Initial test installation, more to come.

[paultheg33k]

Here's my first DVB-S installation, as of last weekend... Just setup with a hastily-thrown coax to ensure it worked and could see the satellites I wanted to receive. More to come this weekend with a multibracket installation with 2 singles and a dual, feeding 3 PCI DVB-S cards and one Fortec Dual. The receiver and one card on 28.3/5 degrees, the other two on 19 and 13.

Dish is a 90cm Fortec Maplin-special, complete with shipping dent, and the supplied LNB.

IPTV head end is a P4 running MythTV, 2x DVB-T PCI, 1-DVB-T usb, 1-Analogue PAL card, 1 DVB-S PCI at the moment... 1TB storage via a RaidZone NAS and another 300gb on board. The frontends diskless boot off the headend. OS is a custom gentoo installation for both the shared frontend O/S and the head.

Apologies for the cheap amplifier present in the pic, that's long gone, replaced by a mast-head amp in the loft, a coax recable in the house and decent splitters! The DVB-S isn't shown there either.

[paultheg33k]

More pics...

[Robbo]

Oooh, the Fortec star Beta, I recognise that!
Nice and easy to use. (until it goes wrong)
and I have the same (90cm)dish, which multibracket did you use, was it the Maplin one?

Your dish looks smaller than mine though, it must be the distance away.

Is there a specfic reason why you have so many sat cards? when a Diseqc switch could be used.

Robbo

[BGonaSTICK]

Wow, that's a crazy setup. I thought my network capacity was OTT! :clap:

If only I could raise the cash for all those lovely tunery-type gadgets.

You do need more screens though

Thanks for sharing the pics.

[paultheg33k]

Is there a specfic reason why you have so many sat cards? when a Diseqc switch could be used.

Aye, for recording! The three DVB-T tuners still deadlock the scheduler if we're watching one channel at the moment now and again, hence the sat card on 28 for the BBC and ITV stuff. The other two sat cards are a bit of an experiment really, along with all of this satellite malarkey, to see what can be found, as it were...

You do need more screens though

Yeah, you're right! :-) There's only the two frontends at the moment - lounge one [with 5.1 sound and the LCD] and a smaller one in the bedroom driving a 21" CRT. I've been thinking about a bathroom one with a wall mounted 17" PC LCD and the actual PC mounted in the room next door. It'd just need the IR receiver poked through. Mind you, my better half has mentioned kitchen TVs a few times recently... :-)

and I have the same (90cm)dish, which multibracket did you use, was it the Maplin one?

I've not actually done the multibracket installation yet - that's Saturday's job! I looked at the Maplin one but it appears to only come with one LNB holder, although it's not clear from the description. I've ordered one off Ebay [http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...MEWA:IT&ih=005] which looks to be similar with an extra holder. Who knows eh? I'll have to see when it turns up! :-)

Cheers for the comments, it's good to know I'm not completely daft!

PS:

I thought my network capacity was OTT!

You can't see the lab rack in those pics, and the RAID array on the floor 'cause I've run out of rack space... It's our power bill you don't want to experience. But I guess the production rack [in the pic] has things that are paying for themselves by hosting a few sites and a dozen or so email domains.