Which Dish and LNB do I need?

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Regs

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Topic # 13247 30-Apr-2007 16:23

Wondering which dish and LNB to buy.... only want it for freeview and dont want to spend more than I have to. I'm going to connect it to two Hauppauge Nova-S-Plus PCI Sat Card's (so i guess i'll need a splitter too...).

There are Ku band LNBs with LO of 11300 and 10750, and dishes can be various sizes. I've been looking at www.freetv.co.nz and reckon these bits will probably do the trick for $100:

Factory Second 65cm Dish
Ku Band LNB 11300
10m Coax Cable (outdoor)

Sound right?

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cyril7

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Reply # 68946 30-Apr-2007 16:54

Yep thats all you need, those 2nd's 65cm dishs look ok, no mechanical issues just minor paint and edge blemishs. I have installed a few 54cm dishs (for upcoming FreeView) as well as 65cm. The 54cm ones a around 1-1.5dB down on the 65cm, however there is enough poke on D1 now that even the worst of rain fall is unlikely to cause drop out of any note.

11.3GHz LO's are fine, infact I believe prefered, D1 does not carry any lower band transponders to justify 10.75GHz LO's the only reason Sky use 10.750 is to gain access to the low band capacity on C1/D2 with their dual throat LNB's which is only a backup measure. By using the 11.3GHz LO you place the FreeView muxs around 1.18GHz in the LBand IF, where as the 10.75GHz LO will place it around 1.7GHz, that extra 600MHz is a db or two of cable and splitter loss you can do without.

Cyril

Regs

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Reply # 68957 30-Apr-2007 19:22

awesome, thanks Cyril.

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BadCam

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Reply # 69226 2-May-2007 13:32

Hi

I'd like to hi-jack this thread, if you don't mind Regs. Could someone please advise what I would need to purchase in order to receive Sky & Free-view? What would you recommend I should go for? I don't have a Sky dish installed, but may choose to install Sky later. For the moment I would like to have Free-view.

Thanks in advance.

BadCam

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Reply # 69437 3-May-2007 19:45

Anybody? Please.

cyril7

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Reply # 69448 3-May-2007 20:57

There are several online retailers, www.freeviewshop.co.nz is one, www.freetv.co.nz is another.

Essentially you will need a 65cm dish, although a 54cm one is quite adequate. You will require a LNB for the dish, I recommend a 11.3GHz LO one, however 10.75GHz are fine as well, but the cable losses with the lower IF of the 11.3GHz one is usefull if you have long cable runs. If you dont have crimping tools to attach Fconnectors, although both suppliers will ship pre connected cables of various lengths. Obviously you will require a mast to support the dish. Both the above sites have listings of all these bits.

As for the STB, you can either go for the certified boxs, the Zinwell looks ok and has both composite and component video support. Otherwise I would recommend the Strong SRT4651, is $70 cheaper but support composite and component video and is a good brand.
The cheap Coships are ok, however one drawback in my view is that it does not support 4:3LB, but if you are driving a 16:9 display its not an issue, however it only has composite or RGB output.

You would be well advised to get a sat finder to help you locate the satellite.

Any practical commonsense chap or chapess can readily install the dish, its not rocket science.

Cyril

JonC

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Reply # 69502 4-May-2007 10:13

I saw they have a calculator on their web-site to figure out where to point your dish:

http://www.freeviewshop.co.nz/dish-angle-calculator-i-16.html