I got 370 channels! - BSC621-2 and Mercury II

[bill190]

Well the various satellite TV product manufacturers have finially come out with various products which work together so you can view everything FTA on every satellite your dish can see using just one receiver and one big dish!

I have the following equipment...
12 ft. wire mesh dish (with small holes in mesh to get Ku).
36 volt 24" actuator (positioner) to move big dish.
BSC621-2 C/Ku LNBF
Moteck V-BOX II - "diseqc to 36 volt" to control big dish movement.
Fortec Star Mercury II "blind search" FTA receiver.

You need a big dish to get C-band. The bigger, the better. But big dishes use a 36 volt actuator or positioner and these connections are not on most FTA receivers. The Moteck V-BOX II solves this problem by using diseqc commands from the receiver to operate a 36 volt big dish actuator (positioner).

Then traditional big dish "feed horns" have a 3 wire "polorizer" for H and V or "skew". Well there is no connection for this on most FTA receivers! But the BSC621-2 C/Ku LNBF not only solves this problem by using LNB's which use 13/18 volts for polarity (H/V), but it also has two LNB's - C and Ku.

Furthermore it has a universal Ku LNB which receives a wider range of Ku frequencies (10.7 to 12.75 GHz). And the C band LNB is "extended" to receive a wider range of frequencies (3.4 to 4.2 GHz).

What more could a guy ask for?

Then to top all this off, the Mercury II controls all this and has "blind search". I think with every satellite I searched, the Mercury II found transponder frequencies which were not listed on the internet.

Plus the Mercury II works pretty much bug free. (I installed the most recent software on my receiver when I got it recently).

So anyway I got all the above equipment which all works together and I now have 370 channels, plus found some neat radio channels.

[elgemcdlf]

Not knowing what your view of the arc is that sounds pretty good. I have mulitple dishes and receivers so I do not specifically what I have based on one dish. My main purpose for FTA addition was Spanish language channels and I know we are somewhere around the 250 channel range in Spanish. Way to many to ever watch all. The one dish pointed at 40.5 accounts for nearly half of those channels.

MPEG2 DVB receivers were the best find for me in regards to satellite TV viewing. We have a 4DTV system with both C and Ku but the DVB receiver opened up a whole host of channels. Spanish language channel availability has grown on 4DTV since we first installed but still does not hold a candle to what she wants. Couple the DVB receiver with subbed digital movie channels (you can change the language) and it really makes for a very nice system.

[bill190]

Actually it is quite good for me. I am in Oregon and there are basically no sats over the Pacific Ocean, so I just have half an arc to work with pretty much.

Then being Oregon, there are large trees here partially blocking some sats and totally blocking the far east sats above the Atlantic Ocean.

Amazingly with my 12 ft. mesh dish, a tree can be blocking almost half the view and I can still get a sat. But my dish arc needs to be exact up/down and dish east/west set exact. Then poor reception of these sats on bad weather days.

I would assume that someone located further south and east in the U.S. with a clear view of everything would be able to get more sats.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by bill190

...
Amazingly with my 12 ft. mesh dish, a tree can be blocking almost half the view and I can still get a sat. ....

One thing I learned recently about that situation where half your view of one sat is blocked. Try to avoid using these sats for aligning your dish, because strange things can happen when only say the upper half of your dish is getting reception. I was having problems once with reception on my true south sat. Since I was fairly certain I was tracking the arc well, I tried peaking the position and orientation of my feedhorn on such a sat, and found that the best reception was when the feedhorn was tilted by about 15 degrees, which obviously isn't right. So then I got behind the dish, and looked and noticed that only the top half of the dish could actually see the sat. I cut down 3 trees to improve the view of that sat, and now the feed peaks when aiming at the center of the dish.

[bill190]

Originally Posted by wejones

...I cut down 3 trees to improve the view of that sat, and now the feed peaks when aiming at the center of the dish.

Yes one of my trees had the nerve to be in the way of my dish! It got chopped down with a quickness. (Glad I'm not married and can just do these things!)

[Darkman]

Speaking of 'em trees .. My neiboughr next door just chopped down some trees .. and / or trees branches.. - which can definatly ONLY but benefit my dishes .. expecially spring and summer time, when the greenery generally appears and stays