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The equinox & Pay TV
The title says nothing maybe they should merge like TV5 and CFI, CNBC and
Asia Business News. All the Australian Pay TV players and GWN?
How about Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch?
Autumn is here again!!!.
It's nearly autumn again! For us in the southern hemisphere.
It's been a great summer and we are all looking forward to a spell away
from the beach bunnies, surfing, sailing. sky and scuba diving.
That also means that your satellite dish might lose its programming for
about 10 mins in late March. For southern latitudes about 38 deg south it
occurs about the 26 th of the month. If you know the exact date let me know
so as we don't waste time discussing it.
It's about the same for South Africa and South America. If you live
in countries prefixed by North, such as North America and Europe it
actually occurs earlier, that is about 5 to 6 days before the
equinox.(21-22 March.) Have you ever seen the sun give a little bump as it
crosses the equator?
What will happen is this: At different times of day, the Sun is, going
to appear behind geostationary broadcast satellites as viewed from
your dish location. This will inevitably lead to a disruption of reception
as the sun emits lots of broadband thermal noise. The digital brigade will
lose signal for about 10 mins at a time.If you use an analogue receiver and
watch it the signal gradually fades completely for about a minute and then
reappears normally about 10 mins later. Depending on the size of your dish
this time can be as short as 2 mins for a large dish. This corresponds to
the narrower angle of view.
If you have a nice shiny polished solid dish you need to take
special precautions.
Just in case you dont know, you should take steps to point it away from the
sun or cover it up as the concentrated rays of sunlight can melt cables,
plastic and even make the solder melt in those nice lnbs' that you have
installed. It can cause a fire as well.A polished or even a light coloured
dish can make the focal point quite warm.(This is an understatement.)
LIKE EVERY GOOD SALESMAN I NOW GIVE YOU THE ADVANTAGES.
The following only applies to the day that the sun is eclipsed at your
location by the satellites in the clarke belt.
Every six months I check the tracking if my dish as long as there
is a cloud free day.If it is cloudy you can not see the sun very well.
Get up early in the morning, it will have to be about 6.00 am normal sun
time for your area. Check the shadow of your LNB on the face of your dish,
as you move your dish through the arc of the clarke belt the shadow thrown
by the LNB should cross through the centre of your dish. The reason for
getting up early is to establish that the east point is accurate. As the
day wears on you continue to follow the sun with your dish checking all the
time that it is tracking correctly. If you find that the dish is off track
at the apogee, that is when it is at its highest point, it means that the
declination angle needs adjusting. If it is out at east or west this means
the alignment needs adjusting and then you still may have to adjust the
declination to get it all right.You should start checking a few days either
side of the crossing because if your LNB eclipses the centre of your dish
before the time you will need to make adjustments.
Having read the previous few paragraphs check all information carefully
before you do anything.
Todays thought.....
If it aint' broke don't fix it..
The following has just arrived in my email.
Hmm!!!
I will include this Shameless,
*PLUG! PLUG! PLUG!*
For a more detailed discussion, watch out for TELE-satellite 3 / 4 --
98 which is to hit news-stands real soon. In that issue, John Locker
tells you how you can profit from sun outages and check whether your
motorised dish is properly aligned.
USELESS FACT: A rainbow can be seen only in the morning or late
afternoon. It can occur only when the sun is 40 degrees or less above
the horizon.
The above few lines came to me from an article by Peter C. Klanowski.
and it is copyright as well.
Peter had an article about sun outages as well so I thought I would use
mine as well. You now have about a month to watch the sun track across your
dish before the shadow of the LNB hits the centre. You can see a great
picture of this in the Nov Dec edition of Telesatellite. It shows my dish
with the shadow in the centre taken in early September.In the southern
hemisphere the sun passes behind the satellites before the equinox and in
March it happens after the equinox.
They only get one chance a year at the south pole though.
If you subscribe to Telesatellite you can get all the good oil
about dish alignment.
Just to make myself clear here are a couple of repeats and corrections.
TV5 will still be in digital as part of the European Bouquet but
the advantage is that it will also be available as an analogue signal on
Palapa C2 using the CFI frequency.
The Plus 21 channel promo is not visible here now. Did they remove it?
The signal I was watching on I 706 was in fact 704. This has disappeared
but another one I see is Punjab TV and it looks like it is uplinked from
Goonhilly in England. Times have changed as the last signal I saw direct
from England was on a dirty big dish out near Ceduna in South Australia. Is
this dish still in existence and have they updated to a 20 deg LNB on it
now?
I forgot to mention last time that Hallmark has returned for the Hyundai
brigade with updated eproms.I don't know how it is if you have the version
5 eproms.
I believe all updates are in the region of A$80.00 for exchange eproms. Buy
a couple of EPROMS for about $60.00 (they are expensive) and program them
yourself, if you know the code and have a programmer.
Hmm!!! again.
Pay TV..
Along with others I have been looking at the optus tests.
I have shown a few people what it looks like and they could be potential
customers. I have had it said a lot and I quote..
" I would buy satellite tv programming for 20 or even $30.00 a month if I
could have my own dish and set top box that I could watch the FTA stuff as
well."
$40.00 to $50.00 is not an option when you can go to the piccies here in
Adelaide for as L I T T L E as $6.00 , a double at the drive in $12.00 and
yes on a Saturday night you pay $12.00 to $15.00 to get in. If you are
sports mad you can watch lots of American basketball and lotsa golf but who
cares of Greg Norman isn't playing against Tiger Woods. Pay per view has
its merits and I think that is fair as long as the boxing match lasts more
than 30 seconds. I really dont care for more wrestling. They took it off
FTA years ago and thought it is now a good gimmick by getting you to pay
for it. Oh! well.
To Optus, Foxtel, Australis, Sky and Galaxy. Please let me have some
responses from you so as I can present a more level view. A lot of people
want to know about you but they do not want to make enquiries in case a
salesman calls.
What does it really cost? how many channels can I get? is it good? they
don't want your view they want an independent opinion. Who are they?
They are the 2 or 3 enquiries I get each week multiplied by at least the
last 52.
Well thats it for now,
Cheers,
Bevin.
© copyright February 1998 by Bevin BODEN.
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