So what has happend with Orcus.

[cyril]

Anyone know, I see Tony's about here, whats up.

edit, Actually I guess I was refering to Orcsat rather than the terrestial service.

Cyril

[Tony Dunnett]

Anyone know, I see Tony's about here, whats up.

edit, Actually I guess I was refering to Orcsat rather than the terrestial service.

Cyril

Nothing is up with ORCUS MEDIA, Infact this response has been posted several times now.

When we looked at the satellite service we had two customers the first was One B broadcasting, the second was Mirchee TV , we had decided to start up an ethnic TV service first and thats about where we were this time last year.

We chose NSS5 as the 15.5m uplink at Carlaw Park was available and we felt with minor surgary it could be made to operate both on New Zealand and Australia. As you are aware this we did and we played a number of channels including APSATTV for several months.

What we were unaware of was when we signed up with New Skies was that they were in being taken over by SES , we signed up for a Five year + Five year term on one 36 half transponder and another which would have kicked in in March last.

What happened next was they decided that there would be no follow on capacity from 177 W and that the NSS 5 replacement would be C band only and we would need to find another satellite in december of 2008 .

Not only would we need to find another satellite but also a new uplink as no other craft had C band to Ku cross strapping capabilities, so Carlaw park would only be usefull for C band traffic.

In between times it was very noticable that ONE B seemed to be trying to do it them selves , as they have done at a huge cost , they have capacity for 5 channels using bigger dishes than they did when they had a full transponder operated by Pan AM SAT.

So at that time Mirchee TV went in reciever ship which gave us the oppertunity of taking over the ethnic TV business in Auckland, which we have done. We have revamped the old Mirchee building and turned it into a fully functioning international broadcast center and production studio's.

Although the question was in reference to Orcsat the project is still very much alive and gathering momentum even as i write this. Our goal when we moved in here was to have a facility which would house both our Terrestrial and satellite service , and that is what has taken place.

We can still access NSS5 and put a service up with in minutes if we wanted to, the earth station only needs to be moved from its parked position onto NSS5 and be turned on as all services would be broadcast from 108 Newton rd using our MMDS network as the link.

We also have a 5m Ku uplink which can access any of the KU satellites with a footprint on NZ, however we are currently negiotiating , a four transponder Ku package on a satellite that would place a high power beam and at least twenty channels per full transponder to 60 cm dishes nation wide.

All programming would come from 108 Newton RD and could be both ethnic and more main stream, Any one that knows me well enough knows what i have always wanted to achieve so lets not go into that.

Using our SuPA TeNNa we can still offer all freeview and our services on the same dish and decoder which is a first for NZ. We only decided to take a back seat as freeview was proposing TV6 and we really wanted to see what the uptake of satellite systems was , before making any announcements in reference to our future plans.

My time has been spent sorting out the many problems left by Mirchee TV and expanding both the channel offerings and the facility capabilities while we looked to which direction we proposed to go in 2008.

[cyril]

Thanks for the update Tony, I must have missed that in past postings, good to see you are still making a go of it.

Cyril

[Tony Dunnett]

Thanks for the update Tony, I must have missed that in past postings, good to see you are still making a go of it.

Cyril

We are not as fool hardy as our competition who have spent millions on a uplink, not teleport , we prefer to make sure our timing is right as we are aware little beady eyes are watching every move we make.

However given our current network , we are the only people providing NASA TV , TV5 Al Jazerria English to any one in auckland who can see our signal , i dont see any one else doing it.

Metro TV is well on track and we were testing camera's in our studio on a live on a spare channel only a few hours ago .

[mas]

Hi just wondering if NASA TV would be going back on satalite?

Thanks mas

[kiwisteve]

Nasa Tv has not left satellite
I watch it regularly

Intelsat 701 at 180 E

[Tony Dunnett]

Nasa Tv has not left satellite
I watch it regularly

Intelsat 701 at 180 E

I Believe the question was when will it be available via KU and smaller dishes, As previously explained NASA TV D/W TV , BLOOMBERG, RUSSIA TODAY , LUXE TV, FASHION TV and several others have no comercial value to operators. That is why Freeview dropped them like a brick once their tests were over.

It would be very nice to have it on the platform , infact we have kept it on the INVISION MMDS network which broadcasts to Auckland , the best i can do when we launch on satellite would place it on our ADHOC channel, as really its costing us $600,000 a year just having it there if one were to look at the space segment cost.

T.D

[New2Digital]

Hi,

Apologies if I have posted in the wrong place, but as a new member, hesitant to initiate a new thread as this my question may have been answered already.

My parents and a few relatives subscribe to a pay tv service offered by Orcus Media. It's been over a month now and the service seems to have been lost (for everyone that i know that has the service) and Orcus Media are nowhere to be seen. The contact number they have on their website goes to a voicemail box that now appears to be full :(

Does anyone out there know what the deal is with Orcus Media?

Thanks in advance,

[Apsattv]

They are awaiting being allocated a new broadcast Frequency. Before they can resume transmissions.

[sally]

It's been 3 months now and no news from orcus. I have heard that they have gone bankrupt. I've phoned them so many times but nobody picks up. they're not coming back on air, it seems they have fooled us just like mirchee did.

[Apsattv]

It's been 3 months now and no news from orcus. I have heard that they have gone bankrupt. I've phoned them so many times but nobody picks up. they're not coming back on air, it seems they have fooled us just like mirchee did.

No not true, they did not go bankrupt. They were allocated a new frequency but with strict strings attached which made it unviable to continue.

The following is a posting made by Tony Dunnett on the 23/10/08


Orcus Media

After two months of renegoitating with MED for a temporary Licence to
resume transmissioms MED agreed in principle to licence 12.200 subject
to several conditions.This licence was to be for the term of 1 year,and
was not renewable , after much deliberation it was agreed to close the
company down earlier today.

There fore there will be a sizable amount of satellite related
equipment become available as well as several big dishes , Three
complete chinese compression systems ,conditional access, systems
modulators , |Satellite receivers , Ihug, Mirchee and Orcus. 12GHz
transmitters , Muxes , encoders S/a's

35cm dishes ,and other related items which will not be required for
the satellite Mpeg 4 platform next year.

TD

[sally]

so what are you saying? they're not coming back right? why didn't they let all their customers (me being one) know? orcus media sent us emails telling us that they are waiting for new frequencies but they haven't let us know of the outcome. I've been a customer since mirchee was on air then orcsat. Now if someone else took their place how would we put any trust in these people? I got my sister to join orcsat about 3 weeks before they shut down, surely they must have had some idea, she was not happy to say the least wasting all that money to get connected then without warning they're off air.

[herbie_g]

so what are you saying? they're not coming back right? why didn't they let all their customers (me being one) know? orcus media sent us emails telling us that they are waiting for new frequencies but they haven't let us know of the outcome. I've been a customer since mirchee was on air then orcsat. Now if someone else took their place how would we put any trust in these people? I got my sister to join orcsat about 3 weeks before they shut down, surely they must have had some idea, she was not happy to say the least wasting all that money to get connected then without warning they're off air.

Yes, it does seem a bit confusing, doesn't it?

By the looks of things, the MED pulled the frequencies which they had originally granted orcus for broadcast to the Auckland metro area. As is the case with all frequencies issued they come with conditional on interference to other users. It would appear that one (or more) of the frequencies granted did indeed cause interference to other users of spectrum, so the MED recinded the license. They offered orcus one frequency only (instead of the original 3) 12200Mhz, for a non-renewable period of one year. This meant that in a years time they would be off the air in Auckland anyway. So, I guess the question the directors was faced with was "Do we continue for one year only with a 3rd of our original content/programming?" They decided that would be un-viable so pulled the pin.

However, it would appear all is not lost. Orcsat, the satellite version of orcus, looks set to launch nationwide at some point. It's quite possible much of the programming you were watching on orcus will be made available when the satellite option launches.

Did I get that right Tony?

Cheers,
Herb.

[sally]

yes Tony, do let us know did herbie get it right?

anyway I guess we'll just have to wait and see, but next time orcus should be thinking more about their customers, and let them know what's happening instead of leaving us with no answers and a lot of anger.

Thanks herbie.

[sally]

So where r u Tony? Hidding out, or has the cat got your tongue?