I'm thinking of getting my flatmate a cheap satellite receiver for her birthday... She has a very old Sky dish, I don't think it's been used for a long time, I'm talking last century... Will she need a new LNB? If so, how easy would it be for me to change it out, once I get over the whole looking down from a height issue? If I had plenty of money I'd be back in my old place with terrestrial reception, so cost is the main issue, just ahead of Fear of Heights...
It's probably a round 11300 lnb and these have been fairly reliable.
You may need to check the cabling if it's been up there for a very very long time, but once again lets not jump the gun.
If you need to swap it then it's a case of buying a new one, unclipping the existing lnb, unscrewing the cabling, re screwing the cabling and then re clipping the new one into place.
Take a photo and we'll know more.
Also, are you in a freeview HD reception area and is there a current UHF aerial. Might pay to spend a few $ more for a HD unit perhaps? (Though I'm yet to find a cheap one I consider reliable).
Cheers for that, sounds easy enough. Unfortunately no terrestrial reception at all here, and not likely to be.
Taking a closer look at this, though, I might need a rethink -- line-of-sight there's a forest up the hill which I'm sure wasn't there when the dish was installed. It is possible that I can find a clear spot, but I suspect that the existing dish takes advantage of a 'v' in the hills, so might not work at the other end of the house. Not quite as easy as I thought.
(I do have a terrestrial freeview setup, which I'll hopefully get to use again one day, but no hope for my flatmate who wishes to stay here on the side of a cliff...)
Unfortunately, a low end receiver won't support the DVB-S2 and MPEG-4 needed to support SBS HD and 3 Australian C9 channels available from the Optus D1 satellite. The Ultraplus 900HD supports these and costs around $380. I'd be interested to hear if there are any cheaper receivers with DVB-S2 and h.264 support.
If she's the sort that only watches TV2 then she may not care.
If you're in a DVB-T reception area but only have the signal blocked by a hill, might it be possible to do a long high quality cable run to an aerial where reception is possible?
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