Oyster Caro on Narrowboat

[m0mcx]

I have an Oyster Caro on my new narrowboat and I took along our home SKY Amstrad settop box to test it out. I flicked the dish controller on, the dish rose, it whizzed around and found Astra 2D (the default for UK market with this dish) and it was like being at home. I was very impressed. I made the boat move by leaping from one side to the other to see if I could reduce the signal but the spec sheet says that it will tolerate up to 8 degrees of movement. Seems a lot but in fairness, I was making the boat move quite a lot and the sig was rock solid.

I have a couple of questions:

1) The Caro is pre-programmed with a few different birds and you can program others. Assuming that I tell it to go and find another satellite, will I need a different receiver to view the channels? We have the Amstrad DRX550 white streamlined thing and I'm not sure what else it will do.

2) Will I need another contract to use a permanently assigned new Sky Box on the boat, or can I take the card from the box at home when we visit the boat? We're addicted to the Disney Channel (kids!) so the free ones aren't much use.

3) What else might I do with this system? Any tricks?

I'll take a video of the motors seeking Astra 2D sometime and let you see.

Cheers,

Callum.

 

[rolfw]

Hi Callum, welcome to the forum. ]

Have seen these dishes in operation and they are great to watch, if you put it on yourtube, you can use [tube] BB code with just the video number in the middle and add a / before tube in the end bracket.

The Sky digibox will accept around 50 channels added in "other channels", but because of the limited symbol rates available, it means you won't find much of use doing it that way. You might be better off getting something like a Dreambox, then you can use your own Sky card in it, plus it is much more suited to viewing the channels on other satellites, plus it can be a lot of fun to play with.

 

[m0mcx]

Dreambox. Cool, I'll go take a look. [later] Woops, I can buy one for 65 quid or 200 or so. Woah! More research. [unwoops]

Back to reality: Further research is suggesting that depending if and when (and which) box I buy, I won't be able to use my existing Sky card. This is confusing because when the little man from Sky came out to the house recently, he did a warranty repair - and actually replaced absolutely everything (dish, coax, the lot) including the Amstrad box. The existing card in the old box worked in the new box without him making a phone call. When I say "worked", I mean that Disney and Discovery (our fav's) were there. He did make the call though and said that it would be a few hours before all the channels came alive, but of course we don't subscribe to films or sprt, only kids and the discovery stuff (which all worked).

Piecing 2 + 2 together from posts here, I'm starting to think that after a few hours in the narrowboat (assuming we took the card there), the card would discover that it's not married to the box and revert to being a freeview type card.

Am I right..?

Rolf, as regards "it can be a lot of fun to play with" - this is certainly one of my primary reasons since I'm an amateur radio op and love to muck about, but the kids won't be happy when it all stops because I fncked it up!

Cheers!

Callum.

 

[Irishsatguy]

Callum,

As above i;d recommend the Dreambox , try the DM500s to start with, it will give you years of fun