What equipment should I purchase? Im new to Free to air?

[resq911]

I am new to this site. I have been a Direct TV subscriber since generation one RCA. I have decided to get a real satellite system but I am not sure what system and antenna to buy. I live in Los Angeles, and I know I want to receive Ku and C band. I have been thinking about the Fortec lifetime FTA satellite system package. Will this do the job or do I need to improve the antenna? What can anyone tell me about other things I might need to know?

[mhoward]

You should know that if you want to pick up C-Band, you will need a big dish--2meter or larger. With the smaller 75cm-90cm dish you can only pick up Ku Band. When I first got into this hobby, I looked at lyngsat and thought wow, what great channels. Then I realized that many stations I was interested had frequencies below 11000 and these cannot be received without a Big Dish. Also, I had to look closely at the beam of stations. I was interested in Spanish language programming, many of the stations beamed only to regions of south america...

At the end of the day, I am still happy with my system--even though I was not able to receive all of the frequencies I thought I could when I bought the system.

[resq911]

Would I still find Ku interesting with out going to a big dish?

[mhoward]

Ok, If you go with the small dish for KuBand. You will have many foreign channels, most in Arabic, Farsi, Chinease, Korean, Greek and Eastern European Languages. So, if you are multilingual it is great. If you are an English/Spanish speaker it is less interesting. You can find a lot of local FOX, WB, UPN, Univision, Telemundo, Telefutura, PBS and religious stations from across the country. China TV has an English language channel similar to CNN, You can also find FOX news and Bloomberg. I also enjoy a Latino, Greek and Arabic music video station, even though I only speak English/Spanish.

If you decide to go for the FTA system and you have a clear view of the southern sky to the east and west, you should consider getting a motor, its expensive but really gives you a lot more stations.

Hola.
Hispasat tiene buena programacion. Hay canales Espanolas, Arabesy muchas cadenas de radio.

[mhoward]

De acuerdo. Este fin de semana encontré Hispanisat por la primera vez, y me encanta!

[resq911]

Now that I have digested your information, I have about $500 US to spend what would you suggest as far as equipment goes. I was looking at package #3 and #6.

I have also heard that I should be ablet to get c-band with a 120cm (4') Dish. Do you beleve that to be true?

If I go to a 6' dish, can I use the same dish for Ku and C-band?

Thanks for all the kindness.

[dtsexpert]

For C-band, I recommand to start at 7.5ft. Forget about 4 or 6ft.
Michael

Originally Posted by resq911

Now that I have digested your information, I have about $500 US to spend what would you suggest as far as equipment goes. I was looking at package #3 and #6.

I have also heard that I should be ablet to get c-band with a 120cm (4') Dish. Do you beleve that to be true?

If I go to a 6' dish, can I use the same dish for Ku and C-band?

Thanks for all the kindness.

[mhoward]

You can pick up Ku Band signals with a C-Band Dish, no problem there. But, if you want C-Band signals you probably do want a 2meter dish or larger, not the 1.2m. The only problem with this is that a 2meter C-band dish is too big to use a STAB or SG motor, there are other motors available for C-Band Dishes, but they are not cheap and quite honestly I dont know much about motors for C-Band dishes.

I own the FTA #6 package, I am happy with it. If you are a first time buyer, try to get the Fortec Ultra--it is new and supposed to have Dolby Sound and blind search, which will make it easier to set up your equipment.

If I were you, I would simply send sadoun and maybee one or two other retailers an email and see if he will give you a package deal on a Fortec Ultra Receiver with a 90cm dish/LNB and a STAB motor.