Satellite Virgin

skippy2

As i have gained from everyone's experience here thought i might share mine from a "satellite virgins" point of view.

Never had SKY UPC or anything to do with satellite up to now and just before Xmas, after getting totally fed up with some of the rubbish RTE was starting/is putting up, decided we need to go down the satellite route and so set out on a quest to do it myself. Having lived on the 4 Terr. channels for 30 years.

Ok got myself a 80cm dish loads of Triax cable, F connectors, Multiswitch and Quattro LNB, satt meter and a few bits and pieces, I have a number of rooms i wanted to connect, large house etc.

Read up on all the boards about satellite positions etc and tried to find a route for the cable, decided to run six cables in total back to the multiswitch as i did not want to have to do this again. 4 for the quattro LNB and two spares. Learnt my first lesson early on DO NOT FORGET TO MARK EACH CABLE when using a Quattro LNB. I used coloured Insulating tape on each one, cut tape in strips and one, two or three strips on each end. 1 Cable with one red strip either end, 1 cable with two red strips either end etc etc

Installed the dish and pole for mounting and left it up first night in the worst storm of 2012, spent the night in bed thinking had i not left some of the bolts loose as i wanted to move it around anyway still there next morning. so first test completed, pole secure

Ran my cable and pulled through, left loose enough so i can tie in later when i am happy with everything.

Was not sure on how to test the connection with the Meter over the 4 cables on the quattro. Anyway I just used one of the cables and put the meter on and this seemed to work fine. Sorry, in the meantime bought a Ariva 120 from Tony online and great delivery over Christmas. only later realized i could have got a boardies discount as well:(....maybe next time Tony

Connected up the box which was really easy was very surprised at how small it is. Set up the multiswitch and powered it all up. Then waited two days for it to stop raining:mad:

Up the ladder with the meter and started testing. First time i got the wrong satt then used someones suggestion here start pointing the dish east and move back to south to pick up Astra2. this worked a treat got my signal on the meter. Came in to check and yipee after 30 years in la la land had my first satt picture and pretty good with first try. Back to dish and spent a bit of time fine tuning Now have...........Signal intensity at 85% and Signal quality at 75%. Can anyone answer is this good, very good, excellent etc??

Did have a problem getting the Quality beyond 70% and then i remembered LNB skew so back up the ladder and Skewed my LNB , after i figured out what this meant, this got me up to the 75%. HD channels are fantastic.

Have played around a bit with the Ariva 120 and it all seems good will try to use the Channel list from Willyb007 on the terrestrial thread later today Thank you willy it looks great. Other than that I cant really comment on the combo box as its the first one i have had but it seems good and great advice on the forums here. Great advice from Tony on here and worth supporting an Irish company just for this alone

A lot of the terminology used is new to me so i have to get my head around transponders etc and try to understand how all that works. But i must say it had been relatively easy, a little wet but enjoyable and i somehow cant see those two spare cables lasting long , this satellite business is getting addictive. Great buzz when you figure it out and definitely will see if i can add a couple more LNB's for different channels etc. Dont really need them but this is addictive. Have always wanted to learn French so you never know.

For now I just need to figure out what button to press on these remotes and the easiest way to set this up for everyone in the house.

Hope this helps in someway if someone else is thinking of going this route. Spend a little time reading the boards and getting the idea right and it should not be a problem for most people.

FRIENDO

Well Done.

Gerry Wicklow

Well done and welcome to the world of satellite TV. For me the real buzz was the first time i saw crystal clear, reliable pictures coming from 1000's miles away, compared to the snowy wobbly rubbish coming from a few miles up the road.

To Alcohol

That was a really good read OP. Great to see someone have a goal and bring it to fruition. Might be tempted to go down that road myself as a result.

dharn

Great post skippy i am at the sat virgin stage at present i am 2 months researching freesat and think i have it sussed for a self install, your post is very encouraging i am like yourself primarily interested in freesat from 28e, but while im at it ,putting up dish, fitting lnbs, running cables, i might as well broaden my options, one 1 thing i am not clear on is can the freesat boxes be used like a satellite reciever to switch between feeds? im thinking of getting the humax foxsat hd recorder, any posters out there further advice would be appreciated

Liameter

skippy2 wrote: »

DO NOT FORGET TO MARK EACH CABLE when using a Quattro LNB. I used coloured Insulating tape on each one

Or use WF100 cable, which is available in 6 colours. However, I don't know whether Tony stocks it. If not, maybe he ought to.

watty

I have 4 x Quattros. 16 cables from dish

I used white tape and pen. But using four colours of tape and 1, 2, 3 or 4 rings would last better.

Years ago wiring racks we had cards with self adhesive pre-printed strips with
0 0 0 0 0 0
1 1 1 1 1 1
...
6 6 6 6 6 6
...
9 9 9 9 9 9

etc,

so you might have two or even 3 strips wound around the cable ... yes many hundreds of cables sometimes.

dharn

Watty any chance you could help me with my query posted at no 5 here i am in awe of your knowledge i also have a thread started re humax foxsat hd any chance you could have a look there and give us the benefit of your knowledge

watty

Only some "Freesat HD" boxes support Diseqc. (feed switching)
Usually Freesat must be on Port 1 as some boxes don't do Diseqc in Freesat Mode.

You have to swap between "Freesat" mode and "extra channels" mode (I think you have to add Sky news and most of the FTA junk channels on Sky EPG manually) to use Diseqc on boxes that support it.

The Humax box does support Diseqc, the Sagem doesn't. There are 3rd party addon software for Humax, but you can't integrate non-Freesat channels on Freesat EPG, though it's possible to integrate channel list and enable Diseqc in Freesat Mode I think with added "plug in" so you don't have to swap between Freesat mode and "other/extra" channels mode.

dharn

thanks for you reply watty i have read a number of places about humax foxsat non freesat mode, originally it was some extra software patch but as far as i know and i hope you will correct me if im wrong, humax eventually included feed switching in a software update, have a look at this page and see am i on the right track http://www.astra2d.com/diseqc.html

lgs 4

skippy2 wrote: »

As i have gained from everyone's experience here thought i might share mine from a "satellite virgins" point of view.

Never had SKY UPC or anything to do with satellite up to now and just before Xmas, after getting totally fed up with some of the rubbish RTE was starting/is putting up, decided we need to go down the satellite route and so set out on a quest to do it myself. Having lived on the 4 Terr. channels for 30 years.

Ok got myself a 80cm dish loads of Triax cable, F connectors, Multiswitch and Quattro LNB, satt meter and a few bits and pieces, I have a number of rooms i wanted to connect, large house etc.

Read up on all the boards about satellite positions etc and tried to find a route for the cable, decided to run six cables in total back to the multiswitch as i did not want to have to do this again. 4 for the quattro LNB and two spares. Learnt my first lesson early on DO NOT FORGET TO MARK EACH CABLE when using a Quattro LNB. I used coloured Insulating tape on each one, cut tape in strips and one, two or three strips on each end. 1 Cable with one red strip either end, 1 cable with two red strips either end etc etc

Installed the dish and pole for mounting and left it up first night in the worst storm of 2012, spent the night in bed thinking had i not left some of the bolts loose as i wanted to move it around anyway still there next morning. so first test completed, pole secure

Ran my cable and pulled through, left loose enough so i can tie in later when i am happy with everything.

Was not sure on how to test the connection with the Meter over the 4 cables on the quattro. Anyway I just used one of the cables and put the meter on and this seemed to work fine. Sorry, in the meantime bought a Ariva 120 from Tony online and great delivery over Christmas. only later realized i could have got a boardies discount as well:(....maybe next time Tony

Connected up the box which was really easy was very surprised at how small it is. Set up the multiswitch and powered it all up. Then waited two days for it to stop raining:mad:

Up the ladder with the meter and started testing. First time i got the wrong satt then used someones suggestion here start pointing the dish east and move back to south to pick up Astra2. this worked a treat got my signal on the meter. Came in to check and yipee after 30 years in la la land had my first satt picture and pretty good with first try. Back to dish and spent a bit of time fine tuning Now have...........Signal intensity at 85% and Signal quality at 75%. Can anyone answer is this good, very good, excellent etc??

Did have a problem getting the Quality beyond 70% and then i remembered LNB skew so back up the ladder and Skewed my LNB , after i figured out what this meant, this got me up to the 75%. HD channels are fantastic.

Have played around a bit with the Ariva 120 and it all seems good will try to use the Channel list from Willyb007 on the terrestrial thread later today Thank you willy it looks great. Other than that I cant really comment on the combo box as its the first one i have had but it seems good and great advice on the forums here. Great advice from Tony on here and worth supporting an Irish company just for this alone

A lot of the terminology used is new to me so i have to get my head around transponders etc and try to understand how all that works. But i must say it had been relatively easy, a little wet but enjoyable and i somehow cant see those two spare cables lasting long , this satellite business is getting addictive. Great buzz when you figure it out and definitely will see if i can add a couple more LNB's for different channels etc. Dont really need them but this is addictive. Have always wanted to learn French so you never know.

For now I just need to figure out what button to press on these remotes and the easiest way to set this up for everyone in the house.

Hope this helps in someway if someone else is thinking of going this route. Spend a little time reading the boards and getting the idea right and it should not be a problem for most people.

well done just one that you could think about for your main tv viewing room a freesat humax hd foxsat-hdr for recording some thing to keep in mind a bit down the road and all will agree with me that humax is a great box and trouble free well done again;)