Hi from Twin Cities!

[Anole]

other departments:

FTA/MPEG2 Equipment Reviews
Has reviews of many pieces of FTA-related equipment, even your Sonicview 8000.
While not everything we know or have an opinion about is necessarily listed, that's a good place to get an idea of how well some products work.

If you don't see something listed, just ask. (or search)
We may have had a casual discussion of the product/device in the past, and you can start out with whatever we've come up with.
Might save you time or the trouble working with undesirable equipment.

 

[SATire]

I don't recall if anyone has tried the Geosatpro I mentioned but if not, I'll be able to give an opinion on it once I've tried it out. Anyone know of other rack mount units?

Don't need any pro features, just basic functions with at least USALS motor controls. I'll stick with the SG2100 since I hear nothing but good things about it.

I had bought the Sonicview because I figured I might as well get it all in one shot, HD, PVR. Turned out, for me at least, there's really not much up there that's worth paying $300.00 for a receiver. I do with I had PVR functions though because I've gotten so used to pausing live TV.

Even if I need to do that part via PC now, that sounds like a better option anyhow than putting the money into the receiver.


Mike

 

[Mr Tony]

I noticed in the images that these dishes are actually mounted on a banister. I'm surprised, am I not seeing some additional mounting arms or something? We have enough wind out there that it would not last a week .

That dish was actually on the deck railing which with a piece of wood underneath it was pretty solid

For the longest time I've had dishes on a round table and even a kitchen table due to having to clear the house...folks here on the board laugh but hey whatever works

Here is my most recent pics of the dish farm
SatelliteGuys.US - View Single Post - pics of the dish farm...post yours too

 

[Mr Tony]

I don't recall if anyone has tried the Geosatpro I mentioned but if not, I'll be able to give an opinion on it once I've tried it out. Anyone know of other rack mount units?

I have a GeosatPro 200 receiver and love it. SatelliteAv (gold sponsor) works with us folks who have one if there are any issues or bugs in it. I have found a couple major bugs with mine and they fixed the bugs within 2 weeks.
Other receivers I have worked with I'm still waiting for a simple fix...and thats been a few years

 

[SATire]

>I have a GeosatPro 200 receiver and love it.

That's good to hear. Wasn't really sure how popular the make is and being new to FTA, I'm going through discovery mode. In only a few weeks, I've already owed three receivers hehe.

I took a look at your pics and I no longer feel odd for having three dishes on the house. I had Dish, DTV and a Hughes dish on the front. Now I only have the FTA on the front, the DTV which I hope to get rid of soon and the Dish mount now holds an HD antenna, but, might be useful for another FTA setup .

You're not going to believe this but what is most hilarious is that I did something similar when we first moved to MN. We rented a townhouse while getting set up and building our house. I wanted to get my DTV up but the condo association would not allow dishes to be installed. I mounted the dish firmly onto a very heavy wooden stool, then used plastic tie wraps to hold the stool in place by tie wrapping it around the balcony railing. They went nuts on me but could do nothing since I had not mounted anything on the balcony.

Don't know if the pics will show up but I tried putting them into the msg.

 

[DiscoLoveGrapes]

Hi! There's a few Twin Citians around these parts. I'm over in Columbia Heights.

Feel free to look around, ask questions, give tips, talk about receivers/dishes/favorite color bars or whatever you like. As someone who has only had a 30" dish for 5 years, I still find a ton out there

 

[rv1pop]

Three dishes on the house ---- How excessive ? --- Not at all actually. I have 6 on the house -- well shed, and two in the yard; but the 10 ft C-Band heaved up out of the ground and I will need to get a backhoe out here to reset it. Need to go down about 5 feet with the mast and the auger will only handle 3 feet.

If you talked to sales at SatelliteAV to order the receiver, or better yet to Brian, you will NOT be disappointed. The Geosat is Brian's private brand (or something like that) !

 

[Mr Tony]

You're not going to believe this but what is most hilarious is that I did something similar when we first moved to MN. We rented a townhouse while getting set up and building our house. I wanted to get my DTV up but the condo association would not allow dishes to be installed. I mounted the dish firmly onto a very heavy wooden stool, then used plastic tie wraps to hold the stool in place by tie wrapping it around the balcony railing. They went nuts on me but could do nothing since I had not mounted anything on the balcony.

Don't know if the pics will show up but I tried putting them into the msg.

very cool. Thats something I would do

 

[SATire]

>There's a few Twin Citians around these parts. I'm over in Columbia Heights.

Hey right back!
I would have figured most people into this would be deep in the woods hehe. I'm surprised so many are actually in or near the cities.

>As someone who has only had a 30" dish for 5 years, I still find a ton out there

So far, I'm not in love with the content up there but I definitely find it fun that it's kinda like OTA. I'm only KU at the moment however so guess I'm not getting everything I could be.

My interest started when I realized I've paid some $12K to DTV over the last 10 years or so for freaking TV. That just sank home one night and I thought about how ridiculous that is. You just kinda get used to paying those costs for such things as TV, phone services, etc. You don't tend to think about it.

I wondered if maybe a combination of things would give me options to give up standard providers. I mean, movies I can get for a buck at the grocery store, I can get unlimited streaming from NetFlix and others. NetFlix just won some agreement to stream first run (I think they are called?) movies so it made no sense to keep paying for movie channels. Happy to wait a while and just rent season DVD's to see all the shows and not get ANY commercials.

Plus, there is a huge push by cable, telco and Internet companies to get IP based TV in a variety of ways to us all. I do believe we'll be seeing all the way to HD reliable TV/broadcasting on the net at some point.

In the mid 90's, I owned an ISP business and one of the things we started doing was broadcasting live video events on the net. I recall how people used to say that it was so cool on one hand, and how tiny useless the screens were as well. My reply was always give it time, this cannot die, it's too cool.

My biggest frustration aside from too much motoring right now is not having guide data or Tivo like PVR. That alone is preventing me from trashing my DTV once and for all. Wish I could find that answer, make it work, then preach it to everyone I know that would be interested in a setup.

I strongly believe in choice so love it when people realize they have it. When the public knows it has choices, and begins to transition, it simply helps to kill monopolies and hopefully means alternate and reasonably priced choices.

That's my hope at least .

 

[SATire]

>very cool. Thats something I would do

Haha, I'm glad the pics showed up. You can see the tie wraps in the second pic. They were so peeved at me because they could do nothing legally and besides, I made it look nice. Then others in the area did the same so I was not very liked my management.

>Three dishes on the house ---- How excessive ? --- Not at all actually.

You're right, it's not really to me either but the neighbors wonder what I'm up to which is funny.

>I have 6 on the house -- well shed, and two in the yard; but the 10 ft C-Band

Six is pretty hard core hehe. And a 10 foot no less? I'm guessing this is something I'll be enjoying for good from now on. The property we have now isn't perfect for what I'd like. I'm not sure if I have a spot where I could put a 6' or more dish to get a good view. The installer was going to take a look but we never got around to it.

I'm looking forward to seeing that GeoSat. Plus, it's C and KU I think?

Mike

 

[jaray]

SATire, your diving into this hobby is reminding me of myself not too long ago. Started small and looked to bigger and better pretty quick. Haven't yet been able to find an active forum person from my neck of the woods over here in Thunder Bay, but I've found a few posts from someone here awhile back.
I get to the Twin Cities a few times a year at minimum....I gotta arrange a chat with some of you guys in that area one of these visits. I did spend some time with PSB as well and brought back a bunch of great knowledge to get me going and a whole car load of goodies to get me going. Not sure I could find another BMW loaded with a 6' c-band (disassembled), polar mount, new KU dish, mount etc... took pics of that one.
They asked at the border, I told them and no further questions, haha

 

[SATire]

>Started small and looked to bigger and better pretty quick. Haven't yet been
>able to find an active forum person from my neck of the woods over here in >Thunder Bay

Hey, Thunder Bay! I'm actually Canadian, originally from just North of Toronto.
Spent from 19 on between Toronto and Ottawa. My wife is actually from this area.

>I get to the Twin Cities a few times a year at minimum....I gotta arrange a
>chat with some of you guys in that area one of these visits.

Maybe you could arrange a small get together down the road, next time you're headed to the cities.

>I did spend some time with PSB as well and brought back a bunch of great >knowledge to get me going and a whole car load of goodies to get me going.

If we're talking the same thing, he is a knowledgeable person indeed when it comes to this stuff.

>Not sure I could find another BMW loaded with a 6' c-band (disassembled),
>polar mount, new KU dish, mount etc... took pics of that one.

ROFL, and no problems getting back uh.

Man, that reminds me of funny border crossing.
We drove to FL one time and while there, I found this huge bomb at a surplus store and just had to have it. It's a big device they filled with sand I believe, then dropped it from airplanes for testing.
Anyhow, on the trip back, I strapped it to the roof of the truck and when I got to the border, figured they would go nuts on us looking for more. I mean, there's a bomb on the roof, that's kind of a red flag that I might be into more.

Never even asked about the damn thing and I took it home. It made it back to the US and has been hanging from the rafters in my garage since 2001 .

You guys mentioning those big dishes really makes me wanna get one up but I just don't know where I would stick it. Plus, I would want it to motor cuz I wouldn't be happy pointing at one bird only.

Mike

 

[sprig74]

sonicview

Seems to be a huge number of forums so not sure where to post this .

Basically, new at FTA, got my setup about 3 weeks ago or so. I find it interesting but am using a motor so one of the first things I'd change is to do a multi LNB setup so there's less having to move.

Got some help from a local FTA dealer who was nice enough, until I mentioned the wrong hardware in his forums and got locked out. Very strange?!

Anyhow, any other FTA users in the Twin Cities?

Mike

To be honest, Mike, I think there were those in the other form that think you bought the sonicview to hack directtv. If you remember my kid had just bought one and was having the same bad time trying to motor with it; usals was obviously broke (I believe it may have had to do with the dish vs. sonicview law suit, where sonicview had to change the software to not accept keys, and in the process, broke other portions of the receiver's electronics).

The person that sold you the 3800 should accept its return, if it did not do what you expected it to. The distributor will (and did) check it under warranty, and it worked as it is supposed to, but they do not exchange or take back for refund, that is the sellers responsibility.

 

[SATire]

Pete, (and, I know this is Pete because the coincidence of your emailing me and this post makes this obvious) some thought I might want to hack, that's nothing but absurd. I never once said a word about hacking nor showed interest in such things so give it a break.

I don't know how honest someone has to be in order to be believed but if anyone thought I was looking to hack, they must be simply paranoid or hacking themselves or have a personal reason to want to bad mouth someone I guess. I don't know, all childish games either way.

As for the receiver, the person who sold it to me did take it back and did give me a refund when Traxis was too careless to do anything about the situation. The fact that I bought a 3500 from you, you helped me set it up, but even you could not get the 3800 to work should be proof enough that the box was flaky.

The support person at Traxis made up his mind that I was in the wrong well before I sent it to them because he didn't even ask me to test it while he was on the phone with me. Instead, he got into an argument with me that I didn't know what I was doing. That's when I said fair enough but I had a Traxis reseller helping me and he wasn't able to make it work.

So anyhow, the 3500 works fine, the 3800 doesn't, I doubt I'll be buying Traxis again now that I've found that the GeoSat Pro's are way cooler.

Also, the fact that I'd like to end up with a pvr because I can't stand not being able to pause live tv is why ultimately, I'd like to end up with something like MythTV using cards, which ever they may be.

Whew... didn't think I'd ever have to dredge that nonsense up all over again.

Mike

 

[sprig74]

Pete, (and, I know this is Pete because the coincidence of your emailing me and this post makes this obvious) some thought I might want to hack, that's nothing but absurd. I never once said a word about hacking nor showed interest in such things so give it a break.

I don't know how honest someone has to be in order to be believed but if anyone thought I was looking to hack, they must be simply paranoid or hacking themselves or have a personal reason to want to bad mouth someone I guess. I don't know, all childish games either way.

As for the receiver, the person who sold it to me did take it back and did give me a refund when Traxis was too careless to do anything about the situation. The fact that I bought a 3500 from you, you helped me set it up, but even you could not get the 3800 to work should be proof enough that the box was flaky.

The support person at Traxis made up his mind that I was in the wrong well before I sent it to them because he didn't even ask me to test it while he was on the phone with me. Instead, he got into an argument with me that I didn't know what I was doing. That's when I said fair enough but I had a Traxis reseller helping me and he wasn't able to make it work.

So anyhow, the 3500 works fine, the 3800 doesn't, I doubt I'll be buying Traxis again now that I've found that the GeoSat Pro's are way cooler.

Also, the fact that I'd like to end up with a pvr because I can't stand not being able to pause live tv is why ultimately, I'd like to end up with something like MythTV using cards, which ever they may be.

Whew... didn't think I'd ever have to dredge that nonsense up all over again.

Mike

I am not Pete, I live in Northwestern ND. And I have no problem with you buying whatever you want. I thought you may have wanted to hack since you're an IT person, wanted to save all the money you were spending on directtv, are an open source guy, etc, etc, It fits th profile of my kid, who says he didn't get a sonicview to hack, but I'm not totally convinced. I was apparently wrong about you, but, at any rate, I'm still not Pete.

 

[SATire]

Glad you're not Pete but as I said, rather coincidental that I've suddenly started receiving apology emails at the same time as this thread came to life. No harm meant to you if you're not him.
I'm just sad that someone could be so paranoia and protective, to the point of burning every bridge that he comes across. I think he's a good guy but messed up and won't be listening to anyone until he figures that out. Being over the top loyal to a company that isn't loyal to it's own customers is kind of strange.

Either way, yes, I own an IT company, we are involved in tons of things and FTA became interesting when we added a satellite company to our line of services. I had been wanting to take a peek at it for some time and recently got motivated enough to finally try it.


I had said in some posts that I found it frustrating to have paid over twelve grand to DTV over the last 9 or so years for crummy TV. I am very much into open source but I believe what you meant was that I love having choices and helping to push something which offers people choices is a good thing. I got bored with KU pretty fast so am now getting a c-band dish up with skyvision programming. My intention and hope is to tell everyone I can, perhaps help build up the numbers, so that more programming can come our way, giving us some choices over DTV, Dish and cable.

Hard to justify paying good money to broadcasters for movie channels of repeats when my wife picks them up for a buck at the grocery store. And, I can stream what ever I want from Netflix and am so tired of commercials that this is going to work for me.

As for hacking, no interest in it. What's the value of hacking signals that are full of commercials free or not? I am trying to make a stand to pull myself away from traditional broadcasting and am hoping to find a solution which I can then preach to as many as will listen .

Mike

 

[sprig74]

Glad you're not Pete but as I said, rather coincidental that I've suddenly started receiving apology emails at the same time as this thread came to life. No harm meant to you if you're not him.
I'm just sad that someone could be so paranoia and protective, to the point of burning every bridge that he comes across. I think he's a good guy but messed up and won't be listening to anyone until he figures that out. Being over the top loyal to a company that isn't loyal to it's own customers is kind of strange.

Either way, yes, I own an IT company, we are involved in tons of things and FTA became interesting when we added a satellite company to our line of services. I had been wanting to take a peek at it for some time and recently got motivated enough to finally try it.


I had said in some posts that I found it frustrating to have paid over twelve grand to DTV over the last 9 or so years for crummy TV. I am very much into open source but I believe what you meant was that I love having choices and helping to push something which offers people choices is a good thing. I got bored with KU pretty fast so am now getting a c-band dish up with skyvision programming. My intention and hope is to tell everyone I can, perhaps help build up the numbers, so that more programming can come our way, giving us some choices over DTV, Dish and cable.

Hard to justify paying good money to broadcasters for movie channels of repeats when my wife picks them up for a buck at the grocery store. And, I can stream what ever I want from Netflix and am so tired of commercials that this is going to work for me.

As for hacking, no interest in it. What's the value of hacking signals that are full of commercials free or not? I am trying to make a stand to pull myself away from traditional broadcasting and am hoping to find a solution which I can then preach to as many as will listen .

Mike

DMSI was nothing but helpful to me when I was starting FTA. Absolutely professional and did what was right when I had a hardware component problem. The way you treat people is the way you get treated. Phone calls and face to face is always a preferred option to internet flaming.

 

[SATire]

>DMSI was nothing but helpful to me when I was starting FTA.
>Absolutely professional and did what was right when I had a hardware >component problem.

And they were completely unprofessional and terribly uncaring to my problems so maybe it depends on who answers the phone sometimes.

Either way, I won't be buying any more traxis. The 3500 I own works fine but for my rack mount needs, it's the geosatpro which has much better features. For non rack based requirements, I'm hoping to find a card based solution.

>The way you treat people is the way you get treated. Phone calls and face
>to face is always a preferred option to internet flaming.

I have no idea what you're talking about here. You don't know me other than a few posts and I've never been rude to anyone online so certainly, you must be speaking in general terms which have nothing to do with me.

Hence, yes, I agree, you are treated exactly how you treat others and in fact, it's my motto in all that I do in life.

 

[guapoharry]

...
>I did spend some time with PSB as well and brought back a bunch of great >knowledge to get me going and a whole car load of goodies to get me going.

If we're talking the same thing, he is a knowledgeable person indeed when it comes to this stuff.
...

The same thing?

 

[SATire]

THING, as in person, subject, apparent behavior, issues, problems, etc. Thing since it's not just one thing related. I'm no English major so forgive me otherwise .