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Last Changed 9/5/2017 |
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When dealing with satellite TV, a very common term you will see is
Locals. Just what are Locals and why are they
important. The Locals are ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC broadcast channels. They are referred to as Locals because some of the programming, ex: local news and weather, and program timing is based upon a city. If you like to have local news and weather on the TV, then you will want to have the Locals for area you are in. One of the evolutions of the satellite TV business is the transmission of certain channels are a limited area. This is called a spot beam. The area covered by a spot beam tends to be about a 200 mile circle. The shape is not a hard circle and often affected by terrain features. When you authorized to receive Locals within a spot beam, you can receive those Locals anywhere in the spot beam area. You will find that spot beams overlap other spot beams. If you don't care what city you get the Locals from because you only want the broadcast channels, you only need to change the spot beam when you go outside of the one you were under. Since Dish has put the Eastern Arc (EA) satellites into space for easier alignment for residents of the eastern United States. the HD versions of the Locals tens to be on EA satellites. Often, there are SD version of the Locals on the opposite satellite set. For example Rochester NY has its HD Locals on the EA and its SD Locals on the WA. One of decisions you can make is ease over HD resolution. We have a Winegard Trav'ler, which automatically locks onto the WA satellites. If we are in a spot beam where the HD Locals are on an EA satellite, we can option to receive the Locals in SD by using the Trav'ler to get the HD Locals by putting up a ground tripod dish. If you travel the entire United States and like to have HD Locals, then a ground tripod will be in your equipment list. To get a perspective, the SD spot beams are much larger. On a trip to the Canadian Maritimes, we set our Local city as Bangor Maine and then used WA satellites all the way out to Prince Edward Island for Locals. |
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Disclaimer: The information in this site is a collection of data we derived from the vendors and from our personal experiences. This information is meant as a learning guide for you to make your own decisions Best practices and code should always be followed. The recommendations we make are from our personal experiences and we do not receive any compensation for those recommendations. |
