| Hi Folks! I'm on holiday from February 24th to March 2nd (inclusive). If you need help with anything before March 3rd, please use our discussion forum.
Long cable run I ordered Sky last week mainly because as the BBC engineer phrased it, our farm is not in a television reception area. However, when the Sky "engineer" came to install it, they could not get a line of sight from the house and so cancelled the contract. To receive a signal it will be necessary to locate the dish 40-50m from the house and I have been told by an independent fitter this would require cable costing £2.50/m. Your WF100 is considerably cheaper than this but is it the same thing? If not can you supply a better quality cable as I am now considering installing a system to view just the BBC, ITV and channels 4&5. John (near Cardigan) I'm a bit surprised they can't get line of sight. Farm buildings are usually surrounded by fields! WF100 would be fine. However 50 metres will lose around 13dB of signal so it would be best to insert an in-line amplifier near the LNB. Global TVRO16F 9-17dB equalised LNB amp http://www.satcure.co.uk/accs/page1b.htm Note that this *might* be needed with a Sky "minidish". You could try the system without and, if you get "rain dropout" add the amplifier later. Alternatively, forget the amplifier and install a 60cm dish. That will collect much more signal and obviate any problem. The cable should preferably be protected if run at or below ground level. You could install the cable yourself (see our eBook "Installing Sky Digital TV") and let the installer do the rest. (He'll be delighted to save time). You could even fit the dish yourself. your stupid advise about Mini Dish Rarely a week goes by without someone, who has never bought anything from us, berating us for doing or not doing something. Most of the time I haven't a clue what their complaint is. Anyway, for your edification and delight, here's our "idiot of the week": I found your remark and suggestion about your Mini Dish unacceptable , how do you expect a customer to find out if the Mini Dish will work in his/her location unless you allow the customer to buy on trial period of at least 14 days and if it does not work then refund the full amount , Would you you buy a Mini Dish without having to try it????? Also your suggestion and so called advise to customer is not friendly, and it seems you just need their money and no customer care, I wonder how healthy is your company turnover??????????????? Here is some advise for your benefit, If you ever travel to USA, spend some times in any retailer of your choice and you will learn what is customer service and how they care about their customer, they are the best in the world, and I would recomend yo try it for yourself , perhaps you will change your attitude of TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT, and you will see the benefots and how much your turnover will grow. Do not get anoyed, and listen, and give up this stupid British retailers attitude who just want customer money and nothing in return, you guys are miles behind the American, try to lwearn from your American brothers. Learn from your American Cusin
Learn what is Customer Services
Learn Customer satisfaction from Americans
Give up stupid British selling technics, it does not work. Come to your senses,Study American retailers , particularly their attitude towards customer, and learn not to rip off customers, if you do all the above, you will see a big rise in your turnover. Advisor to non caring retailers specially in UK yekmihanparast@yahoo.co.uk. Dear yekmihanparast, Unfortunately, I don't know what you are commenting on. If you are referring to information on one of our many web pages, then you need to tell me which page and quote the relevant paragraph. If you are referring to a reply that I gave some time ago then I'm unlikely to remember anyway and you should quote it in your message. You need to be sure that you are ordering the correct size dish for your location and for the satellite signals you want to receive. I can't do this for you, any more than I could supply a fitted kitchen without coming and taking measurements. In this respect, there's some useful information and links to other information on this page: http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/dishes.htm Your suggestion that we let a customer buy on a 14 day trial is not very realistic. Bear in mind that we work purely by mail order so the cost and time required to pack and ship have to be taken into account. If we then had to accept the dish back, that would more than double the cost because we'd have to unpack and test it and return it to the trade warehouse - but testing a dish (and checking it for the slightest distortion which would render it useless) is not feasible in a busy sales office. So we'd have to scrap it. As for your suggestion that we "learn not to rip off customers" I find that totally unbelievable. We do our utmost to ensure that a customer does NOT order something that won't do the job. We actively refuse orders if we feel the customer does not know what he wants. That's the exact opposite of what you are suggesting. There's no heavy sales stuff here. We don't encourage people to order if there's any doubt. Please understand that you are not dealing with a retail shop premises and we are most certainly not copying the American methods. (By the way, I've been to America plenty of times and you'd get exactly the same reaction from a USA mail-order company - I have a friend who runs one). We have a tiny number of staff working in a busy sales office, arranging shipping from various trade warehouses. I'm the only one with any reasonable technical knowledge and I'm handling around 60 enquiries a day by email - and I'm 50 miles away. There's no way that I can spare hours checking on dish size just for one person who might buy. Heck, some people think I can even guess or calculate* the dish size required to give good reception through a double-glazed window! It's very flattering but I can't. All I can do is point you towards the information that will help you to estimate it. But usually the only way is to beg, steal or borrow a dish and try it. That's not compatible with mail-order. Sorry, but I'm sure you can find a nice retailer who will encourage you to buy his most expensive dish. *Maths is not one of my strong points. (Anyway, I'm emailing an American car dealer in Luton. I want him to deliver me a new car for 14 days free trial here in Cheshire and collect it if I don't like it, at no cost to me, of course.) (top)
Top Up TV Current Freeview channels are: BBC One, Two, Three, Four, News 24, cbeebies, CBBC, Sky Travel, News, Sports News, UK History, UK Brightideas, fTN, TMF, The Hits, Community Channel. That's sixteen (ignoring interactive streams etc.) Now a company called Top Up TV is about to launch Pay TV channels (in March) for £7.99 a month (just under £100 a year). As there are only four free multiplexes, these channels will be part-time, sharing the bandwidth. http://www.topuptv.com/html/channel_schedule.htm | UK Style | 18:00 - 22:59 | | E4 | 16:00 - 03:59 | | Discovery | 12:00 - 22:59 | | UK Gold | 12:00 - 00:50 | | Turner Classic Movies | 19:00 - 04:59 | | UK Food | 10:00 - 15:59 | | Cartoon Network | 06:00 - 17:59 | | Discovery Home & Leisure | 06:00 - 11:59 | | Boomerang | 05:00 - 11:59 | | Bloomberg | 05:00 - 09:59 | | TVX * | 23:00 - 04:59 | | | | | * TVX - Coming soon for an additional monthly fee |
The minimum sky package is £13.50 a month (£162 a year) and contains:- Golf TV, i Sports TV, Sky One, Discovery Home & Leisure, QVC, Sky News, Bloomberg. Compared with this line-up, some people would say Top Up TV offers better value. But To view these programmes you'll need a receiver with a card slot. Obviously all the old ONdigital (ITVdigital) receivers have such a slot. There are supposedly half a million still out there, although some have probably been relegated to a child's bedroom or to the skip. The Nokia 221T also has a slot. (Don't you wish you'd taken up our offer?) If you have any comments about this, please put them in our discussion forum. Don't send your rants to me! ;-)
BBC Radio Hi Martin, Not a query, more an observation. I just recommended your site to someone who'd written to me with a query of his own (as I often do when it's a question I can't answer - one of these days, one of these referrees might buy something from you!) However, on this occasion, in passing I had a look at your BBCITV page (http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/bbcitv.htm) and noticed a small error. Your answer to Q2 says ALL BBC radio channels have moved to 2D but that's not the case for Radios 2 & 4. The BBC gave in to pressure from expats and moved those 2 back to the south beam. Regards David Thanks, David. I find it hard to keep up with continual changes so all such feedback is welcome. (top)
Tour de France Clearly a lot of you like cycling and/or the French countryside! I was quite overwhelmed by the response to my request for advice. What a great bunch you are. No less than sixty five people sent me details. I've put the results on this web page: http://www.your-book.co.uk/tour.htm If you see any mistakes or omissions, please let me know. Be sure to put "Tour de France" as the message subject, please. I don't want to trash your message by mistake (it happens). Email (top)
Avoiding Spam If you click on the Email link (above) it will take you to a form for sending email directly to me. The email address is hidden so, although people can send me messages (nice or nasty!) they can't get my email address for the purpose of spamming. It occurred to me that some of you might like a similar form. You could put it on your own web site or I could put it at satcure.net for you. It can be directed to your email address (preferably one that you haven't used yet and that you keep secret). The form will let people send messages to you and works via a PHP script on our satcure server which I will rent to you for, say, £10 a year. If this sort of thing might interest you, please send me a message describing your current setup and how you would like it to work for you. Please use the message subject "Avoiding Spam". If you want me to, I can also arrange for you to have your own simple-to-use web site for just £22 a year - including email! Note: several people have written to say they have found my "hidden email address in the source code". Well it's a dummy address. Please try it! :-) (top)
Large Dishes Can you tell me if you supply 2m - 3m Sat. dishes for use in Southern Europe? If not prehaps you could give me the name of a supplier who does, ideally the dish should be petalised JG Kennedy No, we can't help with this. I don't know any supplier of petalised dishes now although I'm sure there's a couple in America and probably in Russia. There's a company in south Poland which makes dishes in two halves. You can see a picture of one here: http://www.satcure.co.uk/large_dishes/ You can also order a solid dish from www.satalogue.com but they are closed for 3 weeks right now. Many people ask me: "Why is a large dish so expensive?" well, the dish cost is related to its surface area (=pi x radius x radius) and support structure and to the difficulty of making it - bearing in mind that the entire surface must focus the signal on the LNB feed horn. The slightest inaccuracy will render the dish useless or very inefficient. It's much more difficult to make a large dish hold its shape. A petalised dish has to be adjusted as it's assembled. The order of tightening the bolts, and their final tightness, both determine the shape of the dish. Ideally, you should point the dish at the sun then look at the image of the sun focussed on a piece of card at the LNB horn entrance. The image should be a perfect circle and should be within the diameter of the feed horn entrance, otherwise signal will be lost. If it's not a perfect circle then you'd better go find your rubber mallet!
New Pages I'm continually adding new pages to our web sites. The latest addition is two graphs which indicate our web site ranking (pretty good!) http://www.satcure.co.uk/alexa.htm http://www.your-book.co.uk/alexa.htm If you visit these pages you'll see a link to another page with yet another link where you can write a review of one (or both) of our web sites (please do). (top)
New Products We can now supply the "Handylink" range of devices for getting your programmes piped to other rooms. http://www.satcure.co.uk/accs/handylink.htm
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From Radio Bullet ( http://radio.mediabullet.co.uk ): From Sky Digi Online ( http://skydigital.mediabullet.co.uk ):
eBook Updates Since the last newsletter, the following eBooks have been updated. Your original download link no longer works, so please contact me (with proof of purchase). - "Lazyman's Guide to Making Big Money"
(Was "Run Your Own Business") http://www.The-Cool-Book-Shop.co.uk | 
