VU+ Duo set-up in my uni house

[Adam792]

Here's a few pictures of my set-up now that my VU+ Duo has arrived.

It's fed by two feeds from a Sky minidish (re-aligned to 19.2°E) - I'll get a picture of that when it's light. I would have ideally wanted to go for a 13°E and 19.2°E set-up but the landlord only allowed me to use the current dish, I'm not allowed to install anything else and obviously as it's Zone 1 it's nigh on impossible to get both those positions on it.

I have a Hauppauge Win-TV NOVA-T USB DVB-T tuner attached which provides me with the 2 standard definition PSB multiplexes from the Bath transmitter via a cheap indoor aerial - it cost me £1 from one of the bargain shops; it was old Woolworths stock, branded as an 'analogue TV aerial' (not that there's any such thing, and besides, I thought the reason for the 'digital aerial' branding was to dupe people into thinking they need a 'digital' aerial, surely this then had a negative effect, but anyway... ). For some reason, even though the Bath transmitter is vertically polarised, the aerial works best while polarised horizontally. It's very difficult to get it to be vertical anyway though and to be honest, as long as it's providing glitch-free reception I'm not bothered!

The VU+ is networked via a bridge with an Acer Eee PC which gives it access to the internet via WiFi (and also runs vPlug Server, feeding into OSCam). This was an absolute bitch to set-up as for some reason the V*rgin M*dia Superhub doesn't seem to like bridged devices. Our older VM equipment at home always coped fine with it...

I've got a 4GB USB stick in the back with my picons on it. I'm trying to set it up so that it'll timeshift to it as well but for some reason the latest Black Hole image doesn't have the 'Recording Paths' option in its menus.

The only thing I really have left to do is get hold of a proper HDD to put inside for recording. Otherwise I'm really quite happy with the set-up!

Edit Not to forget, I have my TNT Sat card with me, which is also being read by OSCam for the French channels.

 

[Lazarus]

Enterprising! (Will you have time to study?)

 

[archive10]

Nice installation, Adam! :-righton

intersting to see that time on the screen in the last picture is in 5 minutes!
(Either your clock is set wrong, or there is some serious space-time-continuum problems with this website...)

Analogue reception indoors is always a tricky one, because of all the reflections.
(As always, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!)

 

[Adam792]

Enterprising! (Will you have time to study?)

Hopefully; between flicking through satellite channels and going out there might be a little time left to do some work I guess!

Nice installation, Adam! :-righton

intersting to see that time on the screen in the last picture is in 5 minutes!
(Either your clock is set wrong, or there is some serious space-time-continuum problems with this website...)

Analogue reception indoors is always a tricky one, because of all the reflections.
(As always, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!)

Yes, the time was set to the default of CET instead of UK time - I only actually realised this about twenty minutes ago.

And yes, I'm lucky in that the reception here is fairly good - from roof height the transmitter up on the hill would be visible. It's a pity I'm not in an area that receives the full UK DVB-T offer of 5 SD multiplexes but to be honest, all the channels that I ever watch for any period of time are all on the 2 multiplexes which I can receive here. The only time I get any break up is when turning on light switches; otherwise it's fine.

 

[archive10]

Yes, the time was set to the default of CET instead of UK time - I only actually realised this about twenty minutes ago.

Well, I'm on CET, and even then the time was in five minutes when I posted!
Assuming you'd spent a little time uploading picture and writing post, the clock seems to be out by more than just 1 hour.

 

[Adam792]

Well, I'm on CET, and even then the time was in five minutes when I posted!
Assuming you'd spent a little time uploading picture and writing post, the clock seems to be out by more than just 1 hour.

OK, that's really bizarre then! I could have sworn that the default on all these images is pretty much always CET; it's set to UK time now though and is actually displaying 12:20 correctly. It's a mystery...

 

[fergyc]

Very nice! I can only get Freeview where I am unfortunately but yeah, put a harddrive in it!

 

[Adam792]

And here's the dish, you can just make out it's pointing slightly further round than next door's on the left. Cabling goes over the roof as the room is round the back.

A bit messy from the dish to the roof but that's not been changed. I don't know if it was originally installed by an actual Sky installer or what as you'd hope they'd not have done that, but I guess you never know!

 

[Lazarus]

Sadly that's exactly what they do do .............. half of my village is in the National Park, so no dishes on the front of houses: So Sky bung 'em on a pole at the back, looking over the roof and then bespoil the scenery by chucking cables willy-nilly over roofs. No thought, no support, no professionalism. Pay monkey nuts, get peas (I think).

 

[fergyc]

Yeah, you can hardly tell it's for 19e. Was the same when I aligned my uncle's that way. You couldn't tell, handy for those nosey neighbour types.

 

[Captain Jack]

Nice set up! There's a guy on a different forum getting 5 satellites from a zone 2 dish. Alternatively, you could motorise it (would still be the one dish on the wall ).

 

[Adam792]

Nice set up! There's a guy on a different forum getting 5 satellites from a zone 2 dish. Alternatively, you could motorise it (would still be the one dish on the wall ).

Bloody hell! That's rather impressive.

What I might do, is attempt to get my 38cm Aldi dish down and tripod and put it in the garden as/when I want to watch something else. From the back I should have clearance for 13°E at least. Can probably get 39°E/42°E through the window of the spare bedroom at the front as well. I'm pretty sure it's not double glazing as well which should go in my favour.

The obvious difficulty here is getting it from Staffordshire to Bath most probably on the train...

 

[Captain Jack]

You could probably put it on your front porch. It would be a non-fixed installation, so can be easily moved if anyone moans... A lot of people here set dishes up on a pole attached to a paving slab.

The obvious difficulty here is getting it from Staffordshire to Bath most probably on the train...

Have it posted to you - will probably be cheaper than a train ticket!

 

[Adam792]

I've installed a cheap Samsung 1TB HDD (About £40 from eBuyer) and all is working perfectly. I managed to make the recording paths menu show up in the end, and it's configured for recordings on the HDD, and timeshift, picons and crossEPG on the USB stick.