Dish size for Freeview ?

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peejayw

1841 posts

Uber Geek

#220322 6-Aug-2017 11:13

I have to get a dish and LNB for Freeview, no terrestrial available. It will be in the Whitianga area and has unrestricted line of sight to the approximate area it needs to be pointed.

Question is, what size of dish do I need and what type of LNB? I already have the STB.

Is there a specific dish size for Freeview or is it just a case of bigger is better ?

I'm supposed to respect my elders, but it's getting harder and harder for me to find one now.

RunningMan

8953 posts

Uber Geek

#1839817 6-Aug-2017 12:13

A 65cm dish (same as what Sky use) should be fine. If it's well installed and aimed, then it will cope with all but the most severe weather. A smaller (45cm) dish will be OK if well aimed, but will be far more susceptible to rain fade. A 75cm or larger will pretty much cope with anything.

Cheaper dishes will rust out in a few years, particularly near the sea, and may have less gain as the shape is not as good.

If there's already an ex Sky dish on the place, use that - they're a good quality dish.

EDIT: As for LNB, pretty much any Ku band LNB should work OK.

peejayw

1841 posts

Uber Geek

#1840314 7-Aug-2017 08:02

Thanks for that, no Sky dish there so I need to buy one.

I'm supposed to respect my elders, but it's getting harder and harder for me to find one now.

steveb64nz

16 posts

Geek

#1870417 21-Sep-2017 17:37

Go for a 75cm dish if you can get one. We have two - the 60cm Sky dish, and a 75cm one we use for freeview and two other satellites (3 LNB's). Heavy (well, not that bad) rain the other night had my wife cursing the rain fade - while I was watching the same programme on the 75cm dish - and had no problems (though the signal quality did drop from 90% down to about 30%). There may also be a problem with the Sky dish alignment, as it shows signal quality down near 50%, even when fine. To be sorted sometime when there isn't near hurricane winds blowing.

And yes - a better quality (heavier gauge, galvanised if possible) dish (esp. the mounting brackets) is better. The cheap **** 75cm one is now held in place with bits of clothesline wire, as most of its brackets have rotted away. And we don't even live near the sea. :(

Also, make sure your dish kit comes with a signal meter - you'll need it to get it pointed just right. If not with the kit, they're generally pretty cheap...

SATTV

1648 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

#1870425 21-Sep-2017 18:00

As others have said, any size will do but I would say 75cm personally. As for the LNB dont get the cheapest of the cheap, something midrange should be good.

get good quality mounting hardware and you might like to swap out the dish hardware with better hardware as there will be a lot of salt spray.

Might even pay to spray the hardware to prevent corrosion.

Have fun.

John

I know enough to be dangerous

peterds

106 posts

Master Geek

#1871987 24-Sep-2017 13:09

I live in Whitianga too and I recommend a 90cm dish for two reasons:-

Firstly you will still get a picture during heavy rain which is common here and secondly if you want to add a bracket for extra lnbs for Optus D2 or Intelsat 19

a 90cm dish is big enough to handle all three satellites.

joshhill96

1512 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

#1873019 26-Sep-2017 12:28

I use a 75cm dish for Freeview and never had any loss of signal in heavy weather and never had anything replaced or changed since it was installed back in 2009 and the signal is still the same. however 60cm is good too and is the standard for some sky / Freeview installations, just make sure its fastened and not loose

Apsattv

2388 posts

Uber Geek

#1873414 27-Sep-2017 02:02

The footprint for the old B1 satellite use to be weaker the furthur north. I think Sky use to install 90's up the top of the North Island

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steveb64nz

16 posts

Geek

#1873525 27-Sep-2017 10:54

steveb64nz:

Go for a 75cm dish if you can get one. We have two - the 60cm Sky dish, and a 75cm one we use for freeview and two other satellites (3 LNB's). Heavy (well, not that bad) rain the other night had my wife cursing the rain fade - while I was watching the same programme on the 75cm dish - and had no problems (though the signal quality did drop from 90% down to about 30%). There may also be a problem with the Sky dish alignment, as it shows signal quality down near 50%, even when fine. To be sorted sometime when there isn't near hurricane winds blowing.

And yes - a better quality (heavier gauge, galvanised if possible) dish (esp. the mounting brackets) is better. The cheap **** 75cm one is now held in place with bits of clothesline wire, as most of its brackets have rotted away. And we don't even live near the sea. :(

Also, make sure your dish kit comes with a signal meter - you'll need it to get it pointed just right. If not with the kit, they're generally pretty cheap...

Well, looks like it wasn't the Sky dish alignment. Our Sky MySky HDi went back (a couple of days ago), and I plugged our s7090 into (that had been on the 75cm dish) the Sky dish and LNB. Once I got over the problem of it blind scanning the wrong frequency for Prime and Bravo+1, it works just fine - and the channels that used to fuzz out when the microwave was on - keep working perfectly now. The signal quality also appears to be higher (at 86%) than what the Sky box seemed to indicate (appeared to be around 50-60%). Can't say whether it works better in the rain though...

I'm still going to go for a bigger (110cm) dish at some stage, as I want to be able to pull in the IS19 feeds (had all but the HD working on the 75cm), as I like the English news feeds - and not having Sky means no BBC or CNN unless I stream them.