Thank you. When you say a big dish is required, how big are we talking to get Satmex 6 and 8?
At my parents house in Atlanta, Georgia can we get the most popular ones 30W, 45W and 78W easily? On Satbeams I don't see where 78W will be easy, looks like the dish will be large even for Ku.
You're right: On Ku-band they won't get 78, it's too far north. But I wouldn't worry about that since there are just a few Venezuelan channels on that one and you can get Telesur from Venezuela on 97W. 45W is easy, but the only thing on 45W is a channel from Chad, Africa and the Western Sahara liberation station (usually in Arabic, only time to time in Spanish), also from Africa. From time to time some feeds out of Bolivia are on there, usually events that the president or vice president attends, but no full-time Spanish TV stations.
30W is easy to get here IF you have a pretty good view of the Eastern sky with no or very low obstructions. I had to move my dish further out to pick up the signal. There are about 40 to 50 stations there. FTA, as you probably know, can vary with which channels are up (they come and go), but at the moment here are the Spanish language stations on 30W:
1. TV Universitaria, Bolivia
2. TV Marti, USA
3. ACN, Cuba
4. Cubavision Internacional
5. Cubavision
6. Tele Rebelde, Cuba
7. Educativo, Cuba
8. Educativo 2, Cuba (but often rebroadcasting Telesur)
9. Contribucion (Telesur feeds, Venezuela)
10. Telemovil 5, Argentina
11. Solo Tango, Argentina
12. RBC, Peru
13. Bethel TV, Peru
14. Cordoba Internacional TV, Spain
15. Canal Luz HD, Argentina
16. Telecaribe, Colombia
17. TV 101, Argentina
18. Canal 11, Argentina
19. Canal 9, Argentina
20. TV Galicia, Spain
21. Canal Vasco, Spain
[plus lots of Radio stations and some occasional TV feeds, especially out of Argentina and Uruguay]
The best thing for C-band is to get at least a 6-footer, but if you are stuck with a Ku-band 1 meter dish, then a conical scalar and C-band lnbf for a mini-BUD setup also can yield some results off C-band on Satmex 6 (but I have never got anything off Satmex 5). When I try the experiment, I usually get TV Puebla, Canal Trece (Merida), Telemax (Hermosillo), Hidalgo TV (Pachuca) plus some other channels that come and go (because of lack of signal stability on such a small dish).