Mmds

Razor

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Ok , I like TV, but the wife likes UTV and UTV only, as we live in ROI this is not available via sky. So I was left with the choice of acquiring a UK post coded box or dumping sky and going elsewhere for my TV. After some more ear bashing I cancelled my sub with sky and went DTT. MMDS to be precise, line of sight micro wave directional signal. The mast is 30 miles away and on a big hill, and I must say I’m impressed. The picture is crystal clear, even in bad weather, and the EPG and digibox are not bad.

Now the fun begins, and I start playing, must find out how,

The card is paired with the box,
What encryption are they using,
How are they beaming both analogue and digital from this narrow band mast.

These things keep me awake at night.
 

Channel Hopper

Suffering fools, so you don't have to.
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Do you know what is being transmitted from the mast? (both programme content and other services )

MMDS is normally on a frequency that requires special receiving aerials (above 1.2 GHz ). Did the local broadcasting company give you the kit to receive it, or did it come with the box of tricks indoors ?


Im intersted as theres not much demand ovcr here for the stuff for normal television broadcasts - the terrestrial coverages is OK for a start, and anyone that has trouble normally goes for cable or BSKYB
 

Razor

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Its early days yet so don’t know much, but here is what I do know.

The suppliers of this type of TV are very secretive about how it works, back in the old days (pre sky) our terrestrial coverage was so bad it was said 22% of rural Ireland could not receive RTE via the old aerial on the roof. This led to pirate masts popping up on some hills, giant aerials taking in signal, amplifying it and relaying it to anyone who would share the cost. After some time they found that with some tweaking they could pull in HTV, UTV, BBC W. The government moved to outlaw these pirates and pull down the masts, but two where quite well advanced and had worked out carriage fees with ITV, BBC, and where granted a license. To this day we still only have two providers of this type of TV and even if their names have changed or have been taken over by bigger companies (NTL) they are still pirates at heart.

They will provide the aerial for the roof, a square mesh type dish with some type of LNB never got a good look at it.
Also your choice of box, analogue, digital, but it is not for sale, you can only rent this equipment and if you cancel they come out and take back their stuff. The analogue box has built in encryption a variant of the old sky encryption and can receive 16 or so channels. The digibox has 100 channels and two card slots, and when they install they pair a card with each box.

Everything is kept quite, they never talk about frequency, or how they encrypt, as a system like this is wide open. Maybe they have visions of some guy with a shopping trolley on his roof watching SkySports for free. What I do know is that they pull signal from 28e unscramble it, then scramble with their own system and send it back out.
 
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