europeonline internet over sky satellite dish?

infinity

someone was saying on another board that maybe you could go online at high bps over your sky sat dish and the astra satellite - europeonline.com, does anybody know if this is true?

sceptre

Before getting into the technical issues, the Astra satellite in question is at 19.2E rather than the 28.2E Sky TV uses so unless you have a motorised dish (or two dishes) you won't be using your regular Sky dish if you want to continue watching TV on it.

watty

EON cost more than ISDN or ADSL and you need still a analog Dialup, ISDN or ADSL, unless you get Euro600 2 way access which is about 1/2 speed of ASDL or worse.

Casablanca is free and 2000kb/s but you only pick what you browse that is already loaded to a Hard Disk Cache.
http://www.sat@once.csp.it/english/index.php
This will work with PC Satellite TV card (100MHz PC) or Satellite Data Card (P 500MHz).

(It is on Astra 19E)

Eutelsat has some MPEG4 services of Push internet pages, TV, news and streaming video that requires a 800MHz cpu or better with susbscription on 7E and 11W (Check out eutelsats site for exact details). This needs PC Satellite Data Card or Satellite TV card.


Complete PC Satellite cards for Data or TV have a DSP chip, Multimedia bridge chip and HW to feed your TV /Hifi (On Screen TV on PC to). Budget ones may not have either chip. Really budget ones are Data Only, but since the TV is by Data, a really powerfull PC can have addon SW to watch TV/Listen Radio.

PC Satellite Card can only use Sky Free channels, not even FTV.

Setop boxes (not just Digibox) generally can not use MPEG4 or EON or other Data services such as Casablanca.

I get CNN Web news, Sci. American, a bunch of News groups and 80 or so other items "pushed" for free from Casablanca.

watty

Actual online Satellite Internet has two forms:
1) land connection for TO internet and cheap Satellite PC receiver for FROM. Performance is often worse than ISDN. Early days are brillent for downloads, but as more users join the service gets slower than 50K and often goes out of business.

2) Two Way. No land connection. Can cost Euro 5000 for ground station with Satellite Transmitter. No special card in PC. latency can be 3 seconds or more, making it very wierd and unresponse even at high data rate. Typicall Euro 600 per month for 128 K speed guarentied.

Push services can be VERY fast as the same satellite connection serves everyone. Casablanca or Eutelsat's MPEG4 open Platform a 2 Mbit stream can serve every one. For 1,000 users on line out of 20,000 Casablanca gives 2mbit from 2Mbit (one 1/40th of a transponder). Europe On Line or any service from (1) or (2) would need 500 Satellite transponders.

Satellite "Push" or "multicast" thus has a great future as cheap or free service. Unicast or personal "on demand" browsing / download can only be very expensive and can't serve more than about 200 users per transponder at the same time without getting slower than ISDN. Item(2) is of value for those who can't even get a phone connection. Otherwise it costs more than alternatives.

watty

You can put 3 LNBs (the knobbly bit on arm of dish) on a 90cm dish:
Middle one on arm is for 19E Astra (analog or Digital)
Just beside slightly down (looking at face of dish) to left/east is LNB for Hotbird 13E.
To right /west by about 4" to 6" and up by 1" to 2" on a bracket is LNB for Sky 28.2E

The Sky LNB gives a better signal on this than on minidish (lees likely to freeze pics in very heavy rain).