| Back from Holiday Crete was great. It was hot and sunny ALL the time but I kept myself covered up so I didn't burn. I took my little Apple Mac iBook and created a web page for the hotel where we stayed. Yeah, my wife just loves going on holiday with a workaholic! http://www.your-book.co.uk/zygos/ ITV will go FTA The big news is that ITV will go Free To Air next year. That means you'll be able to receive it with a FTA receiver and no card, provided you live within the Astra2D footprint. Thanks to Ross for pointing this out. You can read about it in the "UK Sky Digital Satellite TV technical" section of our discussion forum. It has been suggested that it will be broadcast on the lowest possible frequency and some Sky Digiboxes might not be able to tune it in. Frankly I think this is unlikely but time will tell! Sky Price Hike Sky increased the price of its cheaper packages on September 1st. This meant that I ended up paying £21 for the Family Pack. However, Sky also broke up the pack into six separate options: | Variety | Kids | Knowledge | Style & Culture | Music | News | | | | | | | | | Bravo (+1) (1) | Boomerang | Adventure One | Artsworld | Amp | At The races | | Challenge (+1) | Cartoon Network | Animal Planet (+1) | Discovery Real | Flaunt | Bloomberg | | E! | -1 | Biography | Time (+1) | Kerrang | CNBC | | E4 (+1) | Discovery Kids | Discovery [+1) | Disc+ Home & | IG35 | Eurosport UK | | ftn | Jetix (+l) | Discovery | Health (+1) | Magic | Eurosport2 UK | | FX | NickJr | Civilisations | Discovery Travel & | MTV | Fox News | | Hallmark | Nickelodeon (+1) | Discovery Science | living (+1) | MTV | Sky News (3) | | LivingTV (+1) | Nicktoons | DisemeryWings | DW-TV | MTV Dance | Sky Sports News | | LivingTV2 | Toonami | History Channel | SkyTravel (+l) | MTV Hits | Star News | | Paramount | Trouble (+1) | -1 | SkyTravel Extra | MTV2 | MotorsTV | | Paramount2 | | Nat Geo (+1) | SkyTravel Shop | Music Choice | _ | | Sci-Fi | | UKTV | Star Plus | Q | | | Sky Mix | | Documentary (+1) | TVS | Scuzz | Big Blue radio (4) | | Sky One | | UKTV H1story (+It | TVE1 | Smash Hits | TalkSPORT radio | | Sky Vegas live | | UKTV People (+1) | UKrV Bright Ideas | The Box | The Saint radio | | TCM | | | UKrV Food (+1) | The Hits | -4 | | UKTV Drama | | | UKTV Style (+1) | TMF | The Villan (4) | | UKTV Gold (+1) | | | UKTV Style | VH1 | | | UKTV Gold 2 (+1) | | | Gardens | VH2 Classic | | | RTE One (2) | | | Fashion TV | VH2 | | | RTE Two (2) | | | | | | | TG4 (2) | | | | | |
I phoned Sky on 08702 404040 and pressed the various number buttons until I got the "I want to reduce my package" option. I told the girl that I wanted to drop "Kids" and "Music" since we never watch these. I listened patiently while she tried to sell me up to movies, sport and told me that I ought to wait until the day my subscription was due because I had already paid. I said that, no, I'd forget, so please do it now. So she agreed and then told me that I'd get a credit! So this month I pay only £15 and subsequent months I pay £18. Get on the phone now if you are paying for a package that you don't need!
Futureproofing your house As most of you will know, the UK analogue TV system turn off will be completed by 2012. In fact, in most areas, it will be completed long before then. Now, I'm still receiving questions about analogue TV, which makes me suspect that a lot of people are not thinking ahead. You should be getting ready for the digital switchover now. This includes radio because I reckon analogue FM radio's days are numbered, too. So, if you are planning to do any work, on your house, DO consider replacing all cables with double-shielded coaxial cable. Install at least FOUR to the living room and two to every other room. That may not be enough but it's better than one! Find out about Freeview reception in your area and decide whether you'll use Freeview, Sky or FTA satellite (or a combination). Even if you move house before this stuff is needed, it will be a good selling point to ensure that your house is "digital ready". Decide whether you'll need a simple distribution amplifier or a Loft Box to distribute the various signals. Now's the time to decide whether you also want to include a security camera system or DAB radio. Some of you will want to install a more sophisticated system with, perhaps, CAT5E cable. The price of such systems is falling but it's still not cheap. Look at the options; by all means wait for the price to fall but don't leave it too late.
Best Type of Dish Twice this week I've been asked "is a mesh dish better than a solid dish?" True "Mesh" dishes are for C-Band reception only. For Ku band it's possible to have (very) small holes in the dish (so-called "mesh" dishes for Ku band are actually "perforated" dishes.) Perforation can improve the cosmetic appearance but has no effect on wind resistance because turbulent flow at anything higher than quite low wind speeds effectively blocks the holes. You can test this with a fan. Hardly any air gets through at higher fan speeds. Perforated dishes may be slightly weaker than solid dishes and distortion is more likely. For fibreglass and SMP (sheet moulded plastic) dishes, a fine metal mesh is used but you can't see it. The performance difference between "plastic" and metal dishes is negligible. Quality of manufacture is everything. The dish must hold its parabolic shape with changes of temperature and humidity and must, of course, support its own weight without distorting. Aluminium dishes tend to be easier to make than steel dishes but aluminium is weaker and more expensive than steel. A corroded dish can't be expected to perform as well as a pristine dish. Dishes come in several types. There's the old standard "Prime Focus" dish where the LNB is mounted on tripod arms in front of the dish at its focal point. For small dishes, this is very inefficient because the LNB stops a significant part of the signal from reaching the dish. Then there's the most common type of "offset focus" dish which you can imagine as being an oval cut from the top side of a prime focus dish. That means that the focal point is well below centre so the LNB does not block any signal. More exotic dishes include the "Cassegrain" type where the LNB is mounted behind the dish and the signal is captured by a central plastic dielectric "lens" and focussed down a tube to the LNB. This can be slightly more efficient than the "offset" type. The most common cassegrain dishes are the "Multimo" which we sell (see caravan page) and the "Digiglobe". And there's the "Gilbertini" (Gregorian) dish which uses an additional reflector plate to focus signal from the dish onto the LNB. Again this is an offset focus dish and is probably the most efficient dish you can get - at a price. The most popular example is the "Wave Frontier" which is capable of holding up to eleven separate LNBs. Of course the larger the dish, the stronger the signal, but there's a drawback. A small dish (such as Sky minidish) has a wide focus so it's fairly easy to align on a satellite cluster. However, a very large dish has an extremely narrow angle of focus and as you approach sizes of 3 metres it becomes difficult to focus on ALL the satellites in a cluster. For example, if you are aligning it for Sky Digital at 28.2'E, you may find that Sky programmes are OK but ITV isn't because that particular satellite in the Astra-2 cluster is slighly out of line (by several hundred miles of space). If you optimise the dish for that satellite, you'll reduce the signals from another. Eurobird is especially easy to lose because it's actually positioned at 28.5'E, although to a small dish it's near enough 28.2'E to make no difference. Surround Sound Problem I have a home cinema kit brand new (100w per speaker) 4 speakers, subwoofer, centre speaker and when playing music or watching a DVD the sound is amazing. A Brand new TV all connected with gold plated scart and audio leads! However I have just had SKY+ installed and on 50% of the channels there is a distorted sound coming through all the speakers. If I turn off the amp and have sound through the TV only there is no distortion, cant for the life of me understand why this is. All speakers are connected properly and as I said before this does not happen with DVD or cds at all! I get this all the time. I thought it was my surround sound system to begin with but now I'm convinced it's either the Pace Digibox or else the transmission itself. If you find an answer, please let me know! Hi, I have fixed my problem: I have run an optical cable from Sky+ to the amp. But the biggie was going into services on Sky, system set up, sound and then turning their volume right down to zero, this was conflicting with the surround sound. You'd think that Sky could have told me that ! Hope this helps yours! Mark B. (top)
Happy Customers Subject: RE: SatCure Keep-me SA23416055601 EDG09 Dear Nicola I just had to write and tell you how delighted I am with your company. The website is brilliant. I was having problems with my Grundig Sky Digibox and was told I needed a lbs65 site visit by a Sky engineer to fix the proble. I declined their offer and happened on the Satcure website while browsing the web looking for ideas on ways to fix the problem. Your website described the symptoms I was experiencing exactly, so I ordered the replacement capacitor kit. It arrived by return post and I fitted it this morning. I could see which capacitor was causing the problem thanks to the photos on your website, but decided to replace all 12 whaile I was doing it. I reconnected the power supply, wired up the connections and everything worked perfectly first time! The picture quality must have been degrading gradually over time as it is now dramatically better than when it was last working and I now have access to all the Sky channels again. Thank you very much. Regards Mike E.
Dear Martin, Great! I have soldered all capacitors and everything works now 100%. Everybody who owns a Pace receiver should order the Relkit10. Great work from your side. The packege was here in about 4 daxs (England-Austria) Everything works great! Congratulation! Thanks a lot The Pace MSS500 with positioner is a great receiver and now I can use this great analoge unit again. Alexander F.
Thanks for your info re remote sky+ code for tv. I could not get my remote to operate the tv (Samsung 42" Plasma)Thanks to your list and Andy the code was 646 not 0060 as per the book. Again many thanks.
(top) From Sky Digi Online ( http://www.media247.co.uk ): (top)
eBook Updates - None this month
- All eBooks have been moved to a secure server which requires a username and password. If you can't access it, please contact Me with your original Order number and ask for the new download information, stating exactly which eBook(s) you purchased and the EBK number(s).
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"Installing a Sky Minidish" tutorial on DVD. Click 
