Success with a ku motor.

[Dee_Ann]

My folks S9 tuner just came in. On a Saturday!

It looks nice. It's about the same size as my Coolsat and has a bunch of connectors on the back. I'll post some pix later when I get up.

The sun is up, I better get some sleep before I burst into flames or something.

I still want an Azbox for myself. I'm tired of the pc stuff.

Later gators.

Posted from my JB'd iPhone 3GS using the SatelliteGuys app

 

[Anole]

Heh, I do read!
I even change a few things i see.
I love those direct mounts, great for tweaking.
...

Well, those are a heck of a collection of customized brackets/mounts attached to your dishes! - :up
Yea, I thought that first picture was a later model (Ku/Ka) DirecTV mount.
(for anyone who's serious, please pay attention to these pictures, they're gold!)
Now if we just had some motors...

I do wonder about the DishNet with the 105 FSS LNB 'n feednorn, though.
And I'll refer you to the enhanced feedhorns several members have made, based on a Pendragon test 'n comparison, some time back.
Though, I still doubt they'd get any signal pointed north! -

 

[kodaz]

that there is a genuine Primestar tree, i grew it from seed and every year it grows a new branch and big grey leaf!
like some trees get a new ring, this one gets a new 2 ft ironwood segment (i know it is ironwood because of the rust)!! I dont think it will blow over cause for ever square inch, we seem to have a 5' rock.
Truth is, i have a machine shop in my basement. i love new ideas and love to read of other ideas.
I did have a ku LNB on the bud with the other LNBs but i actually prefer c-band.

 

[Dee_Ann]

that there is a genuine Primestar tree, i grew it from seed and every year it grows a new branch and big grey leaf!
like some trees get a new ring, this one gets a new 2 ft ironwood segment (i know it is ironwood because of the rust)!! I dont think it will blow over cause for ever square inch, we seem to have a 5' rock.
Truth is, i have a machine shop in my basement. i love new ideas and love to read of other ideas.
I did have a ku LNB on the bud with the other LNBs but i actually prefer c-band.

LOL!!!


How do you work on those things way up there? Some of those dishes look like they are waaaaay up in the air!
And what about storms? Wouldn't those be more likely to bend in high winds?
I have to say however, that's an interesting setup!

 

[Dee_Ann]

Well, it's here.

It looks like a nice little machine.

But it's all "furrin" stuff!

The power cord is European and has an adapter. It's pretty loose. The power cord will fall out of the adapter if you give it mean looks.


And the warranty sticker on the back? It's in Russian! Thankfully I can read a little Cyrillic because I was just about to pull the sticker off then I stopped and read it. It basically says don't remove the sticker or you void the warranty. That's not cool. How many people are going to be able to read that here in the US? Anyway..

The new remote, has the evil button. I opened it, cut a little piece off a band-aid and placed it over the contacts so that it is impossible for that button to be used.


It also came with no batteries for the remote.
The dealer did not include ANY paperwork with the machine either. Not even a copy of the ebay sale.

It had a thumb drive (I'm keeping that), a 6 foot video cable and a 4way switch (I'm keeping that too). But no batteries for the remote? Come on now!

Otherwise, the machine came in in good condition, no damage to the box (because it didn't go by UPS) and was delivered on Saturday (how did that happen?!)..

I'm about to plug it up and put it on the ku motor to see what it will do..

I hope to be back soon with more good news.

 

[Jim S.]

Wow, that's a truly stupid place for the video format button. (I hadn't seen that remote in detail before -- there are 3 or maybe 4 versions of the remote now!)

Another note on the remote: depending on what firmware version is installed, it's possible that the zoom button won't zoom the picture. (Most TVs have an option for that anyway.) It's been re-purposed to bring up a satellite list menu. You'll have to try it to see which function it performs, because I've forgotten which version of the firmware changed it. (Some remotes, by the way, have it labeled satellite list.)

 

[Dee_Ann]

Well here is a report on this thing from the village idjit..


I found that the thing comes set up for a universal LNB. And you have to go in and edit that for each and every satellite in your list and this is a tedious process that requires a LOT of button pressing, it would be easy to mess this up and my folks would never, ever manage to accomplish this part of it alone. I had to change it one by one from universal to linear. Arrrrrgh!

There is an option that say "Set all satellites to USALS" and that was nice. It would have made sense if that had a similar option for the LNB setting as well. Sheesh.

Once I got that done I found that it kept telling me "out of range" every time I pressed any button. Huh? What is out of range?

I tried moving the dish and it didn't move. After fumbling through the menus for 30 minutes I got back to the USALS setup and the longitude latitude stuff which to me is very confusing and I can not ever remember which is which. Then to make it more confusing there is an east or west setting on one of them. It defaults to east and that was my problem. I changed it to west and that fixed it. I also had to go to google to figure out what the numbers are for my location and I put them in flip flop the first time because google just gave me raw numbers and didn't say which number is what. WHY do they make that stuff so confusing????


Finally, after all that, I got it where it moves the dish. I went to the setup screen and saw that there are two options, blind scan a single satellite or scan ALL the satellites!

Oh and I see that it does not have the Cuban satellite in the list. It seems to only have stuff from 61 to 129 satellites..

I told it to scan everything and now I'm sitting back waiting for it to work miracles...


Tomorrow I need to go out and swap the dishes around and put the dish my folks will end up with on the motor and try to tweak it as best as I can. They live about 5 miles from me so I'm hoping I can use the same settings and not have to do a total rescan when I get it there.

I guess I need to go over to their house now and use my iPhone to figure out where they can put the dish up, that way dad can get the pole planted in the ground and let the cement set up for a few days. I figure that it will be sometime next week when I can plan on taking it all over there and setting it up for them.

I'm pretty excited about this because I'm going to be Mom's little Heroine for bringing PBS back to their humble abode after years of nothingness..



Oh, and another thing about the remote control. In the middle there are a bunch of light colored buttons. The text on them is WHITE. STUPID!! My mom is going blind with macular degeneration and this is going to be troublesome for her. And the text is printed on the surface of the buttons so it will wear off with use making the remote VERY difficult to use. Not a very good design if you ask me. Maybe they should offer a simpler remote with large buttons for older people.

Also, in the setup screen I spotted some options that I suspect are a little on the shady side.. Stuff about "card sharing" and what not. I googled some of those things and they seem to be used by people for things you're not supposed to be doing. I'm wondering if there is a way to erase those options?

Well, the blind scan continues of the entire sky.

 

[Jim S.]

If you want the Cuban satellite or any others added, all you have to do is hit the green button while you're in the satellite menu. It'll ask you for the name and the location (be sure to toggle it to West by hitting the left or right arrows before you key in the numbers.) Then you have to configure it for LNB frequency, switch settings, and motor type in the antenna setup menu, but you already found out how to do that.

You don't have to worry about the card-sharing options, it doesn't come configured with any servers. (In fact, there's no need to connect it to the internet at all if you're not card-sharing; there's nothing else you can do with the internet connection.)

If you really don't want it in there for some reason (it's not like Dish is going to raid your house looking for FTA receivers), there were some firmware releases that didn't have those modules installed. I don't know if we have any of them online here or not. (It used to be that every American release of the firmware didn't have them, since it can't tune half of Dish's satellites anyway, but the number of firmware releases from different companies is unreal, and some of them have just replaced the eastern hemisphere satellite list with a western hemisphere satellite list and called it an American release.)

 

[Dee_Ann]

Oh oh...

All or most of the satellites have the wrong names and that is very confusing.

I need to figure out how to rename the satellites and the channels. Some of the channel names that scanned in are very un-user-friendly and will make problems for my folks and that will of course end up being my problem because you know what rolls down hill...

The other thing is, WHY does this thing with a dish half the size I'm using, get the Louisiana PBS stations and my pc tuner does not?
I get all the other PBS stations on there including Montana and the other S2 stations. I tried putting the numbers in for that transponder on the pc and it says nothing found.
What the heck is up with that?

More and more I see me switching to an Azbox... Can't be too soon either! This pc sure is annoying!

 

[Dee_Ann]

If you want the Cuban satellite or any others added, all you have to do is hit the green button while you're in the satellite menu. It'll ask you for the name and the location (be sure to toggle it to West by hitting the left or right arrows before you key in the numbers.) Then you have to configure it for LNB frequency, switch settings, and motor type in the antenna setup menu, but you already found out how to do that.

You don't have to worry about the card-sharing options, it doesn't come configured with any servers. (In fact, there's no need to connect it to the internet at all if you're not card-sharing; there's nothing else you can do with the internet connection.)

If you really don't want it in there for some reason (it's not like Dish is going to raid your house looking for FTA receivers), there were some firmware releases that didn't have those modules installed. I don't know if we have any of them online here or not. (It used to be that every American release of the firmware didn't have them, since it can't tune half of Dish's satellites anyway, but the number of firmware releases from different companies is unreal, and some of them have just replaced the eastern hemisphere satellite list with a western hemisphere satellite list and called it an American release.)

Oh ok.. Well, they don't have internet at all at home, Mom doesn't do the internet at all and dad goes to the library to use it there. I can't believe people would be so stupid to do that stuff in the first place. I guess if I don't tell them what it is they won't worry about it. I'll just tell them that's options for European users and leave it at that. They'll never know any different. It just feels, dirty to have it there, in my opinion. But I guess it's like an unloaded gun, if you don't put bullets in it it can't hurt anyone, right?

Oh and I just checked on dishpointer.com and the Cuban satellite is blocked where they are by their house. So no need to worry about that with theirs.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Well, that was kinda rough going but I got it!

I followed Phottoman's directions here. I did a blind scan of everything in the ku satellites, which took a pretty darn long time, then downloaded the info into a thumb drive, edited the file on my pc then put it back from the thumb drive into the satellite tuner.

I was able to delete all the nonsense channels, tons of scrambled channels and then rename channels to things that are more "old folks friendly" names and add the common channels to a favorites list for them so they can ignore most of the stuff they would never look at anyway.

IF they ever decide to explore then they can jump out of the favorites and see all the other zillions of channels. If they want to. First things first.

If they stick within the favorites there's about 30 channels there. I know them pretty well and I am very confident that they will rarely get away from the PBS channels. Dad has been asking me like every time we talk if they will get the H*****y channel and I keep telling him every time, "Yes Dad. But be aware, that channel has changed, a LOT. It's not what it used to be so I hope you are into Bigfoot, UFO's and rednecks teaching history."

They may find some stuff on RTV and TUFF. I know dad will be into the TUFF channel. Dad wants to watch war stuff.. :tsk:

Dad asked me tonight about putting up a C-band and I told him that that can also be done later and that I want him to run two wires NOW so that if he decides to go with a C-band, at least that part will already be done. Running wires is not fun. Maybe they should run three wires just in case. I have a feeling that Mom is going to put her foot down and demand a second ku system. I think they could do fine with a single C-band without a motor that is permanently aimed at 87. We could put a dual output lnb on it so they could both access it at the same time from two different tuners.

But I'm pretty sure that it won't take long at all before they want a second duplicate motorized ku dish and tuner. That is if they don't want a divorce!


I told my Dad that Sunday I'm going to put their dish on their motor so that I can get it all fine tuned and ready to go. Dad is going Monday to go buy a new pole to put the dish on. I am going over Sunday evening to check and be sure of where to plant the pole. I told Dad to be sure that the pole is ultra, ultra level and that he should use a digital level if he has one and to check it on all four points of the compass. Precision is super important because I don't want to be over there 10 times a month fighting that thing because it's just a little off level. No no no no no!

Well, this thing is a bit clumsy to operate and it does some annoying things but it's probably just me. Overall, it works. I can get the S2 channels, I saw it get some channels listed as mpeg4 and h264. I don't know all the secrets of what those are just that some tuners can get them and some can't. This one seems to get everything there including stuff (LPB) that my pc tuner can't get.

Sunday night I'm going to hook my 10 foot C-band dish to it and see what it will do on a blind scan there. I also need to see if I can figure out how to put a portable disk on it and record shows and play them back. I have my dad's portable 300gigabyte disk over here, it's USB so hopefully it will work.

I think my folks are going to be very pleased with their new stuff.

 

[Tron]

See how contagious and addictive FTA is? Next thing you know, your parents are going to be competing with your dish farm!

The S9 seems to have a very sensitive tuner, which is good. I've never had trouble with LPBS on my 1 meter dish, but I've always assumed that, since I'm only 80 miles from Baton Rouge, the footprint is strongest here.

As for the "Evil Button", the real problem is that its directly above the DVR Info button, which gets used all the time.

 

[Jim S.]

Oh oh...

All or most of the satellites have the wrong names and that is very confusing.

I was confused by the last picture in your previous post, that shows it scanning AMC 6 and then AMC 9. I see the channels from AMC 9 -- RTV, TUFF, and the news feed -- on the list, but right above them I see channels that are from Galaxy 28, not AMC 6. I've never tried the multiple satellite scan option, but this doesn't make any sense to me. In your picture of the satellite list, the positions are correct -- AMC 6 at 72, AMC 9 at 83, Galaxy 28 at 89 -- so what's up with that?

 

[Anole]

random thoughts for your project

The other thing is, WHY does this thing with a dish half the size I'm using, get the Louisiana PBS stations and my pc tuner does not?
I get all the other PBS stations on there including Montana and the other S2 stations. I tried putting the numbers in for that transponder on the pc and it says nothing found.

You have a receiver there, that many people have.
So, I'm wondering . . . if you'd been using this one in the past instead of your PC-based tuner, do you think the results with your 6' dish would have been a little more satisfying?

The format button changes the video output resolution/framerate of the receiver (480i, 720p, 1080i).
Problem is, there are several foreign resolution/framerate settings which North American monitors won't display.
When it hits one of those settings, the screen goes blank, and you can't see what you're doing.

As best I can tell, my (older) 42" HD TV will display the foreign formats just fine.
It would be worth verifying on your own HD TVs and those of your folks.
Of course, old 4:3 standard def sets with a picture tube won't handle it, but they won't handle 720 nor 1080, either.

I found that the thing comes set up for a universal LNB. And you have to go in and edit that for each and every satellite in your list and this is a tedious process that requires a LOT of button pressing, it would be easy to mess this up and my folks would never, ever manage to accomplish this part of it alone. I had to change it one by one from universal to linear. Arrrrrgh!

Universal is what they use in the rest of the world.
I think only North America uses Standard.
Yes, it would be nice if there was an easy way to change it.
Maybe in the editor?

A setup for all the birds being "west" instead of "east" might be nice as well.
A global setup when you first get the unit.

As for remote control key-colors, I have a DTV converter box, with black buttons on a black remote.
Regardless what's printed on the keys, you cannot even find the keys in a low-light (TV-viewing) setting.
I have to turn the lamp up, and my eyesight is just fine! - :up
Let's put these key-designers in a semi-dark room and see if they can't come up with a better color scheme!

All or most of the satellites have the wrong names and that is very confusing.

I'm just waiting to see how much your folks wear out the motor, surfing through all the channels!
Anyone would when the box it new.
And of course, they'll have no guide to help 'em.
But if either of them is an inveterate channel-surfer, what's gonna happen when they run out of channels on the main bird and then there's a long delay 'till the next one comes up?
You may have to train 'em to be patient?
Yea, like an old bird is gonna learn a new trick! -

I'm gonna suggest maybe you be very careful how you setup the Favorite List.
Try to name their channels so they'll know to expect a motor-delay.

Dad asked me tonight about putting up a C-band and I told him that that can also be done later and that I want him to run two wires NOW so that if he decides to go with a C-band, at least that part will already be done.
Running wires is not fun.
Maybe they should run three wires just in case.
I think they could do fine with a single C-band without a motor that is permanently aimed at 87.
We could put a dual output lnb on it so they could both access it at the same time from two different tuners.

Well, a dual-output LNBF on a C-band dish would bring you to three coax, right there.
If you should ever want to motorize the dish, two big motor wires and some feedback sensor wires would be nice to have.
If Dad is going to dig up the yard and put in some plastic pipe, might as well make it big pipe and pre-load it with all the good stuff.!. - :up

...I have a feeling that Mom is going to put her foot down and demand a second ku system.

She will hate two dishes...
... but she will hate sharing.
Wonder what'll give?!

Could you add a fixed Ku dish somewhere just for 30°w, that they could share?
Maybe on the roof of the garage, or elsewhere?
With a dual LNBF, they could share it with no problems.

And how will she put up with a giant BUD, regardless of what channels it can get?
You know, the fixed-BUD idea does have some merits.
You have a 10'er, but with the new more sensitive tuner, they might do okay with an 8'er or a 7½ size.
You have a spare pole in your back yard, and could evaluate a potential dish for them right there!.

Don't know if you've been reading the forum too much, but use of an ortho feed gives better results on small dishes.
While the C2 is fine and does a good job, if you were pressured into a small BUD by the folks, ya might have a solution.
I'm not a big proponent of 6' dishes, but some are reporting pretty good results when combined with a C-band ortho feedhorn and two LNBs.
I would actually suggest a 7½ or 8' to the 6'ers around, but it's something to think about for the old folks.
( mesh: maybe, perforated: probably, or solid: for sure)

I also need to see if I can figure out how to put a portable disk on it and record shows and play them back.
I have my dad's portable 300gigabyte disk over here, it's USB so hopefully it will work.

Nothing is perfect. I don't think the timer problems have yet been resolved.

 

[Jim S.]

I should mention, on the subject of hard drives, that one with its own power supply may be required unless she has one that uses very little power.

 

[Phottoman]

OK, Dee-Ann, I have to say something about you wanting the Az Box. You are now experiencing something new with the s9, but BEFORE YOU GO OUT AND SPEND A LOT OF MONEY ON ANOTHER NEW TOY there is basically only one thing the Az does that the s9 doesn't, and that is 4:2:2 and that is MAINLY sports. Oh, I forgot, you LIVE for sports, I forgot that. OK. go get the Az and forget I said anything.

Seriously, to pay twice the price of the s9 and only come up with sports, you should really do some thinking about that. This is an OPINION only, your's may vary, but look into what I am suggesting before spending all that money.

Well, there IS the timer thing, but in all the time I have had mine (got it at Thanksgiving time last year, 7 months ago now) I seriously haven't had a problem with recording anything by timer. If it came down to I HAD TO HAVE THAT PROGRAM, it is inconvenient to go in and reset the timer but I haven't seen the necessity for doing that, YET. hey, you can only watch so much TV, right? And the time isn't that hard to reset if it came to that, just the inconvenience of HAVING to reset the time. But you CAN record on the fly.

When you hit the "Record" button on your remote, it will start recording. If you want it to record and then stop (without setting it as a timed recording for when you are asleep) hit the 'record' button a second time. The screen will show a clock sort of thing. ("00:00"). That is NOT minutes and seconds, it is HOURS and minutes. So if you start to watch, say, IRT, and you want to record it to watch later while you are doing something else, hit the record button a second time and set it for "00:57" and it'll record 57 minutes, and shut off the recorder WITHOUT resetting the time.

OR ... you can hit the record button and by default it records two hours, and shuts off the recorder without resetting the time, OR ... you can STOP the record by hitting the button with the solid square without resetting the time. It will ask if you are sure you want to stop, just click "yes" and it stops.

One other thing, when you have the hard drive (or USB) connected to the receiver, you automatically have a "timeshift." (another reason for giving them the USB) and you can back up live shows for two hours, then it will start to 'record' over the previous time, but you'd still have two hours of timeshift built in, you don't have to set anything on the receiver for this to happen.

As for you keeping the USB thumb drive and four-way-switch, don't be cheap (he said with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek), they WILL need both sometime in the future, they will need a back up for their programing, JUST IN CASE mom hits a wrong button (remember, you've done that yourself), if they have everything on a thumb drive, you don't have to be there to reinstall their basic needs. And you are already telling us they will want more dishes, the switch came with their receiver, they are not so expensive that you should take theirs when they will need it eventually.

Also, depending on the size of the USB thumb drive, they can record a few programs to go back too later if one of them is gone while a program is on.

H*****y I assume is History Channel, we CAN talk about things listed on Lyngsat and in The List, no secrecy needed for that. And just because you don't like some of their programming, you DO like IRT and a few others, let them make up their own minds on what Mom will allow and Dad wants to watch.

Some one will have to jump in here and tell you the www name for Frys Electronics, Phottoette does the ordering here not me, but they often have some wonderful savings on hard drives in various sizes. We use a 500G in the livingroom for the CNX DUO, but we have a 1T in the bedroom for recording, neither were over $100 when purchased, and you need LARGE hard drives for recording HD stuff. Just make sure it has an external power source, not powered from the receiver, those in most cases will not play nice with the s9.

Lastly (I think), when you set up their Favorites List, try to arrange the channels so that they are on the same satellite, rather than say Tuff TV, then History, then RTV then NBC or ABC News. This way there will be less time between switching channels and having the dish move between each channel just in case they decide to channel hop. Just a suggestion.

Good luck and have fun with this, as I think you will.

Photto

 

[Dee_Ann]

I was confused by the last picture in your previous post, that shows it scanning AMC 6 and then AMC 9. I see the channels from AMC 9 -- RTV, TUFF, and the news feed -- on the list, but right above them I see channels that are from Galaxy 28, not AMC 6. I've never tried the multiple satellite scan option, but this doesn't make any sense to me. In your picture of the satellite list, the positions are correct -- AMC 6 at 72, AMC 9 at 83, Galaxy 28 at 89 -- so what's up with that?

Gosh, I have no idea what was the cause of that. This is all totally new to me and still mostly a big mystery. I wish I could give you an answer for that but I just can't because I do not know..

 

[Dee_Ann]

Wow! There's a lot of stuff to address here!

You have a receiver there, that many people have.
So, I'm wondering . . . if you'd been using this one in the past instead of your PC-based tuner, do you think the results with your 6' dish would have been a little more satisfying?

No.. I am convinced that that dish is damaged as a result of my clumsy attempts to assemble it and then more so from months of laying out in the back yard getting dragged around every few weeks to new spots so it wouldn't kill the grass. It was banged up and doomed from the very start before it was ever placed on the pole.

As best I can tell, my (older) 42" HD TV will display the foreign formats just fine.
It would be worth verifying on your own HD TVs and those of your folks.
Of course, old 4:3 standard def sets with a picture tube won't handle it, but they won't handle 720 nor 1080, either.

I have no idea of the brand of TV they own, I do know it's a small flat screen, it may be a 19" or 21". It's wide like my flat screen, not squarish. They used to have a 19" square TV before the digital nonsense then replaced it with the flat screen. The wall, is a bookcase so they are forever locked into a small screen with no option to have a bigger screen. They don't care though and are fine with the small screen.

I haven't hooked their tuner to my flat screen because it would be a huge pain, the screen is bolted to the wall and it's almost impossible to get to the connectors on it. There's no real easy way to do it. Nothing is ever easy in this house..

I can also say that I pressed that Vformat button a few times just to see what it would do and BAD things happen. After I blocked the button, I found myself accidentally pressing it countless times over the past few days as I experiment with their new tuner. Blocking the button was a good idea. I did find in the tuner setup an option for "auto" on the screen size. Apparently it knows what it's connected to and can adjust itself. Good idea, I think..

Universal is what they use in the rest of the world.
I think only North America uses Standard.
Yes, it would be nice if there was an easy way to change it.
Maybe in the editor?

A setup for all the birds being "west" instead of "east" might be nice as well.
A global setup when you first get the unit.

I agree. There is an option to set all the satellites to USALS motor, there should be an option to set all the LNB settings to whatever it is you use. One would assume that if you set all the satellites to USALS that you are using a single dish and a single LNB. Right?

As for remote control key-colors, I have a DTV converter box, with black buttons on a black remote.
Regardless what's printed on the keys, you cannot even find the keys in a low-light (TV-viewing) setting.
I have to turn the lamp up, and my eyesight is just fine! -
Let's put these key-designers in a semi-dark room and see if they can't come up with a better color scheme!

I think they don't care, they just design this stuff on paper and never actually try them out first. I would bet they design the remotes with only the maximization of profit in mind.

I'm just waiting to see how much your folks wear out the motor, surfing through all the channels!
Anyone would when the box it new.
And of course, they'll have no guide to help 'em.
But if either of them is an inveterate channel-surfer, what's gonna happen when they run out of channels on the main bird and then there's a long delay 'till the next one comes up?
You may have to train 'em to be patient?
Yea, like an old bird is gonna learn a new trick! -

I'm gonna suggest maybe you be very careful how you setup the Favorite List.
Try to name their channels so they'll know to expect a motor-delay.

I'm pretty sure they will stay mostly on PBS and History with a few looks at RTV though with the new changes on RTV, not a lot. But then again, I can't speak for them, they may like a lot of stuff on RTV. So there will be a lot of back and forth between 101 and 125..

I am going to spend pretty much a whole day over there teaching them how to do stuff with it.
They are NOT very savvy with stuff like this. Dad used to be a TV/radio repairman when I was little but the times have left him far, far behind. Mom has trouble with a very basic cell phone.

This is going to be fun..

Well, a dual-output LNBF on a C-band dish would bring you to three coax, right there.
If you should ever want to motorize the dish, two big motor wires and some feedback sensor wires would be nice to have.
If Dad is going to dig up the yard and put in some plastic pipe, might as well make it big pipe and pre-load it with all the good stuff.!. -

I went over there today and used my iPhone to verify that they will be able to see the satellites. On the side of the house where the air conditioners are it is fenced off from everything and hidden from view. Mom doesn't have anything planted over there and never goes on that side of the fence. The only one that ever goes there is Dad to mow the grass or work on their ever troublesome air conditioners.

She'll never even see the dish except when driving up the street for a few seconds.

It will be right next to the house so he won't have to bury the wires. It won't be any big deal to drill a hole and run the wire through the wall, then it will go through the suspended ceiling and down behind the bookcase to the tv and tuner. Running the wire will be pretty simple, so he says... If they decide to add more dishes in the future, it won't be a problem.

She will hate two dishes...
... but she will hate sharing.
Wonder what'll give?!

Could you add a fixed Ku dish somewhere just for 30°w, that they could share?
Maybe on the roof of the garage, or elsewhere?
With a dual LNBF, they could share it with no problems.

And how will she put up with a giant BUD, regardless of what channels it can get?
You know, the fixed-BUD idea does have some merits.
You have a 10'er, but with the new more sensitive tuner, they might do okay with an 8'er or a 7½ size.
You have a spare pole in your back yard, and could evaluate a potential dish for them right there!.

Actually, a few months ago when I first began to talk seriuosly about getting satellite and I explained about time sharing a single dish, my mom quipped up first "Two of everything!" She was 100% for having two totally independent systems so they could each watch different things.

I have already suggested to my dad that he should keep an eye out for a 7 or 8 foot mesh dish. A 10' dish is far too big to put on the side of their house but a 7 or an 8 could be done and with it hidden behind the fence, my mom wouldn't be against it.
I'm going to keep an eye out on Craigslist for one for them. If they could get the goodies on 87 that would be the icing on the cake.

Wires aren't really a problem with where the dish (and maybe future dishes) are going.

Don't know if you've been reading the forum too much, but use of an ortho feed gives better results on small dishes.
While the C2 is fine and does a good job, if you were pressured into a small BUD by the folks, ya might have a solution.
I'm not a big proponent of 6' dishes, but some are reporting pretty good results when combined with a C-band ortho feedhorn and two LNBs.
I would actually suggest a 7½ or 8' to the 6'ers around, but it's something to think about for the old folks.
( mesh: maybe, perforated: probably, or solid: for sure)

Nothing is perfect. I don't think the timer problems have yet been resolved.

I have seen you guys talking about ortho but I do not understand what they are or what they really do. It's a level of technical that is way above my head so I just glance over it and move along to simpler things. And I do not know what a "C2" is but I will try to find out.


Thanks!

(Whew~! That was a LOT of stuff!)

 

[Dee_Ann]

I should mention, on the subject of hard drives, that one with its own power supply may be required unless she has one that uses very little power.

My dad has an external USB disk for his laptop that has a power adapter you plug into the wall. It's only 300 gigabytes though so I don't think it will be much for keeping permanent copies of things but should be plenty ok for time shifting..

 

[Dee_Ann]

OK, Dee-Ann, I have to say something about you wanting the Az Box. You are now experiencing something new with the s9, but BEFORE YOU GO OUT AND SPEND A LOT OF MONEY ON ANOTHER NEW TOY there is basically only one thing the Az does that the s9 doesn't, and that is 4:2:2 and that is MAINLY sports. Oh, I forgot, you LIVE for sports, I forgot that. OK. go get the Az and forget I said anything.

Seriously, to pay twice the price of the s9 and only come up with sports, you should really do some thinking about that. This is an OPINION only, your's may vary, but look into what I am suggesting before spending all that money.

First off, the S9 tuner is not mine to keep, it belongs to my parents and is going to their house by the end of this week, never to return to my house.


Secondly, you are right, I have less than zero interest in any sports. You couldn’t make me watch sports for money or under threat of bodily harm. So the 4:2:2 stuff is of no interest to me at all. It’s not even part of my consideration for the Azbox.

What I want an Azbox for is that it is the only thing I have seen that will let me tune in satellite ~and~ OTA on a single device.

The Azbox will automatically adjust the picture to fill the screen of my flat screen. The pc, does not. Using the pc, there is a large black border around the picture no matter what the resolution of the broadcast. When I use it purely as a TV set, it adjusts to what the OTA stations are sending. But when I tune those same stations in on the pc, there is that ugly border. And yes, I have tried ALL possible settings in the my theater app. The settings that approach filling the screen cause severe distortion on the sides, it’s a fisheye effect and it makes me nauseous.

I absolutely HATE the inability of the pc to put a properly scaled picture on my flat screen tv.

Another thing, it allows for complex and unusual switch settings, like what I have.

I downloaded some of the Azbox utility apps and looked at them and I see that it is a powerful machine with a LOT of options and capabilities.

Another interesting feature is that it allows for watching internet videos, such as the White Springs internet videos. The My Theater app does not at all allow you to watch internet videos of any sort. Besides, the pc is broken, I don’t know what he did but last time dumb dumb was here he broke the windows home theater part of it and now it won’t play ANY windows videos anymore. It also tells me the windows home theater app is missing and that windows media player is not installed anymore. I can’t figure out how to install it, everything I have tried has not worked. It WAS working before. I used to use it a lot. Windows is totally messed up. I really want to just wipe it out and start over new. I can’t stand this new windows. The xp worked fine before, this new stuff, I hate.


Another thing I see it does is it lets you watch videos you have saved on your pc. And it can record shows directly to a pc. I think. That it can share files with a pc is a big, big plus. I have a lot of recordings saved on the pc and the My Theater app, while it can record them, playing them back is a horrible pain. You can not use the remote control at all to browse or play back ANYTHING. You have to use a mouse and keyboard to play anything back so if you have a tv in another room from the pc, forget about it. What a horrible, ill thought out design! Yuck!

Well, there IS the timer thing, but in all the time I have had mine (got it at Thanksgiving time last year, 7 months ago now) I seriously haven't had a problem with recording anything by timer. If it came down to I HAD TO HAVE THAT PROGRAM, it is inconvenient to go in and reset the timer but I haven't seen the necessity for doing that, YET. hey, you can only watch so much TV, right? And the time isn't that hard to reset if it came to that, just the inconvenience of HAVING to reset the time. But you CAN record on the fly.

When you hit the "Record" button on your remote, it will start recording. If you want it to record and then stop (without setting it as a timed recording for when you are asleep) hit the 'record' button a second time. The screen will show a clock sort of thing. ("00:00"). That is NOT minutes and seconds, it is HOURS and minutes. So if you start to watch, say, IRT, and you want to record it to watch later while you are doing something else, hit the record button a second time and set it for "00:57" and it'll record 57 minutes, and shut off the recorder WITHOUT resetting the time.

OR ... you can hit the record button and by default it records two hours, and shuts off the recorder without resetting the time, OR ... you can STOP the record by hitting the button with the solid square without resetting the time. It will ask if you are sure you want to stop, just click "yes" and it stops.

I use the timer on my pc a LOT. LOTS and LOTS... I have shows that I automatically record each day and some shows only once a week and then every single day the pc changes channels all by itself all day and night around the clock, across the calendar. Like at 3pm it changes channels to view People’s Court then at 4pm it changes to view Judge Joe Brown, at 5pm it changes to the local news, at 5:30 it changes to ABC Evening News and so on... I don’t have to touch a thing, I just sit and watch as my favorite shows appear all automatically. That is the ONLY thing I like about this app. Well, that and it can use satellite and OTA and my weird switches.

And really, there are so many other things it can do too..

One other thing, when you have the hard drive (or USB) connected to the receiver, you automatically have a "timeshift." (another reason for giving them the USB) and you can back up live shows for two hours, then it will start to 'record' over the previous time, but you'd still have two hours of timeshift built in, you don't have to set anything on the receiver for this to happen.

The thumbdrive that came with the tuner is too small to be of any use. My dad has three or four thumbdrives already and what they are going to use is an external USB disk drive, 300 gigabytes worth so they can keep recordings for the long term and time shift a LOT..

As for you keeping the USB thumb drive and four-way-switch, don't be cheap (he said with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek), they WILL need both sometime in the future, they will need a back up for their programing, JUST IN CASE mom hits a wrong button (remember, you've done that yourself), if they have everything on a thumb drive, you don't have to be there to reinstall their basic needs. And you are already telling us they will want more dishes, the switch came with their receiver, they are not so expensive that you should take theirs when they will need it eventually.

Also, depending on the size of the USB thumb drive, they can record a few programs to go back too later if one of them is gone while a program is on.

I’m keeping a back up copy of their configuration and setting lock codes on important things so it’s more difficult for them to mess things up. I’m giving them the codes of course so they will have to intentionally enter them to make big changes to anything. But worse comes to worse, I have a full back up of their settings saved and can drive over and restore them if need be.

The switch, I have an idea about using it for myself. I can’t see them using a switch though. If they do ever need one, I’ll get them one that is best suited for their needs. At most, I seem them maybe needing a 22k Encoda switch like I have to switch between a C-band and a ku dish. Their needs will never be all crazy like mine. I’m not worried.

H*****y I assume is History Channel, we CAN talk about things listed on Lyngsat and in The List, no secrecy needed for that. And just because you don't like some of their programming, you DO like IRT and a few others, let them make up their own minds on what Mom will allow and Dad wants to watch.

Some one will have to jump in here and tell you the www name for Frys Electronics, Phottoette does the ordering here not me, but they often have some wonderful savings on hard drives in various sizes. We use a 500G in the livingroom for the CNX DUO, but we have a 1T in the bedroom for recording, neither were over $100 when purchased, and you need LARGE hard drives for recording HD stuff. Just make sure it has an external power source, not powered from the receiver, those in most cases will not play nice with the s9.

They are 100% free to make up their minds. I was just letting Dad know that The History Channel is changed a lot from what it used to be. Dad likes war stuff. Thankfully there isn't that much of that left there anymore. In a few days they will see for themselves. Who knows? Maybe Dad secretly likes IRT. Maybe he likes to leer at Lisa. I don’t know..
There’s a lot of stuff up there for them to explore and I’m sure they will eventually make changes to their favorites list. I’m going to teach them how to add, edit and delete things and that will ultimately be in their hands to deal with. I’m not trying to censor or control them..

Lastly (I think), when you set up their Favorites List, try to arrange the channels so that they are on the same satellite, rather than say Tuff TV, then History, then RTV then NBC or ABC News. This way there will be less time between switching channels and having the dish move between each channel just in case they decide to channel hop. Just a suggestion.

I did precisely that. All in order, by channel, by satellite. Easy-peasy...

Good luck and have fun with this, as I think you will.

Photto

HA! Fun? Dealing with old people trying to teach them new stuff like satellites?? Woa.....
Talk about the blind leading the blind!

Yeah, it will be fun.. But, I owe them more than I can ever repay them so I just have to grin and bear it. It will work out just fine though.. They are going to be very happy with their satellites..