FCC: Will they look at mandating PEG Channels for Satellite?

[willdav713]

Time Warner and AT&T U-verse are required to provide PEG channels known as Public, Educational, and Government channels. However DBS systems such as Direct-TV and Dish Network do not carry them.

As a Direct TV subscriber in San Antonio, City Council meetings, Bexar County Commissioners court, Educational Access, and Public Access shows are absent from the Direct TV lineup. Back in 2008 AT&T U-verse added channel 99 (PEG on Demand) as a mandate.

As a taxpayer, I want to know what goes on with the city and county.

I wonder why Satellite providers are exempt from carrying PEG channels?

 

[w9wi]

It's probably not technically feasible, due to the sheer number of such channels.

U-verse can "segment" their network in such a way that the San Antonio city government access channel is only delivered to subscribers in San Antonio. If you're a U-verse subscriber in Abilene, you don't get the San Antonio government access channel -- you get the Abilene government access channel, on the same bandwidth. They don't need extra bandwidth for each city served - they only need one bandwidth segment, which can be shared among all served cities.

"Traditional" cable has the same segmenting option.

Satellite, however, doesn't. Their network segments ("spot beams") aren't small enough to separate San Antonio & Abilene -- let alone San Antonio and Floresville -- they would require separate bandwidth segments for each Texas community served. There are what, over 1,200 incorporated cities in Texas -- that's 1,200 channels to provide just one PEG channel -- there simply isn't that much bandwidth available.

 

[willdav713]

It's probably not technically feasible, due to the sheer number of such channels.

U-verse can "segment" their network in such a way that the San Antonio city government access channel is only delivered to subscribers in San Antonio. If you're a U-verse subscriber in Abilene, you don't get the San Antonio government access channel -- you get the Abilene government access channel, on the same bandwidth. They don't need extra bandwidth for each city served - they only need one bandwidth segment, which can be shared among all served cities.

"Traditional" cable has the same segmenting option.

Satellite, however, doesn't. Their network segments ("spot beams") aren't small enough to separate San Antonio & Abilene -- let alone San Antonio and Floresville -- they would require separate bandwidth segments for each Texas community served. There are what, over 1,200 incorporated cities in Texas -- that's 1,200 channels to provide just one PEG channel -- there simply isn't that much bandwidth available.

I thought On-Demand made that possible.
U-verse has PEG On Demand.

It would make since not to make that "linear" due to the bandwidth.
Doesn't Dish have On Demand?

When U-Verse first rolled out, they didn't provide them until late 2008 early 2009.
I was one of the first to get U-Verse in South Austin back in 1-2008.
I dropped them because they were getting too expensive, and they started to charge a $3 equipment fee and their box rental for each additional set rose from $5 to $7 not to mention the annoying "Press OK to Watch U-Verse" every 8 hours (makes for bad recordings off the box! as I don't do DVR but blank DVD and VHS recordings plus I had to connect a video stabilizer to each box to circumvent the broadcast flag.)

If On Demand is possible (1000's of shows) one would think PEG channels are possible.

 

[w9wi]

But the underlying technology behind U-Verse and Dish is, again, very different. If you select any On-Demand program from U-Verse, that program travels over a small portion of the total U-Verse network. Any San Antonio PEG program, viewed on-demand in San Antonio, would not occupy any bandwidth in Amarillo.

The only way Dish can deliver On Demand programming is over the satellite -- if you order the S.A. City Council meeting, it must be transmitted over the satellite to all of Texas -- you must compete for bandwidth with the guy who wants to watch the Amarillo East High School football game & the woman who wants to see what's up with the Austin School Board. Again, you have a bandwidth problem.

Now, it does appear Dish has come up with a partial solution. It seems some Dish DVRs can be connected to the Internet -- so you can deliver on-demand programs to your DVR that way, without going over the satellite.

 

[Darth_vader]

Re: Will the F¢¢ consider mandating PEG Channels for pay satellite systems?

*Pay* satellite. Not satellite in general. Just *pay* satellite systems.

Buy yourselves a DVB box and get a used dish off somebody, point it out into the stars and look at all the PEG channels that come streaming in.

"not to mention the annoying "Press OK to Watch U-Verse" every 8 hours"

If it's anything like the Echostar/DiSH "VIP" hardware, there's probably some setting you can change in the menu to disable that or change it. It has to do with how it "downloads" (downlinks, although on AT&T's system "download" probably would be the more appropriate term, considering) each day's EPG data. I don't remember how to do it right off the top of my head, since it's been years since I've had to do it, but I set my neighbour's hardware to do it just a couple minutes to midnight instead of the default 0300. (They used to work nights.)

 

[w9wi]

PEG channels on FTA?

Haven't looked for them, but I'd be rather surprised. They're hyper-local & really don't have much value outside the local community. (and thus, nobody interested in paying the cost of uplinking)

I'm sure many of the individual *programs* that appear on PEG channels end up on FTA somewhere though -- at least the PEG channels around here air a lot of material produced elsewhere. Just don't count on seeing the San Antonio City Council.