Maplin sattelite kit 99.00 dish and reciever any good?

[adrian29uk]

I want to be able to pick up Italian channels Rai Uno & Rai Due plus the regular german channels and some french. I used to be able to do this with my old sky analogue dish and box.

Will this sattelite kit be able to pick these up for me?

Also do I need to point the dish the 13degress east and line up with the hotbird sattelite for these channels?

Also I presume that the dish is an anologue signal, however the box transmits it to a digital picture so you dont get the snow, you either get a picture or you dont.

The sattelite kit can be found here
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=43113&criteria=SATTELITE &doy=26m2http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=43113&criteria=SATTELITE%20&doy=26m2

 

[gameboy]

You can receive these Free Italian channels from Hotbird at 13 degrees East with the correct size dish.

_http://www.lyngsat.com/freetv/Italy.html

Check this site for other Free-to-air (FTA) French and German channels...

The signal will be digital and you're correct if it is weak then the picture 'breaks up' rather than snow.

 

[Skip Channel]

Hi, they had a similar kit recently for £50/£60 (actually I think that was a 60 dish) but £99 probably isn't too bad if it includes everything. I have no experience of either this dish or the receiver. I think (and I could be wrong) that there might not be patches available for that receiver. For real free-to-air TV this is not a problem.

It's 90cm so even though you don't say where you're located I'd imagine you'd be okay for Hotbird. In southern England I can get the RAIs, the French and German channels easily on a 45cm square-ish dish and a 40cm oval dish (behind glass!).

All signals are analogue, so there's no such thing as a digital dish (even though I have a dish called DigiDish45!). But you're right, the box pieces together the ones and zeros and sends them on to your TV in analogue - and yes, you either get a picture or don't.

With a dish that size you can add extra LNBs (box at the end of the dish arm) and pick up Astra 1 (old "Sky" satellites), Hotbird, Astra 2/Eurobird ("Sky Digital") and with a bit of work Eutelsat 16 east. (Depending where you are of course). That's a whole lot of European TV!

 

[rolfw]

There is another thread in this section giving details of an ebay seller, where he has a similar kit, but with a monobloc LNB, for both Hotbird and Astra 19.2, may be worth considering.