OmegaSource

At around 6:30pm MST last night Dish Network satellite 129 outage knocks out HD channels nationwide.

At the time of posting it the problem is fixed!

If your Dish Network-receiver was claiming total signal loss, then at least take comfort in the fact that you were not alone. While the company hasn’t revealed exactly what the problem was, Facebook and Twitter posts indicated a “technical issue” with satellite location 129. The really bad news comes when we learned that bird is responsible for carrying many HD channels and HD locals.

If this problem returns in the future, bellow are some hints to help you.

Switching over to SD channels will let you watch most content in the short term — DBSTalk posters advise hitting menu and selecting 1 on your remote to pull up the guide if you’re having trouble. If you currently hide standard-def channels, press menu, then 8, then 1 and uncheck the “HD only” box to see the working channels for now. We’ll keep checking for any updates on the situation, but for now you’re on your own in a 480-line wilderness, so good luck.

Dish has a new webpage up to help customers deal with the situation here, while those who can’t get through on crowded helplines are advised to check out @dish_answers on Twitter.

It is all fixed now , but at least you know that your TV was not at fault last night.

Interesting news from Tokyo.
TOKYO – Japan became the first Asian nation to complete the switchover to digital TV on Sunday when it ended analog broadcasting, while competition is heating up between the new satellite channels that will be using the freed bandwith.

Analogue broadcasts in the region devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, will continue until March 2012.

The president of public broadcaster NHK, Masayuki Matsumoto, and the president of the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan, Michisada Hirose, gave a joint press conference about the switch, in Tokyo over the weekend.

“As a public broadcaster with a mission of delivering its services throughout Japan, NHK has invested about JPY 400 billion [$5.1bn] to implement necessary measures, including the construction of relay stations,” said Matsumoto.

The newly-available bandwith being freed up by the end of analog broadcasts, will be used by 11 new satellite channels will launch this October, doubling the current total.

These will include offerings from Wowow, Fox International Japan and Sky Perfect TV (Sky Perfect JSAT Corp) that are to offer free content, at least for the first year.

Wowow, which will increase its channels from one to three in October, will make some of its weekday programming available free.

Fox bs238 - a new Japanese channel from Rupert Murdoch’s troubled News Corp – will be funded by advertising and begin charging 300 yen ($3.80) for some pay-per-view content in its second year.

Sky Perfect is also set to offer free content on its new satellite channel.

Other companies launching new satellite channels are reportedly unhappy about the free content being offered by their competitors.