2009 College Football Feeds

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signal.quest

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
May 29, 2009
176
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Near Scranton, PA
I am new to FTA and have been doing a lot of reading on forums and trying to decide what hardware to buy. I want to get as much college football as possible this fall. Due to trees and neighbors houses, I will need to install the dish on my roof. My questions:

1- How much college football can I obtain on KU?
2- Will I miss much if I can't get C band?
3- Where can the HD content be found?
4- Which satellites will have most of the feeds?
5- Should I get an analog receiver or will all analog content be gone now?

I am starting to compile a spreadsheet of past years postings of college football feeds to figure out what was where. Does anyone know if this year will be different than past years? Thanks.
 
I suspect that many of the Ku feeds will be on 105W, 91W and 74W . Fact is, though, until about an hour before game time, I generally have no certainty at all. I start blindscanning the usual suspects, and note the tp's that are newly found, then check them out. The thing out FTA is whomever is doing an uplink is free to pick any bird that has the power, and even free to use fiber instead of satellite. Nothing is certain.
:)
 
I am starting to compile a spreadsheet of past years postings of college football feeds to figure out what was where. Does anyone know if this year will be different than past years? Thanks.

I did the same thing last year because the networks seem to use the same few satellites each week. One thing I wonder about this year is ESPN's new contract with the SEC. Last year most ESPN and ABC games were on C band, but with the new SEC contract maybe we will get more games on Ku? We'll see.
 
1. lots...from big games to small college "public access" type broadcasts ya never know how many in a week you will get
2. HD yes...SD no. C-Band mainly is for some HD feeds and the "larger" network games
3. various sats. 72,74,79,85,91,105,123
4. see post 3
5. not many analog left and the ones that are might have a digital counterpart. They are getting fewer and fewer by the year

But Brent summed it up best. Ya never know what you'll get. If you expect to get "X" game, you might be disappointed. But the 10 games that you'll get that ya never knew about make up for it :)
 
Thanks. More questions: Am I better off getting a 36" for KU and adding a larger dish for C Band later? From what I am reading it is a task to get both KU and C on one dish. And a 4 foot dish doesn't get much C band. Atleast a 6 foot or better is required. Am I correct? It also looks like a 36" can be mounted easily compared to a 48" is more of a commercial install that I can't put on my roof as easily as a 36". Please correct me if I am wrong.
 
You'll get pretty good reception of most ku on a 36"dish, but bigger is better, of course. 1m dish is what a lot of us use or recommend. A 1.2m dish isn't that much different as far as the mount, or placement, a motor might require some fabrication, but the dish size prob won't matter to you if you're interested in chasing wild feeds. A c-band dish would be a little harder to roof-mount, but can be done in a variety of ways. (easier to mount on the ground though).
If you want to be sure you get Everything-you'll need c/ku analog and digital, a receiver that does SD/HD , the new S-2 modulation will prob be used more this season also.
If you just want to start out moderately, get a 1m ku offset dish with motor, and a simple receiver like the fortecs or traxis3500, and others with good blind scan like the older Coolsats . I found nearly every game I wanted to see last season with average equipment, and for the ones I couldnt find, I found about 3 others. Plus some high school games from all over the country.
 
How different are the installations for a roof mount for a 36",39", and 48" dish? Ideally I'd like to use the tripod mount that a large modern DirecTV/Dishnet dish would use. Is that possible on those dishes?
 
Far as I know, the tripod setup that my direcway internet dish had, when it was installed, is the same size pipe that fits most of those primestar dish mounts. I mean for fixed install-I"m sure you could stick a motor on it easily. Just be a pain to go up and down the ladder getting the motor tweaked and aligned. Check with Sadoun , top of page, seems like they were telling somebody they had those mounts not long ago, or maybe where someone could get one.
 
I am now considering a 39" dish w/ SG2100 motor on ebay for a Buy It Now of about $150. Is this too cheap to be good? Or is it good enough? I also see a Traxis 3500 on there for a Buy It Now of $50. Is that as good as the Fortec receiver? Is one better at helping you set up the motor? Thanks.
 
Sounds like a good deal to me, as long as the seller guarantees that the motor is no dead on arrival. The Traxis box is a decent deal, even though I'm not a big fan of Traxis. I like Fortec, and I'm currently using a Coolsat. Traxis box will get you started though.
 
I like Fortec's and Pansats mainly because that is what I started with when I got into FTA. SO I'm use to the menus, meters, quirks, etc.

Both are good units
 
Another question - I notice the 39" dish on ebay only has one arm to support the LNB - it looks like an oversized legacy DSS dish. Is this much of a concern?
 
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