4DTV on 90cm dish?

[SATire]

Has anyone ever been able to pick up 4DTV using a 90cm dish?
In my current setup, I'm ending up with a 90cm offset dish installed on the roof, doing nothing. It would be very useful if I could repurpose it for 4DTV.
I know people always say you need a minimum of 6; dish, which I have, but I've also read threads that seem to say it works fine depending on where you are and other factors.

I'll end up with a spare 90cm dish (with sg2100 motor) sitting on my roof doing nothing in my new setup so would make so much more sense to use it for 4DTV only. That way, I could also schedule recordings from a myth box without having to worry about moving the dish since it would always be set to 105w.

 

[Tron]

A 90CM dish will pick up, at best, only a few very strong C-Band transponders on satellites with no neighboring bird within 4 degrees. I doubt it could be used for 4DTV.

 

[pwrsurge]

90cm? No. 120cm with conical scalar? Maybe...

 

[brex2001]

The minimum recommended size for W5 programming is 6 ft. Do yourself a favor & get a BUD.

 

[Mr Tony]

he already has one

I know people always say you need a minimum of 6; dish, which I have,

 

[Mr Tony]

as for the 1.2m dish idea I tried that when I got mine originally and had bad results

from the review I did

With the C/K1 I also hooked up the KU side to my Motorola DSR-905 and locked Starchoice channels with a +7.5 to +8.5 ebno which is really good. I tried to see if I could lock 105. As most know there is a subscription offering on 105W and I thought if I could get that satellite with decent results maybe folks could subscribe. Well my curiosity turned to sadness. The best I could lock on a music channel was +3.0 which is just barely above threshold. If it was a video channel it would pixelate a lot. Audio channels play fine. So much for that idea.

 

[SATire]

I keep reading what appear to be people being able to do this. I would not use the 90CM dish to motor around but I would keep the motor on it to fine tune now and then.

I even contacted a couple of sellers on ebay for the heck of it and of course they say yes, can be done.

Don't really understand this person's reply though;

>yes it can pick up 4dtv on the ku band side,4DTV's have separate satellite
>designators for C and Ku.

 

[SATire]

Yet another reason for my confusion, or, ignorance or, just not enough experience .

C/Ku Pictures

 

[Mr Tony]

Don't really understand this person's reply though;

>yes it can pick up 4dtv on the ku band side,4DTV's have separate satellite
>designators for C and Ku.

The 4DTV has 2 satellite inputs. One for C-Band and one for Ku-Band. So if you had a 4DTV (not a 410) you would need 2 lines from the LNB to the 4DTV. But this takes me to point 2.
There is nothing on 4DTV anymore on the KU Band side. About 2 years ago there was some. Oklahoma PBS, Georgia PBS and the channels that are now on W5 use to be on X4 (99 West KU Band) so yes you could use a 90cm dish and get KU on the 4DTV.
But the X4 stuff all moved to W5, Oklahoma PBS moved to 125W in DVB-S2 mode and Georgia PBS left satellite.

 

[SATire]

Ah, the missing piece in this puzzle then. I didn't realize that a 4DTV means a receiver? I thought it meant the service, formerly known as 4DTV, now called W5.

BTW, the guy sent me this;
YouTube - C-band On The Small Dish, Complete Step By Step Instructions
I haven't listened to it yet but it might only be how to have C-band on a small dish, not 4DTV.

 

[Mr Tony]

Yet another reason for my confusion, or, ignorance or, just not enough experience .

C/Ku Pictures

Can I laugh...please? Especially at this point

how easy it is to put C and Ku both on a small dish.

yet all they show is a pic on the setup. Doesnt show what they are picking up or the signal on those.

Can you get some C-Band on a 4 foot dish? yes
But can I also get some KU Band on a 18" dish with a KU Band LNB? yes

point being while you **Might** get some stuff on an undersized dish using a recommended size dish is what works. In post 6 I mentioned I tried to get the W5 stuff on a 4 footer and didnt have good results.

 

[Mr Tony]

Ah, the missing piece in this puzzle then. I didn't realize that a 4DTV means a receiver? I thought it meant the service, formerly known as 4DTV, now called W5.

well its both actually. The receivers used to pick up the C-Band subscription programming is a 4DTV. Model #'s 905, 920 & 922. The 905 is a "sidecar" and attached to an existing analog receiver to move the dish to the different satellites out there. I had a 905 that worked fine for X4 and now the W5 stuff. The music channels were in the clear

The "new" model is the 410 which is just a fixed system. It was used for the X4 programming for folks. Another use for it was for crappy cable companies who did not want to upgrade their infrastructure so they gave folks 410 systems for those digital channels. They got regular cable (2-99) and then the "specialty channels" were through the 410

You can get some C-Band on a smaller dish. I did it before. Here is the review (now some channels have moved or left so its not up to date)
http://www.satelliteguys.us/fta-mpe...-ws-international-ws-ku2c-conical-scalar.html

but it gives a good amount of info. DVB (which is what the Geosat is) is easier to get on a smaller dish than the Digicipher II (aka 4DTV) is

 

[SATire]

>In post 6 I mentioned I tried to get the W5 stuff on a 4 footer and didnt have
>good results.

Wishful thinking on my part .
I had asked these questions before posting and am getting the replies now. It's interesting that people will say things that aren't exactly true to get a sale sometimes, when they know very well what the answer already is.

 

[Mr Tony]

It's interesting that people will say things that aren't exactly true to get a sale sometimes, when they know very well what the answer already is.

oh I agree.

I could say "yeah it will work great...oh and by the way I have a kit for it in the classifieds"....1st part is bogus..2nd part is true

 

[SATire]

Ok, so I'm done with this question then.

Just hoped I might be able to use the 90CM dish that's going to be sitting on the roof unused.
I changed the LNB on it but connected to my traxis at least, nothing what so ever is coming in anymore.
I'll have to connect it to another receiver and see what happens.

 

[SATire]

>1st part is bogus..2nd part is true

Exactly right. Having used eBay for so many years really helps to decipher that sort of BS too.
You can almost tell instantly when someone is being ambiguous with information when you ask specific questions.

 

[Mr Tony]

Just hoped I might be able to use the 90CM dish that's going to be sitting on the roof unused.
I changed the LNB on it but connected to my traxis at least, nothing what so ever is coming in anymore.
I'll have to connect it to another receiver and see what happens.

you might want to try and hook it to the Geosat to see if it works. Since the 90cm is probably on a satellite right now just hook up the Geosat and do a blind scan to see where its aimed at. If it picks up something then the Traxis might be shot.

 

[SATire]

Tried what you suggested, nothing what so ever, not even a blip. I put it back onto the traxis.

I replaced the Universal LNB with a JSC321S a week or two ago. Read in the forums that using Standard, 10600 with 22K on with this unit was fine.

Moved the dish 5 notches at a time for quite some time while blind scanning and got nothing.

It's motoring E/W as it should so I suspect the angle. Won't be able to fix that til next summer I guess or until warmer or I get a meter.

 

[SatelliteAV]

It's interesting that people will say things that aren't exactly true to get a sale sometimes, when they know very well what the answer already is.

One more reason to buy from SatelliteGuys site sponsors who don't BS to get a sale!

BTW.... Do I have a photo of a CK1 mounted on a 12" dish. Yes....
Does it work? No.....

 

[SATire]

You live and learn .
Takes a while to get a sense of who you can trust these days.