I'm going to miss analog...

[Davage]

TBN is gone from C-Band analog, the Porn channels are gone from C-Band analog. That's the true sign that analog is dying on C-Band. Preachers and Pornstars have abandoned the platform. (Except for the preacher the Late Dr Gene Scott and his ex-pornstar wife).

There's just something neat about fine tuning in a C-Band dish by watching the screen go from snow to picture. The sparklies are all part of the experience. With the channels all switching to digital, just watching a signal meter go from 72% to 79% just doesn't feel as gratifying as watching the sparklies go away when I tug on the dish while watching an analog signal. It has all come down to signal strength meters instead of using the eyes to see when the picture is at it's strongest.

I can remember trying to get C-Band on a 3ft dish one time on the balcony at my apartment. Just seeing the hint of a snowy analog picture on the tv screen was so neat.

Oh well.. Times change and we move ahead..

 

[VinceT3]

I guess if you ask nicely maybe one of the fta box people can make you a signal meter that takes a fuzzy screen to a clear one that simply says "You have enough signal to view this channel"

 

[Corrado]

Someone here once said..."there's nothing like finding an analog signal in the clear". I couldn't agree more.

 

[lumpkin666]

The thing that I enjoyed about analog was not only could you catch a glimpse of a signal through the sparklies, but you only have a handful of predefined transponders to flip through in order to find a channel and determine which sat you are on. Back in the day, you could put your receiver on channel 7 (or whatever) and move the dish along the arc watching each channel fade in and back out until you got to the satellite that you were aiming for.

 

[Mr Tony]

TBN is gone from C-Band analog, the Porn channels are gone from C-Band analog. That's the true sign that analog is dying on C-Band. Preachers and Pornstars have abandoned the platform. (Except for the preacher the Late Dr Gene Scott and his ex-pornstar wife).

there is some stuff still on G1...I think kthere are 4 channels in the clear there

There's just something neat about fine tuning in a C-Band dish by watching the screen go from snow to picture. The sparklies are all part of the experience. With the channels all switching to digital, just watching a signal meter go from 72% to 79% just doesn't feel as gratifying as watching the sparklies go away when I tug on the dish while watching an analog signal. It has all come down to signal strength meters instead of using the eyes to see when the picture is at it's strongest.

amen to that. Its bveen easy for me to find the western satellites. Tune to an analog channel and move the dish until the picture comes in

I can remember trying to get C-Band on a 3ft dish one time on the balcony at my apartment. Just seeing the hint of a snowy analog picture on the tv screen was so neat.

I just did that with my 40x30 Primestar dish. Put it on channel 16 analog and fine tune in shepherds chapel on G4. Flipped to digital and few channels came in with no issues. Sure the signal is low but it works

but when they can fit numerous channels on one transponder versus one you know its the end. When World Harvest switched that was weird. But they went from one channel to 3 video and 12 audio. TBN has I think 14 channels on it (7 with AC-3 and 7 without)...guess its a sign of the times.

 

[linuxman]

There's just something neat about fine tuning in a C-Band dish by watching the screen go from snow to picture. The sparklies are all part of the experience.

The first time I tuned in Dr. Scott, the picture was full of sparklies so I posted about it and Iceberg responded and said to fine tune the skew.

It took me a few minutes to even find the skew setting on the old Drake receiver, but when I did and the picture cleared up, that was heaven for me.

 

[Pismire]

And so ends an era. I remember tuning HBO back in 1980 on the neighbors 12' while babysitting their house. Ahhh the good ol' days. RIP Analog.

 

[Davage]

The first time I tuned in Dr. Scott, the picture was full of sparklies so I posted about it and Iceberg responded and said to fine tune the skew.

It took me a few minutes to even find the skew setting on the old Drake receiver, but when I did and the picture cleared up, that was heaven for me.

Seeing those sparklies go away was a good learning experience wasn't it? It showed you exactly how the polarity really works. You just don't get the same experience with digital.. Watching a sparkle filled picture go clear is to gratifying.. With digital, the only similar type of experience is to watch a broken up picture go from jerky glitching video to smooth video.

Although, the one thing that I must really admit I like the ability of digital to provide a "perfect" picture with less than perfect signal.

 

[tvropro]

Analog is great but required a larger dish to rid you of those last sparklies in the reds on weaker satellites like the old 5 watt F3. That's why my 12 foot went up. I remember the first night I was watching my new 12 foot. It was so crisp and clear on the old F3. One thing I did notice and others agreed that even if you had a perfect picture on a 10 foot as you went to a larger dish the picture got crisper and sharper. Increasing the carrier above threshold vs the noise was the technical reason. God Bless Analog.... it will be missed.

Even though you could tune Analog with your eye. You benefited much more by using a meter. I started tuning that way in 1988 and been using instruments to tune the dish ever since. So watching a meter on digital was nothing new to me.

 

[Davage]

Analog is great but required a larger dish to rid you of those last sparklies in the reds on weaker satellites like the old 5 watt F3. That's why my 12 foot went up. I remember the first night I was watching my new 12 foot. It was so crisp and clear on the old F3. One thing I did notice and others agreed that even if you had a perfect picture on a 10 foot as you went to a larger dish the picture got crisper and sharper.

That's what I'm coming to realize. I've always known that bigger is better, but not to what extent.

Right now I get a crystal clear picture on the Buena Vista feeds (ABC/Disney?) on a 7.5 foot dish. Absolutely no sparklies at all. That must be a pretty powerful bird. Back in the 80's and 90's the test card channels always had sparklies in them on my parents 10ft dish. To see a crystal clear analog picture on a 7.5 dish is amazing.

My wife was asking a couple weeks back if I'd like to move to a new house, just outside of town with a lot more room for the kids. I said 'Yes', thinking that I'd then have the room to put up a 12ft dish instead of my 7.5 footer

I really don't think that I am supposed to have a C-Band dish in my area. There is a "no antennas" rule, but every 2nd house has a pizza size dish mounted to it, and many have 3 or 4 small dishes. (Hmmmm.. Why would they need that many 18" dishes???) I've probably pressed my luck to the extreme putting up a BUD. This 7.5 footer will work for the next couple of years for me until I find a house with a bigger yard where I can start my dish farm.

At that time, I will most likely have to rely strictly on signal meters to tune the birds in - analog will be gone by then..

 

[tvropro]

Analog is great but required a larger dish to rid you of those last sparklies in the reds on weaker satellites like the old 5 watt F3. That's why my 12 foot went up. I remember the first night I was watching my new 12 foot. It was so crisp and clear on the old F3. One thing I did notice and others agreed that even if you had a perfect picture on a 10 foot as you went to a larger dish the picture got crisper and sharper.QUOTE]

That's what I'm coming to realize. I've always known that bigger is better, but not to what extent.

Right now I get a crystal clear picture on the Buena Vista feeds (ABC/Disney?) on a 7.5 foot dish. Absolutely no sparklies at all. That must be a pretty powerful bird. Back in the 80's and 90's the test card channels always had sparklies in them on my parents 10ft dish. To see a crystal clear analog picture on a 7.5 dish is amazing.

My wife was asking a couple weeks back if I'd like to move to a new house, just outside of town with a lot more room for the kids. I said 'Yes', thinking that I'd then have the room to put up a 12ft dish instead of my 7.5 footer

I really don't think that I am supposed to have a C-Band dish in my area. There is a "no antennas" rule, but every 2nd house has a pizza size dish mounted to it, and many have 3 or 4 small dishes. (Hmmmm.. Why would they need that many 18" dishes???) I've probably pressed my luck to the extreme putting up a BUD. This 7.5 footer will work for the next couple of years for me until I find a house with a bigger yard where I can start my dish farm.

At that time, I will most likely have to rely strictly on signal meters to tune the birds in - analog will be gone by then..

Bigger is always better. Being a purist for video & audio (video compression drives me nuts) I realized long ago the 10 foot I had originally wouldn't cut it (for me at least) Even with digital my 12 ft gives me very high and stable quality numbers even with a 7/8 fec. That can make a difference. Like 99 Q on HBO on G1 and no problems ever with the 7/8 Equity mux on G3/C.

Proof how well it works a couple months ago we had a wicked snow and ice storm while leaving my 12 footer up in the arc during the storm watching RTN on G3/C, I never knew anything was happening. Then after my shows were over for the night there. I switched to my Primestar for HITS on X4 and it was GONE. You never knew the weather was bad with the 12 foot on C band. I had to go out there with buckets of hot water to de ice the P* to get it back up. And it took me like 20 minutes to get all the heavy wet snow out of my c band dish.

I'd go with a 16 footer if I had the room and the means

 

[GrumpyGuy]

My Drake ESR 1524 and Orbitron 12 are parked on the analog C-band feed of Cspan2 most of the time (I enjoy their weekend "Book TV" programing.) There is always more signal and gain than a guy could possibly need, in any weather, even when a lot of the right kind of snow falls and the bottom half of that deep dish fills with what must be hundreds of pounds of snow.

Still, when that happens, I can not resist the urge to needlessly take the RF remote to a window where I can see the dish, move the dish over toward the east limit, and rock it back and forth till a mini avalanche falls from the lower lip of the dish to the ground 7 ft. below. There is a most satisfying THUD you can both hear and feel. Been playing that game for 16 years, it never gets old.

 

[TRG]

I had a bit of a deja vu moment reading through this thread. I'm a huge music buff and have seen many transitions in the industry. As a young boy I took several electronics classes at a local tech school. Back then (70's) the curriculum was based on vacuum tubes. Then later I learned transistors (solid state) and digital electronics. Along the path I went from listening to tube based stereo gear to solid state. Guess what? Sometime in the mid 80's I abandoned solid state and went back to tubes. The same thing goes for the transition from vinyl records to CD. Some people might think I'm crazy for saying this but vinyl records and vacuum tubes sound better to my ear. There is a simple explanation for this. Vinyl records are analog and humans are analog. There are more complex explanations such as psychoacoustics, desirable vs. non-desirable harmonics etc. but I won't get into that. The point is that as technology progresses it is supposed to get better. Sometimes the human factor is forgotten in favor of economics and convenience.

 

[tvropro]

I had a bit of a deja vu moment reading through this thread. I'm a huge music buff and have seen many transitions in the industry. As a young boy I took several electronics classes at a local tech school. Back then (70's) the curriculum was based on vacuum tubes. Then later I learned transistors (solid state) and digital electronics. Along the path I went from listening to tube based stereo gear to solid state. Guess what? Sometime in the mid 80's I abandoned solid state and went back to tubes. The same thing goes for the transition from vinyl records to CD. Some people might think I'm crazy for saying this but vinyl records and vacuum tubes sound better to my ear. There is a simple explanation for this. Vinyl records are analog and humans are analog. There are more complex explanations such as psychoacoustics, desirable vs. non-desirable harmonics etc. but I won't get into that. The point is that as technology progresses it is supposed to get better. Sometimes the human factor is forgotten in favor of economics and convenience.

I have to agree with your post. Tubes have a warmth that transistors don't. Transistors are switching devices that add harshness and a cold sound.

Digital is nothing but analog converted to 1's and 0's. Analog is what our eyes and ears use. Compression removes information that is lost for ever. Although it is more economical to place 12 channels in the place of one. While this has it's benefits allowing more content. It degrades the picture or audio quality.

IMHO quite a few of the old things were better. Like a fine wine

 

[kb7oeb]

I understand the nostalgia but digital allows HD to fit in that same bandwidth and allows for error correction removing the need for perfect signal reception.

 

[truckracer]

I can lock the equity mux on G3-c Cband with a 10 foot sami mesh and pansat 9200HD.

There is something to be said about a good clean analog channels with NO compression.
Digital is not necessarily better - It is more economical.

 

[glen4cindy]

TBN is gone from C-Band analog, the Porn channels are gone from C-Band analog.

That sure is a strange mix. Watch porn for awhile, then switch to TBN to ease the guilt!

 

[truckracer]

Around here we call ourselves "fruitjar Baptists" - There's a fine, fine, fine, line between Saturday night and Sunday morning. LOL.

 

[Mr Tony]

That sure is a strange mix. Watch porn for awhile, then switch to TBN to ease the guilt!

and for a while back in the day, they were on adjacent chanenls
TBN on 3
Playboy on 2

 

[rv1pop]

and for a while back in the day, they were on adjacent chanenls
TBN on 3
Playboy on 2

And that positioning was Paul Crouch's plan. He even paid extra to have it there! Now TBN is on so many satellites - he has a hard time keeping track of them! Paul also put micro Bibles in some of the birds. There was a story, that I could not confirm, that one of the satellite companies asked Paul to a micro-Bible on a sat TBN was not even using because the sats with the Bible had so few problems.