Sat TV from South Africa

Cupart

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I'm was wondering if it was possible to pick up any sat signals from South Africa, here in Europe and if so what dish size would one need? I'm quite sure I read a few years ago, that someone in S.A. was able to pick up the old analouge TV3 (from Astra 1 in D2Mac?) channel from Viasat...

Does any one have any experience with this?

Cheers
 

Analoguesat

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SABC News is on OBE on Sky every evening. ;)
 

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Cupart said:
I'm was wondering if it was possible to pick up any sat signals from South Africa, here in Europe and if so what dish size would one need? I'm quite sure I read a few years ago, that someone in S.A. was able to pick up the old analouge TV3 (from Astra 1 in D2Mac?) channel from Viasat...

Does any one have any experience with this?

Cheers

Works ok for me here since the angle is 12 degrees over the horizon but you can't make it since Dublin has a degree of 0,8 degrees which you can't deal with.

The Sat is PANAMSAT 10 on 68,5 east were you can receive SABC 1-3 and etv but Ireland is just bad for that bird. Some folks in the UK with a bit of luck can make it since the angle is around 3-5 depending were you are.

You might give it a try in France / Bordeaux as I just saw you mentioned too. The evaluation here is 6,18 degrees, a lot better but still very low. One meter dish should give you a signal.

Sorry for the bad news M8.

Cheers
 

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Ok you can get SABC that far. But is it possible to get European SATs say Astra or Hotbird in Southern Africa? How big should the dish be if it i9s possible?
Thanx
 

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boot_sectorz said:
Ok you can get SABC that far. But is it possible to get European SATs say Astra or Hotbird in Southern Africa? How big should the dish be if it i9s possible?
Thanx

It is not a matter of geographical (unless SAT is behind horizon) distance. It depends if the Sat has a footprint to a certain region or not. PAS 10 has a beam to Europe as well. Astra and Hotbird do not have a southern African beam. No way of receiving a signal. It is sometimes possible to have reception of birds outside the footprint but in this case not even a 10 meter dish would pick up a signal in South Africa for instance.

Take a look at :

www.lyngsat.com

You can look at the beams from the different Sats there.
 

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In Johannisburg Astra 1 ANALOGUE Reception of 6 Transponders is possible with a 7m dish (PRO7,SAT1 and a few others), with 11m also in south america. But its an anomaly of the antenna on the satellite,normally that far out of footprint is a no go.

Eutelsat widebeam is relatively easy to get up to about Camaroon/Central Africa with standard dishes up to 3.2m (I know,I seen it)

Greetings
Chris
 

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I stay in South Africa (near Johannesburg).

There was an article in the TelesatelliteInternational Magazine where that Magazine wanted to find the reason of why was that reception possible, as chrislloret correctly says. Then the University of Stellenbosch (near Capetown) joint -in. They discovered that 4 or 5 analogue stations where possible to receive in Capetown, with a 4 m precision solid dish. In Johannesburg it was a 5 m precision solid dish. And in Namibia (+/- 1500 km north of Capetown), the reception with a 4 m mesh dish was possible. The famous Schumacher (a German Farmer in Brazil, a fitter by trade) build himself a 11 m monster dish and receives analogue signals from Europe. How? Everyone is pointing to side lobe signals (small signals off the antenna's main beam), but for these signals the actual reception is too good. So the experts should come up at one day with a plausible explanation or better – facts, why a reception 1000s of km’s off the footprint, a reception is possible.

Regards

nopfusch





 

mouk

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nopfusch said:
I stay in South Africa (near Johannesburg).

There was an article in the TelesatelliteInternational Magazine where that Magazine wanted to find the reason of why was that reception possible, as chrislloret correctly says. Then the University of Stellenbosch (near Capetown) joint -in. They discovered that 4 or 5 analogue stations where possible to receive in Capetown, with a 4 m precision solid dish. In Johannesburg it was a 5 m precision solid dish. And in Namibia (+/- 1500 km north of Capetown), the reception with a 4 m mesh dish was possible. The famous Schumacher (a German Farmer in Brazil, a fitter by trade) build himself a 11 m monster dish and receives analogue signals from Europe. How? Everyone is pointing to side lobe signals (small signals off the antenna's main beam), but for these signals the actual reception is too good. So the experts should come up at one day with a plausible explanation or better – facts, why a reception 1000s of km’s off the footprint, a reception is possible.

Regards

nopfusch






hi m8

will be travelling to SA soon are there any satshop in jhb?
are there any online satshops based in sa?

thankyou
 

boot_sectorz

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@ Chris, any chance of you giving us more info on the Eutelsat widebeam that you know can get as far as Central Africa. Would surely appreciate that.

@ All
I see alot of people are interested in getting signals thats are way out of the foot print. Is there a thread or someone should create one. So we put info on all that can be received way of the foot print. This will be very useful to some of us who desparately need it.
I wouldn't mind getting even one channel from a far of land. I want some european or American SATs within my reach. Bigger dish - well will see if it is an obsatcle.
Thanks guys for all your info- keep up the good work.
 

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This thread is developing to be very interesting :)

Allow me to correct the size of dish in Southern Brazil Mr. Schumacher was using: It was an 8m selfmade solid in a very professional way. I haven't heard of him for many years now. Maybe Dr.Dish knows more since he was in contact with him. He did not achive to receive any digital signals by the way.

Well analogue Astra 1A/B/C reception in former times was possible in many african countries starting from 4.5m up to 12m solid.

Might be interesting for some folks: http://forum.digitalfernsehen.de/forum/showthread.php?p=705034#post705034
On the last post of mine i have written down (in german) the beams a member of the greek sat board of sdtv.gr receives in Lubumbashi (southern Dem.Rep. of Congo) on his 3.70m selfmade solid.

Concerning 13E reception i have also some questions about it:
1. Where exactly in Cameroon was the reception made ?
2. Do we speak of handmade dishes or commercial solid (or meshed ?) ones ?
3. Any special hardware ? Highperforming SMW LNB or a very tuner-sensitive receiver ?
4. What is beeing received there ? Only Hotbird 6 or also other Widebeam frequencies of the elder Hotbirds ? I don't think that they catch any Superbeam frequencies, do
they ?
 

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If somebody wants to know the "Main-SAT-signal supplier" to South Africa and neihboring countries:: Multichoice; if you have a signal you might see "DSTV" .displayed.
http://w*w.seeq.com/lander.jsp?referrer=&domain=multichoice.com&cm_mmc=
or simply w*w.multichoice.com/

that's the address if someone wants to purchase one of their many packages they offer, their satellite is Pananamsat7/10. C- and Ku-Band. And most of it is in PAL I!

There are also some free channels, but you still need a smartcard (around 80 Euros, one for C- and one for Ku-Band, once only). I think at present you can receive only Botswana TV without any smartcard and on the footprint to southern Africa.

Yes deepbluesky (tiefblauer Himmel), you half-right: with the 8m dish Mr. Schumacher received analogue channels. The 11m was ment to receive digital transmissions - no success. And nobody knows why not??? Dr. Dish was there and had no explanation either.
regards
nopfusch
 

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11m ? So he built another one ? Or did he expand the existing one ?

By the way nopfusch, great to have you here with us. It's quite rare to see people from Africa in european sat boards :)
 

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We where in Guider and Maroua in Camerun (North) and in Paoua,central Africa. This is a few years ago and we could recieve Signals of Hotbird analogue like TV5 and I think also Euronews, there where several others but by today they all moved to digital. I do not know about digital reception there, that is after my time "in the field"

The Antennas where commercial HC Mesh Antenna,the cheap ones,3.7m, really made for C-Band in the States but they perform very well for Ku as well. They are relatively light and stay upright on trailers. We also had a 5.6m solid (in parts) for the broadcasting bit, but could not use that for our "private" sat-search expedition, after all,we where there for work. As reciever we also hat an analogue HC. Quite a good equipement.
We where using the Intelsat Fleet, normally in C-Band for V-SAT broadcast, they supply (even today) several spot beams to all of Africa and also a Hemi Beam (hence the 5.6m Dish)
In general I think that we lost a lot with the switch to digital what out of footprint is concerned as I could keep up with a snowy picture (ahhh the filmch. and MTV on 27.5w, long long ago) because today its simply picture or no picture.

To everyone who is really interested in Feeds and far away stations, try the C-Band. You do need big antennas, 1.8m minimum,but its well worth it. Its a real hobby (if you get planing permission AND can convince the neighbours that you do not work for the CIA and do NOT mess up ther TV and mobile phone reception)
Greetings
Chris
 

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Actaully I feel we lost out too. Worse for us from Africa and far of places like Zambia. I don't mind too having snow on a picture. After all I never have snow in Zambia. It is the transmission that I'm interested in.
Anyway, theres alot more being missed out by restricting signals to an area just for quality. I think if we have satellites being set up llike the internet, more good will be out. Doesn't matter where U, U can access satellites.co.uk. why not still access any satellite U want. Or just combine analogue and digital transmissions so many will get them. Get ur bucks through ads or something. Good channels will always be worth paying for regardless of where U live.
Anyway thats me being sat-litical (Satellite-Political ha ha)
 

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Thanks a lot for your post Chris. Analogue reception was indeed quite easily to cope with if you were out of footprint. You had chances to improve the signal with a LT circuit or in extreme cases a Digitex.

Indeed boot_sectorz it's a pity that transmissions are such restricted and i fear that in future they will be much more since in the States very small spot beams are usual, so the Astra 2D is only the peak of an iceberg. The worst will be when frequency reuse starts. Then even you won't know installing a 10m dish what if at all you will get.

In my opinion in far future it will be necessary to have broadband internet connections (>10 Mbit/s or even more) so that a known person of yours inside the footprint could stream to your location the station you'd like to see. But what i don't expect is that TV and radio stations all over the world will offer this as a paid service. As long as there are mighty media companies trying to sell their content as much profit making is possible. And do never forget: TV is the easiest way to spread in a short time propaganda, so it's a political and not such a technical problem.
 

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Best thing would have been to still use C-band satellite as we did in the early days as the beams could cover half the earth almost.

However you needed dishes around 6-7M so many people with small dishes today wouldn't take benefit of the weak spots.

Just look at USA which was the big nation with C-band and large dishes and had all expensive receivers we couldn't get in Europe as they were designed for NTSC and 950-1450MHz.

Now they are like the opposite with tiny small dishes and has forgotten about their history.

I am glad i don't live over there as they don't have much choice these days.
 

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@ Deepbluesky,
U right. The multimedia companies are actually making things worse by trying to make more and more profit from us. I feel a break through will be in the areas of streaming or something like that. It will only be a problem when someone finds a way to block it. I hate thinking about the death (God forbid) of VLC, for being a free media player, all for licensing stuff.
I think all Sat Lovers will be better when we have access to each Sat on this planet and probably more out there. Hopefully even if they charge, it will be affordable since you can easily change preference to a cheaper source. Unlike a situation where you have only 2 channels on the entire Sat offering FTA service.
 

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IM in wales uk i can get the ku band SABC channels sabc 1,2,3 etv and a few others on 68.5 e on a channel master 1.2m dish fine with 97% signal
 

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On what receiver do you get the SABC signals? Do you get Botswana TV in as well? Cheers
 
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