Would a bigger dish improve picture quality ?

Delta Lima

I'm wondering would it be worth while putting up a bigger dish on a house to help overcome the degrading effects of poor quality coax? The house already has a standard sky dish, but some of the coax is the old poorly shielded brown stuff. I'd rather not run new cable as it would be a tortuous run. The sky dish is well rusted and could do with replacing anyway. The signal quality seems to be borderline at present, especially on RTE and Channel 5.

I'm thinking of an 80 cm dish. Any advice would be appreciated.

uck51js9zml2yt

Not an expert but you'd still have the problem of the cable so a dish would be pointless.

Skatedude

sounds more like you need a better lmb on the dish or a in line signal booster.
Is it a long coaxial cable?

Gerry Wicklow

I'm reminded of the woman who turned up her car stereo so she couldn't hear the grinding noise of the wheel that had fallen off

The Cush

Delta Lima wrote: »

but some of the coax is the old poorly shielded brown stuff.

http://www.megalithia.com/elect/cable/

Is there a mix of brown and other cable in the run from the dish, joiners etc.? Better to install a new run of quality satellite grade cable, any of the CT100 spec cables.

Thurston?

Delta Lima wrote: »

I'm wondering would it be worth while putting up a bigger dish on a house to help overcome the degrading effects of poor quality coax? The house already has a standard sky dish, but some of the coax is the old poorly shielded brown stuff. I'd rather not run new cable as it would be a tortuous run. The sky dish is well rusted and could do with replacing anyway. The signal quality seems to be borderline at present, especially on RTE and Channel 5.

There must be another connection to the same dish that doesn't have these signal problems, or you've tested the signal with another length of cable? Obvious way to check that the problem is solely, or mostly down to the cable.

I would think there would need to be serious signal loss before you'd start having 'picture quality' issues. (By PQ, I assume you mean breakup & glitching.)

greasepalm

since when had sat cable been brown,i have had mine over 15 years and is black.quality counts,would think everything needs upgrading.newer cable is better shielded.

Thurston?

greasepalm wrote: »

since when had sat cable been brown,i have had mine over 15 years and is black.quality counts,would think everything needs upgrading.newer cable is better shielded.

Webro WF100 is (or was) available in brown, no doubt others too, & I would think age-related dampness & corrosion in old cable could be more of a problem than the shielding.

Unless the OP has ruled out something like a misaligned dish being the main cause of the problem, there's not a lot of point in going straight to replacing a 'tortuous' cable run.

Delta Lima

Ok , thanks for the replys. I think l'll have to bite the bullet and run a new cable, and make it a twin while lm at it. The run must be close to 30 M. I'm pretty sure the dish is alligned properly already. There's at least one joint that I know of to the brown cable.

greasepalm

dish will need to be changed if well rusted,so as said go the whole hog.

Thurston?

Delta Lima wrote: »

I think l'll have to bite the bullet and run a new cable, and make it a twin while lm at it. The run must be close to 30 M.

If you're going to use 'shotgun' cable on a run like that, make sure it's the full size type, rather than 'mini shotgun'.

The Cush

Since this thread during the summer Webro's WF100 Twin cable (Twinsat) has been CAI benchmark approved.

http://www.cai.org.uk/information/benchmarking-scheme/cai-benchmarked-cables
http://www.webro.com/coaxial/tv-satellite/wf-multi-coax-cable/