New to Satellite- Receiving FTA television

[Tron]

Is there anything I can use the General Instrument DSR-4200V for? Or am I better off jsut taking it out of my configuration?

The 4200V, being Digicipher II and not DVB, would require activation for the particular service you are trying to receive. Considering this is at a school, it was probably used to receive one of a handful of PBS channels that were at one time uplinked using Digicipher II. The PBS channels are now DVB and DVB-S2. Honestly, the 4200V is next to useless.

You would get nice PBS coverage if you were to aim the Ku-Band dish at 125W and connect a DVB-S2 receiver to it. Looking at the pictures, you probably have a single-polarity LNB on that dish, so to get everything on both polarities you'd want to upgrade the LNB.

 

[kwhite0711]

Thanks to Brex2001, I have a DVB set top box on its way to the school. I'm going to take the DSR-4200V as well as the smaller white dish out of my configuration. I'll let everyone know how things turn out!

 

[brex2001]

I think most of us would agree that a fixed Ku dish could be figured into your system. Don't be too hasty about removing that nice dish.

 

[Tron]

As Brex2001 said, there is no need to remove the Ku dish from your system. In fact, I would think the PBS channels on 125W would be very useful in an educational environment. Combining the outputs from the Ku-Band dish and the C-Band dish is not a complex procedure. I would certainly park the Ku-Band dish on 125W.

 

[kwhite0711]

Just received my Conaxsat Due in the mail today and it works great! I won't disconnect the Ku band dish... Does the C-band dish receive Ku band signals, or is it necessary to have a separate dish for those?

Also, I was doing some searching online and I noticed that a lot of these FTA receivers have been subject to lawsuits and seizures, due to people using them illegally to watch encrypted television (ie. Dish network signals). Obviously I never plan on using my dish or equipment for those purposes, but it seems like a bunch of different companies and models of FTA receivers have been subject to these piracy concerns. What's the story behind this? Are these companies (ie. Conaxsat, Pansat, Neusat etc.) legitimate companies?

 

[FaT Air]

Does the C-band dish receive Ku band signals, or is it necessary to have a separate dish for those?

That depends on what's used for a 'feed' electronics, the LNB or LNBF. And also the size of the holes in the mesh. For Ku on a BUD, the area holes should be much less than the area of the solid surface to be usable on Ku. **
Tell you what I'd do - Just hook it up to the coax from the small white dish, and do a blind scan. See what transponders and channels it gets, and determine what satellite it's aimed at. Then go from there.
You can add a DISEQC or 22khz switch to 'switch' between the small dish and big dish
Maybe re-point the small dish to 125W for PBS? But even there, I think most is HD or S2, and don't think a Duo does either S2 or HD. Should get the SD feeds and channels tho--

a bunch of different companies and models of FTA receivers have been subject to these piracy concerns. What's the story behind this?

And those found guilty have been shut down.
FTA is perfectly legal. Decryption of scrambled signals without a subscription(authorization)is not.

Are these companies (ie. Conaxsat, Pansat, Neusat etc.) legitimate companies?

Some were originally legit, but fell into the 'dark side'. Others were born in the 'dark side'. Same applies to some domestic re-sellers.
** Tell ya what, take some pictures of the electronics in the front of the dish, we'll tell you what they are capable of.

 

[Tron]

Just received my Conaxsat Due in the mail today and it works great! I won't disconnect the Ku band dish... Does the C-band dish receive Ku band signals, or is it necessary to have a separate dish for those?

You would need a C/Ku combo LNBF on the big dish, and these LNBFs tend to be hard to tweak and usually result in poorer performance on one band or the other. Best to keep a separate dish for Ku-Band.

 

[brex2001]

That CNX Duo I sent you was reset to legitimate, factory firmware & then scanned in SD(which may need rescanning because its been awhile?) from 83 to 139W in C-band.

I included both a 22 kHz & a 1.0 diseqc switches for flexibility in a temporary system. For now it would be easiest to hookup the 22 kHz switch to Ku & 0 kHz side of that 22 kHz switch to C-band.

Then set up the menu & scan for your SD fta. The CD contains all the factory fw, loaders & editor I ever had found for the Duo.

Enjoy.

 

[kwhite0711]

 

[brex2001]

NICE!
Very nice dish & H to H Ajak with a counterweight.