Anyone understand satellites?

[laserblazer]

There's a big change with the Astra broadcast satellites, with Freesat moving to Astra 2F, which has a tighter UK spot beam meaning the peripheral coverage is nowhere near as good and reception in Southern Spain and Portugal deteriorating. I asked if it would help to realign the dish and was told it would make no difference. The old and new satellites can't be in the same location, so why shouldn't pointing the dish at the new one make a difference?

[Greenbeast]

surely if it's not broadcasting in that area anymore pointing it towards the satellite won't help?!

You won't be able to receive the signal

[laserblazer]

I don't know. If there is still a signal but it's weaker, then shouldn't pointing the dish directly at the new satellite make some improvement in the same way as it would with a terrestrial aerial? Some people are saying a 3 metre dish will help. It will be a real bummer for the sports bars that attract trade by showing football on big screens.

[sted]

the sneder on the satallite can be shaped to provide coverage over a more specific area (as wider coverage required more power etc) so when an old satellite is replaced with a newer more effecient one the shaping for the signal will be more refined so outside the area they actually want coverage you will have less signal to pick up

 

Now this is what ive read/seen somewhere so it may be wrong

[RabbieBurns]

yes you will need a bigger dish.

 

This website might help:

 

SatBeams - Satellite Coverage Maps - Sat Footprint Astra 1D / Astra 1N / Astra 2A / Astra 2B / Astra 2D / Astra 2F / Eutelsat 28A (E28A, Eurobird 1, Eutelsat W1R, Europesat 1) / Eutelsat 28B (Eutelsat 48B, E48B, W2M, Eutelsat W2M)

[nickbro]

The Astra Website Explains it

 

 

This is the new UK spot beam which most TV in the UK will use. As you can see it's a very tight beam that just covers the uk.

 

The Europe beam, which UK TV wouldn't use covers much more of the UK

 

 

By the looks, you'll get the same reception as the 1N Sat that's up at the moment.

 

 

More on the footprint at: Satellite Footprints - SES.com

 

The older sats didn't have spot beams, covering either north or south europe

 

 

King of Sat is another good website, their beam page will tell you the size of the dish you need to get what beam: Reception Reports - KingOfSat

 

Currently only 2xBBC One HD frequencies are transmitting on Astra 2F

[SteveBentley]

The reason that they're doing this is that by using the UK spot beam, they don't have to encrypt the signal. This is more convenient for the intended end users - particularly with Freesat which doesn't support encryption, and means that the broadcasters don't have to pay for the encryption services.

[Oaktech]

Big Dish, Big Dish! It's always cool to have Goonhilly Down on your roof!

[plexer]

If the beam doesn't cover where you are then no size of dish will pick up the signal it's as simple as that.

 

Ben

[CHR1S]

Even more reason to get a decent (for your country) internet connection, a VPN and get your streams on

[jinnantonnixx]

Nice graphcs, @nickbro

 

I wonder if this means we're due for more channels? Film4 HD would be nice.

 

I like Freesat, my unscientific A/B tests show that my picture is better than Freeview, possibly because my Humax box does a better job than the TV of upscaling SD channels. In any case, it does look better.

[laserblazer]

Even more reason to get a decent (for your country) internet connection, a VPN and get your streams on

 

I think there may be a real push in that direction. We can't justify the cost at present for the amount of time we spend out there.

[Guest Guest]

I think there may be a real push in that direction. We can't justify the cost at present for the amount of time we spend out there.

 

£50 dm500 dreambox clone. Connect to your home router. Http/ts/zapstream in and away you go.

Will depend a lot on your Internet connection. And I've found the dm500 to be not great at streaming but it's certainly the cheapest option.

[Michael]

I suspect the additional 2F is for additional capacity, especially for HD channels. It is actually possible to receive signals out of the maps illustrated above. A combination of a very large dish and cooling the LNB can achieve interesting results.

 

I remember reading about a chap in USA/Mexico who has an 8 metre dish and a super cooled LNB. He was able to receive channels from Astra 19.2 at certain times of the day.

[RabbieBurns]

Aprenda a falar o português e apenas assistir a televisão local

[nickbro]

Astra 2F is going to take over from the temp 1N sat, which will reposition to the rest of the Astra 1 cluster, thus why the footprints are near identical

[tmcd35]

I remember reading about a chap in USA/Mexico who has an 8 metre dish and a super cooled LNB. He was able to receive channels from Astra 19.2 at certain times of the day.

 

AFAIK 19.2E was used by the old Astra 1 series analogue satellites that, according to the @nickbro above didn't use spot beams. I'm guessing the signal had bounced off the atmosphere in a similar fashion to picking up LW radio from the continent? I'm sure the curviture of the earth makes direct line reception impossible from there. Any how I doubt such extreme measure would work on modern satellites with tight transmissions beams - kind of the whole point of them using spot beams

[jinnantonnixx]

Aprenda a falar o português e apenas assistir a televisão local

 

That's easy for you to say.

[laserblazer]

Aprenda a falar o português e apenas assistir a televisão local

 

We are trying to learn it but it ain't easy and the dialect in the Algarve is very different to Lisbon. Not only that but Coroação Rua is cr@p

 

We do have a separate dish on the European satellite and we can get German and Dutch, which we can follow. One of the German channels broadcasts every F1 event, so it's not all gloom and doom. There are also loads of XXX channels, which is interesting because the EPG shows a thumbnail. It can get quite embarrassing searching for stations.

[RabbieBurns]

a lot of the European satellites broadcast a dual audio stream on their programs, so you can change it and watch it in English, especially for the American shows which are dubbed in the local language.

[laserblazer]

a lot of the European satellites broadcast a dual audio stream on their programs, so you can change it and watch it in English, especially for the American shows which are dubbed in the local language.

 

I did look on the menu to see if it offered this but the menu is in Portuguese

[Cloud2012]

Even more reason to get a decent (for your country) internet connection, a VPN and get your streams on

 

This is what I currently do now as I moved into a new place, I used to have a 1m motorised dish picking up over 20 satellites and it would even get channels from Africa (36 east). I now pay for a service in Sweden called ViaPlay for movies and sports and with a VPN it works great.

[m25man]

It doesn't look good for the ex pats The Astra 2 Forum http://www.astra2.org - Astra 2F Reception

 

Im guessing the reason for the tighter beam width and focus is primarily to improve reception in the target footprint whilst keeping transponder power usage as low as possible.

A side effect is keeping the broadcast contained within UK borders thus complying with the distribution rights of the content owners.

 

A user has reported Ch5 @ 45% Signal on a 1.5 Mtr dish which isn't good, jumping to 3mtrs might help (whilst it still bleeds and can be seen you have a chance) but I would expect SRS will gradually reduce power or even use some kind of dynamic TX control which will tweak output based on the UK weather.

 

Either way it sounds like its time to get used to the local programming

[tmcd35]

Surely there must be some way to do some internet jiggery pockery to get web based services like TV Catch-Up, iPlayer, 4OD, etc to work? No need for a 20m dish clinging precariously to your roof tiles or a second home on the isle of sheppey just to host a slingbox

[sted]

Surely there must be some way to do some internet jiggery pockery to get web based services like TV Catch-Up, iPlayer, 4OD, etc to work? No need for a 20m dish clinging precariously to your roof tiles or a second home on the isle of sheppey just to host a slingbox

 

well i use a firefox plugin called modify headers to fool american tv sites into letting me watch them from the uk (since more4 removed the daily show) google modify headers daily show