Thread: What will Bell do with the new Nimiq 5 satellite?

If N5 doesn't wind up at 72.5, I would be beyond shocked. The only way it doesn't happen is if they re-arrange the satellites and move N1,N2,N3,N4iR to 72.5 instead and reshuffle the dishes, but to me that doesn't make sense because you design N5 to have a contour of North America based on being at a specific orbital location. Sure, 9 degrees does not drastically throw off that contour, but it still is an unnecessary shift.

Dish needs the transponders for local HD feeds. Both Dish and DirecTV are planning on rolling out some 3000+ local OTA HD channels in the future. Most of them will be on spot beams to serve local markets. I am guessing that EV is planning to do something similar by putting channels predominantly subscribed to in Eastern Canada at 72.5 and the same at 129 for Western Canada. I think we will see many western locals and MC end up at 129. TMN and many eastern locals will likely end up at 72.5. Some regional sports channels may also be split between 72.5 and 129. Channels at 72.5 and 129 may be the first to go MPEG4 to ease the transition. HD channels at 82 and 91 will not go MPEG4 until all subscribers are upgraded to MPEG4 receivers. Space will be freed up at 82 and 91 when all subscribers have dish upgrades to pick up the dropped channels at 72.5 or 129. This means, of course, that it will be a long, painful wait until EV adds significantly more channels. Telesat may be able to move N2 to 72.5 to hasten the transition but I think they need it more at 91.

N5 poses reception problems for many areas in BC so putting western services on the CIEL sat certainly makes sense. I'm guessing that premium regional sports and other premium regional services may go at 73 and 129. That way, dish upgrades can be phased in slowly and will generate extra revenue.

The upgrades will be costly. At a minimum, an SW64, new dish and new LNB are required. At worst, everything will need to be switched to DishPro.

Found this link on another site. It talks a bit about Nimiq 5 and Telesat/Bell's future plans for 17 Ghz BSS satellites at 86.5

It would not be in EV's best interests either. They would need to upgrade every subscriber's dish and add extra LNBs. They would also lose their promo advertising spots on US services. EV would have to handle blackouts on the US feeds when copyright conflicts occur. (Many direct US feeds are altered to provide program substitutions now.) It would also be impossible to use US networks feeds due to the use of spot beams and the requirements for simsubs. For the few remaining direct US feeds that could be used (if any), it wouldn't be worth it.

Actually, maybe Bell played right by letting Dish take this spot in exchange of deep discounts on MPEG4 equipments to upgrade its HD customers.

alebowgm,

I said in my post the satellite (72) would have to be placed at correct elevation to work with two other satellites.

Of what I eard, half of nimiq 5 (16 tr.) will be leased to dish network and the other half for expanding HD content (MPEG 4) to Bell expressvu. I don't expect much changes in equipment ecxept for the dish. A dish 1000 could be use with a ''W'' and 3 legacy lnbf coupled to a sw64. That would be a correct setup for the current Bell receivers wich are legacy as well. Dish pro equipment would require to replace all the receivers and doesn't make any sense to me. So it's possible just to replace the top of the dish by a new unit providing a third lnbf to catch signal from 72.7 W. I'm sure there will be some extra installation cost to the customers to add exclusive HD content from nimiq 5.

Me, I like the idea of reserving Sat 82 and 91 for us out west here. You English guys in the East can share 72 with the French channels. How do you like that scrooloose?

Actually that may make sense. Make the new satellite spot French, which will free up space on 82 and 91.

Forgive me for asking what could be a dumb question. I just read the post on Nimiq 5. It says Nimiq 4 is just a replacement and won't add much in terms of programming or content. It also says that Nimiq 5 is a new satellite launching in '09 and operational in '10.

Does this mean that we shouldn't expect much in the way of new channels (in addition to what's already available) until the new satellite is fully functional in 2010?