ASTRA 2D BBC & ITV RECEPTION

[Old Satellite]

To ALL would be purchasers of large dishes

"Plastic" , Aluminium , steel dishes are all subject to warping, The gain from a offset dish is not higher than a prime focus of equal quality.

Additional once you increase the size in excess of 2.4 mtr a majority will be prime focus, and generally with all professional installations the best dish SHOULD, be chosen to suit the customer requirements.

Petal Dishes are weaker than one piece normally "yes" but this is not always the case it depends upon the manufacturing tolerances, and has correctly stated the quality of the installation.

Be very carefull of cheap large dish purchases without the knowledge of someone that as already used the same.


Regards

Old Satellite

 

[deeno]

The way they are transported plays a big factor. Pre Astra days in Spain most installs were 1.8-3mt. The metal dishes were often already warped when they were delivered.
I do a lot of temporary installs 1-2 days and now I wouldn’t use anything but Cmaster.
You can drop 1 of a roof and it stays in shape. I have compared a 1.8 mt Cmaster dish to
1..8 precision and 2mt Irte and have always found slightly better gain on the Cmaster.
but the 3mt Precision is better than the 3.1 Cmaster.

 

[GaryL]

Thanks for the info..

shame that there is such a premium in spain for a $350 dish.

My problem will be getting it up on the roof..as it wont go through the door. i dont think i can get ropes long enough to lift it 6 floors.

So it looks like we will have to stick with south beam only.

Unless I get a 1.3 mouted on the wall to get some of the north beam.

 

[Bru4213]

As an update to a previous post in this thread.
In the hills near Modena Italy at 44.3N 10.8E
I have upgraded to a 125cm Fraccarro offset dish with my existing Alps BSTE8-601B LNB, Pace 2200 box (yes I know!) and about 8m of good quality cable no faceplates etc. My old dish was 1m same setup.

My ITV and 960's reception was marginal and faded early evenings : no change Possibly worse (weather ? Urgania any comment?)
BBC was no signal: no change!

I spoke to installer about LNB skew of maybe -17° for our area but he insisted tha he lost some db doing this. I feel that he has just looked at the signal strength and not the quality and not specifically tweaked to 2D. Any advise?

Thanks

 

[expat2]

I think is the moment to forget BBC and trying with to fix a 2.50mt
or a 3mt dish.
As BBC moved to Astra 2D there must be free trasponder on the other Astra satellite, why don't invade with e-mail the ITV office and ask to move away from 2D and take the BBC trasponders?
for the expats living in Spain or Italy, and let the BBC for the French?

 

[rutledge]

I am in Northern Spain (Bilbao) and was unable to receive all BBC and ITV channels as I had the message 'No Signal being received' I turned to 101 (BBC1) just by accident when suddenly I could see a picture, I tried all the other channels and found I could see them. What's going on? Now sometimes when I turn to BBC1 I have no picture I then switch to BBC2 then back to BBC1 and all is okay. Is this normal? Do I need a better Digibox? I have the Origanal Pace that Sky gave me.

 

[GavinP]

Rutledge,

What make/size of dish and LNB do you have ?

What model Pace digibox do you have ?

What level of signal quality do you get with the 2D transponders ?

Does the weather change between when you can/cannot recieve them ?

Thanks

Gavin

 

[rutledge]

Bad news I have lost all the BBC and ITV Channels I spoke to soon. I will find out all the above details and Post.

 

[Zorba]

All to do with time of day.I have a 2.4m prime focus with invacom quad lnb.on average bbc starts coming in 11-12am and fades off 6-7pm(GMT+2hours)Cyprus.lately the signal has been getting better/longer.bbc has been coming back at midnight.saw eastenders last night,slight breaking up but had subitles on to follow program.as a matter of interest I use a panasonic 30 but when there is slight breakup,the pace 2600 works okay.
other comparisons on various digiboxes on same dish:
pace 2200-bad
pace 2500-bit better
grundig silver bad
panasonic 20-bit better
grundig 3000 bit better
on a friends dish who a panasonic31 and a black grundig200,the grundig was getting itv and the panasonic wasn't.this was a while back using an mti twin prime focus lnb on 3m dish.
At another address,2 houses sharing a twin telsplit lnb on a 2.4m offset dish an amstrad drx100 was getting itv and amstrad drx200
wasn't

 

[skyoutUK]

new report and I'm afraid it doesn’t look good:

Baska, Island of Krk, Croatia
Latitude 44.97 Longitude 14.75
Dish: Channel Master 1.8m
digibox: Panasonic TU-DSB20
also tested with Humax 5400
LNB: Samsung 0.6dB


Initial tests show not even a trace of signal on all Astra 2D transponders both vertical and horizontal.
Everything else on 2A and 2B works fine 24/7 even on 60cm dish. Will try soon with different LNB.

 

[unmissable]

I have a similar problem to Rutledge.

I live in Belgium and like many of my expat neighbours have Sky using a minidish. I was fairly unique when I lost BBC on the switch to 2D. Having read this forum several times (and I thank all of you for the information), I have followed the advice learnt about about the system and have re-positioned my dish to a different corner of the house. I now can get BBC and ITV but only in strange circumstances:

I have always only been able to get ITV by using the scroll up on the remote (pressing 103 never works). However I now have a similar problem with BBC. If I press 101 (or 102 or 624 for Cbeebies etc etc) I get nothing, BUT...if I select 105 (Channel 5) and then 101 BBC works and lets me scroll up through the channels (including ITV). If I select 105 and scroll down I get Channel Four and then nothing!!

This fix only seems to work with 105 and not 104. (I have to admit I haven't tried all 999 channels.

I have a Panasonic decoder with a minidish and was given a new card by SKY about two months ago.

Can anyone out there suggest a reason, or do I put it down to PFM (Pure F...ng Magic)

Unmissable

 

[rolfw]

No, this is a well known problem Unmissable, it would probably go away with a change of dish and LNB as it has to do with some Panasonic models generating a spurious 22Khz tone which fools the LNb into thinking a genuine tone is being sent and thus keeping it in High band mode. The channel can also normally be seen by removing the LNB cable and reconnecting.

There is als a solution involving the soldering of an internal filter, but it may be just as cheap to solve the problem with a new dish and or LNB.

 

[unmissable]

Thanks rolfw, you lost me a bit with technical jargon (eg high band etc etc) . I have disconnected the cable and the LNB several times and ensured plenty of bare wire etc, but to no avail. If it is a known problem, is there not a downloadable software fix? Also why change dish and LNb when problem is in the decoder?

Unmissable

 

[rolfw]

Sorry unmissable, what I meant with the LNB cable, was to select BBC, disconnect and reconnect cable, this should put the LNB back into low band and the BBC channel should appear, this is not a solution to the problem, but a way of temporarily obtainng the channel.

Yes it is a design fault with the receiver, but most repairers will charge 60 Euro to look at the box, so a new dish may be cheaper, if you have any friends with a dish pointing at 28.2, why not try your receiver on theirs.

 

[Transponder]

Is anyone who lost BBC able to receive the test transmissions for the regions on 10818 and 10788?

 

[Old Fred]

why change dish and LNb when problem is in the decoder?

Unmissable

I just read a report on this "panafix" filter in the Digital Spy forum (yes, I know, I have nothing better to do!) Apparently it fixed the guy's problem which was as described above. As he could presumably solder, he was happy with the fix as it meant he didn't have to climb a ladder and start changing LNBs in the hope that he could find one that was compatible. If you can't solder and don't know anyone who can, then as Rolf says, you could end up spending E60 to get a qualified repairer to solder the three wires!

Fred

 

[rogler]

Does this mean your receiver hitlist is as follows
1 pace 2600
2 pana 30
3 grundig 3000, pana 20, pace 2500
4 pace 2200
5 pana 31

All to do with time of day.I have a 2.4m prime focus with invacom quad lnb.on average bbc starts coming in 11-12am and fades off 6-7pm(GMT+2hours)Cyprus.lately the signal has been getting better/longer.bbc has been coming back at midnight.saw eastenders last night,slight breaking up but had subitles on to follow program.as a matter of interest I use a panasonic 30 but when there is slight breakup,the pace 2600 works okay.
other comparisons on various digiboxes on same dish:
pace 2200-bad
pace 2500-bit better
grundig silver bad
panasonic 20-bit better
grundig 3000 bit better
on a friends dish who a panasonic31 and a black grundig200,the grundig was getting itv and the panasonic wasn't.this was a while back using an mti twin prime focus lnb on 3m dish.
At another address,2 houses sharing a twin telsplit lnb on a 2.4m offset dish an amstrad drx100 was getting itv and amstrad drx200
wasn't

 

[Zorba]

Does this mean your receiver hitlist is as follows
1 pace 2600
2 pana 30
3 grundig 3000, pana 20, pace 2500
4 pace 2200
5 pana 31

Thats right,but I have heard heard the panasonic 45 might be even better as it is meant to be designed for "weak signal areas in europe".I hope to get one in July.
Has anybody got one and compared with other models?

 

[Old Fred]

Thats right,but I have heard heard the panasonic 45 might be even better as it is meant to be designed for "weak signal areas in europe".I hope to get one in July.
Has anybody got one and compared with other models?

I think the list is confusing. The later Pace 2200 has the same "ZIF" tuner as the 2500 and it's said to be abysmal in fringe areas. Even Pace admit this (I asked them). But the early Pace 2200 has a conventional "metal box" tuner which reportedly worked OK.

Pace also told me that their 2600 and "Javelin minibox" have a new tuner which has been specifically designed to provide good performance in fringe reception areas. So my list for Fringe area performance would look like this:

Best: Panasonic TU-DSB30, Pace 2600 and Pace Javelin.
OK: Panasonic TU-DSB20, Grundig GDS2000, 3000 and Thomson.
Poor: Pace 2200 (early), Amstrad DRX100, 300, Grundig GDS200/2, 300/2 etc.
Useless: Panasonic TU-DSB31, 35, Pace 2200 (later), 2500, Amstrad DRX200

I don't know anyone who has a Panasonic TU-DSB40 or 45.

 

[mick1539]

We Have tested a 2.2Mtr dish in Rome with no trace of a 2D signal With a Scope. Im Sorry to say but this looks grim. Without spending boatloads of cash the beeb has gone. 2.4 mtr will be tested in the next few weeks if this fails well ???.
One Question to those in the Know. My Grundig GRD (blackbox) does not get ch4 so i had another shipped over Serial numbers a few apart and still no joy. But all other Expats in the area work fine (even on my dish) and my Samsung Box can see the channels.