|
| ||||||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 | ||
|
|
|
|
| ||||
|
| |||||
NewsLancaster Lancaster transmitter is using a low power aerial for the next 3-4 months. BBC/ITV freesat Humax to launch a High Definition freesat receiver: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/satellite/a93895/humax-claims-lead-on-high-def-freesat-box.html
Comet sells Grundig freesat HD receiver Comet has allegedly sold a freeview receiver prior to the official release date (rumoured to be May 9th but this has not been confirmed at the time of writing.) The Grundig model is not a PVR, having a single tuner with LNB pass-through. See http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=786214 Five Life devalued? The programme "Five Life" has been renamed "Fiver". There is some speculation whether this is related to its perceived value or whether the "r" is for "repeats". Personal Problems :-( For anyone interested, my Vectra V6, converted to run on LPG in February, continues to misfire. I've found an "expert" in Stoke-on-Trent and he assures me he can fix it. It's booked in for next week. Fingers crossed. My Apple Mac Mini has been "playing up" recently. I traced the problem to a faulty Hard Drive. So I have now migrated back to a Mac G4 tower, which I've upgraded with a 1.8GHz* CPU, a couple of large internal Hard Drives, a "Superdrive" (CD/DVD RW) and an external 750GB firewire drive. Don't let anyone tell you that Macs are reliable. They are better than the average PC but they use exactly the same Hard Drives, which suffer exactly the same failure rates. *If 1.8GHz seems slow to a PC user, I should explain that my other G4 tower has "only" a 1.4GHz CPU and it can record two TV programmes while playing back a third and letting me "surf", or whatever. They are not lightning-fast but they are adequate for email, editing movies etc. I always buy second-hand Macs for peanuts and upgrade as necessary. This latest G4 is a 2002 model which originally had an 800MHz CPU. (I have not "upgraded" to Intel because I don't use/need "Windows" but I do need to run some old 1995 Apple software, which the Intel Macs can't do.) If you have any comments, please put them in the forum where everyone can read them! Thomson PSUsWe have had a few rebuilt PSUs returned where no fault can be found. This prompts me to suspect that something else is going wrong. Back in the days of analogue satellite TV, Amstrad designed a PSU with a really crappy plug-in connector. It was so bad that we had to solder an additional wire to bypass the 0 volt connection between PSU and mother board! I'm wondering if the Thompson board has a similar problem? The 0 volt connection is via several black wires. You can tell which by looking at the underside of the PCB. They are clustered together in one copper land. May I suggest that anyone having problems with a new PSU should try spraying the connector pins (on both ends) with WD-40 (or similar) and reconnecting. Move the plug up and down a few times to clean the pins. It's fragile so do this carefully. The lubrication will make it easier. I also think the connector should be sprayed as a matter of course when fitting a new power supply. If any pins look blackened or tarnished, that would confirm my suspicions. Back in my days of reliability testing, I had access to M.O.D. statistics for failure of military equipment. Fifty percent of failures were caused by connectors! I should have remembered this but my thoughts were clouded by bulging capacitors. We are stocking exchange power supplies and also fans and tuners for the Thomson Sky+ and Sky-HD models. Discussions about this and updates in our forum: UK DVDRIt's rare for me to recommend another company but I've had good service from this one when I've bought blank DVDs and iPod accessories. They are now offering furniture and bankrupt stock at low prices so may be worth a look! They are based in Edinburgh and have been around for several years. I don't get a penny for this. I'm not affiliated with this company in any way. http://www.ukdvdr.co.uk/shop/Clearance-Furniture-etc-c-505.html If you do buy anything, please let us have your comments in the forum. BBC News 24 ProblemsSeveral BBC programmes, including BBC News 24, Parliament and BBC radio programmes have been switched to a different transponder (Eurobird 28.5'E) on a different transmission frequency. Several people have reported problems with reception. Most of these problems appear to be caused by poor dish or LNB alignment and the answer is to optimise the dish installation and replace the LNB, cable (and any unshielded wall plate in the LNB line). Check to ensure that the dish itself isn't distorted and that the arm is not being bent by the weight of the LNB and cables. (If it is, then you'll need to provide a support by using a suitable piece of wire or cord.) You can check the BBC transponder signal by using the Manual Tuning menu: Press [services] 401 [select] 5 Enter the parameters: 11954 The signal strength and quality will be displayed. If the quality is low (less than 40%) then that explains any problems. Adjust dish alignment and LNB skew to maximise that quality reading. If this is all gobbledegook to you, then maybe you should download and read our free eBook "Understanding Sky Digital TV"? Back in the days of analogue I recall a similar problem with UK Gold. The cause was traced to an Egyptian transmission on almost the same frequency from an adjacent satellite (16'E I think - adjacent to 19'E). It was difficult to track down because it affected only certain receiver models and only those with smallish dishes (wider focus). If re-aligning the dish didn't help then going to the next size dish did. So my question is: what transmission is close to Eurobird 28.5'E 11954MHz on an adjacent satellite? Answer: 11958 H tp 13 on Badr at 26.0°E. Remember, you read it here first! New Products
The new Global SPC4 (Super Plus Combiner) allows the RF2 output of up to four Sky Digiboxes to be connected into a home distribution system, with independent control. The four Sky Digiboxes can be any combination of, the standard Sky Digibox, Sky+, or Sky HD, or all the same type, if required. You simply "tell" the SPC4 which remote pairs with which Digibox then it works automatically! This month we are giving away a free eBook with every repair kit purchased. You'll find download instructions in your "Keep-me" email after ordering the kit. This also applies retrospectively so, if you bought a repair kit from us within the last month (April 2008), email me your SATxxxxx order number and request the download details for "A Beginner's Guide to Receiver Repair". (Please check your "Keep-me" email to make sure the link is not already there!) We are now offering the ARCON dish with single- or twin-output LNB. This dish is larger than the "Multimo" and uses the same "Cassegrain" design to give better efficiency than a standard "offset" dish. Ideal for Sky+ or Sky-HD in your motorhome. (If you can afford a HDTV in your caravan, you can certainly afford the dish!) Failure of the Thomson tuners is rare but we've had a couple of enquiries. So now we are stocking a couple. Don't all rush at once! Actually, I think we sold ONE yesterday. I'm obviously not going to get rich any time soon. :-( Questions- a selection from this month's emails I rang Sky today to upgrade my package to include Sky sports 1 and as far as I was aware I would get the HD equivalent (i.e. Sky Sports HD 1) as I have a HD box and I'm paying for the HD subscription. I confirmed this with the UK based advisor. 8 hours on and I have got standard SS1 but SS HD1 is blocked. I have rung the India based Call Centre twice and apparently they have sent two signal updates, neither of which worked. They are easily confused and don't seem to care or have any idea how to fix it. Can anyone HELP PLEASE, I'm desperate to get this sorted for this weekend. You would think that paying for Sky Sports 1 would be sufficient to get you Sky Sports HD 1 if you have a Sky-HD Digibox and you pay the £10 a month HD subscription. Unfortunately, it's not. Sky point out that Sky Sports HD 1 shows different programmes from Sky Sports 1 (SD) and you must pay an additional £8 a month for the complete Sky Sports Package, which includes Sky Sports HD 1. (Hey, don't blame me! I'm only the messenger. Comments in the forum, please.) I have already done a couple of mods to my Sky box in a quest to improve the crap sound it produces. I have fitted an IEC outlet with built in filtering and upgraded the phono connectors with gold plated ones - connected with silver plated copper wire. I've also made up a shielded mains cable with LAP CY and terminated it with silver plated plugs. I have made some improvement with this mod but its far from great yet. Sound with TV is pretty good but radio is in need of further improvements. I understand there are 2 key areas to audio: 1, the power supply, and 2, the audio output stage. I have 2 questions regarding the above: 1, what's the best way to improve the power supply of the Thomson unit? (Ive considered a number of things from Audiophile Caps to a Tordial transformer. There are a few Audiophile voltage regulators out there, too. I've even thought about separate power supply for the audio and shielding the PSU.) 2, Whats the best way to improve the audio output stage? (Here again, Audiophile Caps and or op-amps, separate Audiophile power supply maybe. An extreme idea I've had is to tap into the digital audio output and run it to a quality DAC.) I know its a lot of big ideas but I am serious about this project. I'm not going to spend hundereds on it, though. I may consider a full consultation from you if you think it's worthwile to create the ultimate 'Audiophile Skybox'. Sincerely, Mike S. Hi, Mike. I'm afraid that I can't help. I'm 56 and my left and right hearing cuts off at 5 and 8 kHz respectively so I'm not the right person to ask. In addition, you omitted the model number - but it doesn't really matter because I don't have the circuit diagrams. The only comment I can make is that when you "digitise" a signal by chopping it up and throwing away 90% of the original, the reconstitution process is never going to produce anywhere near 100%. Modern TV and radio transmissions are for the undiscerning masses. While you are correct in thinking that the equipment is "built to a price" - unfortunately, the source signals are also degraded by compression and multiplexing to take up minimum bandwidth. So improving the components will have, at best, only a minimal effect on what you see and hear. And, as compression techniques are "improved", the resultant artifacts become even worse. To coin a phrase: you are "flogging a dead horse". Can you confirm if I can use your product, code "A73203 2-way splitter F-conn 5-2300MHz 2 DC pass" to split and thus present the sky+ cables in two locations of the room? The use of each location will only be one or other but never both at the same time. Thank You Michael Probably not. It will lose at least 4dB of signal and probably cause loss of several programmes because it won't present the correct impedance. See http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/split_feed.htm I recommend you use our plate with 4 "F" connectors. Two are connected to the LNB on the dish and two are connected to the second location. When you want to use the second location, you connect two "loop" wires. See http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/extender_plate.htm and http://www.satcure.co.uk/accs/page15.htm#plates "PLATE4F". Better still, simply run another two cables from the LNB to the second location. I am moving to the Poitou Charente area of France - about half way down the map and in about 60 miles from the west coast. I have an Amstrad Sky box with a Freeview card and also a Pace DS810XE free to air HD satellite box. I wish to purchase an appropriate dish and LNB to use these. I wish to use both boxes at the same time. At the moment I currently use a Sky minidish with a single LNB, which is rubbish in bad weather in the UK, but when the Pace is on, the 'loop through' cuts off the signal to the Skybox. So I need to have more than a single LNB. Also, I would like to be able to watch French satellite channels (Hotbird ?) as well as UK (Astra2)signals so I need to point at more than one satellite. So, which should I opt for ? - a single dish with quad LNB and a diseqc motor or a single dish with separate LNBs mounted on brackets. I would appreciate your advice. Thank you. Paul M Hi, Paul. The Sky Digibox will probably "lock-up" each time you move the dish back from Hotbird AND you won't be able to use it while the dish is aligned on Hotbird, so avoid the motorised option. All you need is an 80cm dish aligned on Astra 2 (28.2'E) with a twin-output LNB (or quad-output if either receiver has 2 inputs). Add an additional LNB on an offset bracket for Hotbird. See picture:- http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/page9.htm Dish and LNB here:- http://www.satcure.co.uk/accs/page2.htm#orbital80 You might need an LNB switch:- http://www.satcure.co.uk/accs/page1b.htm#switch I'm sure that a few of you must think that I make up these posts each month, just to make myself look good! Not true. Every post is genuine but I don't print the surname because I think everyone deserves a little privacy. Anyway, this month I thought I'd do it a little differently so the first two messages have links to discussion forums where you can see the public posts that our nice customers have made. Martin Regarding Customer receipt SAT025595 I received the new power supply this morning (), fitted it in about 10 minutes (the rubber fan mounts were *easy* - a tiny bit of olive oil on the ends and they twist through no problem!), and now the box seems perfect: • All channels available again • Dual record on HD channels with HD playback seems to work fine • Response to remote control seems sharper • All recordings have reappeared, including a couple of things that I forgot to record in the first place • China have departed from Tibet and introduced new human rights legislation OK, so I made the last two up, but nevertheless I'm very happy with the SatCure replacement. See http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=23021943#post23021943 I must congratulate you on your service. My order was placed after 3pm on 15th April and has arrived this morning Friday 18th April. The one thing that really impressed me was that my card details were blanked out on the receipt, this is the first time this has happened in all the time that I have been ordering goods online. Many thanks for the excellent service. Regards Sylvia W. France p.s. I have put a mention on the MMM forum here: http://www.outandaboutlive.co.uk/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=11509&posts=1 Regarding Customer receipt (Keep-me): SAT025491 I received my order from you yesterday and I only placed it on Tuesday. Absolutely fantastic service well done Regarding Customer receipt (Keep-me): SAT024722 Thanks for the quick service. I will order again soon and recommend you to others. Hello Martin, Just to say absolutely fabulous service, item arrived next day! Thank You also for your quick reply to my question, a pleasure dealing with you. All I have to do now is wait for the weather to improve so that I can get up me ladder and fix the problem!! Best Wishes, Simon. As ISPs try ever harder to prevent spam messages, we are starting to suffer. Not a day goes by without somebody complaining that they didn't receive our automatic reply or "Sales have not replied to my urgent question". Assuming that you managed to type your main email address and your secondary email address correctly (some don't!) then the fault lies with you (your spam filter) or with your ISP (in which case complain to them!) (Some stupid people, using systems such as "Spamalert" or "Vanquish" to combat spam, are placing orders with that filter system in place. Unfortunately, this system works by sending a message to our shopping cart, asking it to click on a link! Helloo! The "shopping cart" is a piece of software. It can't read or click!) You can test your email address(es) here: Scroll down that page and you'll see a grey form section. Fill it in. If you don't receive a message within 5 minutes, you have problems. You can solve these "non-arrival" problems by clicking on this link: Order an "Easy1" package, which will get you web space (handy for uploading photos for family to view) and an email server (which affords unlimited email addresses and gives you full control). It will cost about £18 a year for the "domain name" (e.g. www.john-jones.me.uk) and the "hosting" (space on the ISP's server). IMPORTANT: If you do place an "Easy1" order with betterwebspace, be sure to use a completely meaningless "user name" and password. Something random like "dgwq4853kg" is fine. The reason is that this becomes your default email address (dgwq4853kg@john-jones.me.uk) You won't use it but it is still there, potentially to receive spam, so it has to be "unguessable". If anyone is interested, I'm happy to give further free advice on how to set this up. (I use this company but I am not on commission.) If you prefer me to set it up for you, it will cost you £20 for my time. Latest SatCure eBooks The Sky User Guide "Missing Manual" has been updated with an additional page (5th April).
http://www.The-Cool-Book-Shop.co.uk
|
|
"Installing a Sky Minidish" tutorial on DVD. Click 
The SatCure Satellite Review is written for the customers and subscribers of the following websites:
http://www.satcure.com
http://www.satcure.co.uk
http://www.satcure.net
http://www.your-book.co.uk
http://www.The-Cool-Book-Shop.co.ukcopyright © 2007 SatCure