Foriegn Channels through a minidish?

[patrickmartin]

I hope this is the correct forum as I searched the rest and this seems the closest...

I'm looking to terminate my Sky contract and purchase a Digital Satellite Receiver to connect to my minidish so that I can view foreign (Spanish) channels. I am located in London.

I've done some research (I am VERY new to all this) and it 'seems' that this may be possible although I have not seen a definitve answer on the net.

Can anyone clarify if this is possible? If not I'll purchase the whole kit (receiver, dish etc) if necessary.

Many thanks for any advice you can provide.

Patrick

 

[2cvbloke]

Yes you can get Hispasat at 30 west using a minidish, but it's reccomended that you use a bigger dish as you'll experience signal dropout in bad weather. Moving the dish over to Hispasat is easy though, just move it 60 (ok, 58.2 to be precice!!!) degrees west (looking from the front that's to the left) and centre the LNB so the cable is coming off straight down, then twist the whole dish so that the cable points to between 5 and 4 o'clock and that's basically it, you may need to tweak it a bit afterwards to get the best signal strength and quality...

 

[Cupart]

Most channels on Hispasat are encrypted so you'll need a receiver that's patched or get a subscription. The free channels are mostly local TV stations...

 

[2cvbloke]

Most channels on Hispasat are encrypted so you'll need a receiver that's patched or get a subscription. The free channels are mostly local TV stations...

There is a channel on there that's free and occasionally shows things like Discovery channel and RealityTV, I think it's TV Cabo's preview channel or something....

 

[rolfw]

The mindish is smaller than I'd avise and may not be suitable if it has one of the fixed skew LNBs, it needs an LNB which can be properly rotated in the collar.

As the other guys say, the amount of watchable free to air channels in spanish are very few.

 

[2cvbloke]

The mindish is smaller than I'd avise and may not be suitable if it has one of the fixed skew LNBs, it needs an LNB which can be properly rotated in the collar.

That's why I said to twist the whole dish leaving the LNB centered, I've got hispasat before in a minidish myself so I managed to work out a few solutions...

 

[Maurice1]

Wasn't it on this site that a guy in London had a 60cm Sly minidish on Hispasat through the glass of his apartment window. He even got his photo in What Satellite mag.
Maurice

 

[patrickmartin]

Thanks for all the feedback.

Wonder if you could clear up a few points...

1 - "Yes you can get Hispasat at 30 west using a minidish"
2 - "Moving the dish over to Hispasat is easy though, just move it 60 degrees west"

Which of the above applies to my current situation (with a sky minidish and digibox)?

You suggest a bigger dish... would I also need a new receiver or could I use my existing digibox?

Thanks!

Patrick

 

[JTA]

forget your digibox, it's only capable of receiving Sky channels.
if you're going for a subscription, you might consider pointing your dish at Astra 1 (19.2 E), where the Digital+ package is located. And why not use a twin lnb, for Astra 1 ànd Astra 2 ? This way you can get all the spanish channels and all the FTA stuff on Astra 2.

 

[patrickmartin]

Thanks

In that case I may as well buy a new (bigger) dish and digital satellite receiver.

What do you think of this? Will it enable me to get astra etc??

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=43113&criteria=digital satellite receiver&doy=12m7

Thanks

 

[BGonaSTICK]

1 - "Yes you can get Hispasat at 30 west using a minidish"
2 - "Moving the dish over to Hispasat is easy though, just move it 60 degrees west"

'Sky' is at 28.2E and Hispasat is 30W so a total movement of nearly 60 degrees is required. You would need to twist the whole dish maybe 35 degrees as the Sky LNB is actually skewed inside the 'case' and you need it skewed the opposite direction for Hispa.

The dish is small, but you should get something. Like everyone else has said, it's really too small to use for anything but a test, and your digibox won't be much use. Get yourself a 60 or 70cm dish when you buy a new receiver.

STICK

 

[patrickmartin]

Any recommendations on dish & receiver?

 

[JTA]

well, I'm very happy with my dreambox .....

 

[Cupart]

Any recommendations on dish & receiver?

To keep it simple and versitile I'd go for a Lemon or Technomate 1500CI+ as these both are easily patched and also have the ease of adding a motor to the dish without any hassel (well more or less)

 

[BGonaSTICK]

Careful though, only the Lemon 020S FTA is patchable, not its bigger brother IIRC.

 

[2cvbloke]

When I used a minidish (indoors too) it was a decent signal, it was just the weather dropout trouble that was a pain, but once I got my 80cm dish from Lidle last year the problems dissapeared completely, but as a suggestion (and out of experience) 80cm is the best dish size for Hispasat in the UK, I tried my 60cm and that wasn't as good (some dropout & pixellation aswell as dome Sparklies on my analogue box).

As for a sky box, they're not that good for other satellites, they do work mostly, but it's too much work to watch free channels.

Just shop around for a decent patchable FTA receiver (personally it would be a Technomate 1500 for myself), a good 80cm dish & LNB and some new CT/WF/PF100 satellite cable.

Oh, and get youself a 4 pack of your favourite drink, for when you're done and relaxing infront of the TV watching your newfound channels...

 

[patrickmartin]

thanks for all the suggestions.

i'll do some research over the weekend and go for a new dish & receiver.