Which satellite receiver?

I can't recommend a receiver, but this link seems to have a pretty comprehensive selection:

There's also this ste:

I've not bought anything from it, but there's a Mutant 4k sat. box that looks interesting. It seems that Humax has gone frippery-wards.

What do you mean by this? I googled it and all it came up with was you posting it many times.

Dave,

If you have trouble finding an integrated receiver/positioner I have a standalone positioner, still boxed, which you could have for whatever we agreed was a reasonable price.

For many years I used an Echostar receiver with a built-in positioner. I

Bert

s interesting.>

Running something like openvix

forums for help/advice on the boxes/software images

If you want to watch French channels, the Octagon SF4008 can receive the multistream channels from 5w. They are FTA, no need for a card. The Italian channels such as Rai 1 are broadcast in a similar fashion.

Dunno if anyone understand how these things work. ;-)

Took the receiver up to the dish - which is luckily accessible. And (one) problem is it no longer moves the dish if you change satellites or tell it to 'nudge' etc. But there is still power to the dish motor as it will move on its local buttons.

Obvious question (sorry) but have you done anything to change or disturb the wiring between the receiver and the dish motor?

I've tried it up beside the dish with a new lead - to eliminate any cable problems.

Mutant 4K ordered up, thanks.

Goody! - please let us know what it's like. My Humax PVR is nearly 5 years old and the new ones, even by a shop's opinion, is not good. Bloody shop sells only Humax - Joe Public prefers frippery over function.

Out of interest, how does a dish rotator work? The one I have has a button on it - push once to move one way, twice to move the other, so has motor volts at all times. So how does the receiver tell it to move?

The ones I've used have had a semi-automatic setup system: you had to drive the dish to the limit of each end of its range and store those positions; the receiver then calculated every satellite in the available arc and stored the information in its memory.

Is your dish motor DISEqC or 36V?

I was more wondering what the commands it received consisted of. Since it seems to have permanent power.

It's old, but did seem to work on any of the choices on the old receiver. Which I think were off, motor, Usal and DISCEq (sorry if those ain't the exact terms)

I've ordered up a new one anyway.

I've got the new receiver, but it's not reacting to that either. Although it's fiendishly complicated with a rather basic instruction manual.

It absolutely won't be the one recommended by Which.

It'll be better...

:)

If it is running OpenVix you may also need the openVix manual and the video guides

A youtube video showing the capabilities of OpenVix albeit on a (older) different box, an older version of Openvix, and with some incorrect assumptions.

Thanks for that.

The old box seemed to just die. All menus etc seemed to work, but constant 'no signal'. And it wouldn't move the dish either. But pressing the button on the motor did make it move. So obviously now no longer aligned to any satellite.

New box has a far more complicated set up for the drive. Lots of choices I don't understand.

However, sending it fully East or West does work, so I'm assuming the motor is OK. But telling it to find a signal doesn't seem to do anything. And the signal strenght etc gives a constant zero - I'd expect it to react a bit as the dish motors across, as the old one did. So wondering if the LNB is faulty too.

The box you have purchased is generically known as an Enigma2 box so a google search for "Enigma 2 motor set-up" or similar may/will get you some help

I'm still not sure having played with it. The handbook supplied with it is poor - far too basic. But it has the openvix software installed. And I've yet to find an idiot's guide to that.

Turns out I had two faults (on a system not much used) Not only was the old receiver not sending volts to the dish (proved by running a new cable) but there was a poor connection in the original. Now sorted.

What's odd is the lack of channels I can find on the dozen or so satellites it finds. Including all the Astra ones. The old box found hundreds. So I'm guessing I need to alter some of the settings before tuning. It gives you a choice of predetermined or user for each satellite. But will need to look up what all the user ones actually mean and do.

The one thing I've found poor is the ability to set favourites. Essential when you've got a big choice. It's not intuitive.

I specified it with the second tuner being DVB-T and with an HD, so at least I have an additional FreeView PVR. ;-)

FWIW, due to the position of the disc, I'm limited pretty well to East sats only, due to a neighbour's rather dense chestnut tree. ;-)