nOOb questions from experienced tech

[1953Beetle]

Our business is expanding from the US to the UK. I am very familiar with setting up Dish, DirecTV and Shaw. I am out of my element with configuring the new office, London EC4A.

Here is what I eventually want 30 or so HD tuners, no DVR, with the least number of dishes on the roof.

In the states, I can put a single quad LNB Dish on the roof and pull all the signals down 4 coax to a combination of Sonora splitters and powered multi-switches. I have one location with 64 tuners from one dish. Will the Whyte Series 5 equipment do it? or is there something else? The tuners will be in a closet, driving video out via composite cables, so wiring is not an issue.

I want a mix of Sky and FreeSat stations. I would like to bring in French or other European broadcasts as well. Is that possible from London? If so, do I need another dish to pick up the additional signals or is there a quad that can do it? Or do I need to separate the switching environment as well?

Any help is appreciated.

 

[Analoguesat]

Hello & welcome to the forum.

UK channels come off the Astra 2 cluster at 28E. The UK psb channels & most news services are fta, most sky channels are encrypted.

French stuff comes off various birds, but 5W or 19E is probably the best. most psb signals are encrypted.

German stuff is 19E, Italian 13E, Spanish 19E or 30W.


Most of the channels you will require are broadcast off high power satellites so unless you want something esoteric you probably wont have too many problems.


Sky commercial subs rates can be expensive, but as you sound like you are doing something commercial I dare say that wont be too much of an issue..

 

[Channel Hopper]

If you are in EC4, I'd check first that the satellites of interest are not hidden behind a much taller building.

 

[1953Beetle]

If you are in EC4, I'd check first that the satellites of interest are not hidden behind a much taller building.

Thanks, I'll do that right away

 

[1953Beetle]

OK, I have had a line of site survey done, and we have clearance.

I need composite video out of the tuner, what is the best head-end configuration? I am looking for 50 tuners for Sky and FreeSat. For US satellite I can bring the 4 coax feeds from the LNBs and split it out. Is it the same? Is the Whyte Series 5 the way to go?

 

[Captain Jack]

DirecTV LNBs work rather differently to LNBs here in Europe. For your configuration, you would likely need a quatro LNB, which has 4 outputs, one for each polarity and band (low-vertical, low-horizontal, high-vertical and high-horizontal). This will need to go into a multi-switch (or more likely a number of), which will combine these 4 outputs into 1 cable to be fed to each receiver.

 

[rolfw]

With that size of system I would go for fibre rather than coax, much more flexible, have replied to your other thread, let me know if you want my colleague's number. I'm using a multi-satellite dish on another project, will be set up on three satellites, so UK French and German channels shouldn't be a problem, although there isn't much french programming which is free to air.

 

[Channel Hopper]

Where is the other thread as I get at least 20 French channels here on a Free to Air basis

 

[Analoguesat]

Where is the other thread as I get at least 20 French channels here on a Free to Air basis

This one?

http://www.satellites.co.uk/forums/threads/commercial-designer-installer-needed-london-ec2a.163165/