Ok, I have been reading as much of the FAQs as I can, so not to ask questions that are really stupid... that said, I probably have not succeeded...
Couple questions:
1) The Supra has inputs for C-Band and Ku Band. Am I correct that the BUD can recieve both? So that I do not need to get a smaller Dish just for Ku? It looks like that from what I am reading, but I am not sure.
If the BUD has a feedhorn with both C-band and ku-band lnb's, you can receive both. A lot of the BUD's out there, only have a C-band lnb on them. If that's your case, you will need to get a different feedhorn, like the Corotor II or the one ADL makes. The Uniden Supra will get both. The role of thumb theory, or rather the rule of pencil theory, is if a #2 lead pencil will go through the holes in the mesh, you may have problems with ku signals. However, if the #2 pencil doesn't go through the mesh, you should be OK.
2) I need to use the Supra to power the actuator and polarotor (still not sure exactly what these are in a definitive sense, but I get that its the motor which causes the Dish to move to pick up a different bird). From the manual of the Supra, it appears that I have to have basically four connected pieces of Coax coming out of the dish (which is what there was) which goes to the Sat input and the four speaker-like connections on the back of the Supra, that are for the actuator and polarotor.
You need to use the Supra to power the actuator, because the Coolsat won't do it. You can get a VBOX II and it will power the actuator with the Coolsat by decoding Diseqc commands from the Coolsat to work with the actuator.
The Polarotor is the servo motor on the feedhorn that changes the polarity when you change channels with the receiver. The Coolsat will not control this device in any manner or form. So, you will need the Uniden Supra to do this or you will need to get lnb's with dual polarity to replace your lnb's or get lnbf's to replace the entire feedhorn. The difference in the 3, is the lnb's do not switch polarity and are either single polarity (which is usually used with a servo motor - polarotor), or lnb's are dual polarity (so you have both polarity's), or you have an lnbf which is a dual polarity lnb which has the feedhorn made as a part of it and they use 13/18 volt switching to change polarity.
I'm not familier with the Uniden, so my guess with the wiring would be, you have 2 coax inputs (one for C and one for ku), you have another to power the actuator, it has 5 wires, red & black for powering east/west, blue for pulse, and brown & naked/skinned for ground (it usually has the larger red & black wires, but not always), and the last is for the wiring for the polarotor (3 wires, red-black-white).
What is less unclear is if I can use the Coolsat 5000 I have with this Dish? I know the Coolsat has more modern features, like Digital Optical Out; and from Iceberg's review, has a lot of very nice features.
Is the Coolsat just for a smaller (say 31" Dish) or can I use the coolsat in conjunction with the Supra? This ties back to my first quesiton about C-Band and Ku-Band
You can use your Coolsat with your Uniden Supra. This is how I do it, and I feel it is best to slave the Coolsat, by splitting the signals from the lnb's, like this:
http://www.dmsiusa.com/add_a_receiver.htm
You can also use a smaller dish, I do, but I use a 4x1 diseqc switch (replacing the 2x1 diseqc in the diagram from DMSI) and get the most out of my equipment. With the diseqc switch I have port-1 C-band, port-2 ku (BUD), port-3 ku from a 1.2m dish, port-4 Circular from a 1.2m dish [the 1.2m has the Invacom QPH031 lnbf, which does both Linear (ku) and Circular (DBS)].
3) Tomorrow I am going to take some pictures of the components of this dish; to get a sense from you gurus if this is a 1) really old Dish; and 2) if I should consider upgrading the LNB (if that is even possible).
Thanks guys. Sorry if I am being a pain; just trying to figure this all out. Its a lot more complex than my little old Dish 1000 and 622.
Looking forward to your photo's and in most cases the older lnb's are better than the newer ones (unless you put out some big $'s). If it's old enough, you may have lna's, if that's the case (which ain't likely), you definately want to upgrade. In any case, upgrading can be a good thing.
Al
