I think I saw someone post about this a while ago. Say I get a hacked Dish 500 system with a DP 301 receiver and I live near Buffalo. Would I be able to get all the local channels from cities like Cincincinnati, Dallas, etc. with this system? Or does the transponder just pick up the closes local channels, in this case Buffalo?
no, its a single satellite you would get the same same channels as everyone else. Transpondors are for handeling the channels on the satellite and they alternate between them for even and odd channels then when the advailable bandwidth is used up then it goes to another new transpondor on the same satellite. This is how networks can have so many channels