Freeview won't be being distributed to the motel. The Sky signal is on a separate 1.2 meter dish. I am purchasing a second 75cm dish in order to get Freeview and wiring the house only. That and Wellsford is out of the UHF signal reception area.
Sorry about the pictures. I was at the top of an unsteady ladder that was about a meter away from the actual setup. I couldn't line up the shot and its a crappy camera. I didn't want to drop my digital SLR on the washing machine. I'm not sure who did the Sky install, but whoever did it made it difficult to understand what is going on. Even when looking at it, it is hard to see what is going on making a diagram almost impossable. My lack of knowledge also impears my ability to do anything in the ways of explaing what is what. Right now, the Sky setup is irrelevant. I am purchasing a seperate dish as I don't want to mess with it.
If all the wiring is within one building then dont worry about the groundloop issues, just install it with splitters with the number of outputs you need (no point getting an 8 when you only need 3, also most 3 ways are really 2 2 ways internally so there is a -4 and a pair of -8dB ports, so you can use the -4 to go to the second splitter.
Only then if you have problems worry about an amplifier. They cause more problems than they solve on digital.
It took us about a day trying to point the damn thing at the right satellite. For a while we where geting 60-70% intensity and 0% quality. It seemed every direction we turned the satellite finder went nuts! We where a tad confused and still have to hone it in.
Right now we are sitting on about 78% Intensity and 75% quality. Is that good? Or should I hone the dish in a little more in order to get it in to the 90-100% range?
I Have been having an issue with sound. It is awesome with my DVB-S PCI card, but terrible on the TV STB. They connect to the TV using RCA cables, yet the analogue sound on the same channel is light-years better than the sound on Freeview across all channels (Including random ones like SBS)
All up, it seems to be working. Any tips or suggestions?
Finally I would like to thank all those that have helped though this project. I would not have been motivated or knowledgeable enough to take on such a task and can't tell you guys enough how much I appreciate your expert op opinions and help!
The meters in your reciever/PCI card are not calibrated, so the absolute reference of there measurement means nothing to me. However you should adjust, the dish alignment for a peak which the quality measure ment should show in a relative fashion with full accuracy. The skew is also important, however to set this correctly you should use a cross polarity null technique that would typically require a spec analyzer or as an alternative, find the peak in quality for skew alignment, then slowly rotate the LNB one direction till the quality falls say 10%, then rotate it the otherway and find the same level of drop off on the otherside of the peak, then set it mid way between those two points.
cyril7: The meters in your reciever/PCI card are not calibrated, so the absolute reference of there measurement means nothing to me. However you should adjust, the dish alignment for a peak which the quality measure ment should show in a relative fashion with full accuracy. The skew is also important, however to set this correctly you should use a cross polarity null technique that would typically require a spec analyzer or as an alternative, find the peak in quality for skew alignment, then slowly rotate the LNB one direction till the quality falls say 10%, then rotate it the otherway and find the same level of drop off on the otherside of the peak, then set it mid way between those two points.
Cyril
Thanks Cyril,
I didn't get the reading of my PCI card, I got it off the STB. We don't have any fancy equipment to align the dish, so when we where actually getting a signal, we where happy. I'll have another play around on monday and see if I can make it better or worse. Making the signal better might make my sound problem go away.
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