what is the ultimate FTA set up???

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cablewithaview

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Apr 18, 2005
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DeKalb County, AL
Everyone has a difference of opinion on what to use from receivers to motors and everything else in between. Some do HD, some does AC3 audio, some blind scan, etc. After it is all said and done, what is the ultimate FTA set up???
 
That is hard to define, because so much depends on what you want to watch. Personally I think a 12' C/KU dish, high stability LNBFS, 4dtv reciever with good quality DVB receiver with ac-3 and blind scan, and a pc with pci DVB card is a pretty good start. With that kind of setup you can get pretty much everything up there.

If you want multiple recievers to view all the sats you can see, than you have to start looking at fixed dishs, lots of switches and lots fun hooking it all up.
 
A solid 15 footer with CBand, Linear KU, and Circular LNB's. Receivers attached would be able to receive HD, 4:2:2, 8PSK, analog, 4DTV, AC3, etc. And of course no trees or obstructions to the south. And while you are at it, the ability to track inclined orbit sats.

The dream setup..
 
I would say one of those Manhatten receivers that will natively control an actuator running a 10' or better bud with a C/Ku feedhorn or LNBF.

I miss cueing up a bunch of sats to scan and letting the Coolsat do it's thing.

That's from a simplicity point of view.

Now if you just want to see the most stuff on the cheap to free....

Same C/Ku BUD and add a DSr-922 4DTV with a sub to pretty much anything so you are authorized for all the stuff in the clear. Slave your favorite DVB receiver to this via DiSEqC 3/4 for the C and Ku sides.

Save DiSEqC 1 & 2 for C/L on a motorized 1M or so dish with a Invacom quad polar LNBF.

Throw a PCI/USB DVB receiver in for good measure.

I'm getting there ;).
 
As noted above, there is no "true" ultimate.

I guess if you had about 20 acres and a clear southern view, you could put up a dish at every slot from 72-137 (C Band and KU) and a DBS dish to get 82, 91, 110, 119. Run a shitload of cables into the house and use a bunch of switches. You'd probably need different receivers to control different setups :)

Honestly, my perfect setup (IMO)
-12' dish with C/KU LNB's
-922 4DTV
-a DVB box with AC-3, blind scan and a good tuner
-Quali-TV unit for 4:2:2 and HD
-motorized KU unit

-couple 8'-10' fixed C-Band dishes.
-Fixed dishes at G10, SBS6, maybe a couple more
-Couple DBS dishes for 119 & 91
-few receivers

and a helluva southern view :D
 
Everything noted so far, plus the receiver would have at least 4 tuners, a 500+GB raid array for recording and an ethernet port to connect it to the network and retrieve the files. That's my definition of ultimate.
 
Pepper said:
Everything noted so far, plus the receiver would have at least 4 tuners, a 500+GB raid array for recording and an ethernet port to connect it to the network and retrieve the files. That's my definition of ultimate.

I concur with everything above. But why are you stopping at 500GB. If you have that much cash to afford all the above, I am sure you can throw out a few more to get a SAN box with Terabytes of storage and a PC to program all of your favorite shows to record from your bzillion dishes that you have on your ranch :D
Or let me put it this way. When it gets to this stage, you need to hire people to manage the maze for you. And then the question is what will you be doing? watching TV and not messing with cables and switches and running up and down the ladder to the roof ;) That doesn't sound like much fun :p
 
-At least two 6m (19' or so) solid dishes on an elevated horizon-horizon mount at an east coast location with a completely clear southern horizon (to permit you to see everything from 1 W to 139 W or so) and with international Ku-band and C-band feeds, the latter with linear and circular capabilities
-Professional GI DCII Megapipe, MPEG-2 QPSK and 8PSK receivers with 4:2:2 and HD capability
-Spectrum analyzers
 
Pepper said:
Everything noted so far, plus the receiver would have at least 4 tuners, a 500+GB raid array for recording and an ethernet port to connect it to the network and retrieve the files. That's my definition of ultimate.

500+gb raid array?

I've got 820gb(raid not needed) in my HTPC w/ FTA card & HD OTA card and I'm still wondering what I'm going to take off and burn to DVD's.
 
oops that was a typo. meant to say 5000+GB

if you think raid is not needed you apparently have not experienced a drive failure?
 
Pepper said:
oops that was a typo. meant to say 5000+GB

if you think raid is not needed you apparently have not experienced a drive failure?

Didn't say that... I'm too greedy on space to cut it in half.
 
digiblur said:
Didn't say that... I'm too greedy on space to cut it in half.
RAID 5 you only lose 1 drive's worth of space.

1.2TB array here :hatsoff:

Since tivo Desktop 2.2 lets the Tivos get video back from the PC it is making for quite a nice Tivo repository!

If anyone wonders why I chose this size.... it's because when I built the server 400 Gig was the break point where the SATA drives started getting really expensive any larger. I kind of wish that I had went with a raid card that would do more than 4 drives now - hehe.
 

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Shawn95GT said:
RAID 5 you only lose 1 drive's worth of space.

1.2TB array here :hatsoff:

Since tivo Desktop 2.2 lets the Tivos get video back from the PC it is making for quite a nice Tivo repository!

If anyone wonders why I chose this size.... it's because when I built the server 400 Gig was the break point where the SATA drives started getting really expensive any larger. I kind of wish that I had went with a raid card that would do more than 4 drives now - hehe.

I bet that raid takes a WHILE to FORMAT & DEFRAG >>>>> LOL

BryanSR
 
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