need some advice on what to chose

[adamlondoner]

hi guys and girls
i am adam from london. i'll be honest and upfront i am not to knowledgable about satellite tv however I am very interested in buying equipment for a set up.


currently i have your regular sky digital box and dish, but i used to have the old sky set up and loved the german channels,
so basically i am looking for the best option for the most amount of channels i can get that are FTA, my viewing habbits would be sports, any american news channels or music etc. I may also be interested in the paytv cards for the premiership etc.

now I don't have a fortune but i do have the ability to put up a large dish etc.

what would be my best option to view, and what would be the best way to go about it and an idea of cost.

thanks everyone., i hope my question isn't annoying

[BGonaSTICK]

Annoying? No mate - you are more than welcome to ask anything you like. No question too basic here

At the risk of sounding stupid myself, I assume you're in London ?



That will dictate dish size and whatnot.

Also, what sort of budget are you on, and is it a strict budget?

STICK

[adamlondoner]

Originally Posted by BGonaSTICK

Annoying? No mate - you are more than welcome to ask anything you like. No question too basic here

At the risk of sounding stupid myself, I assume you're in London ?



That will dictate dish size and whatnot.

Also, what sort of budget are you on, and is it a strict budget?

STICK

thanks for the reply,
I am in central london. islington to be exact. even with my sky digital and analouge dishes i've always seem to have some kinda of signal problem. but nothing major,

I do have not much of a budget now only about £100-200 however if i know there is something worth saving for in a month or so i'd be in a much better position to incread the budget

my flat is on top of an office buidling and have permission to put dish up etc. also i have easy access to the roof by staircase so i should be able to install myself

[BGonaSTICK]

OK, without any subscriptions, and wanting as much as possible, then I would say that a 90cm dish on a DiSEqC motor would be ideal. I wouldn't go any larger than that if it's on top of a high building, and make sure you secure it really well on a proper mounting system.

If you want to get your hands dirty and really experience it all on a small budget, then you can't beat the Skystar 2 PCI card for your computer.

Has a great tuner, only costs around £45, does mpeg-2 HD and 4:2:2 - so good for feeds and is very configurable. Tons of support and loads of viewing software and plugins.

If you don't want to use your PC then a Technomate TM1000D will get you started for around £60.

If you shop around patiently for all your bits, you should be able to get sorted for maybe £150.

[adamlondoner]

thanks for that,

I now have a little more advice i need.

I am a bit confused on the motorised dishes and multible lnbs.

I was looking at the lyngsat site and the hotbird satellites seem to have plenty of stuff. but what other satellites can be picked up and what in your opinion are the best. sorry if they are strange questions. i am really new to it and its hard to fnd basic info

one last question do the dishes point roughly in the same direction as a sky digital dish. i am only asking as this side of my flat should be ok to put up a dish.

EDIT
i am kinda getting an understanding now with all the satelites on different degrees. so i am just now trying to work out whats the best way of picking up the most amount of channels

[Mship]

13,16 & 19E are three popular satellites (besides 28E Sky satellite) but there are many others of interest
(30W, 42E to name a couple I use quite often).

To get the Sat's mentioned above you would need a line of site 14* east of you're Sky dish (for 42E) and 58* west (for 30W, looking from behind you're dish).

If you want the MOST amount of channels then a motorised is best, if you only want two or three satellites then a multi-LNB set up may be the way forward. The link below may help you decide exactly what is best for you:

http://www.satellitehelp.co.uk/forum...pic,365.0.html

Kev

Edit: By the sounds of it motorised would suit you best but you need to do a little bit of homework to check if you have a good enough line of site first. We wouldn't want you to spend you're hard earned only to find you can only receive a handfull of satellites due to obstructions

[adamlondoner]

thanks for the info,

i am getting a bit more understanding of it now,
East of my current sky dish shouldn't be a problem as there are no obstructions at all, west may be a problem as i do have some space west of my dish there is a new building there and i had to move my sky digital dish because of it,

is there any tools on the market that i can use to get a reading or work out the angles before hand before i buy any equipment

[Mship]

The good old compass will give you a general idea of where you're dish needs to point for a particular Sat. If you know the distance and height of any possible obstructions then you could download the program below which I found to be a great help

http://www.al-soft.com/saa/satinfo.shtml

Using the obstructions tab you can enter the height/distance of the object and it will tell you what sort of viewing angle you need to see over the object......if that makes any sense ops:

Kev

[adamlondoner]

just been up on the roof, i was backwards in my calculations. East is the problem area possibly. from a rough look i reckon i would be able to reach up to about 45degrees east without a problem after that there is a brick wall obstructing , west is completely clear

got to find my compass though to give it some more thought. also let me know if i am making mistakes with my judgements etc.

i might buy a cheap signal reader off ebay to see

[BGonaSTICK]

That would be excellent. 42E is the last satellite of mainstream interest on the eastern side. 30W is the common westerly max for the casual user.