Starchoice Dish and Galaxy 10R??

[Rockstar]

Hey everybody..... well, I've read the stickies, and tried to make sense of testing true fta sats..... but I'm still having troubles with the basics..

I am in Northern Ontario... Postal code P0H 2L0.

I have a few receivers namely a Coolsat 5000, Viewsat 2000 - both Platinum and Extreme and my latest, an Extremeview Magnum XV-3300.

I have a 33" Oval Starchoice dish I found in the dump a month ago... with the ku lnb. (I think it said 19.7 / 22khz? on the lnb) I also have available to me, a 36" round Starchoice pan, one of the older models (but it's at my dads)

No motor. For the sake of testing, I *think* the best sat for me is 123w Galaxy 10R. (more english offerings) but can't determine if something else may be better for me .... I mean, from AMC, T5, and the rest on lyngsat, 10R appears to offer movies and lots of other decent channels..... but, do these FTA boxes derupt PowerVU, Digicipher (I don't think VC2 has ever been cracked yet) how many of these channels am I going to get in reality? If I should consider a different sat, please let me know.

So anyway, moving on.... the 33" oval is mounted straight, with NO skew on the pan. Sat calculator game me elevation of 22.6 (Sudbury, closest city) and I've tried up and down a little from there - the dish is aimed just a little to the right of 119 (didn't use a compass) but from playing around I didn't detect ANY quality...

Assuming I continue with Galaxy 10R, what's the BEST way to achieve this? I have the dish on the patio.... a 10' foot cable going to a line amp.... going to one of those cheap analog meters.... going to the back of the coolsat 5000....with antenna setup on 123W Galaxy 10R... I'm NOT certain if I'm configuring the sat correctly...

Anyway.. I'm kind of just rambling. Any tips here? Whats the best way to go about actually HITTING Galaxy.... I didn't detect any audible spikes in the tone off the meter, didn't detect any quality when scanning either... so I need to figure out how to aim, and how to configure the box....

Maybe I missed a sticky on this... if somebody can help me out, it would be appreciated, my next step is to buy a motor and a larger pan..... Thanks!

[elgemcdlf]

Wow where do I begin? How about as stated in the rules this site is no hack. So any talk concerning the "cracking" of any encryption is forbidden. Next an FTA receiver receives and decodes DVB MPEG2 clear signals. These are indicated by the F indicator at lyngsat along with DVB. The movie channels you speak of on G10R are big dish stuff. You will never get them on a small dish no matter what receiver you have. Simply not enough gain.

Now we move to the StarChoice dish and lnbf. Could this possibly be a circular lnbf? If so you will not get G10R with that either. So why not start a fresh?

For FTA you will need at least a 31"D. dish (you have) with a linear Ku lnbf and a FTA receiver (that part you do have providing you have not installed any aftermarket software). Take the lnbf mounting arm off the dish and lay it on a flat surface face down. Is it flat on the ground or warped? Warped is junk flat is good. After all you did find it in a dump

Next gather as much info about the lnbf as you can and start doing some homework to determine what it really is. But then again I believe a lnbf can be had for $15.00 so you decide on the amount of homework you wish to invest.

[rainman]

personaly i would go with the 36" round dish then add a linear lnbf to it use the setting's from www.sadoun.com
under tech support.then go from there.

[elgemcdlf]

Originally Posted by rainman

personaly i would go with the 36" round dish then add a linear lnbf to it use the setting's from www.sadoun.com
under tech support.then go from there.

Bigger is always better! Move surface more gain. More gain clearer picture.

[rainman]

my thoughts exactly.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

No motor. For the sake of testing, I *think* the best sat for me is 123w Galaxy 10R. ........

So anyway, moving on.... the 33" oval is mounted straight, with NO skew on the pan. Sat calculator game me elevation of 22.6 (Sudbury, closest city) and I've tried up and down a little from there - the dish is aimed just a little to the right of 119 (didn't use a compass) but from playing around I didn't detect ANY quality...

First of all, you will need to skew your lnb to get G10. Second, I got closer to 23 degrees for elevation. However I'm really confused by your "119" ? The azimuth for G10 should be something like 230.4 (not including your magnetic deviation correction), not 119, so I'm not sure what you're referring to here.

Did you go to the section in the Sadoun page that relates to a fixed dish?

[pmb1010]

I think he's saying "119" for pointing towards Dish's sats, and would be "123" for G10R.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by pmb1010

I think he's saying "119" for pointing towards Dish's sats, and would be "123" for G10R.

Oh. I'm a bit slow this morning. You're probably right. I didn't think of that. Since I didn't see any mention of DBS circular capability, it never occurred to me that he'd know where a Dishnet sat was.

Reading even further, and unrelated to previous, I just noticed that there was a line amp in the circuit. I would recommend taking that out of the circuit.

I was also curious about the "19.7" on the LNB??? My mind isn't clicking on this either, or is that something used by StarChoice? I think he needs to go back to the LNB and make sure exactly what kind of lnb he has before going further, ie looking for 10750, 9750/10600, or 11250, etc.

[Rockstar]

Thanks for the replies so far, I'm at work and just checked in to see what was up..

I was under the impression skewing the entire dish, is only for hitting 2 sats at once (ie. 91/82 or 110/119) although I understand skewing the LNB, but that can't be done on this dish without some kidn of cool mod.

I also inquired on other forums about what was more important, width of dish, height of dish, or overall diameter.... and had a resounding reply that the width was more important... whereas a 33" Starchoice dish is the same as and as good as a 33" Oval dish... so I'm kind of baffled by the myth.

As for the lin amp, I had virtually no signal showing at all without the amp, and again, not sure how to "Detect" 123W - whether I should be using the coolsat, or viewsat, or which one is goign to be best for alignment.

Yes, I meant it's aimed "right beside 119w for Dishnet. I know I'm in the approximate area for azimuth, just not sure how to "lock on" as I mentioned, the meter made no audible tone no matter where I aimed...

I'll take another look at the lnb when I get home, and confirm the exact type.... then maybe somebody can confirm it's compatibility with Galaxy 10R.

And, to elgemcdlf - not attemtping to talk about "hacking" I realize some signals on 10R are encrypted, just not clear on which ones are "Free" and unscrambled. So, if I understand correctly, the NOLY channels I will get on 10R are the ones that say DVB/Mpeg2 - and only those? Ok, I'll take another peek at lyngsat also.... thansk for thei nfo so far, I'll check out the lnb when I get home.

[elgemcdlf]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Thanks for the replies so far, I'm at work and just checked in to see what was up..

I was under the impression skewing the entire dish, is only for hitting 2 sats at once (ie. 91/82 or 110/119) although I understand skewing the LNB, but that can't be done on this dish without some kidn of cool mod.

I also inquired on other forums about what was more important, width of dish, height of dish, or overall diameter.... and had a resounding reply that the width was more important... whereas a 33" Starchoice dish is the same as and as good as a 33" Oval dish... so I'm kind of baffled by the myth.

As for the lin amp, I had virtually no signal showing at all without the amp, and again, not sure how to "Detect" 123W - whether I should be using the coolsat, or viewsat, or which one is goign to be best for alignment.

Yes, I meant it's aimed "right beside 119w for Dishnet. I know I'm in the approximate area for azimuth, just not sure how to "lock on" as I mentioned, the meter made no audible tone no matter where I aimed...

I'll take another look at the lnb when I get home, and confirm the exact type.... then maybe somebody can confirm it's compatibility with Galaxy 10R.

And, to elgemcdlf - not attemtping to talk about "hacking" I realize some signals on 10R are encrypted, just not clear on which ones are "Free" and unscrambled. So, if I understand correctly, the NOLY channels I will get on 10R are the ones that say DVB/Mpeg2 - and only those? Ok, I'll take another peek at lyngsat also.... thansk for thei nfo so far, I'll check out the lnb when I get home.

The only signals you will get on G10R with the receivers you have providing they are stock software (all bets are off if the software has been modified. With that you may get nothing at all ever) will be DVB with MPEG2 and depending on yoru receiver MPEG1, MPEG1.5 but you also require a F indicator at lyngsat. This designates they are Free To Air.

Bill is not talking about skewing the dish. He is saying skew the lnbf. If this is not an easily accomplished feat you most likely have circular lnbf as they do not require skewing in which case you will never get G10R with that. Skewing a circular lnb dish is for hitting multiple sats as skew has no affect (lnbf skew). If you happened to have a linear lnbf you would most likely need to know what sat it was intended to view as it is nonadjustable. this would tell you initial skew and you could potentially add to that to achieve the desired skew for G10R but I think you have a circular lnbf.

Not trying to be rough on you here but you could save yourself a ton of headaches by simply buying a 90cm dish with lnbf. I think roughly $90.00 here at Sadoun's plus shipping. If your dish is what I think it is you will only get V tps which for G10R may be all you need.

By the way in your original post you made the statement "(I don't think VC2 has ever been cracked yet)" And to a question I just seen in your original post as to number of channels you can realistically expect to get. I believe currently I have somewhere around 750 channels scanned into my DVB receiver. It will all depend on yoru location, viewable arc and equipment.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

I was under the impression skewing the entire dish, is only for hitting 2 sats at once (ie. 91/82 or 110/119) although I understand skewing the LNB, but that can't be done on this dish without some kidn of cool mod.

If you have a motorized dish, you won't need to skew the lnb, however for a fixed dish you either need to skew the lnb, which is what you do on most of the dishes/lnbs you buy for FTA, however I'm starting to understand that you must have a dish something like a DirecTV 3 sat dish, where instead of rotating the lnb, you rotate the entire dish. Either is OK, but you have to rotate something.

Originally Posted by Rockstar

As for the lin amp, I had virtually no signal showing at all without the amp, and again, not sure how to "Detect" 123W - whether I should be using the coolsat, or viewsat, or which one is goign to be best for alignment.

Unless you have like 300' of coax, a line amp won't help, and will likely make things worse, and it sounded like you had short cable runs from your post. I'm not familiar with either of those receivers, but you're going to want to set the reciever on an active transponder that you know is 24/7, and get some sort of a signal meter showing.

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Yes, I meant it's aimed "right beside 119w for Dishnet. I know I'm in the approximate area for azimuth, just not sure how to "lock on" as I mentioned, the meter made no audible tone no matter where I aimed...

Those hand held meters should give you a tone even if the dish is aimed at the ground, or the cable not attached to the dish. IF no sound, then you probably don't have LNB power on.

Originally Posted by Rockstar

I'll take another look at the lnb when I get home, and confirm the exact type.... then maybe somebody can confirm it's compatibility with Galaxy 10R.

As long as it isn't an 11250 LO circular, it will probably be compatable. Ie an 11250 is what is used for Dishnet or DTV or the NIMIQ Bell sats.

Originally Posted by Rockstar

And, to elgemcdlf - not attemtping to talk about "hacking" I realize some signals on 10R are encrypted, just not clear on which ones are "Free" and unscrambled. So, if I understand correctly, the NOLY channels I will get on 10R are the ones that say DVB/Mpeg2 - and only those?

I'd go by the color coding, plus you can't see anything listed as DCII (Digicipher), or NTSC. But yes, some FTA channels are listed on a transponder on which most channels are encrypted, but you can tell it's FTA by the color code.

[bobkat]

The StarChoice LNBs are linear, standard I think. But I agree with the other guys -- go with a 33" (or bigger) round dish from Sadoun and start afresh. I've wasted too many hours pharting around with customers' old StarChoice dishes because they were too cheap to spring for a new one.

kat