Indoor dish, is it worth it/possible?

xios2000uk

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Having spent a year at uni without any tv (poor freeview reception), I want to come up with a way of getting some form of TV in my dorm room next year. I've looked long and hard on the net, with mixed answers on whether a dish indoors pointing out a window can be suffice for watching sat tv.

The window I'll have next year is about 1.3m wide and a 1.5m tall, it's two panes of double glazed with a sliding mechanism right in the middle, made of metal. The window frame is all metal. The room isn't in a fringe reception area.

So guys, do I have a cats chance in hell? And what's the best kit for the job?(I wouldn't want to spend more then £100 for just a dish setup, and cheaper as always is better.)
 

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Hi,
Which direction does the window face?
You need to have a good view of the sky in a southerly direction.
When the window is slid open how wide is the opening?
Robbo.
 

xios2000uk

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I'll not know which way my window faces for now, but I know it needs to be facing southward for it to be pointing the right way. The window slides across horizontally the full way, so 50% of the full window width is open. I'll be top floor, and bar a very rare tree, it should be very clear to view out of.
 

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xios2000uk said:
I'll not know which way my window faces for now, but I know it needs to be facing southward for it to be pointing the right way. The window slides across horizontally the full way, so 50% of the full window width is open. I'll be top floor, and bar a very rare tree, it should be very clear to view out of.


if you are top floor can,t you put a dish on the roof, i had a dish mounted in my conservatory (temporarily) and reception was very poor and frustrating even with the door open!, best of luck m8

deep joy
Dave;)
 

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Ok, assuming that you window faces southish, you will definitely be able to receive satellite TV of some sort with the window open.

Obviously with the window closed there will be attenuation. Also the metal frame down the centre may block some signal depending on the direction on the dish.

A couple of examples through glass can be found here
_http://www.analoguesat.co.uk

Look at contributions, scroll down on the left.

Not sure what the car tyre is for though.
Best ask analoguesat himself.
 

xios2000uk

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The more I read about digital sat the more I feel like should complicate the problem. I was hoping that if I placed a dish inside I'd be able to adjust it to direct it to other sats in space. A motorised-dish on the roof was another idea I was playing around with, but then I'd need to get up there somehow and keep it out of the eyes of wardens (they already hate me for playing music too loud).
 

2cvbloke

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Robbo71 said:
Not sure what the car tyre is for though.
Best ask analoguesat himself.

That's an Analoguesat patented multi-dish compatible ground mount... :D
 

Robbo

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xios2000uk said:
The more I read about digital sat the more I feel like should complicate the problem. I was hoping that if I placed a dish inside I'd be able to adjust it to direct it to other sats in space. A motorised-dish on the roof was another idea I was playing around with, but then I'd need to get up there somehow and keep it out of the eyes of wardens (they already hate me for playing music too loud).

The only way to find out what you could achieve is to try it. If the view from inside your window is in the right direction and the glass doesn't attenuate the signal too much, there is no reason why you could not adjust the dish for other sats, including Hotbird, Astra 1,Astra2 and Hispasat.

Might be a bit of a pain in the ar*e to do it manually though, as both the elevation and azimuth require re-adjustment. This could be made easier if the dish was mounted on a pole aligned with the earths axis, then only the azimuth would require adjustment.


Probably best to start of with a cheap minidish or similar and experiment to see what you could pickup.

After that, start trying to complicate things.

How about an indoor motorised dish, that would be funny:-rofl2


and 2CVbloke, why tyres?, perhaps he had a spare lying around. I wonder how many other people there are in the world using car tyres, down to el famoso Analoguesat.
 
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