Help for complete novice!

Gilder

Hi,

As you will probably guess from what I am about to ask I am a complete novice to this, but here goes...

I have a Technomate 1500CI+ receiver with a standard Sky minidish (aligned to whatever Sky usually align their dishes to). It seems to pick up a number of channels on two of the Astra satellites and also Nilesat and Arabsat. When I do a blind search it brings up a large list of channels on these satellites, and the majority can be viewed. Some however just appear as a black screen (this is not because they are pay channels).

Could this be because my dish is not large enough?

Would I benefit from upgrading to a larger dish?

If so then I would quite like for it to be one of those transparent dishes (it has to go on the front of the house) so is there any particular setup that you would recommend?

Would this also be likely to pick up european channels or for this would I need a motorised dish?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Aidan

Analoguesat

You are ONLY picking up channels from 28E - (the "Sky" transmissions).

The reason why it appears you are picking up multiple satellites is that all the different Ku band satellites use the same frequency band so there is a lot of overlap in frequencies used.

You can see for yourself by comparing frequencies from Flysat:

_http://www.flysat.com/satlist.php

The frequencies may not be exactly the same, but receiver tuners will normally lock a signal even if its detuned by several MHz.

Analoguesat

If you want more satellite choice you need either more dishes up (Ive got 5!) go motorised, or put more lnb's on an 80 or 90 cm dish.

Gilder

Thanks for your help... can you explain more about putting additional LNBs on a larger dish?

Would this allow reception from more than one satellite without having to move the dish?

If I get a larger dish than I have pointed at Astra now would this allow the other European channels to be received?

If I was to get a secondary dish to point at Nilesat is there a way that this can be connected to the same receiver as the dish pointed at Astra?

The last question is that there are a lot of channels I appear on the list when I do a blind search on the "Sky" Astra satellite. Some of these are pay channels which I can understand not working, but others which apparently should work don't work - is this due to the mini-dish issue?

Sorry for the endless questions but I have only really started to learn about this over the last week!

Thanks,
Aidan

Analoguesat

To add LNB's to your dish you get an 80cm or bigger dish, and do this:

_http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/page9.htm

Then you use disecq switching (available on almost all receivers except old analogue kit and sky digiboxes) to switch between lnb's.

Nilesat is a difficult satellite in the uk - signal strengths are weak unless you are in East Anglian.

twag42

investing in a bigger dish and a motor would open up a whole load of different channels for you.some good some not so good.keep the mini dish for sky,and set up the motor to play with the technomate.Have Fun :-)

TWAG