jeallen01
Specialist Contributor
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2003
- Messages
- 6,674
- Reaction score
- 2,630
- Points
- 113
- My Satellite Setup
- See Signature
- My Location
- Somewhere in England (possibly?)!
Some of you already have contributed to the above thread (which, BTW, was originally meant to be a slightly humourous/off-beat one!) with "serious" comments about why the forum is quiet at the moment, and has been for a few weeks - that's normal in August, but things should be picking up by now. Therefore Lazarus suggested that I start this thread to try to help the Staff work out what might be "wrong" and how to fix that.
So, here we go with the comments made so far that appear to be relevant:
Analoguesat
"Its certainly a lot different from when the Portuguese pay service was open. The staff couldnt keep up with the demands for the keys (or flowers as they were styled by the Porto lads). And of course most of the posts were in Portuguese which made life interesting in the extreme.
The sat tv hobby forums are much quieter since the pay services got their act together and cut off the freebies, and the younger generation doesnt seem to have latched onto forums. The site facebook page has many many folk joining it - mainly from Africa & Asia (despite a very large warning notice that most of the info is only relevant to north western Europe)"
William1
" Make access easier to the Feeds Section currently we have to go through several links:-
SatsUK
Members Lounge
The Football and Sport Section
Sport Satellite Feeds Section
Football feeds
Well I did suggest this a while back & thought it did get a favourable response "
Channel Hopper
"The general trend is for people to accept small dishes work for most of the content they need, planning limitations don't help much in this respect.
Additionally the almost exclusive acceptance of Ku band kit in this part of the world means branching out to the other frequencies requires a second dish and front end that often requires modification.
There are sections of the forum that are frequented more often of course, SDR has been a welcome departure from the norm, and the cost of carryng this out is well within the budget of most, along with the availability.
S band detection also appears to be slowly making a reappearance, thanks to a couple of recent launches. "
4wd
"Some thoughts, with the time spent on internet and advent of fibre for tv etc, interest for dishes goes way down. Exceptions are 'off the grid' locations (but they get only the simple oneoff dish for national tv, while waiting for fibre) and expatriates wanting their home country tv, f.ex. in Norway lots of workers from Poland etc, one can always spot which house they live in by looking at the dish\lnb setup.
As for hobby\enthusiasts, it will continue but compared to before lots less imo, as young people have no interest\no idea about it so no recruits lining up. Have tried to introduce sat to friends who got excellent location for dishes + money to buy anything needed, showing them freesat etc, they find it interesting and impressive, would be nice to have etc etc, bu zero interest to actually do something.
& an example, a Norwegian sat forum that was very active in it's heydays, look at the posting dates now... Satellitt
About the forum, am sometimes (quite often actually) finding it irritating to navigate, the overkill amount of boards in a quite muddy structural layout (imo). Often am not posting due to having to dig too much \ way too many clicks time trying to find the intended\best place\board. Apart from this, have been, and still is, and excellent and immensely helpful place for knowledge, fun & news. "
Myself
"@4wd
Somewhat share your observations/feelings about people not being interested in sat tech - in this area with a large population of those of Asian & Eastern European origin, they seem to be the only people with dishes other than just Zone 1 Sly ones pointed at 28E. Probably doesn't "help" that we generally have pretty fast broadband, although rarely fibre to premises.
As for the forum format issues, that's true of quite a few forums apart from this one, and I'm not sure what could be done about that (apart from simply dumping/archiving areas that are rarely if ever frequented - a possibility???)
Might help a bit if the What's new section wasn't quite so short unless you deliberately extend it."
So, here we go with the comments made so far that appear to be relevant:
Analoguesat
"Its certainly a lot different from when the Portuguese pay service was open. The staff couldnt keep up with the demands for the keys (or flowers as they were styled by the Porto lads). And of course most of the posts were in Portuguese which made life interesting in the extreme.
The sat tv hobby forums are much quieter since the pay services got their act together and cut off the freebies, and the younger generation doesnt seem to have latched onto forums. The site facebook page has many many folk joining it - mainly from Africa & Asia (despite a very large warning notice that most of the info is only relevant to north western Europe)"
William1
" Make access easier to the Feeds Section currently we have to go through several links:-
SatsUK
Members Lounge
The Football and Sport Section
Sport Satellite Feeds Section
Football feeds
Well I did suggest this a while back & thought it did get a favourable response "
Channel Hopper
"The general trend is for people to accept small dishes work for most of the content they need, planning limitations don't help much in this respect.
Additionally the almost exclusive acceptance of Ku band kit in this part of the world means branching out to the other frequencies requires a second dish and front end that often requires modification.
There are sections of the forum that are frequented more often of course, SDR has been a welcome departure from the norm, and the cost of carryng this out is well within the budget of most, along with the availability.
S band detection also appears to be slowly making a reappearance, thanks to a couple of recent launches. "
4wd
"Some thoughts, with the time spent on internet and advent of fibre for tv etc, interest for dishes goes way down. Exceptions are 'off the grid' locations (but they get only the simple oneoff dish for national tv, while waiting for fibre) and expatriates wanting their home country tv, f.ex. in Norway lots of workers from Poland etc, one can always spot which house they live in by looking at the dish\lnb setup.
As for hobby\enthusiasts, it will continue but compared to before lots less imo, as young people have no interest\no idea about it so no recruits lining up. Have tried to introduce sat to friends who got excellent location for dishes + money to buy anything needed, showing them freesat etc, they find it interesting and impressive, would be nice to have etc etc, bu zero interest to actually do something.
& an example, a Norwegian sat forum that was very active in it's heydays, look at the posting dates now... Satellitt
About the forum, am sometimes (quite often actually) finding it irritating to navigate, the overkill amount of boards in a quite muddy structural layout (imo). Often am not posting due to having to dig too much \ way too many clicks time trying to find the intended\best place\board. Apart from this, have been, and still is, and excellent and immensely helpful place for knowledge, fun & news. "
Myself
"@4wd
Somewhat share your observations/feelings about people not being interested in sat tech - in this area with a large population of those of Asian & Eastern European origin, they seem to be the only people with dishes other than just Zone 1 Sly ones pointed at 28E. Probably doesn't "help" that we generally have pretty fast broadband, although rarely fibre to premises.
As for the forum format issues, that's true of quite a few forums apart from this one, and I'm not sure what could be done about that (apart from simply dumping/archiving areas that are rarely if ever frequented - a possibility???)
Might help a bit if the What's new section wasn't quite so short unless you deliberately extend it."