reasonable Satellite system

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dependencies

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Can someone point me towards such a system.

Also is it possible to run one on 12V system.

My TV alone will run for a couple of hours or more by itself,
How much more current would a reciever use?


Thanks in advance,


if there's a thread already running please just put up a link.


Richard
 
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Screwfix have an offer on at the moment. Less than £80 for the full kit. It is a 12 volt camping system. Or you could wait until Lidl or Aldi have another offer on.

The digibox uses not a lot of power. Why not fit a bigger battery. People keep adding electrical goods to their vans without thinking about that. :eek:
 
So how do you pay to view,
I mean on sky at home there's a monthly subscription.
Is their some freeview option.

Should be enough room for another leisure battery I think BTW
 
If you want Sky then buy a second hand sky box (240 volt) and an inverter. Take your sky card with you (we do)

The Screwfix (and other) ones will give you free to air (FTA). If you want Freesat (not Freeview) you will have to buy a Freesat box.

Basically you need a dish, a box and a telly. Which option you choose will cost you money to buy unless you are happy to spend £80 and watch FTA.

Google free to air channels. There are a lot of them and see if it will suffice.
 
Maingate is absolutley right if you have a SKY box take that with you and point your satalitte at astra and you will get the same TV that you get at home all over Europe,

If you are setting up for the first time and just want the free channels, some 500 or so in europe then you need a FREESAT box (google it as maingate says) this is the one we have from Maplins, gets all the free stuff, that includes your bbc/itv etc channels 12V Satellite Receiver for Free Digital TV : SD Satellite Receivers : Maplin

You will need a sat dish to plug into it. Maplins camping shops etc also do complete kits some come with carry cases other are designed to be bolted to your van.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?moduleno=217921
 
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So have I got this right

Dish>freesat (maplins)>TV= a few hundred free channels,
If that's right, it should be possible to narrow that down to, what,
4/5 worth watching.

Its only really the news and a couple of other things (not soaps) that we really need anyway.



Thanks guys,
 
freesat

in my freesat outfit i have 90 channels in favourites that are worth watchin,
quite a few film channels.
itv 1,2,3,4 and the same plus 1 hour
e4 . e4 plus1
true movies true movies plus 1.
about four horror channel.
movies for men 1 and 2
loads of music channels.

the list goes on.
we get these all over europe.
a word of warning the suitcase sattelite dishes are a tricky to set up,
but i do know some people who have no trouble at all.
i have a 65cm dish with degrees marked on the back so i can aim it at the right height.
alignment can be found here

Satellite Finder / Dish Pointing Calculator with Google Maps | DishPointer.com

just put where you are into the search engine and it gives you all the angles.
i use it all over europe,and it's exellent
 
Ah, I was going to ask about 'tuning in'
I guess its not enough to mimic the direction of a visible neighbors dish as you might a TV aerial.
Lots of places offer small directional compass things
 
dependencies said:
Ah, I was going to ask about 'tuning in'
I guess its not enough to mimic the direction of a visible neighbors dish as you might a TV aerial.
Lots of places offer small directional compass things
Click to expand...

Yeah the suitecase ones need to be set quite accuratley but there are loads of gizmos to help. The guys that use them get to know in which direction to point the dish and then its just fine tuning using a meter.

I had a self seeking dish fitted to the roof which would find several preprogrammed satallites automatically but of course this costs more money look for Oyster Vision, there are other makes some fitted in covers.

Also with roof fitted ones if you are under a tree or similar you have to move the van which can be a pain if your on a site with laid out pitches with a suitcase job you can normally move the dish to somewhere better, then again with the suitecase ones people worry about them being stolen.
:)
 
The suitcase models would probably have been my first thought, but from what I've read they would appear to be something of a nuiscance,
(The theft aspect aside)

Also I just daren't increase the number of things likely to get left behind or otherwise damaged by someone as accident-prone as myself.

Primarily for use in the UK, we don't need a home-from-home setup.
As I say, its for a little news, and some odd programs before bed-time, I don't go on holiday to recreate home life with nonsense TV.
But having tried a few TV aerials over the last few trips, and finding reception pretty variable if at all on some sites, I wondered at a dish.


Spoke to a dealer earlier who unsurprisingly offered me something around 400-1500 quid,
I was only waiting for a response here of course,
If I'd been near a full-size screen I'd have just done a search for the answers, but thanks for replying anyway.

That maplins deal looked OK, and I'll look at Screwfix, (and the portable option)
 
we got the aldi kit £60,
bit of a do getting it set up when we first got it we put it on me works van with the sucker mount got yhe satalite pretty quick once we relised we were pointing it up to much, great!!!
first trip out nothing messed about for nearly an hour took it back they sent it of and replaced the lnb,
next trip out fri night nothing urggh this is going to get thrown in the quay side when i get home !!!!!
a bit bored on the sun thought i would have a go 10 mins set up and running,
the guys reckon to persavere with it as its better than a tv????
you watch next time out at the end of the month we will see hey
misty
 
Screwfix item is out of stock just now,

Maplins offer a 'set' comes in a suitcase of sorts, but will just plug into a permanently mounted dish. offers 250 channels free which would do.

might take a look on flea-bay see whats on offer now I know what to look for fropm your experiences


thanks
 
We record all of our sky++ programs we have not had time to watch at home onto recordable DVDs and watch them while we are away.

The kids have their own dvd player for their programs too.

For normal telly we have an aerial and freeview.

We find all this takes up less power.
 
Applecore I like your thinking,
sadly my DVD recorder failed a year or so back shortly after its warranty expired!
Though the scarcity of programs worth recording would probably outweigh any worth in replacing it though just now,
that said I have a couple of sat' outfits to watch on auction,

On a slight departure I'm watching the British outdoors on TV right now, perhaps we should all hurl our entertainment away and get up and follow more wholesome pursuits
morris dancing, nudism, cheese rolling (cutting edge west country one)




well its certainly worth considering,





hello*tap tap* is this thing on?
 
TV away from home

Until last month we got by using one of the £49.99 (now £59.99) Portable Satellite Kits sold by Lidl - once a year (I think Aldi or Lidl had stock last week). The whole system including Dish, LNB, Cable, multi-satellite Receiver and Sucker and Clamp Mounts all come in a neat plastic case together with a rudimentary Compass (which I don't use) and a really useful Tuning Meter (with LEDs) and an audible tone. The Receiver also has a selectable audio tone fed through your TV which makes "tuning-in" the particular Astra (or HotBird) satellite much easier and when you are used to it can be done sometimes in minutes.

However, it can also take a long time and when raining and you are getting wet outside it can be very frustrating. Then when it is windy the dish can be blown out of alignment and may even have to be removed in high winds.

We used our Lidl unit all over England & Ireland (in places for which the dish size should not have been adequate) with both the 12v Receiver supplied - and also when tuned-in to Astra 2 (for UK & Irish TV) I would then swap our home 230v Sky Box using an Inverter for power (when away from Mains). I even managed to view some of the UK channels right down to south west France (north of Perpignan) last Christmas - but since not all channels have the same power and "footprint" many could not be tuned that far south. Sometimes I had to tune BBC 1 Scotland when BBC 1 Wales (or London) was blank.

In a bid to avoid arguments with the wife and so as to ensure quick set-up and turn-on using our Sky+ Box from home I lashed-out about £1,700 on a KvH Dome Sat system last month from which Rowlands Marine, Pwllheli which they installed very professionally for me and which I used all over Ireland an parts of UK without any problems. As "wild campers" we like to enjoy films, news etc. especially on those long dark winter evenings. This unit was about £300 more expensive than the standard unit as I wanted a "twin-LNB" so that my Sky+ Box would work fully with all functions. They are KvH agents and know what they are doing.

I also had a separate 2x120Ah Battery array installed with a 50A Battery to Battery Charger fitted - all to supply the entertainment devices in our Auto-Trail Apache 634 leaving the two existing Leisure Batteries to run the Lights, Pumps etc. Remember venting Batteries must be mounted outside the habitation area with adequate ventilation to disperse charging gases.

Incidentally the load drawn by my Sky+ Box is 4 Amps and that of my LCD TV is 3A which adds up to 7A drain (+ a bit for the losses of the Inverter) - which means that an evenings TV/Sky will consume over 42Ah. It is usually recommended that Leisure Batteries should not be discharged below 50% hence a 120Ah Battery would just be enough for one evening's viewing. Remember a typical 12v Halogen Lamp is 20W (some dimmer ones are 10W) which if you have 4 burning for 6 hours will also use almost 42Ah on their own.

However, if you only want News and Weather then the Lidl system will suffice once you "learn" how to locate the right satellite. It can also offer much superior World News on BBC World which is available on the HotBird satellite (13deg East of South) and which can be tuned over the whole of Europe - unlike Astra2 which is aimed at UK & Ireland with overspill into France.

Another and much cheaper alternative would be to abandon Satellite and go for Freeview which is already standard here in Wales and the Borders I think and is being rolled-out across the rest of England. As long as you are in a TV area then you would get most UK TV channels (exc Sky's subscription channles) for free and eventually over most of the UK (subject to mountains etc.).
 
Well,

If people are going to start bragging about their satellite systems, I am not going to be left out.

Metal Sky dish (free)
Sky digibox (second hand, £15)
Camera tripod (about £8 in Lidl or Aldi)

Remove top of camera tripod. Using a `U` bolt, clamp on Sky dish. Use pegs and bungees to hold down in force 10 gale.

Alternatively, buy a triple suction glass lifter, open roof light and stick to roof. Bung tripod and dish through rooflight and using a bungee, affix dish to roof.

I know this makes me sound like a cheapskate. Thing is, with being retired, I need a challenge.

My next project is to make a solar panel from egg boxes and double sided sticky tape.
 
maingate said:
Well,

If people are going to start bragging about their satellite systems, I am not going to be left out.

Metal Sky dish (free)
Sky digibox (second hand, £15)
Camera tripod (about £8 in Lidl or Aldi)

Remove top of camera tripod. Using a `U` bolt, clamp on Sky dish. Use pegs and bungees to hold down in force 10 gale.

Alternatively, buy a triple suction glass lifter, open roof light and stick to roof. Bung tripod and dish through rooflight and using a bungee, affix dish to roof.

I know this makes me sound like a cheapskate. Thing is, with being retired, I need a challenge.

My next project is to make a solar panel from egg boxes and double sided sticky tape.
Click to expand...

You should be on Blue Peter.
 
dependencies said:
Can I ask the camping massive their opinion on this item please

Camping and Caravanning Satellite Suitcase System Free Delivery : Satellite Kits : Maplin
Click to expand...
It should do the job as well as any other system. Go for it.

Just a quick tip. I put my Sky box and TV on. It is set to the Sky screen that shows the signal strength (and if there is any signal at all). I adjust the dish while looking through the van window and find it does not take long.

If there are other dishes around, to get the direction, that is a bonus. If not, you need a compass or a signal finder. I have just bought a combined satellite/aerial finder through MMM magazine.

Start off with the dish pointing in a horizontal direction. It sounds odd but it will not be far away. All adjustments should be very small and remember that there is a short time lag before you willsee a result on a Sky digibox. This Maplin box might be quicker but be patient.

The LNB unit might need tweaking a bit for fine adjustment. You just twist it clockwise or anticlockwise a bit.

Any problems, just ask.
 
Thanks that's a useful tip.
How susceptible to disturbance are the dishes,
I mean moving about in a camper with one stuck on the roof/side, is that likely to upset reception.
Is that why those of you have tripods instead
 
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