufactures use to sell TV's. It's for future use! Less than 1% of HDTV channels actually show HDTV! It's all upconverted crap!

Surely as HDTV gets more popular, even the free to air channels will go HDTV - and why not go to MPEG-4, so I don't think the argument that FTA would need to do some explaining is all that relevant or a valid point.

Then again, it isn't the first time that I've heard that FTA receivers will be
"out"... and look who's still "in" and who's "not".

Lastly, HDTV on Dish is brutal anyhow. Bev is better! At least they have recent upconverted PPV!

Thanks,

Tobyguy

[mili]

Good points keep it coming. Birdie had some input to this too he will post them here.

mili

Dreambox 8000 will be
Mpeg2, Mpeg4, WM9 compatible
also the unit is going to have other feactures like

Twin tuner
HD (optional)
DVD burner (optional)
128MB
IBM 300mhz CPU
32MB flash
DVI, HDMI

Its going to be a expensive unit but after other FTA manufacturers jump in prices will go down

[nags]

Further to tobyguy's response, what is to stop a north american satellite provider from using the same reasoning as our european counterparts in providing free tv. With all these fta boxes out there, somebody may decide that it might be worth servicing these people.

Testing FTA's and AVR-X (when it actually starts to work!)

Mpeg 4 is only the HDTV stuff, All the reg is staying Mpeg 2 so we should be fine until 2008 when the fcc forces all tv HDTV with all the old irds and fta.
The older HDTV IRD's are being discountinued and the 622 is replacing the 924 dvr, The other models Mili already posted in his info link about the swaps. All dealers were instucted to sell their remain inventory before Feb first of discountinued models or be fucked financially on them.

The sub base price is dropping from 32.95 to 29.95 to compete with dtv's base subsciption rate, However locals will no longer be included and must be subbed separatly thus raising the base price above 29.95 effective to subscribers after feb 1.
The free second car siruis radio subscription for home dishnet sirius radio subscribers also is done Feb 1st.

I am not buying the Mpeg 4 swap on any non HDTV IRD's including FTA, It is not finacially plausable to replace that many receivers to impliment it. The main idea seems to be to force all subscribers to have to pay a upgrade fee to go to HDTV and renew at least a 18 month contract.

Some also may have noticed as of Feb 1 all dealers are getting a substancial commision cut, Charlie chat makes it sound like the company is having financial trouble and they don't have the money for this Mpeg 4 HDTV conversion so the need to cut corners, Perhaps part of the reason the ECM team has been off duty since Nagra 2.

[fetajr]

Originally Posted by mili

In a year DIshNet is planning to migrate ALL HDTV channels onto the MPEG 4 platform.

so you're saying that in 1 year MPEG2 will no longer exist in any of charlies streams, and it should be all MPEG4?, at which point my Dreambox500 and my MPEG2 dp301.010 with Atmega 128 should not work anymore?? please clarify. Thanks.

[tobyguy]

Originally Posted by fetajr

so you're saying that in 1 year MPEG2 will no longer exist in any of charlies streams, and it should be all MPEG4?, at which point my Dreambox500 and my MPEG2 dp301.010 with Atmega 128 should not work anymore?? please clarify. Thanks.

We're talking HDTV here.

Neither your dreambox500 nor you dp301.010 support HDTV, so it does not apply.

Tobyguy

Mili:

As we all know now, the 5 new Voom Channels, ESPN2 and UHD are all labelled MPEG4 on Dish but in reality they are MPEG2. The (HD locals 6300-6303 for NY) I have not heard for sure.

But regardless, as these are actually MPEG2 streams with MPEG4 headers so as to force the adoption of MPEG4 STBs, is it possible to pick up ESPN2, UHD and the 5 new Voom channels with a AVR-X and a 6000 for example?

I would assume if the correct tiers were put in, this should be able to be accomplished???

Hello,
I personally I think we owe a debt of gratitude to the makers of FTA's. If it werent for them N2 would still be secure. I hope FTA's have a long and prosperous future. Most reputable manufacturers have supported their products, not like some sites that offer support for freeware and charge for it(wink, wink). There were some sites bashing FTA's, again (wink, wink), now I see them selling FTA's as well. FTA's are like any other product you need support and those that dont support their products, I say screw them for trying to make a fast buck but lack of support is not uncommon(AVR-X, Majic Card, Etc). If I were a Chinese manufacturer of FTA's my comment would be(say with heavy mandarin accent the following statement) "you want sum flied rice wit yo FTA, cuz we make how you like, vey vey nice, me love you long time".

[tobyguy]

Agreed $$dollarz, most testing methods out there (except for plastic), are riding on the backs of FTA.

All these promises of this card doing that better than that testing method, what a load of crock! Like we haven't heard that one before.

All those Magician promises of his cards doing this and that, yet, my trusty ATMEGA is still up and running! My FTA is still up and running. My pastic is 100% up and running with no issues at all this weekend. My DVB w/my theatre is also still up and running.

Yet take a look at the AVR-X forum... And see the issues users are having. And I wouldn't hold my breath for any of those so called features to come out when magician can barely get rid of most of the issues on his latest card... Still no auto-roll BEV support... 019 errors, etc.

I think Magician needs to get back to the basics and should focus on getting this platform up and support the basics features that other testing methods support, instead of putting effort and time into putting down other testing methods - espcially those that have been tested by the only real measurement - how long the method has been around for and the kind of support available for it!

Tobyguy

[JT]

The true hacks are rom based guys. (think about it, the rom is what all hacks are emulating) Atmega is based on rom101 and so is FTA/DVB. You guys that are making up reasons to bash magician are wasting your time. He's doing a good enough job of justifying your efforts as it is. No reason to make shit up.

[tobyguy]

Originally Posted by JT

The true hacks are rom based guys. (think about it, the rom is what all hacks are emulating) Atmega is based on rom101 and so is FTA/DVB. You guys that are making up reasons to bash magician are wasting your time. He's doing a good enough job of justifying your efforts as it is. No reason to make shit up.

Sure, first hacks are ROM based no question about it.

However, more emulation needs to happen in order to use a different hardware plaform other than plastic (such as AVR-X, ATMEGA and FTA) - and FTA's were the first ones out with different hardware providing a totally different emulation solution - so it all depends how you look at it.

But I'm not going to disagree with your statement.

That being said, the main point is how full of crap magician is. He's made promises in the past that he hasn't lived up to - bet you can't argue with that one can you? And there's no reason to expect it will be any different now with his latest card - just look at how he's supporting users with 019 errors when clearly this is his fault.

And like I said, AVR-X supporters should focus more time on supporting the half-assed working card then bashing other testing methods that have lasted the only true testing measurement - time.

Good luck arguing against that!

Tobyguy

[JT]

The latest news and developements forum was not intended to be a discussion forum. We know your history of pushing FTA over everything tobyguy. Justify it however you see fit.