equipment advice

[C-M]

I recently bought a skystar2 v2.3 PCI satellite card and just got a solid 85cm dish today for £25. I just have a few questions regarding this setup.

1) are there any (dis)advantages of a solid dish over a mesh one?

2) I want to be able to receive either astra or hotbird, what LNB would you recommend? will one off a sky minidish work?

3) I'm going to the electronics store tomorrow, what type of cable do i need to connect this all up, i.e what is it called?

Thank you

[SamRadford]

1) are there any (dis)advantages of a solid dish over a mesh one?

Yes, it has no holes in it.

2) I want to be able to receive either astra or hotbird, what LNB would you recommend? will one off a sky minidish work?

You'll need a "universal" LNB to suit the dish. If your dish is oval (much wider than it's height) then a minidish LNB will be perfect. Otherwise it will be a poor choice.

3) I'm going to the electronics store tomorrow, what type of cable do i need to connect this all up, i.e what is it called?

75 Ohm double-screened coaxial cable using copper (not aluminium) foil.

See review at http://www.netcentral.co.uk/satcure/cable.htm

[C-M]

ah. the dish is much more circular than oval how am i to tell which LNB will go well with a particular shaped dish?

[dishdoc]

hi mate,
If you want both astra 19.2' & hotbird 13' then buy a monoblock lnb

[C-M]

going with a single lnb at the moment. ordered a philips one from ebay for about £3. but untill that arrives is their anyway i can test my card with my current Sky minidish (still pointed at astra 2d)? I know i won't be able to decrypt the signal or watch anything, but i need to make sure my card is set up correctly.

[Chris Muriel]

You should still be able to test it using whatever tuning software you have (either supplied with the card or a 3rd party one like ProgDVB) - and with the Skystar drivers installed of course).
Find one of the FTA (Free To Air - i.e. unencrypted) channels on Astra2 for your tests.
You can see which ones are FTA and the required parameters (frequency, symbol rate, FEC etc.) here : http://www.lyngsat.com/astra2d.html

Chris Muriel (currently working in Limerick)