Astra 1M on air. Any distant reports?

[bite]

As mehdisa already said, MTV Unlimited package right now is on Widebeam...
There are some FTA Viacom channels too, like MTV Germany, Viva Germany, Nick/Comedy Central Germany etc.
Signal strength here on Latvia - 97% on 90cm dish with multifeed...
When Viacom channels were coming from old Astra - signal strength was 94 - 95% on my DM 600... So, there is improvement...

 

[BombedOne]

Das ist fantastich, meine lieben

 

[HB13DISH]

I am just wondering why Premiere has decided to transmit several transponders on the wide beam.
As Premiere official subscription is possible only in Germany and Austria, then I would have expected them to transmit only using the European beam so as to make it as difficult as possible to other countries like in the Middle East to receive the signals.
Could there be any technical reasons behind it?
Is it because the signal from this satellite is too powerful and therefore they use the wide beam?
Something like when you have a torch light shining over a small area and then over a wider area, then the light intensity is reduced.

I remember several years ago, when TPS made tests to transmit on the European beam (wide beam) instead of the Super Beam (narrow beam), they had complaints from their subscribers and then they reverted back to super beam until they resolved the technical problems.

 

[BombedOne]

As rumours say - all this due to damaged antenna alignment hardware on the satellite. It got stuck in such direction, that wide beam was formed.

But people do expect lowering of power of wide beam in nearest days - just as it happened with sirius north beam.

 

[Reza_Sadeghi]

as Mehdisa reported here about Quality of Astra Signals in Iran (Tehran) but i tried it again and again in East of Iran (Mashhad) with a dish sized 110 CM.
but we could not find any signal of Astra 1M at all.

I love Free German TV Package like RTL & VoX & nTV & VIVA .... but as i noticed they are all on European beam.
so nobody in Middle East can receive em but some Premier Channels in Encrypted.
of course there is not even Premier Channels in East of Iran too.

 

[HB13DISH]

As rumours say - all this due to damaged antenna alignment hardware on the satellite. It got stuck in such direction, that wide beam was formed.

But people do expect lowering of power of wide beam in nearest days - just as it happened with sirius north beam.

Thanks BombedOne for this info, even if it is a rumour.
Is it possible then that the wide beam was never intended on 1M in the first place and was created only as a result of this failure?

I am trying to avoid investing time and money getting the channels on the wide beam and even buying a Premiere subscription or MTV only to get disappointed again when they switch it back to the Europe beam.

 

[HB13DISH]

as Mehdisa reported here about Quality of Astra Signals in Iran (Tehran) but i tried it again and again in East of Iran (Mashhad) with a dish sized 110 CM.
but we could not find any signal of Astra 1M at all.

I love Free German TV Package like RTL & VoX & nTV & VIVA .... but as i noticed they are all on European beam.
so nobody in Middle East can receive em but some Premier Channels in Encrypted.
of course there is not even Premier Channels in East of Iran too.

Looks like 110 cm is probably too small in your location.
Take a look at the 1M footprint in one of the posts in page 1.

 

[BombedOne]

Yes, wide beam was never intended to exist at all - just check SES site for coverage maps. Coverage of astra 1M was known what it should be for a long time, but suddenly, after entering the desired position, they were forced to draw a new coverage map

So if you're planning to invest in mtv or premiere sub, it will be better to wait for a month or so - let the things settle down.

p.s. I'm still getting 12640 freq. from astra, re-checked today. So since there are no other reports of transfer of that frequency to 1M, seems like I'm receiving 1H...

p.p.s. As I can guess, by reading turkeyforum.com, Mehdisa is not in iran, but in turkey, province of anatolia.

 

[mehdisa]

Yes, wide beam was never intended to exist at all - just check SES site for coverage maps. Coverage of astra 1M was known what it should be for a long time, but suddenly, after entering the desired position, they were forced to draw a new coverage map

So if you're planning to invest in mtv or premiere sub, it will be better to wait for a month or so - let the things settle down.

p.s. I'm still getting 12640 freq. from astra, re-checked today. So since there are no other reports of transfer of that frequency to 1M, seems like I'm receiving 1H...

p.p.s. As I can guess, by reading turkeyforum.com, Mehdisa is not in iran, but in turkey, province of anatolia.

I am living in Tehran not in turkey .
Maybe we couldn't believe astra 1m coveraged middle east,
but i think their policy have changed.

in end of this year they will launche astra 3B with 55TP and this new satellite will coverage middle east also,17 tp will replace with 1E ,12 tp middle east and rest of is incremental.

 

[Reza_Sadeghi]

during these days (moving Channels to Astra 1M) a lot of people who lives in west of Iran and Tehran also central of Iran and of course Iraq and Turkey and Dubai (Middle East) reported they received Astra 1M Frequencies with good power on 90 CM unstandardised Dishes.
but here in east of Iran that i live here myself i could not receive any signal as i wrote before by 1.10 M Dishes.

and HB13DISH told me the size is not enough to reach Astra 1M according to Map and i believe it too.
but dear friends i think SES (Astra) company did not distribute the correct coverage Map due to Policies.
anyway...
during this days a lor of people reported they are watching Premier Channels on Astra 1M from Iran.(Tabriz, Kurdistan, Tehran, Isfahan, Ahvaz, Kerman, Bandar-e Abas, Dubai ,...)

 

[jonfr]

I got good signal from astra 1M here in Iceland. The quality of the signal is about 78 - 80%.

 

[Analoguesat]

AH Iceland - a beautiful country - I was there last summer and had a fabulous time

Well so far Astra 1M has an incredible coverage area - Iceland to Georgia in the north, the Canary Islands to Iran/Saudi Arabia in the south.

 

[Analoguesat]

As rumours say - all this due to damaged antenna alignment hardware on the satellite. It got stuck in such direction, that wide beam was formed.

But people do expect lowering of power of wide beam in nearest days - just as it happened with sirius north beam.

I dont believe there is any damaged antenna alignment - a very early press release I saw mentioned coverage into the Middle East - I mentioned it a couple of times in early discussions of 1M and wasnt believed

Remember these antenna reflectors are precision engineered to sub-millimetric levels of precision and any deployment fault would basically make that transmission reflector useless.

ALso look at the Astra 1/Hotbird historical situation. The Middle East has always been Eutelsat country. With satellites now covering that region SES can go for the market - and once they start culling the 19E analogue channels next year they will have plenty of digital capacity coming up for grabs. They may be able to offer some very sweet deals to channels wanting to transmit into the Middle East.

 

[divibi]

I got good signal from astra 1M here in Iceland. The quality of the signal is about 78 - 80%.

Hi Jonfr

Can you tell us more about satellite reception in Iceland, especially if you can receive any signals from US and Canadian satellites, like Echostar 61.5 W, or DirecTV or Nimiq?

 

[jonfr]

Hi Jonfr

Can you tell us more about satellite reception in Iceland, especially if you can receive any signals from US and Canadian satellites, like Echostar 61.5 W, or DirecTV or Nimiq?

I don't think that we can get any US or Canadian satellites. Mainly for the reasion that they are too far west for Iceland and possible below horizion. At least there isn't any Ku beam that reaches Iceland.

I found this footprint map of Nimiq, _http://www.geo-orbit.org/fprntwest/nimiq.gif

C band coverage is ok here in Iceland. But I don't have any C band LNB so it is of no use to me at the moment.

In Iceland, the best signals come from 1W, 13E, 19,2E, 23,5E (1/2), 28,2E and other satellites in that range. We also get few satellites on the West part of the sky, but no more then up to 37.5W, the exception from that might be the C band satellites that have huge coverage.

Most people point there dishes to europe. I don't know of anyone that has tried to get signal from US or Canada.

I hope that this gives you good idea on satellite coverage in Iceland.

 

[divibi]

I found this footprint map of Nimiq, _http://www.geo-orbit.org/fprntwest/nimiq.gif

C band coverage is ok here in Iceland. But I don't have any C band LNB so it is of no use to me at the moment.

In Iceland, the best signals come from 1W, 13E, 19,2E, 23,5E (1/2), 28,2E and other satellites in that range. We also get few satellites on the West part of the sky, but no more then up to 37.5W, the exception from that might be the C band satellites that have huge coverage.

Hi jonfr,

Thank you very much!!! Now I know I was hoping that someone in Iceland nailed Dish Network from Echostar 61.5 W. However, come to think of it, I now realize that Iceland is so much closer to Europe than it is to North America after all.
Also thank you for the footprint of Nimiq!!!

 

[deepbluesky]

I also have no detailed data for North American Beams but at least this here should show up that even in Greenland huge dishes are required: _http://web.dxsatcs.66.sk/php66/index.php?str=5&spr=14 but those might be for 13E.

Though i do believe that particular frequencies could break through even in Iceland just like 74W had been received in Ireland a couple of months ago.

@divibi: _http://www.satbeams.com/ has the most complete footprint database i am aware of. After a registration you've got full access to it.

 

[BombedOne]

So let's wait what tomorrow will bring to us
I expect some radical changes...

 

[mehdisa]

I should wait to canalsat.

 

[HB13DISH]

We can start dreaming.
All those packages that are on Astra 19.2E might be in our sitting rooms possibly just few weeks from today if some or all move to the wide band transponders:
- Premiere
- MTV
- Digital +
- ORF
- Canal Digitaal
- Canal Sat
Plus all the FTA channels there on the wide band transponders.
While our friends in Europe think whether to use a dish size of 60cm or 90cm, we have to consider 2.4m-5.0m but hopefully not for long. U-zzz