Italian Channels Question

spongebob

OK

Been asked about these. Apparently there is a scutch of Italian Free To Air channels on Hotbird 2 and Hotbird 6 ...not Astra which has some encrypted stuff called Telephew or something.

It also appears that the Sat footprints in Kerry require an 80Cm dish for both of these.

My Q's would be

1. What does it cost for a dish with 2 LNB's pointed at each of the two all the time. As both sats are at 13 East will one LNB do it? see Map

2. If one LNB will do it, can a sky minidish be tilted a tad and pointed to 13e

3. What kind of Receiver is needed for the back end of this dish ?

4. If FTA is there any encryption issue or annual sub needed ?

5. Who sells all this kit in Ireland

TIA

M

Tony

One lnb will do this with an 80cm dish. FTA means free to air IE no subscription needed. You could use a sky ish but it might give problems in rain, I would recomend an 80cm dish, take a look at http://www.satellite.ie/acatalog/FTA.html

Tony

Originally posted by Muck
OK


M

watty

Tony sells it! (www.satellite.ie)
(Also Urlan TV in Limerick, but more expensive).

Many of the Itallian channels are FREEEEEE!
RAI1, RAI2, RAI3, RAI News, RAI Edu etc (About 7 RAI). Occasional encryption on football.
Also about 3 Italian Pop Video
Two or 3 Shopping
Lotsa Radio.

A single 80cm or 90cm dish with 2 LNBs can get Sky and Hotbird 13 on two LNBs.
A special manual remote switch can switch the LNBs on a Sky Digibox, but a Palcom, Humax etc or whatever is better for non-Sky Digital.

A PC card (Hauppauge Nexus / DVBs-PCI) is a bit more expensive than cheapest receivers, but cheaper than expensive ones.

Check www.lyngsat.com for HotBirds at 13E

Get a Sat box with a CI slot for a CAM incase you ever want pay TV or a FTV card from a European country other than UK. (BBC Prime is on Hotbird 13E too, for about 75 Stg p.a. BBC World TV is free though)

I'm in Tralee side of Limerick, so not a million miles away...

One LNB picks up ALL the satellites at any orbital position, though if you want Analog and Digital AT THE SAME TIME, or to drive TWO receivers at the same time from the same satellite you nedd a Dual o/p LNB.

Two separate LNBs on the same dish will ALWAYs point at two DIFFERENT satellites (about 6 degrees apart if LNBs are side by side). Move in front of a mirror to see what I mean.

Initial setup 2 years ago for 28E Sky, 19E astra and 13E Hotbird using one dish and 3 LNBs.
(It a bit neater now, and there are now two complete dishes like this too!)

watty

Yes a Sky Digibox and Sky minidish can work for Hotbird, but not very well. Also many "nice" channels can't be tuned by Digbox.

Also the Minidish is not ment to be moved easily so getting back Sky is a problem!

You would lose a lot of channels even in light rain.

I even have one of my Digiboxes on a 80cm dish so as to not be affect by the really heavy rain we seem to get (Just after Kerry has finished with it :-)

spongebob

Thanks for the advice y'all

From my reading of the Listings, most Southern Europe and Eastern Europe Free channels seem to be on Hotbird

Astra generally has North West Europe ...Dutch/French/German language as far as Austria/Switzerland.

Am I right in saying that Astra and Hotbird (s) have all European free channels between them?

M

watty

Yes.

{Pedant mode}

Well if you count UK and Ireland as Europe you need to include the 60 radio and 80ish TV FTA on Astra 2/ Eurobird Sky Platform at 28.2E

5W has Free Analog French and a few free Digital French
1W Has some FTA Scandanavia Digital on one Analog PAL
30W is Spanish. Some FTA. Most the decent channels are Encrypted.

16E and 10E have Analog and Digital, Mostly Arabic.

Certainly you get maybe 95% of Europe Free TV on 28E, 19E and 13E. Its still worth while having Analog on 13E and 19E too if it doesn't cost you anything.

That's why I have:
28.2E: 3 LNBs, feeding two digiboxes and the PC Digital card
19E: 2 LNBs, one feed analog box, the other PC Card
13E: 2 LNBs, one feed 2nd Analog box, the other PC Card.

Single LNB on 1m manual polar mount dish to explore 40E to 50W, usually connected to PC Digital Card, occasionally connected to 3rd Analog box.

The PC Digital DVBs PCI card has a "Global" 4 way Diseq switch at one of the dishes to select one of four LNBs. (Tony at www.satellite.ie sells them).

The two LNBs for analog plus a digibox LNB is on 90cm Dish 1

Dish 2 (90cm) has 3 LNBs for the PC (28, 19 and 13).

Dish 3 (90cm) has a minidish type LNB literally tied on a home made arm on a 90cm dish got free as it had no arm.

Dish 4 is mounted on top of very hefty pole that has dish 2. It is a 1m center feed with home made LNB tripod (calculated from dish measurements. 10 Euro Dish from Urlan as the LNB tripod missing). Home made polar mout.

You can calculate where the focus ought to be on a centre feed dish, but if an Offset dish is missing arm it will never be really "right" as you can't tell which part of a virtual parabaloid the actual dish surface represents, so calculating the focus is impossible. (you can muck around with the dish pointed and an hand held LNB to get it to do something though).

The three 90cm dishes are actually 80/90 elliptical offset feed. The two complete ones were "free" ("Take down my old analog dish and you can have it" type offer!).

I did actually buy three LNBs (Two £7.50stg ex equip Sky and one IR£45 model to replace a dead free LNB on my free Sky Analog box that I was given. My first Sat receiver was befere sky Digital Started and was free Amstrad SRD400 from friend who upgraded to dual LNB i/p Nokia analog) out of the eight in use. A fourth came with my Original Sky Digibox. The other 4 came free with old analog boxes chucked out (two were "universal" so suitable for digital).

Mossy Monk

RAI seem to encrypt stuff at random. most sport goes (except for their sport channel which shows stuff like netball and olympic hand ball and even some cartoons get the encryption treatment. if you have patience and a good eye you wont mind the encryption though. i remember when i was in Paris and all they had was RAI, RTL, CNN, M6 and Eurosport (no TF1, France 2 etc) and i had to make do with watching the US Grand Prix through RAI encryption. RTL made way for a radio station at midday :mad: suprising seeing M6 as the only French channel available. you got to love ****ty hotels. and no restaraunts/bars (why was there a lack of pubs where i was staying) showed the race