Total,total beginner, wants to watch Libyan football

[mahouligan]

Hello All,

Not only do I not know how satellite works, for many years now, I have not even had a TV!

I would like to get a versatile system, since I am more interested in browsing unusual content than getting what everyone else is getting down a cable. More specifically, I really want to watch the games of the African league ... I have a Libyan friend in Tripoli and I would like to watch his favourite team "Ittihad" when they play. He tells me that the games are shown on a channel called A.R.T. ("Arab Radio and TV", I believe) and that this comes from a satellite called "Hotbird". He also said that the channel was "coded" - I guess that means you must subscribe in some way yes?

I also want to get a system that is as small as my requirements allow and highly portable since I am touring with a band and camping throughout the summer and do not want to install TV in my house anyway. Power would be from a solar charged leisure battery (with inverter if necessary).

I did have a look for a Hotbird website and for that of A.R.T. to see if they listed requirements, coverage and so on but am none the wiser so far. I also see many briefcased portable systems, pretty cheap on Ebay ... so cheap that I assumed not much good, am I right?

Any help you can give would be warmly and gratefully received, thank-you in advance,

Mh

[BGonaSTICK]

Hi - welcome to the forum m8

Yep, I watch a fair sprinkling of foreign football on ART - including African games. They cover loads of different leagues.

The trouble with ART on Hotbird has always been that it was on a low-powered transponder. Luckily for you (and many others towards the end of last year) it has recently moved to a more powerful piece of hardware. It can be found on 13E 12015 H 27500.

You should be able to pick up an ART subscription card really cheaply now - they carried the English Premiership last year, and the market was flooded with cheap cards. They lost the rights to that this year, so the dealers are left with cards that they can't sell in the UK at all.

You will obviously need a receiver with a card slot that supports the Viaccess encryption system. It will also clearly be most suitable if it runs on 12V given your power supply limitations.

A motorised setup would be most flexible, but they can take a while to set up properly - not something you want to have to keep doing every couple of days!

I would just go with a fixed dish - with maybe a monobloc LNB to get 19.2E and 13E.

Hotbird is available all over Europe. You would have to travel very far afield for a 70cm dish to be too small to receiver ART now I think - but then again you don't say where you are or where you'll be travelling.

Hope this is of some use to you.

STICK

[mahouligan]

Hello Stick and thank you for the welcome and your reply.

I'll be in the UK, mostly Devon, Dorset and Cornwall this summer.
So, is "13E 12015 H27500" the name of a satellite? Or is this where the ART staion can be found on Hotbird? Please excuse my ignorance.

I think the portable kits I have seen on Ebay are all 40cm diameter dishes, some are smaller. I assume these are inadequate then?

I had read about motorised systems but assumed that in a camping situation, it would be better to just find something solid to mount it to and take the time to allign it correctly once ... perhaps with a tripod.

I saw someone recommending a PCI card for a PC that could perform the function(s) of a receiver box and wondered if you can get a good recever of this type for a laptop. SInce I have a laptop with me anyway, it would mean one less gadget to carry around.
Thanks again,

Mh

[BGonaSTICK]

Originally Posted by mahouligan

So, is "13E 12015 H27500" the name of a satellite? Or is this where the ART staion can be found on Hotbird? Please excuse my ignorance.

No problem - it's a transponder on Hotbird - one of many. See http://www.lyngsat.com/hotbird.html for more details.

Originally Posted by mahouligan

I think the portable kits I have seen on Ebay are all 40cm diameter dishes, some are smaller. I assume these are inadequate then?

Yes. Although you may get it to work, life will be so much easier with a 60 or 70cm dish.

Originally Posted by mahouligan

I had read about motorised systems but assumed that in a camping situation, it would be better to just find something solid to mount it to and take the time to allign it correctly once ... perhaps with a tripod.

I agree.

And whilst a tripod is neat, it's much cheaper to bang a short length of 2" scaffold pole in the ground

Originally Posted by mahouligan

I saw someone recommending a PCI card for a PC that could perform the function(s) of a receiver box and wondered if you can get a good recever of this type for a laptop. SInce I have a laptop with me anyway, it would mean one less gadget to carry around.

You can get USB receivers, but I don't know of one that has a card-slot. If you have a powerful laptop and are a bit handy with things technical, you may be able to run a card programmer from either a serial port (preferred) or a USB port / USB-serial converter - but I personally have no experience of doing this.

[mahouligan]

Thank-you again Stick,

I've started to trawl for parts now. It's amazing how little second hand stuff there is on Ebay since I last used it.

I'm still not sure whether to try this laptop thing. A guy at hisat.com suggested that a "MiniBee Phoenix Programmer" (£11), used with the "STARBOX USB Satellite receiver" (£57) might do the trick but he had not tried it and could not guarantee.

Also, I would happily pay a few quid to have a system that was really compact and portable, as space in the van is limited so I wondered about these dishes which claim to have a greater performance than their actual size ("80cm performance from 57cm dish") http://www.leisurepower.co.uk/acatal...lite_Dish.html Tempting if true, though pricey - £150 for the dish alone.

Do you know if there have been any good threads about low-power consumption 12v receivers and other equipment suitable for camping use?

All the best,

Mh

[BGonaSTICK]

I don't rate H!sat at all, but you may be able to get a USB box and phoenix programmer to work. It'll be a tough job for a newcomer. You may also ultimately fail.

There are some good threads on 12V camping systems here, but none that I can recall which have card slot requirements.

The other big-hitter you could consider is the Dreambox 500S - a fantastic little 12V receiver which runs on Linux and is supremely powerful - and it's tiny!

All the encryption technology is translated to software emulation, and it will run an ART card. It's also pretty good at opening things it shouldn't!

STICK

[hybug]

Originally Posted by mahouligan

Also, I would happily pay a few quid to have a system that was really compact and portable, as space in the van is limited so I wondered about these dishes which claim to have a greater performance than their actual size ("80cm performance from 57cm dish") http://www.leisurepower.co.uk/acatal...lite_Dish.html Tempting if true, though pricey - £150 for the dish alone.

Do you know if there have been any good threads about low-power consumption 12v receivers and other equipment suitable for camping use?

I have one of these dishes, which unfortunately has 'died', and it isnt that compact. For your purposes you will be better off looking at the sites which cater for caravan and campers,they have dishes which fold, have less expensive replaceable parts and would be easier to pack (flatter). You mention your in a van, have you thought about a roof mounted dish?
Best of luck. Hybug

[mahouligan]

Hi Hybug,
Well thank-you for saving me from that one then! Yes, I've also seen those conventional dishes on caravan websites with folding arms - that may be the way.
I would *love* to have a roof mounted dish but I have a medium roof transit that only makes it into my safe underground parking by the skin of its teeth (in fact I had to get an engineering wizard friend to install a hydraulic thingy to lower the back of the van when going in and out) so could not do anything that would add even 1cm to the roof height - it would probably get ripped off.

Thanks Stick, I will look at the 500S. I'm also thinking of taking a small PC rather than a laptop ... then I could use one of the PCI cards that I've seen - there seem to be many of these and some do take subscription cards as far as I can tell. I feel warned off Hisat, thanks. Their attitude was not-the-best, for sure.

Mh

[BGonaSTICK]

No problem. The Arcon dish certainly doesn't perform like an 80cm dish according to the reports I've read



And yes. some of the PCI cards do take CAMs which in turn take cards. I think one might even had a card-reader add-on, but I'm not 100% sure on this.

[mahouligan]

Hello again,

I thought I'd report back ... I bought a Dreambox 500-S, an 80cm dish with a folding arm, a lnb and a lightweight tripod.
I've got a DELL 2007WFP Wide Screen TFT because it has composite video in (I could not find a TFT with composite *and* powerable by 12V, except motorhome/caravan models which all have built in freeview/DVD which I did not want).

I have not tried it yet though - we went camping in Norfolk and I wired things up but that took all the tme I had (after crabbing, eating fish and chips and setting up solar power). Also, it was extremely windy - too much I thought for a dish on a tripod.

I have just bought this card:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/12-months-Art-...QQcmdZViewItem
I wasn't certain that this could be used as-is in the DM500-S. I wonder if you could point me in the direction of some explanation of the basics for a total novice? I have browsed the manual and the Klona "howto" (though this is not DM500 specific) at _http://www.rdi-dreambox.com/showfiles.php/9/1/Dreambox%20500/How%20To/

I also wondered (as I came closer to actually trying it) if there is a 101 guide to finding your satellite (Hotbird at 13degrees East I believe), when you are standing in a field with a dish, a signal meter and a cheap compass?

More news soon, and thanks again for your replies.
Mh