total noob in the sat scene, help a brother out!

[kayo]

hi guys,

ive had cable for just under 3 years, and now im looking to make the jump after easter to the sat scene. ive got the itgate tgm220, but am looking at a dreambox 800hd... main thing i want to watch is football, and if i can any boxing i can get. movies would be a bonus, but not really essential.

i know that al jazeera have all t he footy, but is there a way to acquire it with the 800hd or even with my itgate without subscription?

what would be the best setup to get?

80-1.2m dish?
motorised or stationary?

any help appreciated!

[Robxxx7]

Al Jazeera was open fairly recently, but what you are asking for are channels that require subscription or a topic of conversation which is banned on here ..  So we are not able to talk about card sharing

in answer to your other questions, get the biggest dish you can afford and legally put up and stick a diseqc motor on it (this motor will pretty much handle upto 1.1m dishes) this will allow you to operate the dish around the arc to pick up numerous different satellites.

Both the Itgate (with a satellite tuner) and the DM800 are Linux boxes so will do everything you need it to do

[iravik]

For normal non-conservation areas in UK you can put up 1m dish without applying for planning permit. anything more than 1m may have to comedown, it depends if council will bother. 1m is a good size. H-H motors that say can drive 1.2m dishes I'd be careful, depends on the winds in your area. If you're not bothered with LAN streaming and other technical stuff, there are many sat tuners that can do what you want, when you move into the topic we do not discuss here, it's better to have a linux box in general, like DM, or similar.

[kayo]

cheers for the prompt reply.

ive read a few posts here and it seems like the 800hd which ive seen have been clone boxes as theyre 200ish.

i live in london, wembley, so a 1m dish should be able to pick up most of what id want right?

whats the score with multi lnbs? whats the benefit?

one thing i dont understand yet is, once i have a channel scanned, and then i change the dish to receive a different hotbird(astra, nile etc..) then do i have to rescan, or will the channel still be there without the dish having to be moved to a different freq?

has the DREAMBOX DM500S HD been released yet if not when?

the movie channels that can be found, are they in english or the dubbed etc?

its probably wise if i get the sat tuner for the itgate and experiment with the sat scene before forking out for a hd box right?

[basilyoung]

well the igate with a at tuner would be a starting point, Nile sat,...forget it, even with a well aligned 1.2 dish, (in London) you wont get much out of Nile sat, although I have been told, that nilesat might be accessable in Europe next year

if you are considering the db800, the VU+ might be a better deal

baz

[cyprusdunc]

"one thing i dont understand yet is, once i have a channel scanned, and then i change the dish to receive a different hotbird(astra, nile etc..) then do i have to rescan, or will the channel still be there without the dish having to be moved to a different freq?"

Where with cable you focused on one source for your signals,with sats we have as you gathered multiple sources(sats)the software in these boxes retain all the scanned channels for each sat you look at and become available again once you point your sat dish at them,the dish moves to a different satellite,the box controls the frequency and as such the channel you wish to view, Dunc.

[iravik]

picking up on Dunc's post, ... also these channels in memory know which sat they belong to so when you select the channel it will turn the dish to the right position automatically (thanks to diseqc1.2 and/or usals) muliple LNB gives you multiple independent cables which you can feed into multiple receivers. you cannot feed two tuners of one cable. well, you could, but you only get 5 channels out of it, this is because LNB is really a part of the tuner, unlike terestial or cable. LNB preselects the frequency/polarisation and downsamples amplified signal to the receiver's tuner, where it's further processed, so that the tuner cannot possibly see all the frequencies at once. if you stick another tuner on you only get this preselected signal, that's if you do not burn the kit first

LNB with multiple outs gives you thesame as multiple dishes that all look in the same direction.

for messing about and getting into it, you could get some cheap digituner for 50 quid. fro HD could try freesat tuners, that are now as low as 70 quid, then you'll have idea of what's there and how much you want to spend on it.

13E, 19E sats have movies which have also engish soundtrack, but they are encrypted, you could by the official card or do something that we don't talk about here.

[kayo]

thanks for the reply guys...

so from what you guys have said i think its best if i stick with my itgate tgm220 for now, and just get a sat tuner for it, and then get a motorised dish between 90-1.2m and work with that setup?

[Robxxx7]

sounds like an ideal setup, if further down the road you want to go HD, then there are a few other options..  but to get you up and running stick with your itgate

[cyprusdunc]

yes it would be as you have that box to start with and it is familiar to you. Dunc.