[jjyec]

Not sure if this is the right Forum, but since Dr.Sat is here, I figured it's a good start.

I noticed HITS packages on DR.Sat website. It's very thin on information, but interesting since it offers a la carte. Something I wouldn't mind to complement my FTA.

Anyone using it? What exactly is required (I understand it's C band)?

 

[stecle]

HITS

HITS uses the 4DTV receiver and gets its programming from AMC 18 at 105.0°W. Works best with a 10 foot dish however you could probably get by with a well tuned 6 footer.

 

[HDTV101]

HITS is just another service like DirectTV or Dish Network but it's sent over C band.

 

[classicsat]

Not quite, but close. Selling to customers directly is secondary.

Primarily, HITS is for smaller cable companies that do not or cannot afford to fully implement a digital cable system using the normal headend equipment and feeds. The system is called "QT", and basically remodulates satellite to cable, the boxes esseintially being a DSR4xx with a tuner simlar to QAM, instead of the DCII-QPSK. Those receivers are the DSR-470 boxes you occasionally see.

A few times, they tried HITS To Home, where they installed a dish on the customer's home, and analog wired cable to a DSR410 receiver, which has a DCII-QPSK and analog cable tuners. That was when they were on Ku birds.

 

[tdti1]

here is there site:

http://www.comcastmediacenter.com/cmc-hits/

Mind you with a 4dtv or 410 you are limited to there redistribution, and can only pull in a very few channels that they are still crazy to have up using ancient tech haha, if you put up a system, put a motorized one with a dvb receiver, as you never know when Comcast will switch all the HITS feeds to s2.

 

[DTVGuy]

Agreed - HITS was a great idea, 10 years ago. Today, I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole (dish), even if it was free.

 

[stecle]

Gotta respectfully disagree with you. My 4DTV picture will blow away any Pizza HD out there. I agree that the programming is limited and a receiver with more features is needed. The pizza guys should be embarrassed for taking peoples money for their over-compressed programming.

 

[tdti1]

stecle please tell me what 4d over compressed HITS rebroadcast looks better than a pizza HD channel? Most HITS SD channels look better than pizza SD, when we use to pull in the main distro off the 4d it blew away pizza SD by a mile.

4d pic was good and the best for a while, the hd with the hdd 200 was great as well, that time has passed, many ota HD channels look better than what the old hdd was able to put out, now if you hook up a dvb-s2 receiver you can't compare the main distro feeds to ota or pizza. it blows them away with ease.

Yes I have a 4d, and I do pop a 3 month sub on here and there occasionally, I also have netflix, ota and multiple dvb receivers, what do I use the most? dvb no doubt.

 

[stecle]

stecle please tell me what 4d over compressed HITS rebroadcast looks better than a pizza HD channel? Most HITS SD channels look better than pizza SD, when we use to pull in the main distro off the 4d it blew away pizza SD by a mile.

I am a little confused about your comments above. I never said that HITS was over-compressed. What do you mean by the main distro?

4d pic was good and the best for a while, the hd with the hdd 200 was great as well, that time has passed, many ota HD channels look better than what the old hdd was able to put out, now if you hook up a dvb-s2 receiver you can't compare the main distro feeds to ota or pizza. it blows them away with ease.

I guess I should have been more specific. I wasn't referencing OTA or true FTA as pizza, but rather Dish,Direct, and Bell. I wont include Shawdirect because I believe they deliver a better picture than the rest.

Yes I have a 4d, and I do pop a 3 month sub on here and there occasionally, I also have netflix, ota and multiple dvb receivers, what do I use the most? dvb no doubt.

I have done different tests connecting Dish,Direct,and Bell to my Samsung LCD. At the same time I connected my 4DTV to my Wega. I used the HD channels on the Dish,Direct, and Bell versus any of the 4DTV. I asked friends that came over to pick the best picture and only 2 out of 30+, picked the pizza as a better picture.

Hardly a scientific poll I know, but the vast majority picked the 4DTV as the best picture.

Steve

 

[tdti1]

Hard to believe, as I have the equipment to test the stream, you may have not said HITS was over compressed but I am telling you it is, looks like crap to me so does most programming except dvb distro (distribution feeds) and my ps3 games and movies (depending on blu ray movies)

I am not going to argue with this as I have the facts, just like public feed posters getting things encrypted, I know what I know, and see what I see. Enjoy your tv.

 

[stecle]

I think if we sat down for a beer we would agree on more things than we would differ. I remember the first time i saw a satellite picture off a BUD back in the early eighties. It was one channel per transponder back then and there was nothing like it.

Fast forward to today and you have programmers packing and over-compressing way too many channels per transponder with little regard to quality. Making a buck seems to be their only motivation. In the Satellite industry improved technology has made things worse for the purist, not better.

In your tag line I see that you have a Clearview. That was my very first dish which was silver and broke down into 8 pie's. The factory bearings were bad but the dish worked OK.

Steve

 

[foxtail]

I was at Dr.Sat last week and he was running hits programming from a 5 ft dish. He is trying to find the smallest dish with the least signal lose for people that don't have much space. foxtail.

 

[DrSat]

Mind you with a 4dtv or 410 you are limited to there redistribution, and can only pull in a very few channels that they are still crazy to have up using ancient tech haha, if you put up a system, put a motorized one with a dvb receiver, as you never know when Comcast will switch all the HITS feeds to s2.

With over 10,000 subscribers in the US and Canada from converted 4DTV and DSR-410 units, HITS TV is not going anywhere anytime soon! Even though you consider the Digichipher II technolgy as ancient, it continues to be used as it is one of the most secure encryption methods in the market today.

For those of you who might not know, Shaw Direct actually uses the same technology for their DTH service so there continues to be active development on the DCII platform.

 

[DrSat]

To provide more info to the original poster of this thread, HITS TV is a C-band subscription service with all programming currently located on the AMC 18 satellite at 105W. As all channels are currently broadcasting from a single satellite, it is easy to install a fixed dish tuned to 105W if you don't already have a motorized C-band dish. A DSR-410, DSR-920, DSR-921 or DSR-922 Digichipher II satellite receiver is required for this service. As there are no contracts or basic package requirements like the DTH or cable providers, it is the perfect way to complement your existing FTA service with channels currently not available unencrypted.

Based on our tests so far, we have been able to receive all channels reliably with a 1.5 meter dish using a 17K LNBF. We are in the process of testing with smaller prime focus dishes to find out the absolute minimum size for reliable service. With our tests so far, all but one or two transponders are over 60% in quality. The weaker transponder(s) come in at about 45% which is most likely due to adjacent satellite interference. The digital threshold on HITS is about 35%. Anything lower and you start seeing the picture starting to break up.

 

[classicsat]

For those of you who might not know, Shaw Direct actually uses the same technology for their DTH service so there continues to be active development on the DCII platform.

Well, they still use DCII, but have moved on in receiver technology.

Consumer C-band hasn't moved on yet, due to lack of base to make it economical. I am just saying, I don't mean anything bad about it.

. A DSR-410, DSR-920, DSR-921 or DSR-922 Digichipher II satellite receiver is required for this service.

Are you sure on the 921? That is the Star Choice version of the receiver, and as I remember, was never able to be authorized for 4DTV service, because its U/A is "owned" by Shaw.

 

[Danster]

You could get c band analog stuff activated on the 921 like mine but like classicsat wrote, nothing on the digital side.

If you had the box activated in Canada, you could get whatever was free on digital in the US but that's it.

 

[tdti1]

I never said DCII was ancient, I said the 4dtv is, DCII is a vey good encryption system, and is used with modern compression tech. With only 10000 subs I don't see how it would be worth it for Comcast to keep there old compression, upgrading to S2 h264would be a smart move, unfortunately this would leave 4dtv users out.

The 4d is so old it can't even pull in the HITS megapipe feeds.

 

[Danster]

The 4d is so old it can't even pull in the HITS megapipe feeds.

What do you mean by this?

 

[tdti1]

Comcast HITS has many redistributed feeds up there using DCII encryption, some of there channels are 4dtv compatible, some use megapipe or some use the term combomode 4dtv can't get these, they also have s2 feeds up, mostly for there hd so far, it would be good for them to switch everything to s2 h.264 but again when they do this 4d will finally be put to rest as a subscription based receiver.

 

[classicsat]

About Megapipe:

IIRC, DCII can carry two bistreams of a sort. A channel can use data amongst both bitstreams. However, at higher bitrates (if at all), the 4DTV (includes legacy Starchoice receivers at least, which were designed off the 4DTV platform) tuner cannot use both bitstreams for one channel. You need a Megapipe capable receiver to use both bitstreams at once.