Satellite dish

[hillbilly]

Hi all, anyone know what is the best satellite dish for a liveaboard who cruises half the year? Think it should be folding and automatic but don't want to spend a fortune. Ideas appreciated.

[Dutch]

Hi all, anyone know what is the best satellite dish for a liveaboard who cruises half the year? Think it should be folding and automatic but don't want to spend a fortune. Ideas appreciated.

 

Maplins do one which i use and is very popular also Lidle and Aldi have these on sale quite ofte i think the price is about £60 complete with 12v sat receiver sat finder dish and single Lnb

 

Mick

Edited July 28, 2009 by Dutch

[Nine of Hearts]

Maplins do one which i use and is very popular also Lidle and Aldi have these on sale quite ofte i think the price is about £60 complete with 12v sat receiver sat finder dish and single Lnb

 

Mick

 

Anyone else got one of these? I have seven sorts of trouble i) finding Astra in the first place and ii) getting it to stay on signal (when the wind blows, Donald Campbell goes past, etc. etc.). Would getting a bigger, replacement dish help? Is my broomstick mast perhaps too flexible? Any suggestions?

[RLWP]

Read a book? Hold a conversation? Take up meditation?

 

Richard

[Nine of Hearts]

Read a book? Hold a conversation? Take up meditation?

 

Richard

 

I will stand behind you and even hold your coat whilst you make those suggestions to my darling offspring. I'm happy to do all three of those (even when alone, worryingly), but my kiddie-winks are a long way from considering their father worthy of emulation. Perhaps fortunately, in some instances.

[RLWP]

I will stand behind you and even hold your coat whilst you make those suggestions to my darling offspring. I'm happy to do all three of those (even when alone, worryingly), but my kiddie-winks are a long way from considering their father worthy of emulation. Perhaps fortunately, in some instances.

 

Ah, ours were carefully educated from an early age that our boat just could not possibly have a television for various obscure technical reasons.

 

With friends they would hold epic card games instead.

 

Richard

[alan_fincher]

My understanding from previous threads is as follows....

 

A bigger diameter dish will boost signal if properly aligned.

 

However, the bigger the dish, the more directional it becomes, so the more the signal is attenuated as alignment moves away from optimal.

 

Therefore if the problem is rocking due to wind, Phylis, or other causes, a bigger dish may be just what you don't need.

 

If you are moored so the dish is pointing along the longitudinal direction of your boat the movement effects will be much less than if you are trying to point it at 90 degrees sideways, so if a particular episode of "Cash in the Attic" is important to you, mooring further round a bend may help.

 

Some have reported that replacing the original low quality cable and connectors in the Maplin set with a purpose made lead of good quality can help - I've not tried this, though.

 

That said, I can hardly ever be bothered these days, and think we only unpacked our suitcase about twice in three weeks. But then I have largely stopped watching TV altogether, whether at home or on the boat.

[NB Alnwick]

We use the Kerstan mini mobile satellite dish and find it easy to set-up and operate. We used to use a sat-finder but these days we just use the maps in our various Nicholson's Guides to point the satellite dish in the general compass direction of SSE - with the dish vertical. It usually takes two or three minutes to get a strong signal with decent quality. If we want to watch TV we choose a mooring spot that provides a clear line to the satellite - trees, hedges, buildings and high cutting sides will all shield the signal because the sat is is quite low in the sky. Also if the dish is pointing straight over the towpath or straight over the cut passing boats and even walking about within the boat and rocking it can cause a momentary loss of signal - the cat sitting in front of the dish doesn't help either.

 

Link to Kerstan Mini Dish

[Proper Job]

I have to confess that my off spring bought me the Maplins unit last Christmas (it may have been a hint)

 

It's still in the box unused, so I can't confirm how good it is.

[WotEver]

my kiddie-winks are a long way from considering their father worthy of emulation. Perhaps fortunately, in some instances.

 

I worked with a lad in his late twenties a few years back and he said to me "You know, more and more I'm beginning to think and act like my dad." I asked him if he thought that was such a bad thing. He paused for a few seconds and replied "Well, as long as I don't start to dance like him, no!"

 

T

[alan_fincher]

Link to Kerstan Mini Dish

 

Shows how little I know, but the details of that dish say.....

 

It’s suitable for use with both analogue and digital transmissions

 

In my naivety I would have assumed that all satellite TV is digital - can somebody enlighten me, please ?

[WotEver]

In my naivety I would have assumed that all satellite TV is digital - can somebody enlighten me, please ?

 

Well, you've heard of "Sky Digital"? Guess what there was before the 'digital' bit?

 

T

[NB Alnwick]

Many of the channels are not originally broadcast in digital format but are subsequently digitised and decoded as part the satellite transmission methodology.

[nb Innisfree]

Anyone else got one of these? I have seven sorts of trouble i) finding Astra in the first place and ii) getting it to stay on signal (when the wind blows, Donald Campbell goes past, etc. etc.). Would getting a bigger, replacement dish help? Is my broomstick mast perhaps too flexible? Any suggestions?

 

We have the Aldi one, been no trouble at all.

 

When you tune in make sure you look at a compass first (away from steel boat shell) to be in the right direction + dish needs to be nearly vertical for Astra 2. Our dish sits on a mag mount on the roof and once aligned (a bit fiddly I agree) it stays locked on despite boat rocking, I put this down to a small radius (6"?) when manipulating dish but a much larger radius (5' to waterline?) when locked up and boat rocking. Suggest you don't mount it on a pole as this will increase radius.

 

I find audible tuning much easier than trying to look at LEDs

 

Edited to say a pole giving a larger radius will actually improve the situation but needs to be rigid to stop whipping

Edited August 28, 2009 by nb Innisfree

[MikeV]

Slightly but have you considered entertaining the ankle biters kiddiewinks by downloading stuff with iPlayer.

 

We downloaded quite a few programs on the last trip. Where BBC iPlayer offers a mobile download option this is usually only about 256Mb for an hour's viewing. We found these files quite acceptable for viewing on a 17 inch widescreen TV (we sit about 8-10 feet from the screen). Using a '3' dongle there were hardly any locations in 8 weeks where we could not get a signal and I found you could typically download one of these files in 2 hours maximum, and sometimes in as little as 30 minutes.

 

Watching iPlayer live is really not an option unless you have a really good connection and I alo found that signal strength and download speed are not necessarily related. Sometimes I got really fast downloads with only two 'bars' of signal strength. At other times, even with 4 or 5 'bars' downloads were slooow.

 

One anomaly of the service is you have to use MS Windows Explorer (wash my mouth out!) as the mobile option does not show up with some other browsers (e.g. Chrome). Also, for some odd reason there is not always a mobile download option listed.

 

The only downside is cost, but if you buy the larger download capacities from '3' - e.g. 3gB for £15, or 7gB for £25, it's not too expensive as that would net you ~12/28 hours of viewing. We only used it occassionally so for us it was not an issue.

 

We haven't watched broadcast TV for years, except for news and weather. We've always recorded and timeshifted programs we were interested in. At home we now have a Virgin+ box which allows digital recording as well as CatchUp TV (iPlayer style) service which means we can watch what we want when we want to.

 

It does mean we are a little out of date at times. Having been on the boat for 8 weeks we are now watching some programs that were recorded in May!

 

Edited to add: On a short trip you could also download a load of stuff before you go! :-)

Edited August 28, 2009 by MikeV

[paulcatchpole]

In my naivety I would have assumed that all satellite TV is digital - can somebody enlighten me, please ?

 

There isn't much knocking around that's still analogue these days, but there are a few transponders.

 

I didn't realise you could find an analogue decoder 'new' still - haven't seen one in ages.

 

http://www.satellites.co.uk/

 

The above forum is a friendly place for help with this sort of thing.

 

The other good thing about a large dish, if you're in the mood, is that it's possible to receive signals from three satellites at the same time, using bracetry and 3 lnbs. We used to do this at the house, for a bit of fun.

 

PC

[kevinw]

We/ve got a Kerstan dish mounted on a tv aeriel pole connected to the cratch board and a Pace minibox receiver. I've replaced the LNB with one I found on Ebay - lowest possible noise, I think .2dB - and also use a sat finder with an analog meter, rather than LED's. Using a compass to first get the general direction, I can usually get the whole thing set up in a few minutes and is then immune to the boat's usual movement when moored.

 

I think my replacement LNB cost a fiver and the sat finder was less than £10. The Kerstan dishes are quite small, so not so sensitive to movement, but you get less gain (hence the upgrade of the LNB). I originally used a mag mount, but found this very hard to get both azimuth and elavation correct, hence the move to a fixed pole on the front of the boat. We've found that as long as you can get more than 25% signal strength and quality on the set up screen, all works fine.

 

Also, if you use a magnetic compass to set the general direction, you'll probably find that the amount of steel in the boat has a huge influence on the compass.

 

Kevin

[twocvbloke]

I've replaced the LNB with one I found on Ebay - lowest possible noise, I think .2dB

 

You do know those LNBs are a load of bull don't you? They give the dB level at one frequency, which just happens to be the lowest, the nominal level is usually between .4 and .7dB on pretty much all modern LNBs...

 

http://www.satellites.co.uk/

 

The above forum is a friendly place for help with this sort of thing.

 

Watch out for the 2cvbloke fella though, he's an odd one...

[Yoda]

Yes I forgot, the arc of the covenant. Multiply the rocking movement on a mast head dish and you'all around the sky, so to speak.

 

Low gain antennas are the best way with super accurate pointing. Any movement will cause signal degradation not total loss.

Edited August 29, 2009 by Yoda

[Biggles]

Aldi Sunday 30th

 

http://www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/2827_...009-08-27-18-20

 

I got a similar one form Lidl earlier in the year and it works just fine with its own box and my Sky box form home, so would expect the same for this unit.

 

Biggles

Edited August 29, 2009 by Biggles

[alan_fincher]

Aldi Sunday 30th

 

http://www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/2827_...009-08-27-18-20

 

I got a similar one form Lidl earlier in the year and it works just fine with its own box and my Sky box form home, so would expect the same for this unit.

 

Biggles

I hope the illustration is a composite of two different pictures.

 

Otherwise that set-top box must be over a metre wide, if the dish is 45 cms - a bit big for narrow-boat use.

 

At least you'll not find it easy to lose the remote in an arm chair, though.

[Biggles]

Hey

 

I never noticed that. You need to get out more :-)

 

In my experience no matter how big a remote is you can never find it!