FreeSat.

[Dave Plowman (News]

Got a new TV which has a built in satellite tuner. Good news in that it will reduce STB clutter. Although I mainly used FreeView - FTA satellite just for playing with, as I have a 1 metre dish and rotator.

TV gives me the choice of FreeSat or 'other'. 'Other' allows as many sats as I want and controls the dish. But unlike the old STB, a very limited EPG.

So tried FreeSat. Which complains about postcode. Googling says this comes from Eutelsat 28E, but the progs from Astra 28E

The 'other' list on the new TV gives all the Astras, and several Eutelsat, but no Eutelsat 28. Set the dish motor to Astra 28, and that shows 100/100%

About the one thing I did quite often use satellite for was to watch regional opt outs from BBC and ITV Scotland.

[T i m]

<snip>

Ah, like a RADAR antenna, or did you mean 'positioner'? ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[ARW]

Then you need that TV to be working on the 18th of June 8pm :-)

[JNugent]

Does the satellite tuner in the TV enable recording off-air (maybe onto a tethered hard drive or data stick)?

I ask because it's hard to envisage TV watching these days without some facility for time-shifting (if not archiving).

I admit that I don't know much about Freesat, but I assume - perhaps wrongly - that boxes with hard drives (analogous to Sky+) are available.

Without that, one would be reliant on some sort of internet-based catch-up service for the channels not available via the terrestrial catch-up services.

[The Natural Philosopher]

you can stuff a DVB-S tuner car in a PC and record off that

[Richard]

The Freesat app works well with my Humax.

[williamwright]

The satellites are all clustered together so you can think of them as one.

Bill

[JNugent]

I dare say that's true and that it has some uses.

But I remember that there was a time when one could only get the iPlayer (and similar services) on a computer of whatever sort and an industry bigwig was reported as saying that it needed to be "on the TV" (ie, provide an experience more like a video recorder). That's certainly in line with my own view of recording TV. It needs to be part of the TV set-up.

[Dave Plowman (News]

I'd expect that of the dish. Not sure the tuner does, though.

I looked up the frequencies etc of some UK progs, and did a manual tune using that data. Said it was adding progs, but still couldn't find them afterwards.

[Dave Plowman (News]

Dunno. I'm unlikely to want to record from it.

I already have a couple of Freeview boxes for recording.

My old satellite box - a Mutant - had an HD. Never used it though. The GUI on it horrendous.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Well, Its a bit like a telescope mount but only able to look at the plane of the ecliptic at the correct elevation. I often wondered if some kind of omni directional pirate could be set up on a tall building so pointing the dish at it would pick it up? Brian

[T i m]

Yeah, I think they are also called polar mounts, slightly different to an astronomical equatorial mount.

If the transmitter was powerful enough I guess but the dishes normally work on a fairly narrow beam and I'm not sure there would be many instances where a building would be tall enough and have dishes already pointing at it. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[alan_m]

Freesat is the same cluster of satellites as used by sky and with a fixed dish tuners all Freesat/Sky/Enigma2/A.N.Other boxes have no problems getting all available Freesat or Sky or Free to Air Sky channels from that cluster without having to move a dish. Freesat is group of TV channels with an over the air 7 day EPG much like the Free to Air channels from Sky where the 7 day EPG can be obtained by tuning in to their IEPG channel (comaptable software assumed). Other free to air channels may only have a broadcast now and next EPP but maybe a longer period EPG can be obtained from the Internet.

It will be the software behind the tuner that determines how good the experience with a GUI and associated features.

[The Natural Philosopher]

yeah. anything that will pick up sky will pick up freesat and there are a lot of 'free' sky channels

From memory just point it at Astra 28.2E...more than one sattelite sits there. Astra 2E and 2G...

[Dave Plowman (News]

I was able to get everything using the original STB. The dish remains the same. And of course is much bigger than a Sky dish. I motored it, using the TV software, to give 100% from Astra 28 in the sets drop down menu.

I also entered my post code in the general setup instructions for the TV, and that found my actual address.

If I do a FreeSat tune, it complains about not knowing my postcode.

[Richard]

Have you tried a postcode very near you? The even numbered houses on my road have a different postcode to the odd numbered.

[Michael Chare]

In which case I suspect you get on better with the 'Other' option.

[williamwright]

The geometry is a bit weird. Really big dishes take quite a bit of setting up.The thing sweeps across the arc by virtue of a fairly simple pivoting arrangement, but then there has to be 'declination offset' to compensate for the fact that the dish is not at the centre of the earth. It's done by setting the tracking arc a bit high then adjusting a offset to drop the dish down a fixed amount on the swivelling mount. Then you start to think about polarisation offset!

Bill

[Dave Plowman (News]

Yup - there doesn't seem to be much on FreeSat I can't get from FreeView anyway.

But at the moment can't see any UK progs at all from satellite.

[T i m]

Back in the day I installed about 10 'Maspro' systems for friends and family and a couple were 'motorised' so I had to deal with all that as well. I found it all very interesting and it was all quite new at the time (in domestic circles).

I obtained them 'trade' though the Co I worked for at the time and installed them for nowt for the fun / experience of it.

My dish was just on an old tripod stand at the bottom of the garden and it was only an issue if I walked in front of it ... but if / when that happened, *I* wasn't watching satellite TV. ;-)

(From memory) The dishes were solid steel (not mesh), 90cm, offset LNB jobbies, with a separate polariser and with an elevation of around 27 Degrees around here meant that the front edges of the dish were nearly vertical (or close enough to get *some* signal) and the Astras could be seen between the chimneys. ;-)

Having it at ground level made it much easier for playing with different LNB's etc.

Cheers, T i m