Greetings From The Uplink Center!

I flew into Denver yesterday just so I could go on a tour of Dish Network’s uplink facility in Cheyenne, Wyoming and boy am I glad I did.

For a satellite geek like me this was like walking on holy grounds.

The trip started at 10:45 this morning and it took us an hour and a half to get there but the trip was well worth it. As we got off the bus a security guard told us we could take as many pictures as we wanted outside, but no photos inside.

After that we were broken on down in groups and taken inside. First stop was down the stairs of the facility where Dish Network takes the video feeds and encodes them for uplink. The room was huge and there were satellite receivers and encoders as far as the eye could see. If you looked in the air you could see massive amounts of well-organized cable that was feeding the signals to other parts of the building. And engineer told me that the building has enough cable in it that if they took it out and strung it end to end it would circle the Earth 6 times! People never think about all the work that goes into bringing them television to their homes, and this wiring job is something to truly be appreciated.

Next we saw a room full of batteries, the batteries were like car batteries all hooked together. This room was like a giant UPS (uninterruptable power supply) that could power the operations for 20 minutes if the commercial supply went out. The Cheyenne uplink center uses as much electricity per month as 230 households use in a year!

We were then taken and shown the Technical Operations Center, which uses a huge video wall that can display around 1,000 video services. The layout of the wall can be changed at anytime, and in the event of trouble with a station an alarm will be displayed on screen notifying them of the issue. To me this was the most amazing room, as there in front of us were hundreds of channels all being displayed at one time.

We then saw Master Control; this is where they manage channels such as Pay Per View, Sports Alternative channels, and business television stations. Here they manage Dish Home (channel 100) and is also the place that all the PPV movies and events come out of.

We saw other portions of the building and a separate building that housed generators that could power the entire complex if the power went out.

We were even taken on a special tour of Dish Networks Spacecraft Operations area, this highly secure area is where the most vital part of the operations take place. This is where they actually control the satellites. On one of the stations was an Atari 2600 joystick, I don’t know if it was there as a joke or if they really use it to control the satellites, but it gave me a good laugh.
One of the most unique things on the tour we saw was Dish Networks huge 82 foot by 23-foot Torus satellite dish. This dish is where they receive all of the programming off of satellite for use to send back out to Dish Network customers. This massive dish can simultaneously receiver signals from 35 satellites in a 70 degree arc of the Clarke Belt.

After the tour we were treated to lunch and I got to meet with many of the engineers at the uplink center. It made me feel great that many of them knew who I was and knew of my work. Also made me feel good that as we were on our tour my website was found on a number of computer screens throughout the facility.

The uplink center folks made me feel at home and made me feel welcome. I thank them for their hospitality!

Today was a great day.

NOGGIN NOW 24/7 on Dish Network
Good news to parents out there, today Dish Network finally split Noggin and The N and now offers both channels 24 hours a day!

This move surprised me as this split was not scheduled to happen until May 24th.

We will catch you later this week from here in Denver! Thanks for reading!