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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fisty McB" data-source="post: 1081922" data-attributes="member: 389824">In theory, it's possible but in practice it would be complicated and messy. The 27.5W feed uses a transponder Symbol Rate (45000 IIRC) that none of the craft at 28E is capable of handling. Then you come to the issue of regional variations - not an issue for COM5 and COM6 but it can be for the others. It used to be the case, especially Pre-DSO, on the main BBC multiplex that in England the capacity was "split" into two blocks, one to carry the local BBC One region at a fixed data rate, and the second block to carry all remaining BBC TV "national" services that were collectively stat-muxed in this data block - the "national" channels were distributed to local DVB-T multiplex encoders to be inserted into them alongside the local BBC One region before being sent to transmission sites. In the likes of France & Italy where one PSB channel is regionalised (France 3 & RAI Tre) the satellite distribution to terrestrial TXs involves the regional channel being sent via its own "stream" while the rest of the nominal multiplex content is sent via an alternative stream. At the transmission site both of these streams would be combined into one DVB-T/T2 multiplex to then transmit/broadcast, not dissimilar to the method for early BBC DVB-T distribution mentioned above. It's for technical reasons like that that (for example) at 5W the multiplexing of services for the French DTT networks and the Fransat platform are kept separate. It's possible that the SATBACK broadcast could move to a new satellite in the not too distant future, especially if it worked out cheaper - the Intelsat 907 satellite at 27.5W is already operating beyond its expected service life of 13 years having launched in February 2003 and I've heard no announcement from Intelsat about a potential replacement. Over the Atlantic there are two somewhat close by orbital positions that have UK targeted footprints which could provide continuity of service (allowing for dishes to be realigned, of course!) from Telstar 12 Vantage at 15W and Intelsat 32e (aka Sky Brasil 1) at 43E, the latter at first appearing as though it  would be too low on the UK horizon but in northern & western parts of the UK wouldn't be much different to that for 28E in the same location. I think there might be one or two more Intelsat positions even further out west with Ku-Band spot beams aimed at the UK but they would risk not being above the horizon in some tricky locations. Incidently, Q Radio in Northern Ireland use 27.5W these days to distribute their audio feeds to their transmitters (outside of those TXs serving Greater Belfast), but use a symbol rate of only 500 thus not possible to receive on most domestic DVB-S2 receivers.</blockquote>

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