What is it about satellites? :)

David Fagan

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Hello everyone,

This is my inaugural post on this site,
I like using analogue satellites and feel a bit nostalgic given that it's all over next year after the signals are switched off.

I'm also an artist and I'm making work around peoples enthusiasm for satellite technology.

I'd be really interested in knowing how you all feel about the past-time.

When did you start to use satellites?
What do you enjoy most about the past time?
Have there been any highlights over the years?
What is your set up?
What do your friends and family thing of the past time?


I look forward to hearing from yee.

Best,

David
 

ALLSAT67

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David Fagan said:
Hello everyone,

This is my inaugural post on this site,
I like using analogue satellites and feel a bit nostalgic given that it's all over next year after the signals are switched off.

I'm also an artist and I'm making work around peoples enthusiasm for satellite technology.

I'd be really interested in knowing how you all feel about the past-time.

When did you start to use satellites?
What do you enjoy most about the past time?
Have there been any highlights over the years?
What is your set up?
What do your friends and family thing of the past time?


I look forward to hearing from yee.

Best,

David

Past times were great especially the old d2 mac decoders etc as they were fun so look them old antiques up David!!!

Its funny you ask about old times and analogue getting the chop but really digital was here at the same time as analogue= anyone remember bskyb squarial dishes well if you do you are as old as me hehehehe,nah i,m only 36 but they was digital,good old digital express receivers with digital pictures and then the wars began between sky etc, bskyb was just a little ahead of their time and the system was a little inadequate really thinking back but fantastic digi pictures.(all down to money)

Highlights would be installing sky for jorge cadete/andreas thom and rangers player peter lovenkrands,i,m a celtic fan but when i went to peters house some numpty had smacked a zone 2 dish on the front wall of his 500 grand house pmsl and it was not installed right,of course i done the install right fitting a t+k but my mates gave me pelters for that.

David Fagan said:
What do your friends and family thing of the past time?

Most of my friends and family dont give a hoot about the old times or the present as they dont know,but they do know my friggin mobile number so i get the short straw all the time there hehe.

Cheers
 

David Fagan

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Channel Hopper said:
Most of the answers can be found here

Picture of Members' Setups and general satellite installations

You could post some pictures of your art in relation to the subject.

Cheers for the link Channel Hopper,

I'm not sure yet the shape of the work, it's for my graduate show in June,

I think I'm gonna have regular dishes on motors turning left to right, searching for the satellite signal, picking it up and losing it every so often.
I may mount them on a shed, to denote the hobbyist element of satellite use.

What I was after was to know about other peoples attraction to and stories about the hobby to inform the work, and also I'm just interested.

I would have missed when the technology just took off, but I remember thinking how lucky a neighbour of mine who had several dishes was to be able to connect with the world, from a fairly ordinary housing estate.

Here is a video of a previous performance of mine.

_ww.vimeo.com/12900443
 

David Fagan

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I'll have a look at the d2 mac decoders, cheers.

I didn't know analogue and digital co existed so early, and here's me getting all teary eyed, end of an era etc. :)
So you installed them professionally too?

Were you ever able to pick up raw feeds from news organisations or anything like that.

"Most of my friends and family dont give a hoot about the old times or the present as they dont know,but they do know my friggin mobile number so i get the short straw all the time there hehe."

Knowledge can be such a burden! ;)
 

Topper

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As mentioned by CH the forum is full of nostalgic threads
Just a few thoughts of my own for this current thread

The challenge of finding and receiving those first analogue channels
Tweaking by rotating the dish to get rid of the noisy rolling screen to suddenly get a clean locked TV picture.
Discovering a live feed, knowing that nobody apart from someone like yourself and some editor were watching
what was happening at length.
The disappointment when you discover the edited version of the news feed that you watched and recorded only
to discover that censorship did exist in this country and a good editor could easily make one recorded item look
the exact opposite of what actually happened.
The thrill of hopping from satellite to satellite to see channels you had never even heard of before.
The joy at overcoming the early and primitive encryption systems and watching TV for free (purely as a hobbyist of course)
 

Llew

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David Fagan said:
Hello everyone,

This is my inaugural post on this site,
I like using analogue satellites and feel a bit nostalgic given that it's all over next year after the signals are switched off.

I'm also an artist and I'm making work around peoples enthusiasm for satellite technology.

I'd be really interested in knowing how you all feel about the past-time.

When did you start to use satellites?
What do you enjoy most about the past time?
Have there been any highlights over the years?
What is your set up?
What do your friends and family thing of the past time?


I look forward to hearing from yee.

Best,

David

Performance artist Nam June Paik has a great line in using technology for his installations. Are you intending something similar?
 

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David Fagan

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Hey Topper,

I would have loved that, picking up raw live news feeds, and running rings around the encryption.

I wonder are is there anyone who doesn't actually like television much but loves satellites?

It's the fun of making stuff work I suppose.
 

ralphmagno

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Hello to all,
well started in 1987 when sky and bbc was on 28 west. bbc used sink supressed video and audio inverted. there was a small box ready to receive it on the market.
then sky went to 19 east and used a line shuffel system on the picture. then a movie channel came up,mtv, uk gold,bravo channel
Filmnet and tv 1000 used d2mac system and there was a clone card that had a small key board that you could key up the new algorithim and tv 1000 was back up again.
tv 1000 had adult movies every night at midnight and it was free.
analogue is gone but the memory is still here
ralph:confused
 

Analoguesat

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David Fagan said:
Hey Topper,

I wonder are is there anyone who doesn't actually like television much but loves satellites?

It's the fun of making stuff work I suppose.

Me - I watch very few programmes, (Id rather have my 1980's rock music on!) but I love the challenge of finding new channels, news feeds and basically getting the best I can out of my receivers & dishes. If you look through the new channels section there are dozens of discoveries flagged with "not on KingofSat or Flysat yet" (These are the two big satellite frequency sites so if Ive beaten them to a discovery Ive done well) :-rofl2

Im well known in the hobby for my penchant for using second hand dishes, car tyres for dish mounts and generally unorthodox way of doing things :D



Oh by the way - welcome to the forum :)
 

Topper

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Seems we are from the same era Ralph, I had a filmnet decoder as well, I did not watch alone either.....

It was the news feeds I enjoyed in those days saw some incredible footage

in 1995 I brought a tutor from college to my house and his jaw dropped open when I showed him a d2mac transmission, he used to work for Granada TV and then after lecturing went on to design digital reception equipment
 

David Fagan

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Hi all,

Cheers for the welcome Analoguesat, I think it's your website I was flicking through last week,

Helped a lot to tune in French Channels,

This is a great video, yee have probably seen it before, but I think the fireworks give a channel the great send off

_ww.youtube.com/watch?v=jBrUJOX1Wqw

Does anyone find digital as interesting as analogue?

I thought that it was really great that a neighbour of mine who was big into satellites when I was younger could connect with the rest of the world through the satellites, but perhaps the internet has bypassed satellites on that one now.
 

federer_11

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When did you start to use satellites?
In the late 90s with my motorised Paraclipse Hydro 228cm dish and the analogue Drake ESR 300s with built-in positioner.

What do you enjoy most about the past time?
Hundreds of FTA analogue channels: CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, MTV (when they used to play music), TVE...

What is your set up?
Motorised dish Paraclipse Hydro 228cm with analogue receiver Drake ESR300s and digital receiver Dreambox DM500s.

What do your friends and family thing of the past time?
They miss the analogue channels very much, because in the 90s it was shiver to watch satellite tv. There were no sources of information, like the Internet nowadays.
 

villager1971

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When did you start to use satellites?
Around June 1989. Astra 1a had only been up and running for a few months. Not a great selection at the time. Purchased from Colorvision in Oldham and had to wait 6 weeks due to demand and cost best part of £280 for the Amstrad Fidelity SRX100. This was the non-remote version and had 16 channels, but could manually tune in. When Sky's movie channels launched I remember an 'Engineer' coming to my parents address and hid the FilmNet decoder ! Moved to an Amstrad SRD520 a couple of years later and a frequency extender for Astra 1D.

What do you enjoy most about the past time?
Remembering the Astra Promo video. Channels that have left us including Screensport, Lifestyle, FilmNet. MTV Europe was great back then with their great VJ's espec Ray Cokes. My Dad and I were really impressed with the Sky Movies ident when we saw it for the first time, and seeing it on You Tube brings back great memories. FilmNet was a popular channel in our house espec with my being a teenager at the time for the late night mature content film. Lifestyle also had their 'Satellite Jukebox'. A very early The Box. Good thing with this is that it would tell you when your requested track will play and who can forget Twinkle's video 'Hello'. Traded in my FilmNet decoder for a joint one to allow me to watch RTL Veronique later renamed RTL4 and watched The Exorcist which was still banned from video in the UK at the time.

What is your set up?
Was motorised until I moved from Oldham to Banbury in 2000 and had Sky Dig ever since. About to purchase a motorised system to get me channels from all over the world again and can't wait. After two failed attempts due to lack of funds should be installed early next month. Will be either 80cm or 1m motorised dish.

What do your friends and family thing of the past time?
Most I speak to about satellite wonder what I'm on about as they have only ever known Sky, but of course back in the late 80's and 90's they didn't have the monopoly that they have now in the UK. To quote Peter Griffin "D you know what grinds my gears is that people say they are getting Sky as opposed to satellite tv prior to Sky Digital launching". I have a few vids on You Tube that I've looked at recently for channel idents that have been and gone and programmes I used to watch that you can't see anymore.

Other points to add to this of course is that everything was analogue and I'm still got a soft spot for it. I believe there is someone on the forums who is a big fan of analogue satellite - his name escapes me at the moment :confused :p

When testcards and holding slides appeared on the channels/transponders I used to get really excited about the prospect of a new channel launching. Then of course around early 1998, Astra started showing their digital promo videos which again got me all excited with the thought of 100's of channels, picture in picture, different views of the football, stats screens, PVR etc etc. Of course most people these days take all that for granted, but back in the good old days of analogue, it was still a case of setting your trusty old VCR to record something. We are spoilt now with 1TB hard drives in HD boxes and able to record two programmes at the same time.​
 

David Fagan

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Hey thanks villager1971,

And thanks everyone on this thread,
I got loads of food for thought here, I thought you might be interested in seeing the work I finally made,

[video=vimeo;25907974]http://vimeo.com/25907974[/video]

Best,

David
 

Captain Jack

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When did you start to use satellites?
Er... Well, actually my hobby started before the satellites. Back in Russia in 1991, before the fall of USSR, we only had 2 national TV channels. When USSR fell apart, someone at school (I was 10 at the time) said that there was a new TV channel starting but you could only receive it if you had a special "decoder". This "decoder" was actually a UHF tuner module, which was an optional extra in most TV's, as VHF was used for TV for national channels and still is! Our big colour TV did not have a UHF module but a little portable black and white one did. The channel was broadcast on channel 22 and at my mum's in a block on flats overlooking most of the city, I easily received the channel. It was a hugely popular one, as it transmitted all the big Western movies (obviously pirated). Terminator 2 was shown months after it was released in the cinemas in the Western world.

Due to a low-power transmitter, we were lucky that we were sat high up for reception, but at my grandparents, whose windows looked at another block of flats, the reception was zilch. No indoor aerial was good enough and most people, who could afford it, installed outdoor UHF or even combined VHF/UHF aerials. We had a lot of problems with reception and I spent a lot of time walking around the flat with an aerial looking for the best signal. Finally found one on the other side of the flat, but that meant a trailing cable on the floor and fitting a signal amplifier near the aerial as it was pretty much unwatchable without one. Fun times.... all for just 1 UHF channel! In total there are around 12 on analogue system across VHF and UHF spectrum. You can even listen to some VHF TV channels on your FM radio :)

Next I came to Blighty in '93 and we got our analogue Sky system with Amstrad 510. Once I learnt a little Engrish (sic), I started reading What Satellite TV magazine and found out that there are far more channels elsewhere. So I started moving the dish manually to find other satellites and all sorts of weird and wonderful channels. In '95, we got our D2MAC FilmNet decoder for FilmNet, TV1000 and 3x TV3's. All were wonderful channels and we watched it without subscription with a green pirate card sticking out of the decoder. I still have them in a box somewhere.

In '97, FilmNet moved to Thor 1 and we could no longer receive it as you needed a 1.8m dish to get it in Somerset. We did catch a brief glimpse of it later when it moved to Thor 2 prior to Canal+ Nordic launch. At around that time, we also permanently moved our now 80cm dish to 1W for a bunch of Nordic channels. Mucho fun, once again!

And the rest then revolves around digital TV, for which I used a Sky box initially to tune in to channels on Astra 1 (MTV was free at that time), then got a weird Philips Canal+ box, which was rubbish but did the job. Then Humax F1, the Nokia 9600 (the best!) and the various Dreamboxes. The dish was upgraded to 1.2m Gibby to receive Russian/Baltic stuff Sirius 2/3 during early evenings but lost it at other times.

What do you enjoy most about the past time?
The fact that I receive channels my neighbours can't ... and probably don't care about. But the fact that I can watch my native Russian channels on various satellites is probably the core reason I am in this. Still need to venture into C band world that many of these channels are scattered on.

Have there been any highlights over the years?
Probably the D2MAC era was the most fun. The pirate code hunting, the scrambled picture clearing in front of you eyes.....

What is your set up?
Right now a modest clone DM800 and a Penta 85cm dish on a motor.

What do your friends and family thing of the past time?
They like the mature content! And the boxing matches they showed on TV1000 which were PPV events on Sky. My girlfriend enjoys her native Polish TV and my parents enjoyed Russian stuff when I lived with them. So, nothing negative really!

I was looking for a flat to rent a few months ago and found a nice one in a block of flats which had a communal Sky dish on it. I didn't see any other dishes attached, so I asked the estate agent whether I could put one up myself. She asked my why would possibly need a satellite dish when there's already one there for Sky..... I really didn't know how to explain it and put the phone down.
 

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When did you start to use satellites?
As a kid in the 80s I'd always been in to picking up the "wrong" radio and TV stations. I liked to listen to some of the few distant commercial radio stations we had in the UK at the time because I knew none of my mates would be listening to them. Then later on I discovered I could get another ITV region on my portable TV (TVS) which back then showed quite a few extra programmes or similar programmes at different times, I thought at the time it was useful if I'd missed something earlier on. A bit like an early +1 service. I'd also heard about something called satellite TV (pre Astra and Sky days) and how it showed lots of channels from other countries. At the time I thought it was a system for DXing existing terrestrial stations.

It wasn't until my grandmother in Finland got a communal dish system in her block of flats that my interest really peaked and I began to understand what satellite TV was all about. The Astra 1A satellite had just been launched and was broadcasting a few English language channels. At that time in Finland a lot of flats where being converted to cable TV but my gran's block decided to go the new satellite route and save on monthly cable TV service bills. They had a 1.8m dish on the roof and piped three extra channels via UHF to all the TVs in the flats meaning no extra kit was required by the TV. In addition to the local terrestrial channels they could get Sky Channel, MTV Europe and Eurosport. We used to spend our winter and summers in Finland and it was really exciting and mind blowing to be able to watch English language TV there. However, my gran doesn't speak a word of English so she had no interest in the channels.

When we got home back to the UK after the summer holidays I pestered my parents in to getting Sky. Eventually they gave in and they decided to rent a Sky satellite system because my dad wasn't sure this satellite thing would really take off. :-rofl2

Later on Astra 1B was launched and I remember scanning the band every day after school looking for the test transmissions. After experiencing this I had a desire to get even more so saved up for my own 80cm dish and LNB and built my own portable stand in the garden which I used for several years to manually tune in to other satellites such as the new higher power Eutelsats that where being launched. Luckily our Grundig rental satellite receiver had 2 LNB inputs, a sensitive tuner with filtering, and loads of spare channels so was ideal for messing about it.

A few years later when we moved to Finland permanently I think everyone started to appreciate satellite TV even more...

What do you enjoy most about the past time?
Mainly being able to receive new and exotic TV channels and radio stations. Most of it I don't watch but it's nice to know it's there if I did suddenly get an urge to watch Hungarian TV. Of course now that I spend quite a lot of time out of the UK it's also nice to be able to watch TV from home too.

Have there been any highlights over the years?
Finding my first satellite and seeing the faint flicker of a signal (Discovery on 27.5W).

Picking up BFBS radio in Finland in the 90s was one of the closest things to hearing "proper" UK radio.

Seeing digital TV for the first time (1997 in South Africa of all places - DSTV Multichoice).

Being able to see UK TV in Finland and Finnish TV in the UK.

What is your set up?
In the UK I currently have a 60cm dish for Sky 28.2E, a 60cm dish for 13E, a 45cm dish for 19.2E, and a 90cm dish with multiple LNBs for 1W/5E/9E all connected to a Technomate TM6900.

In Finland I have an 80cm dish with multiple LNBs for 28.2E/23.5E/19.2E/13E/9E/5E connected to a Technomate TM6900.

My parents in Finland have a 1.8m dish for 28.2E, my original 80cm from when I was a kid for 1W, and a 45cm dish for 19.2E.

What do your friends and family thing of the past time?
Most friends think I'm a little nuts but I think the family appreciate my technical skills since I've set up most of their satellite systems to be able to receive UK and Finnish channels.
 

John Pykett

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Dish setup: 80cm Motorized Dish, TM-5402 HD M3. This setup goes from 1w to 28.2e

My computer setup: AMD Athlon II X4 645 3.10 GHz processor and 8GB of ram. Graphics Card is NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti. OS: Windows 10 64 Bit
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When did you start to use satellites?: im not sure but i think it was back in 2016 when i first got my mini-dish for 28.2e
What do you enjoy most about the past time?: when i got my first ever signal from the satellite
Have there been any highlights over the years?: when i got my current setup
What is your set up?: its listed in my profile
What do your friends and family thing of the past time?: one of my neighbors used to flick through the analogue german channels on astra 19.2e in 1996 at late nights when there was nothing on the sky channels and found the log fire on super rtl
 
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