So, if I slave an FTA box to my dsr922...

[JerryK]

Will my wife be able to use it? Is there a particular FTA brand that works best when slaved to a 4dtv?

I'm a little nervous (for my wife's sake) about all the posts in the FTA forums with guys continually fussing with frequencies and polarities. Is all that tweaking just a 1-time thing, or constant?

I'm a techie, and I'm not worried about my ability to hook up the diseq stuff etc. I'd probably get a feedhorn that can take the 3rd lnb, and run everything from my 10foot dish. I'm just not sure what the "user interface" is when I'm running the 2 receivers.

...If viewing DVB stations means 10 minutes a day of playing with signal strengths, I probably won't bother.

Thanks to any of you with slaved setups who can share your experiences.
-Jerry

 

[Shawn95GT]

It isn't as painless as a Ku dish on a SG2100, that's for sure .

On my DVB tuner I set the channel names to include the 4DTV tile.

FUSE on 121 reads 'CE-FUSE' on the DVB box.

Now there is still a 50/50 chance the polarity won't be correct, so if it doesn't come up I choose an odd or even channel below 24. Of course if you were on a 4DTV digital channel you won't know what polarity you were on unless you check. You might have to channel up-down from there to get the polarity right. Explain the odd/even and it shouldn't bee too bad to use.

Unfortunately, I wouln't expect my finace to figure it out.

 

[JerryK]

It isn't as painless as a Ku dish on a SG2100, that's for sure .

Well, if the fta box can drive a little dish (w/motor) simpler than my big one, I'm open to that. You think just keeping the systems separate would be easier to understand?

 

[Shawn95GT]

The FTA STBs are as easy to operate as a Cable / DBS box once it's all setup. The motor operation is transparent.

I plan on having a mix and match combo of both. I plan on putting my SG2100 back up and having an FTA Box (maybe my USB tuner) drive it. I'll also have it slaved to the 4DTV for the added versatility.

This is my ultimate game plan:

http://www.satelliteguys.us/attachment.php?attachmentid=6484&d=1135403613

It doesn't show the motor but it would be easy enough to integrate behind one of the DVB boxes.

Shawn

 

[sdoradus]

Actually, I found that my wife preferred to have a certain degree of control so did both. Essentially my 922 runs a 10 ft BUD (C&ku) and the FTA receiver is operating a 1M motorized dish that she controls position and polarity on. It also acts as a slave to the 922 (C-side only) so that she can watch C band programs but does not control position or polarity so we have to compromise a bit now and then. This alone worked very well for us but of course later on I got carried away later and added in more options with some older equipment that I happened to have.

SD

 

[JerryK]

Actually, I found that my wife preferred to have a certain degree of control so did both. Essentially my 922 runs a 10 ft BUD (C&ku) and the FTA receiver is operating a 1M motorized dish that she controls position and polarity on. It also acts as a slave to the 922 (C-side only) so that she can watch C band programs but does not control position or polarity so we have to compromise a bit now and then. This alone worked very well for us but of course later on I got carried away later and added in more options with some older equipment that I happened to have.

SD

Thanks, I may just go that route, keep them separate...and live without c-band dvb. Is most of the dvb out there ku and not C? I have a pretty good 4dtv subscription, so if the c-band dvb is a small percentage of the dvb up there, I'll just go without it.

 

[sdoradus]

Thats a bit tough to answer since depending on the size of your arc both number in the multiple hundreds. Depends on your tastes in programming. For example a quick ku scan on T-5 alone may pop up a hundred plus stations but most of them hold little value for my interests.

SD

 

[Shawn95GT]

It depends what you want.

Most of the live news feeds / remote uplinks that I managed to find were Ku. I miss this.

More of the mainstream English language programming is on C-Band DVB. I'm enjoying FUSE, Euronews, IMF etc or C-band DVB. On the Ku side there is a lot of international programming and of couse the Equity muxes.

The only downside to the motorized Ku dish is it seems to move in slow motion if you are used to a BUD .

Shawn