I haven't got a clue...

G

gascan22

Member
My Satellite Setup
Nothing as yet
My Location
Gloucester, England
Hi, I would really appreciate some advice from you knowledgeable people.

I've recently got fed up with my virgin tv service and would like to set up a satellite dish and receiver. At first I was looking at just getting a HD Freesat box with a cheap dish but having thought it over, since I study A level Italian at college I would really like to be able to view italian tv channels aswell. My problem is that I haven't got the faintest idea what would be the best receiver or satellite dish to receive all the sd and hd channels that freesat offer aswell as being able to receive the Italian tv channels.

Would the freesat box be able to receive italian tv?
Will I need to buy a motorised dish to be able to pick up both english and italian channels?

Sorry if my questions seem dumb but I'm really not clued up about these things. I would prefer a receiver that is easy to use and that records tv well. I would also like to keep the costs down if possible. So if anyone has any advice please do share. Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
 
There are quite a few FTA, Free to Air, Italian channels, as you can see from this link:
Code: 
http://en.kingofsat.net/find2.php?pos=&cl=ita&num_pays=&num_genre=&num_crypt=1&num_standard=Digital&ordre=freq

As the most are on 13E then receiving them should be fairly straight forward, and cheap.

You have several choices:
A motorized dish set up
Two fixed dishes, one on 28.2E and one on 13E
One large dish with multiple LNB's.

Most receivers will be capable of picking up the channels, and many HD digital satellite receivers are quite cheap, providing you don't want extras like PVR, twin tuners etc.
 
Thanks for your input Mickha much appreciated.

So if I was to go for a larger dish with mulitiple LNB's what size and type of dish would you recommend for me?
I take it that with the multiple LNB's I'd be able to add another receiver at a later date? because this could be a possibility.
Also where would you recommend that I buy a satellite dish?

Thanks alot for your help and also for the link.
 
I would recommend a Visiosat Bisat dish. I've installed hundreds of them in the past :D

They get good levels on both 28.2e, 18.2e and 13e at the same time. You can add lnbs at different positions to suit the application by just changing the lnb holder. You just use a DISEqC switch to switch between the lnbs.

See the pictures below.

Nano
 

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After spending the past couple of days searching the internet its all starting to make a bit more sense. However I would really appreciate your opinion of the following setup bearing in mind I'm trying to keep the costs to a minimum..

80cm Technomate Solid Satellite Dish & Fittings
2 twin LNB's
Diseqc Switch 2/1
Multi LNB Bracket (Cheap but not sure if it's any good) ebay 150611201926?
Once I've bought the wall bracket, cable, fittings etc. it all comes to around £90.

As for the receiver, it looks like I'm going to get one of the Humax's. Still undecided if I should get one with recording capabilities or not. Am I right in believing that for being able to record one channel whilst watching another I would need twin cables going into the box?? If so, if in the future I wanted to add a second receiver in my bedroom then I guess I would have to buy quattro LNB's, right??

As always thanks for your input its much appreciated.
 
Anybody??

I'm hoping to buy everything this weekend so I would be really grateful if someone could confirm if the above setup is going to allow me to watch 28E and 13E.
Or if anyone can recommend a better setup for under £100 that will do what I want.

Thanks in advance.
 
Not sure about how much adjustment there is on the bracket, but as long as it can handle 15 degrees offset, it should be fine on an 80cm.
 
gascan22 said:
Anybody??
Or if anyone can recommend a better setup for under £100 that will do what I want.
Click to expand...

AFAIK Technomate don't do dishes, but for the price, a dish, two LNBs with appropriate bracketry, DiSEqC switch and cabling plus delivery sounds fine.

Who's going to install it though ?
 
It's called Technomate but maybe its just some cheap dish ripping of the technomate trademark. Wouldn't be suprising on Ebay. To be honest, as long as it works as it should then I'm not really bothered.

And yes, I plan on setting it all up myself!! Having spent the past several days researching online I believe I've got a decent understanding of how it all works. Thanks to Google and all the great information available online, in the past I've managed to successfully teach myself how to build PCs and rebuild 4 stroke engines among other things so I'm quietly confident that I'll be capable of setting up a satellite dish. :-righton

Although, if I were to run into problems I'm sure I could ask some advice from the many knowledgeable people on this website like yourself.:)

Thankyou all for your time and opinions. It's much appreciated!


[warning]Live External Link Disabled - For eBay , please use Item Numbers[/warning]
 
Good Luck id be interested how you get on, being in a simular position
 
I've got all the parts I need now and I'm hoping to get it all installed this weekend so I'll let you know how it goes banny1.
 
Looking at the (now disabled) link, at least the supplier quotes three gain figures across the band, which is to your advantage.

What they don't provide is a photograph of the rear end which may be troublesome if you are thinking of bolting to something non-standard or in a high wind area.
 
Update. I managed to get everything installed on saturday without too much trouble and after a while messing around with the LNB bracket and positioning the satellite dish I'm now happily receiving all the italian channels I wanted as well as all the free sat english ones.

However I'm a bit dissapointed because I've only managed to get 65-75% quality on the italian channels and 60-65% on the english (is that normal for an 80cm dish??). The level for all the channels is 97%. We had some heavy rain and strong winds the other day and the quality of the channels remained the same so its obviously a strong enough signal to not cause problems but from the information around online I was expecting to be able to get at least around 80%. I've also noticed on 28.2E there are alot of transponders where I'm not picking up the channels, probably just the foreign ones seeing as I've got all the BBC, ITV channels etc. but it would be nice if I could get them all.

Do you think this could just be the positioning of the LNB??

I've set the dish up so that 13E is the main focus and then using the bracket I bought I've got a second LNB sort of up a bit and quite far left. Well instead of trying to explain it just check out the photo I've attached(Not from the best angle sorry).

It seems to me that the LNB bracket doesn't offer much adjustment for pointing the second LNB at an angle so I'm probably just going to make my own out of some aluminium.

Well, thanks for your time and any help will be much appreciated.
 

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