All posts by Neil Bell
Below are all of Neil Bell's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
St Johns Cross I stand corrected - You can get satellite signal boosters but having a quick look at users reviews it seems they have mixed success with them. They sometimes work where there is a very long cable between the dish and the receiver or where people are using communal satellite systems with very weak signal strength.
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Donatella Sechini I see no one has posted a reply for you so I'll add the little I know. There are quite a few Italian channels broadcasting free to air on Hotbird which is a lot further west in the heavens than Astra 2 etc where most of the English language channels come from. You could try a separate dish pointing at Hotbird but I don't know how big it would need to be and the size would obviously influence the cost. You could instead try a bracket on your existing dish to take an extra LNB positioned to pick up the signals from Hotbird but it may be that your existing dish is too small. If so you could replace your existing dish with a larger one, have the prime focus of the dish aimed at Hotbird and the other LNB aimed at Astra 2. I live in London and have a fairly large 1.2 metre dish aimed at Astra 3A which is in between the satellites mentioned above and I have 4 LNBs on a bracket. The LNB furthest from the centre line is for Hotbird and I get good reception on all 4 groups of satellites. If you intend to continue using Sky you would need a separate cable from the 'Hotbird LNB' to a separate receiver for the Hotbird channels. You could alternatively get a receiver which supports Diseqc 1 and have a Diseqc switch fitted close to the LNBs which would only require one cable between switch and receiver. The receiver switches between the 2 LNBs as required. I don't know what Sky set up you have but if you wanted twin tuners
on the new receiver you'd need a twin LNB rather than a single. I'm not actually in the UK at the moment so can't tell you which Italian channels I receive.
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Jayne I think posting your comment twice is a more polite way of relieving your frustration than SHOUTING your entire message in CAPS so Ill give you the benefit of the doubt with some sympathy. I presume you were on holiday when the messages concerning the 10th April retuning were aired and so you missed them. I also presume that you do believe in coincidences and that both your freeview boxes exhibiting the same fault at the same time could indeed have been just one of those. Im a little puzzled as to why jiggling around with the freeview boxes for hours didnt include retunes but Im very impressed that you replaced both TVs for just 250 quid so Im not knocking you! Seriously though one thing you should learn from this is that if you have a problem in future post a question here first before you spend money replacing anything else. There will always be someone here to help.
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Matt You'll need a satellite receiver as well as the dish and it would be better to go for a free to air type rather than a freesat box as you won't need the freesat software. I'd go for an HD box because several of the German channels transmit HD free to air now and for that you'd need an HDMI cable to connect to the TV
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Gordon I would have thought that a bigger dish would be easier to align because the stronger signal would give you more margin for error. I have a fairly large 1.2 metre dish & I fitted a bracket with 3 extra LNBs to receive signals from other satellites and it surprised me how easy it was to position the LNBs to get a good signal from each.
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Peterpiano Just to add that my old free to air satellite receivers do require passwords to enter the menu system to do retunes, add or delete channels etc. so if that is the case with yours I can't see how the original suppliers could possibly justify withholding the passwords. As JB38 says try 0000 or 1234 to start with. Also just out of interest did they fit a quad LNB and run 3 separate cables - one to each receiver - or have they tried to use some form of splitter?
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Tony Riz If the box stopped working while changing channels it does sound like a fault with box or LNB. I live in Ilford if that is anywhere near your Mother & you want to try a swap but I'm not at home until Friday night if it can wait. I also don't know how to send a personal message on ukfree - can anyone advise? I have a motorised dish and can normally get quite a few Italian channels on Hotbird and have one older receiver that I use for aligning the dish.
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Tony Riz I don't think a Sky box would help because it would be tuned to transponders on Astra 2 etc at 28 degrees East. The Italian Programmes are on Hotbird at 13 degrees East so you need another expat Italian (or Pole or Bulgarian which are on Hotbird too). Their dishes would be pointing in the right direction.
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Diane C You did say you have very poor aerial reception so Freeview is probably not an option for you. If you want to continue receiving satellite transmissions but not via Sky you would need a Freesat set top box. This would also cost a lot more than £60 for one that records as well but you wouldn't then need to keep paying Sky subscriptions so would be cheaper in the longer term unless you want to subscribe to some pay to view programmes.
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Saturday 20 April 2013 6:25PM
St Johns Cross There is no link between terrestrial and satellite reception and as far as I am aware there is no such thing as a booster for a satellite dish. All you need is direct line of sight to the satellite. So as long as there is nothing high in the sky to the SSE (e.g. trees, tall buildings etc.) of where you want to mount your dish it will work fine. The function of a signal booster for satellite reception is fulfilled by using a larger dish but as you have some sort of freeview signal and you want to receive freesat I am assuming you are in the UK and thus you won't need this.