New to Ku But Not Satellite

[turbotoy]

Hello all, I've been lurking around here for a while now. I had a 7.5' Perfect 10 dish that was used for C Band from the early 90's to about 2005. We had a huge hail storm come through, dish got destroyed, and I ended up going with DirecTV as the future of 4DTV didn't look good even back then.

Since then, I've built and moved into a new house. I used to love looking for news feeds when big events were going on, so I decided to step into the Ku FTA world. I just picked up a 90cm GeosatPro dish, Invacom LNBF and a used Coolsat 6000 of ebay. Up and running for around $250 total. It's amazing how cheap this equipment is!

The other thing that blows me away is USALS and how tolerant these dishes are to poor alignment. I installed several C Band dishes over the years, and finally got good at aligning them fast. If you have never done that, trust me, USALS is amazing. It took me about 5 minutes to have the dish tracking from 125W to 30W perfectly. I've spent hours peaking C Band dishes.

I do have to say, the way some folks talk around here, I expected the picture quality to be considerably better. There are channels that are downright unwatchable (i.e. Presstv). I have yet to see a feed that has been superior to some of the better DirecTV MPEG-4 standard definition channels. Some have been decent quality though. I have a very potent Linux box that resides next to the A/V rack, so I may pick up a Prof 7300 to play with picking up some HD content.

However, from what I can gather, it looks like the good stuff is really still on C Band. I know where there are a few good BUDs... I can get a black Paraclipse Classic 12' from a friend. I also know where there's a 10' Channel Master solid (with the heavily ribbed back) that doesn't look like it's being used. However, it seems that a lot of the birds are MUCH further East than they ever were back in the good old analog days. That said, it would be nice to find a dish with a H-H mount. I used to always look for dishes, and I'm quite sure I have never seen a Birdview in this area (a little North of Albany, NY). We'll see...

Is there any analog content at all left on Ku? I have a Drake 1824 I was going to drag out and hook to the loop out of the Coolsat to scan some of the birds.

In any case, just wanted to say hi and thank you, as I've picked up a lot of knowledge browsing this forum.

 

[guapoharry]

Welcome, turbotoy.
Thanks for the pics. What kind of motor do you have?

...The other thing that blows me away is USALS and how tolerant these dishes are to poor alignment. I installed several C Band dishes over the years, and finally got good at aligning them fast. If you have never done that, trust me, USALS is amazing. It took me about 5 minutes to have the dish tracking from 125W to 30W perfectly. I've spent hours peaking C Band dishes.
....

On the free stuff, sometimes you get uplinkers who compress the crap out of the signal.

About quality, don't see how you could get better than network feed or SNG feed. Just wait until you see the HD.

USALS is good.

As for tolerant to poor alignment, methinks you may have gotten lucky this time.

 

[turbotoy]

Thanks! The motor is a DG280.

Poor choice of words on my part in regards to alignment. What I really meant is, the dish can move around a significant amount with the signal appearing to stay near maximum. As expected, there is far less "focus" than there is with a BUD. When I first felt the amount of backlash in the motor and the amount of resulting play in the dish I thought there was no way it would work. It's fine.

That said, I'm sure I could have just got lucky.

My method was... Locked the motor to my latitude per the scale on the motor, then moved the motor using USALS to 72W. Punched in a hot transponder and scanned the sky by moving the dish (not motor) up and down and had it within a few seconds. Went to 125W and had to make an azimuth tweak. Went back and re-peaked elevation at 72W, went back to 125W and all was fine. Tried Hispasat at 30W and, to my amazement, it was dead on. Locked everything down and went into the house to start blind scanning.

Nice having one coax to hookup for alignment at the dish vice all the motor and polarotor connections!

 

[guapoharry]

Ok I understand.

Maybe not lucky. That's the way to do it.



That thing about C-band dishes alignment is too true.

I went from aiming pizza dishes to little Ku dishes to C-band dishes. It's funny how going from one kind to another is sort of the same. But in ways, there are big differences.

 

[Jim S.]

I also have a GeoSatPro 90cm and a DG280. I also had hardly any tweaking to do to achieve near-perfect tracking. The scales on those two items are dead on.

 

[phlatwound]

turbotoy, afaik there is little to no Ku analog stuff anymore, maybe a little during college football season.

Does that 12' Paraclipse have a linear actuator? The new DVB-S2/high FEC signals like to have some dish "real estate" and some good tuning to get good reception. I do pretty well with an old beat-up 10' Perfect 10 mesh, but that 12' Para could be a fine signal sucker.

C-band definitely has a lot of the best stuff, most of it is from 87W to 133W, hope you have LOS for that part of the arc.

And as G-harry said, wait till you see the HD, it will kill anything you have ever seen on cable, or the little pizza dishes.

 

[turbotoy]

I was actually just able to do some back to back comparisons with some SD feeds on 99W with their 720P counterparts on DirecTV. For the most part, it was really hard to tell the difference between the two. These are hands down the best feeds I have found yet though (quality and content). DirecTV seemed to have the edge on transient response. I attribute this to two things that sort of balance out; higher end receiving equipment at the feed destination which is subsequently uplinked, and the HDMI connection to my TV from the DirecTV STB vice component from the Coolsat. In any case, it is impressive for SD.

The Paraclipse is a standard polar mount/linear actuator. Those dishes were very popular in this area due to the frequent ice storms we get. They are strong enough to survive about anything. I know where several others are within 15 miles or so from me that I could probably get. I have never seen a Paraclipse with a H-H mount in person, though I know one of the members here has one. Moving the dish, setting the pole (in a LOT of concrete), and getting one tracking perfectly is not a trivial task though. However I know where countless other cheaper/smaller dishes are that I would not waste my time on due to the very S2 issues you mention phlatwound.

Back in the mid 90s I replaced the ancient 90ish degree LNB (that replaced the original LNA in the late 80s) on that Paraclipse with something high end and modern (Norsat 30 degree if memory serves correct). There were sparklies on only the most yellow of colors on the weakest birds with the old 90 degree LNB. With the 30 degree LNB, it was C Band perfection, and I was jealous.

I have LOS basically down to the horizon in the West (getting below F1 would have been easy in this location if that is a meaningful description) over to at least 30W.

 

[guapoharry]

edit: Are you talking about the auction? If so, this is what the feeds are...

Feed 1
Elementary Stream MPEG-2 Video
MPEG Video: Bitrate 3.437 Mbps Resolution 480 x 480i
MPEG Video: Framerate 29.97 fps Aspect Ratio 4:3 Chroma Format 4:2:0
Descriptor: Data Stream Alignment Descriptor
Alignment type: video access unit

MPEG1 Audio: Bitrate 256 Kbps Sample Rate 48 KHz
MPEG1 Audio: Layer II Mode Stereo


Feed 2
MPEG Video: Bitrate 3.390 Mbps Resolution 720 x 480i
MPEG Video: Framerate 29.97 fps Aspect Ratio 4:3 Chroma Format 4:2:0

MPEG1 Audio: Bitrate 256 Kbps Sample Rate 48 KHz
MPEG1 Audio: Layer II Mode Stereo

Feed 3
MPEG Video: Bitrate 3.082 Mbps Resolution 720 x 480i
MPEG Video: Framerate 29.97 fps Aspect Ratio 4:3 Chroma Format 4:2:0

MPEG1 Audio: Bitrate 256 Kbps Sample Rate 48 KHz
MPEG1 Audio: Layer II Mode Stereo

Guess they couldn't cram three 720 feeds on that one transponder...

 

[Anole]

Nice pictures. Glad to have you more active in the FTA department. - :up

As for BUDs with H-H, just keep a look out.
I didn't expect to see any and found two within two months.
Thanks to the knowledge I gained on the forum, I recognized the tell-tale sight of a Birdview, AND a nice spun aluminum perf on an AJAK 180 motor!
A year before, I didn't follow up on a Paraclipse 12' on H-H, thinking it was too far away and too big a job!

Also, some creative members have whipped up their own H-H's.
Lot of fine brain-power here on the forum.
Everyone builds on the ideas posted by others, and some of the creations they've come up with are outstanding! - :up

 

[turbotoy]

Yep, I was talking about the auction. Still on the cautious side about citing anything found in this forum based on the rules.

I'm curious about how you are extracting those data on the feeds?

I probably haven't found the good stuff yet, but out of all the "published" channels on Ku DVB, the only thing I have found that has come close to the quality of those auction feeds is ABCNow and Montana PBS. Things like RTV are reasonably poor quality even relative to what I get OTA.

This is all qualitative assessment by my untrained eye on a 52" Sony XBR, so take that for what it's worth. And don't get me wrong, it's free, I'm NOT complaining.

I am a baseball fan, so I would love to see how the 1080i sports feeds really stack up to the DirecTV offerings. That will probably be the deciding factor in whether I plant a BUD or not. To my eye, the DirecTV HD on channels such as YES and ESPN is quite good, less so on some other channels. But everything is relative.

 

[guapoharry]

Yep, I was talking about the auction. Still on the cautious side about citing anything found in this forum based on the rules.

I'm curious about how you are extracting those data on the feeds?
...

DVB card / USB adapter on a PC

TSReader Hardware Support

TSReader

There is a free lite version that has a time limited picture viewing restriction. But you can still get info about the streams. Some people complain justly about TSReader support, but I don't see anything else that matches it...

RTV used to be better on Ku but they changed to what it is now fairly recently... Since it's so crummy, I guess that means all of the affiliates have C-band or IP feeds now. Bet they wanted to avoid problems when it rains in Chattanooga.

User kingofku seemed to indicate he could improve the picture somehow. That is beyond me...