A question about the satellite & lnb side of Sat broadband.

netwhizkid

Hi guys,

Basically my situation is where i live adsl broadband will arrive at about the 12th of never. So i'm getting satellite broadband, i'm getting it via Central Point, 256kbps one way, diy install. My question is will putting a dual lnb on the sky dish distrupt my viewing of Sky tv ? could i surf the sat broadband while someone else watches sky tv at the same time ? also could anyone recommend any good stores either online or bricks & mortar for getting such lnbs, connections and satellite cable.

Note i've also posted this on the broadband forum to try and get as much info as possible.

Any help would be most appreciated,

Regards,
netwhizkid

cormacl

a dual LNB is as if you have two separate LNBs on the exact same sat position.. one feed will not be affected by the other.

advise you get the correct sky type (usually a single or quad LNB are all thats available for Sky dishes). The Sky dish shape is not fully circular and normal LNBs are not perfect for it.. people do get results with normal LNBs but from what I hear its not the optimal.

do post back on the performance you get with the satellite solution.. I can imagine the dial-up uplink will be a hindrance.. and make sure you check up on other wireless solutions that may be abailable.. ripwave has got some traction in the greater Dublin area and a friend from Nobber, Meath saw that there was some locally available solution that I think uses a some kind of microwave-based solution.

netwhizkid

Hi,
Thanks for that cormacl,

Originally posted by cormacl
advise you get the correct sky type (usually a single or quad LNB are all thats available for Sky dishes). The Sky dish shape is not fully circular and normal LNBs are not perfect for it.. people do get results with normal LNBs but from what I hear its not the optimal.

when you say its not optimal, would not having the right lnb affect the transmission of data from the satellite through the lnb to the PC ? or more importantly would it distrupt the reception on sky ?

would any of these be any good ?

Thanks again for the info,

Regards netwhizkid

cormacl

Of the link you mentioned.. the official quad-LNB for Sky is the safest one to get.. even for just fitting to the existing Sky dish.. there will be no problems

I've seen comments on other boards regarding the lower signal obtained with non-Sky LNBs.. because the universal LNB is expecting a circular dish and not the oval shape. Theres always a risk that this will cause problems with the signal and a low signal is definitely going to cause problems with the data link. Some do report that universal LNBs have worked for them.. I'd only risk it myself if the signal I had was normally strong.

If you want to play safe, get the proper Sky quad LNB or consider a larger universal dish with universal dual-LNB that will guarantee the best signal with universal kit.

netwhizkid

Hey,
Thanks for all the info fellas, i've changed my mind about the whole Central Point Sat Broadband via the Sky Dish and im now going with Euroskynet and i will have to install a new 80cm dish pointing 8° West to the atlantic 2d satellite. You can read more about this on the Broadband forum here.

Regards netwhizkid

Zaphod

A few years back I subscribed to Netsystem (Italian based) for 2 months, although the main incentive was because you got a free Skystar2 card included. Suffice to say it was crap, and was only barely useful after 12 midnight when the rest of Europe began logging off.

Recently I've been trying out Satspeed (German based), in particular the Satspeed Easy package which is a prepaid service offering 555 minutes at 768 kbit/s max for €25 - not the cheapest but I didn't want to be bound by a yearly contract. Fairly impressed by it, browsing the web isn't like wading through treacle anymore and download speeds on individual files are very good (seen 90 KBytes/s on a good day). So for those of who can't get ADSL, it's definitely an improvement on dial-up (although with the usual drawbacks of one-way sat internet such as poor pings etc).

Packages and prices are here:
http://www.satspeed.net/prices/prices.html

Was also tempted to try out the Euroskynet/SkyDSL service, so I'd be interested to see how you get on with it. They recommend a 1M+ dish for Ireland, but I checked the transponder out and an 80cm precision-engineered Lidl dish seems fine even in the far west of the Atlantic Bird footprint (Kerry) although that was a dry day. One of the interesting extras they offer is the offline email service and a limited offline download service.
http://www.euroskynet.com/

byte

Ah, I used Netsystem too (helped by the free SS2 card ). As Zaphod said, it was generally pretty poor unless you were a night owl. P2P throttling at the time helped none either! Before that I had Europe Online (with another free SS2 card ) though it wasnt really an internet service. The download streaming during nighttime was great though.