"Discreet" dishes

[elniniol999]

im one of those unfortunate sort who live in a development thats managed by property factors.* They will simply not allow satellite dishes but recently noticed someone has a the sky minidish just about buried in the garden area behind all sorts of wildlife!* i reckon he gets away with it because no one sees it and his flat is on the ground floor where the garden area seems to be pretty private to that particular flat.

that got me thinking, could i get away with something like that - no! i live on the first floor but what i did find is dish alternatives

digiglobe http://www.digicams-uk.com/prod30.htm

kathrein sat antennas http://www.digicams-uk.com/prod244.htm

LX200 http://www.pulsat.com/satellite/site...product_id=181

i was wondering if anyone had any experience with any of these - really only interested in sky dig and all the freebies on28E at the moment.

any help appreciated or any other suggestions welcome!

cheers

[MrGlum]

No experience of these but their prices are a little testicle shrinking.
Does your location have Cable TV or excellent Terrestial reception?
If not, It may be worth doing a 'flyer' asking who would like sat tv.
I would make sure that all know having a sat dish means you are simply up-to-date rather than you watch footie.
We [the English] is awful snobs. Sucess requires accomodation of this fact.

[BGonaSTICK]

Hi elniniol999.

The three alternatives you have picked out are often discussed on satellite boards, along with another (though not of interest to you) which is a dish disguised in a plastic rock!

I don't have any personal experience, but can draw on that of the many other folk that have tried them.

Yes, they work - but relatively poorly. At the end of the day, the amount of signal you can collect depends primarily on the reflector size.

The pipe antenna is interesting, but ultimately has the same limitation.

So the bottom line is that if you don't mind spending the rather high ticket price, plus installation costs (if you can find someone experienced enough to fit one for you) and live in the south of the UK (stronger signal to start with) then it might be worth a go.

It's very ugly and geeky, but you could also mount a sky minidish inside one of your south-ish facing windows. The glass steals some signal, especially double glazing, but it can work!

As MrGlum says, it may be worth leafleting your neighbours and petition the management company for a single roof-mounted dish.

STICK

[elniniol999]

tried the shared dish route already but the property factors argued that the initial cost would be too high as not that many people were interested.

i take it the posibility of getting decent signal with the 3 mentioned "dishes" in edinburgh is hit or miss then?

the dish at the window isnt really an option either since i rent out some rooms in my flat and these are the only ones that face southish really.

ive looked round the building and theres loads of places i could put a dish quite sneakily but id probably get a nice letter through the door so my thought was use a "dish" thats not actually a dish. then im not technically breaking any factor rules.

i think the digiglobe is probably the most realistic option though - id be certain to get a southfacing view with it.

am i missing something blidingly obvious? - any other options or suggestions on what ive said greatly appreciated!

[BGonaSTICK]

To be honest, I think reception in Edinburgh is going to be tough with one of those gadgets.

Regardless of the shape etc, you'll still need an unobstructed view of the southern sky.

Why don't you ask the guy with the dish in the shrubbery if he would fit a quad LNB to his dish and run a cable to it?

If he likes to bend the rules himself and you offer to bung him a few quid, you never know.

If it were me, I'd be more than happy. You can run the cable underground once down to the ground floor.

You can even get a section of coaxial cable that you can shut in your window!

I don't think there are any other options that we've missed.

The dawn of FTA TV over IP (Internet streaming) is on our doorstep. With the BBC and ITV teaming up on an FTA satellite venture, and the BBC already test-streaming high-quality BBC1 and BBC2 over the net, that may be your best bet.

STICK

[the ugly american]

in america we just stick on our roof "Discreet"? whats that? also you got programs for ntsc? like pansat 2500?

[BGonaSTICK]

LOL, but then you don't have Mr Tony Blair

He checks each dish installation personally (... I'm blQQdy sure he'd like to...)

Most of our satellite transponders use DVB-S/mpeg2 at the moment. A few HD test channels exist for the moment. Sky start HD proper in a month. Our TV standard is PAL, but in reality most of our TV's will handle NTSC as well.

We don't carry any receiver firmware files here of any sort I'm afraid.

STICK