A TV communications satellite is drifting out of control thousands of miles above the Earth, threatening to wander into another satellite's orbit and interfere with cable programming across the United States, the satellites' owners said Tuesday.You can bet that the customer service people at the cable companies are starting to drink heavily in preparation for the onslaught of calls from disgruntled subscribers, especially those folks who pay a shitload for all of the premium services.
Communications company Intelsat said it lost control of the Galaxy 15 satellite on April 8, possibly because the satellite's systems were knocked out by a solar storm. Intelsat cannot remotely steer the satellite to remain in its orbit, so Galaxy 15 is creeping toward the adjacent path of another TV communications satellite that serves U.S. cable companies.
Galaxy 15 continues to receive and transmit satellite signals, and they will probably block or otherwise interfere with signals from the second satellite, known as AMC 11, if Galaxy 15 drifts into its orbit as expected around May 23, according to AMC 11's owner, SES World Skies.
AMC 11 receives digital programming from cable television channels and transmits it to all U.S. cable networks from its orbit 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above the equator, SES World Skies said. It operates on the same frequencies as Galaxy 15.
The ensuing class-action lawsuits ought to be full of hilarity and mirth.
I would expect that the networks will use sites like Hulu to get their shows in front of an audience in order to try and maintain viewer loyalty. The big losers may be the TV stations and the cable channels, who would see a hell of a drop-off in ad revenue.
5 comments:
People may bring class-action lawsuits (actually, "will" is probably more correct) but they are unlikely to win, given that the %^ contracts one signs with the %&^ cable companies are so totally one-sided.
Phooey.
I suggest that you first drive by the studios of your local television station before you dig out the old rabbit ears (not that they would work with the new digital TV format anyhow). I'll give you a hint as to what you'll see: Satellite dishes. Several of them. It turns out that modern-day television stations get their programming from the exact same place that your local cable company gets theirs... i.e., via satellite.
- Badtux the Broadcasting Penguin
According to a friend hi-def works with the antenna he has. Been there several times but never turned the tube on.
With the new format many new antennas went up on Lookout Mt. outside Denver. There were always quite a few channels available even years ago. I liked that and that included UHF as well.
With this change over there are even more channels than before and I put that at around 20 and half are hi-def according to my friend.
Some of the biggies have more than one channel.
I like this kind of thing when you get it for free. There is diversity as well with several local stations.
My experience has been that antennas work with digital TV, but they don't work as well. If you were kinda on the fringe of where you could get good analog reception, you will probably be disappointed with digital.
The content producers could probably distribute their product using BitTorrent, but somehow I think the irony would prove too much for them.
Interesting. The errant satellite is the very same one that was hosting one of the FAA's WAAS transponders. It's failure has rendered WAAS GPS subject to interruptions. Now cable channels. I wonder what else it's going to screw up before it's finished?
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