Please Help Old C-Band Guy Who's Lost--->

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427Cobra

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Original poster
Sep 24, 2005
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I received an email this morning concerning FTA stuff... Within minutes I made the decision to buy a receiver. After looking around some I am Totally confused at this point. I still have a C-Band dish running and I have an small dish that has been down for almost 2 years, that's when I went back to watching what I could get on the C-Band. My question is, what is my best option, go with a FTA and connect to my C-Band dish or to the small dish, or to make matters more confusing switch over to 4DTV?

I would Grately appreciate your exprienced opinion on what you'd do?

Thanks,

CM
 
If you want movie channels and cable channels, then the 4dtv is what you will need, programming is much cheaper than small dish and picture quality is a lot better also.
Go here to see what is on 4dtv:
http://broadband.motorola.com/4DTV/4DTVChannelUpdates_031205.htm (at the bottom click 4dtv channels by category)

DVB can be added on also to catch many free channels.

Best thing to do for both 4dtv and DVB is to have a c/ku setup.

What size dish do you have?
Is it in good shape?
Mesh or solid?
 
I know it is confusing but let me ask a couple of basic questions:

Is your dish and receiver C-band only, or C and Ku band?
Did you install your C-band dish yourself, or let a professional installer do it for you?
With regard to the small dish, what service was that used with (if Dish Network or DirecTV, then that dish will be pretty useless UNLESS you want free audio signals, which are worth having. On the other hand, if it's an old PrimeStar dish, you're in luck as that is actually quite usable).

One thing you might want to familiarize yourself with is a DiSEqC switch. You will need one (and probably one or two splitters that pass DC through one port only). Some people may try to sell you a two-port DiSEqC - I'd suggest getting a four-port one because they aren't that much more expensive and someday you will wish you had an extra port or two. Try to get a good one with low insertion loss.

If your dish is currently C-band only then I'd ask a couple of additional things. First, what is the composition of the dish itself? Solid fiberglass, aluminum mesh, or what? If mesh type, how big are the actual holes in the mesh (can you stick a pencil through them or almost do so, or are they much smaller)?

If the dish is solid fiberglass or small-hole mesh, you may be able to make it receive Ku band by buying a dual-band feedhorn and a GOOD QUALITY Ku-band LNB (warning, there is one guy on eBay that sells CHEAP LNB's, they are pure junk, so be careful what you buy. I had one that crapped out whenever the temperature went below 45 degrees. Anyone in Hawaii, southern Florida, or Puerto Rico reading this that wants a cheap C-band LNB, let me know!). :D

It does not matter if your current receiver can receive Ku band, your FTA receiver would still be able to as long as you have a dual feedhorn and LNB's. But you still need your present receiver to actually move the dish from satellite to satellite and possibly to change LNB polarity (many FTA receivers can do that also, but in a dual analog/digital system you usually let the analog receiver deal with LNB polarity). I will note that Ku is initially much trickier to tune in - things like feedhorn distance from the dish and proper setting of the scaler rings on the feedhorn and such matter much more with Ku, but once you get it right your C-band reception should be crystal clear!

Once we know all this we can probably give better advice.
 
Fta

What brand and model receiver did you buy ?

FTA is Free To Air , you can receive unscrambled channels .

They will be DVB , Digital Video Broadcast .

They can be C or Ku band or both .

To see my post about slaving a Pansat FTA receiver to an existing C band analog set up , go to
http://www.satelliteguys.us/showthread.php?t=84309&page=2&pp=15

If your rig is C band only & you want Ku , might be easier to buy a 30" or larger offset dish , Ku band linear LNBF and motor and hook it to the receiver . That technology is made to work together .

If your receiver will work on Ku analog , you could also use the power blocking / power passing splitter to slave the analog receiver to the FTA receiver .


But , to get started , might be simpler to to start out slaveing the FTA to the analog C band ( as I described ) anf start the learning curv on digital C band .

If you have more questions , send me a privite message .

Best of luck ,
Wyr
 
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