[elgemcdlf]

Originally Posted by wejones

I don't think I understand what you are trying to say here.
But the way I look at it, for you to be able to lock a weak transponder, you have to have a certain quality level, which one way or another will relate to your signal AFTER error correction has occurred. Ie, you can have lots of errors in the signal, but if they are corrected, you can still view the video. When you have a weak signal, due to a small dish, or a signal with interferrance from adjacent sats, you will have a lot of errors. When you have a high FEC ratio, like 7/8, then your receiver isn't able to correct all these errors, and your odds of being able to lock the transponder will be decreased. But if you have a low FEC ratio, like 1/2, then more of the signal is devoted to error correction, and your odds of being able to lock the transponder and have viewable video are improved. At least that's my understanding. Hard to prove it one way or another from examples, because it's hard to eliminate other parameters like interferrance from adjacent sats, differences in signal strength, bandwidth, etc.

No my thinking is at the dish and as you stated receiver corrects. So you need to trap enough signal first before you can do anything. If that signal contains primarily clean data and less error correction then the bulk of your signal coming in would be actual signal. Thinking of signal like a container of water. The 8.5' dish catches 3 cups of water and the 1 meter dish catches 1. Let's pretend I only need to drink 3/4 a cup of water to survive. On the 8.5' dish I can afford to give up 2 1/4 cups of volumn for water purification but on the 1 meter I can only afford to give up 1/4 cup for purification.

In any case that was my line of thought. Right or wrong it was my line of thought.