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NewsSatCure holidays Nicola has flown off for a well-deserved fortnight's holiday, leaving Sue and Sophie in charge of the office (I work from home). I anticipate that there could be a few mistakes made during Nicola's absence and I ask customers to be polite to the girls if things go wrong. Global SPS1 It seems that Global stopped manufacturing the SPS1 LNB switch some time ago but nobody (as usual) bothered to tell us. Consequently, we've run out of stock, with no possibility of buying more. However, we believe that our other LNB switch from "Sadoun" will do the same job so we are offering that instead, with a Scart plug, at a lower price! Awaiting feedback on this. "What Satellite and Digital TV" magazine has some really interesting articles in this month's (July 2008) edition. (Bryan H. won my copy. Competition closed). Sky+HDChanges are afoot. Read about it here: Pace has allegedly shipped a consignment of Sky+HD boxes to Sky. Presumably Sky will roll these out in July. I expect they will not have the component DV output which the early Thomson boxes had, so you can use them only with a TV that has an HDMI socket. (Scart and RF will work, of course, but you won't see High Definition pictures.) Thomson power supplies continue to fail and, unfortunately, we fell way behind on our "rebuilt" power supply orders in June. We averaged 10 orders per day and we simply couldn't repair them fast enough. So we are now using an additional technician to do the work and we are catching up. We've also acquired more stock to compensate for the fact that customers are not returning their old PSUs to us but we still don't have enough. Typical turnaround is back down to 7 days but this will increase if customers don't return their old PSUs promptly. Freesat receiversDear Martin, Many thanks for producing your Newsletter each month; it keeps me up to date on what is happening in the Satellite & Digital TV world. If you do not already have this information, I thought you would like some initial feedback on the FreeSat receiver boxes currently available. There are two designs available at present: the first produced by Humax and the second retailed under three separate product names: Bush, Goodmans & Grundig. Although there are some cosmetic casing differences between these three receivers, one look at the user guides available on their respective WEB sites will quickly show they are all of the same design. I have had no problem getting ether design to work first time, although the initial software download seems to take a long while (about 8 mins on average). Perhaps I am just impatient. One interesting feature on the Bush, Goodmans and Grundig design, is the "LNB Out" socket. While the receiver is in use this socket is disconnected. But, when the receiver is in standby mode, the LNB In and LNB Out sockets are linked together allowing a second receive box to be used. This means that you can use both a Sky & Freesat receivers on the same LNB but obviously not at the same time. Regards Colin E. Thanks, Colin. BBC/ITV freesat has had a fairly disastrous start with a shortage of receivers and no PVR receivers at all. (These are due out from Humax in "late July/early August" but it looks as if they won't be ready until the end of August.) In addition there have been reports of software glitches and problems with the postcode system in Scotland for the setup menu in the ordinary models. Note: Freesat boxes don't have RF modulators, or even UHF loop-through!!! This means that, if you want to watch Freesat in the bedroom, you'll need another Freesat box or a videosender or an RF modulator and a cable run. Also, a simple remote extender "magic eye" won't work without a tvLINK-Plus. Apart from that we (SatCure) are not permitted to sell the receivers. In order to buy them from a trade warehouse, we would have to sign a declaration that we will urge the customer to pay for a full installation, we would have to supply a dish kit "with a mean diameter no greater than 50cm" and we would have to appoint a registered installer. This is all fine and well but most of our customers simply want to buy a receiver to connect to their existing Sky dish. They neither want nor require a new dish and if they did they'd probably want something larger than 50cm. Anyway, it seems that only Currys have stock of freesat HD receivers right now so, if you want one, that's the place to try. Reyman writes: Any of you who have bought the Humax Foxsat STB recently may have realised it's not so easy to activate the DiSEqC switching and tune into a few different satellites. I managed to sort this out after several days of effort, in case anyone is interested. Essentially there's a hidden advanced menu (not mentioned in the user manual) that you can only access as below: Multi-Satellite Setup - DiSEqC Switches, Motorised systems To access the Advanced Menu (hidden) for multi satellite: Go to Menu> SETUP press ok. Press RED, GREEN, YELLOW, BLUE; GREEN, YELLOW, BLUE sequentially and slowly. 2 options appear: Antenna Setting Manual Tune In Antenna Setting select your Antenna Type (Fixed, SCD, Motor*, SMATV) Set up as required and then use Manual Tune to search for the channels on each satellite separately and save. When you use the Humax then on non Freesat mode you will automatically have access to all the satellites you tune in via your DiSEqC. HDMI and RF leadsApparently, some shops are pushing customers to buy very expensive HDMI leads for use with the Freesat receivers - even though the receiver is supplied with a perfectly adequate lead. Andrew F. writes: I was having a browse in (shop name) last week when someone came in and asked to see an HD Freesat box. There was one up and running in the shop and the salesman started his chat. He told the customer that he would need to upgrade the HDMI cable even though the Humax was supplied with one. He said he had two types available and asked the customer what size screen he had. The customer said he had a 32" and the salesman said "You won't need the £85 one for that size screen, this £55 will do nicely". Unfortunately I was unable to speak to the customer and put him right, so I think he went for it. It seems that now most people are wise to the insurance scams, this is the latest way of ripping off customers. The only time you might have to pay extra is when you need a really long HDMI lead. It's easy to tell because the effect of a poor lead is to cause the picture to "break up". Note: you will not see "grainy" pictures or interference, as you might with analogue. The leads which we (SatCure) offer are perfectly adequate. We could offer very expensive leads and make a huge profit from gullible customers but, as regular readers will know by now, that is not the way we do business! Now, having just written that the supplied HDMI leads are usually perfectly OK, I'm going to tell you the opposite about supplied RF leads. If you buy equipment and the supplied RF lead is less than 6mm in diameter, throw it away! In my experience, these cheap thin leads cause 50% of reception problems. Here's how to make a decent "fly lead" which will be better (and cheaper) than almost anything you can buy: http://satcure.net/tech/tvplugs.htm Or, if you don't want to solder, you can buy the leads, ready-made, from us. New Products
We can now offer a wide selection of LED torches at realistic prices. These are not only useful to keep in your pocket, car, caravan, motorhome, boat or tent - they make great birthday presents for the practical person. We even offer dinky little "keyring" torches for the handbag. Noise cancelling earphones. (I use these myself - what more can I say?) Zone 2 minidish We are now offering zone 2 (as well as zone 1) minidishes, with single- or quad-output LNB. Ideal for minimising "rain fade" if you have Sky+HD or Freesat. LNB prices I have reviewed our LNB prices, following a recent reduction in the trade prices. We still can't quite compete with the stolen-from-Sky offerings on eBay but at least your conscience will be clear! Questions- a selection from this month's emails I have a sky digibox and want to be able to record programmes. Can I connect my Sky Digibox (either via a SCART-in or RF-in) to any of these PVR boxes and be able to record programmes? I'm aware of Skyplus, but want a cheaper alternative with a greater capacity. Your opinion would be much appreciated. Regards, Sanjay
No, you can't record anything onto the internal Hard Drive of a PVR. It uses its own tuner(s) only.* As you already subscribe to Sky, you should buy a used Pace BSKYB3100 Sky+ Digibox and fit (if needed) a larger drive. Get Sky to activate your card in the Sky+ box and make sure they turn on the (free) recording facility. Michael at Digifix might be able to supply a refurb Digibox. *According to Maciej, who has written to me, there are PVRs that will record via SCART from a Sky Digibox, for example Sony RDR-HX series boxes (Sony RDR-HXD860 etc.) I haven't checked on this so please do your own research. Dear Martin, Not a question but a warning. I love the way you give technical information which is invariably accurate and I just wanted to warn your readers about Maplin. I love Maplin and I do buy stuff from them but I find that half the time they don't know what they are talking about! There's an example of this which I came across today. Somebody asked about an LNB amplifier in a discussion forum and someone else kindly pointed them to a Maplin product A24FB which is listed as "Line amplifier 20db for the amplification of the satellite signal. Uesfull (sic) if your cable length is above 40m." Actually, Maplin have made a mistake there. That's a linear amplifier which is designed to boost the signal before a splitter or switch. It is NOT suitable for compensating for a long cable. The type to look for comes under various names but is usually something like "equalised slope LNB amplifier" and it is marked with a lower and upper gain figure such as "12 - 17dB". (I see that you stock a selection of these.) The reason is that the attenuation in a cable is greater for higher frequencies than lower so the amplifier has to "equalise" them by boosting higher frequencies more. Sam R. Thanks, Sam. You are quite correct. An equalised slope amplifier should be used to compensate for cable length, although it's better to install a larger dish if possible. Regarding Customer receipt (Keep-me): SAT027081 Just a note to say thanks for the quick dispatch of my capacitors, and for taking the time to provide kits like these. Got them soldered in last night to fix the Stand By problem and it's working a treat. Also fixed an annoying problem we had with our four remotes intermittently failing to work. I was cursing the SLX distribution box but it must've been the PSU in the Sky! All the best, Simon. The whole course has proved very useful. After installing my own satellite system and a couple of others for family I found your website and discovered that maybe I could make some money at this work, instead of doing it as a favour for people. I have now spent a tidy sum of money on setting up with most of the basic equipment and my website went live today (20th June). I am based in north western Ireland, in County Donegal (hence the name - no imagination). Money is tight here so I don't think I will ever get a full time living out of it, but I enjoy the work. Thanks for the course - well worth it just for the knowledge alone. My website is a bit amateurish, but I'm no wizz with a computer, and I never seem to have enough time to spend on getting it sorted. Well, enough rambling, bye for now Ian Drury
Well done, Ian. My first web site looked like that (and it's not much better now!) Note: Don't include your email address as a clickable link. Take a screenshot of it. Crop the screenshot and add it to the page as an image. Also DON'T use "info@" because this is the most-spammed address in the world. You should actively block it and use a less obvious one such as "idrury@". I failed geography at school but, if Co. Donegal is near enough to Eniskillen, you could get Digibox repairs done cheaply there. Another service to offer. In fact I recommend building up a stock of refurbished digiboxes of various types. All the Best. Martin Latest SatCure eBooks Installing Sky Digital TV has been updated to include a page about Freesat.
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The SatCure Satellite Review is written for the customers and subscribers of the following websites:
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