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#1
11-08-2009, 11:13 PM
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Hi guys..... Not to sound totally assinine but what analog satprograms are still 'out there'? If I set up a C or Ku satellite and receiverbox what would I get? Very interested in trying this if possible.
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#2
11-09-2009, 08:18 AM
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"Had"? I still use a C-band system and dish daily. Same Winegard Pinnacle 10' dish I put up in 1987. Nowadays though there is almost nothing free or analog. PBS still has a clear analog feed on W4-16, and C-Span has two analog feeds. Everything else I receive now is digital and requires a Motorola 4DTV receiver, and I subscribe through National Programming Service "NPS" one of the only C-band providers left. My days are numbered though, I don't have the digital "side car" unit to get what HD programming there is available and eventually there will be so few C-band subscribers there won't be enough business incentive left to keep it going. Also the cost difference for programming has narrowed since they now insist on bundled programming. In the old days (after General Instrument finally secured the Videocipher from the pirates) programming was mostly ala carte and a hell of a lot cheaper than cable.
Last edited by Ed in Tx; 11-09-2009 at 07:14 PM.
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#3
11-09-2009, 12:43 PM
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Ed, your post reminded me of how much cheaper it was for Satellite service, and how much easier it was to pick and choose the channels you wanted. Another nice bonus was that the major channels offered east and west coast feeds, so you could watch your program at the regular EST time, or tune in three hours later on the west coast time. I remember watching many movies on something like HBO east, liking it, and then tuning into HBO west and recording it three hours after it had begun on east.
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#4
11-09-2009, 12:57 PM
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Yes, was nice. NBC used to have 3 feeds on Ku; East, Mountain and West. And a backup East feed on C-Band. If I happened to see a music act I wanted to record on The Tonight Show or Saturday Night Live, I could wait an hour and tape it on my S-VHS VCR. Excellent audio and video. I have vollumes of stuff like that I recorded direct from satellite for years until the networks scrambled and I had to replace my original Houston Tracker 8 receiver for a GI-Motorola 4DTV unit. The new receiver took the fun out of scanning the satellites as it blue-screens everything with no video which can't be disabled. The old receiver was much easier to use for searching random feeds.
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#5
11-09-2009, 01:48 PM
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I've had three c-band setups over the years. My first was an 8' mesh dish and ChannelMaster receiver, the secoond was another 8' mesh dish and a General Instrument 2500R later replaced with a General Instrument DSR-920 4dtv receiver. the third and my current system is a 10' mesh with a dual C/Ku feedhorn and a Motorola DSR-922 4dtv and the HDD-200 HDTV sidecar. I also have a Scientific Atlanta MPEG-2 DVB receiver that I occasionally hook up and play around with. You're right there isn't much left up there analog in-the-clear but there's a ton of digital up there (both subscription and fta.) What I always hated was the belief that C-Band was dead, which is entirely untrue... it's just that C-Band ANALOG is dead.
Regarding the HDD-200 sidecar. Don't get your hopes up that you'll be seeing more selection with that other than what's already up there. All newly added DCII HD channels use MegaPipe, which the HDD-200 cannot receive. You need a commercial DCII receiver designed for use in cable headends to receive that content. Given that most of the HD on satellite is either DCII or DVB, opt for a DVB receiver instead as that's gonna be your best choice. I have to give props to NPS, as they've been pretty good to me, and their selection of packages available is pretty comprehensive. Believe it or not, they actually don't bombard me with junkmail and telemarketing calls about switching to DirecTV like some of the other providers had!! Quote:
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#6
12-21-2009, 02:55 PM
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Still using 2 cband systems and subscribing to everything I can get through NPS. The DCII digital signals are darn near as good as anything you will ever see and they beat the highly compressed KU feeds from Direct and Dish Net.
I have a 10" Weingard mesh here in Milwaukee and a 12" solid fiberglass dish in Presque Isle, Wisconisn just south of the Wisconsin UP boarder. My Milwaukee system has KU also. I used KU with a Free To Air Coship blindsearch receiver, but most of the chanels are foreign language (spanish or Arabic). There are a few feeds that are worth watching on the Coship, but the feeds keep moving around and you have to search them out and relocate them, and I got tired of that whole thing, so I retired the Coship and now I only watch what I subscribe to on the 4DTV Mot 922 receiver. I also have a HDD200 HiDef converter but now we are down to only 2 Starz feeds and a Wealth TV chanel which I do not subscribe to. Unless SRL (another provider) is able to somehow provide us with an updated receiver that will take advantage of the HD feeds that are provided by the Comcast HITS (Head End In the Sky) I am affraid that DCII cband feeds days are numbered. Unfortunately for some reason NPS has not been able to secure a redistribution contract with HITS. So if we lose some of the DCII master feeds that are being sold by NPS, I may have to start buying from SRL to get the hits feeds on HITS SD. Still better than paying for the over priced and over compressed feeds from Dish and Direct. I get my HD networks over the air locally, but I do miss the HD feeds from the premium feeds like Sho Hbo etc. Long Live Cband! I will be there till the end.
__________________
Vacuum tubes are used in Wisconsin to help heat your house. New Web Site under developement ME http://AntiqueTvGuy.com
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#7
12-21-2009, 05:33 PM
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