Comment to Martin Pickering at Satcure BACK to Satellite Page
Hi, Martin. Your new Digibox site seemed off line for a few days. Now that it's back I found it very interesting. It must almost be a couple of years ago I first found your site and bought various bits. I've had fun fixing and customising my GIRD3000, my similar older actual Pace and my Philips box (really a Pace too). Sky finally reduced price here in Ireland for Digibox from 400 IR Pounds to 50 IRP since 1st Sept 2000. Possibly because the UK freephone would be expensive in Ireland, or due to some other quirk, they not only DON'T require a phone contract, the Installer actually recommends NOT connecting to the Phone. It is connected to phone by installer's extension cable just for the initial validation.
Other differences: BBC1, BBC2, Choice, NEws24, Knowledge, C4 & C5 are not on EPG and don't work manually. (FTV, not FTA) R1, R2, R3, R4FM, R4LW, Ulster, Scot, Wales not on EPG, but work manually (Other Ch) (FTA, not FTV). R5 not on EPG or manually (FTV, not FTA) BBC Parliament not on EPG, BUT IT DOES work manually!! Even with phone line I believe we don't get the Email. I must try it.
I kept my analog system. The Sky guys botched the install and did two attempts of mounting the Dish! After they went I put LNB on arm on my existing 90cm dish which has 19deg and 13deg. The 19deg is an old LNB for the GIRD3000 and, even without a sky card, gets a worthwhile list of Stations. On the arm of the 90cm dish, the signal Quality went from 1/2 to nearly full and the signal Strength went from 1/2 to 3/4 full. The picture froze just once for about 2 minutes when the sky went black at 2pm and the heaviest shower I ever saw came down. BBC World on 13deg was almost pure noise and CH5 on analog lost videocrypt lock (though no card, it is still videocrypted, to stop analog non-decoder boxes working).
Generally the analog as good as the Digibox, but MPeg errors seem more common on some channels than others. These seem to be at originator.
I added a second dish with a wiper motor and Univeral LNB. At present it is fixed at 13 deg and I use a relay operated by an external transistor and the Scart Control pin to change LNB on Digibox. Later I will wire up motor, but Digibox has very limited symbol rates. Not as easy as Analog boxes to hack. I used casing of a cable TV splitter box for the relay as it is screen plus the screw connectors (F type).
I see that a Nokia box has been hacked and its SCSI port can transfer MPEG direct to PC or MAC. The digiboxes do have RS232 and a PCMCIA style slot at back, so potential is there if anyone hacks its software, for PC control (Or Martin's MAC), of functions and/or MPEG recording. The Pace box I got on 5th September is one of the faster ones and seems not to suffer most of the classic problems. I've had no problems switching to Hot Bird for Euronews.
We have 12 ch Analog MMDS on 2.4 GHz in Ireland. It's got a dipole feeding a LNB outputing on Band III / Hyperband (240 .. 350 MHz ?). You then can tune in any TV or VCR with VHF, different channels in different rooms. Some channels are scrambled, so it is piracy to decode them without subscription, but the 5 or 6 clear channels are obviously available to anyone able to pick them up. The signal is poor, so I am going to replace the pathetic 1/4" mesh 12" square dish with my redundant minidish, just mount 2.4G dipole where the horn used to be.