Where are you at Q?

[PaulT]

Q in a post a few days ago you stated that you were still having 'fun' with TV reception. Out of curiosity what is your current set up and how poorly is it performing?

[Quillan]

I have a 150cm dish and twin Invacom LNB with a feedhorn and a Humax decoder. As we move into the autumn we are now starting to get problems again. For example Mrs 'Q' wanted to watch "Cilla" but it only recorded the first few minute before pixels started and 15 minutes after that we lost signal. During the summer we had a perfect picture in both SD and HD (day and night).

To be honest it is all a bit mystifying as to why this happens. People have come up with all sorts of answers but bit by bit each has been discounted. I do not want to get a bigger dish (180cm) because you are looking at around £600 plus tripod mount which is another £300, all the work installing digging trenches, running new cables and then there is no guarantee it will work OK.

I did set up a system in Quillan using Filmon, Samsung tablet and a Cromecast dongle which works quite well. The SD picture setting is OK but not as good as proper SD TV. The HD option gives the equivalent of SD definition TV when put onto a normal sized TV (say 38") but then you have to pay for that. You do of course need 2mb or more download speed especially for HD (it uses compression for tablets and phones).

Hope that helps.

[dave21478]

I have been right out of the UK tv discussion for a while now, I just gave up with it.

Is there anything approaching a definitive answer? or are things still due to change further in the future?

I am about 100km due north and maybe a touch west of Quillan (assuming you live in the town of Quillan?) has anyone at this sort of latitude got a working setup?

Thanks,

[Quillan]

You might get away with 110cm or 120cm dish but I am not recommending anything because there is no 'logic' to any of this. For example my BIL knows an expat in Barcelona who says he has no problem with a 90cm dish although the BIL has not visited and seen it working.

[nomoss]

[quote user="dave21478"]I have been right out of the UK tv discussion for a while now, I just gave up with it.

Is there anything approaching a definitive answer? or are things still due to change further in the future?

I am about 100km due north and maybe a touch west of Quillan (assuming you live in the town of Quillan?) has anyone at this sort of latitude got a working setup?

Thanks,[/quote]

We are about 60 km NE of Quillan, elevation about 120 metres, and use a Panasonic Sky Box we brought here whenever analogue satellite tv from the UK shut down.

We had our oval 50 x 70cm Sky dish replaced with an old (but very sturdy) 90 x 95cm dish, which we used in Spain in the 90's, in February this year.

The installer, Steve Marston, who I can recommend, fitted a new quad LNB to the old dish, and installed the dish just above the sloping edge of the roof, to avoid a tree which had grown up and partly blocked the line of sight of the previous dish position in the garden.

The results are excellent, although we lose reception completely for short periods during very heavy rain.

[PaulT]

Q you are a fair bit further south than us and we are finding a 130cm dish is fine - except when it absolutely pours.

Sorry it has not worked out for you as you certainly did give it a try.

[Quillan]

I would like to think it is just my bad luck but it appears not. I know many people within 10km2 of me and we all have exactly the same problem. Even worse if they have a 130cm dish. As I said though the summer has been great with no problems even on HD but as we now move towards Winter the problems start again. Problem is it is the winter when we use the telly the most as both of us don't have the time in the summer. Sods law I suppose.