big dish sattelite, worth it?

[whd507]

I have a big dish set up here at the house and a fairly new digital reciever (Motorola 4dtv) that I have never used. it tracks and moves and such, but I never looked into setting up service. is it worth it? I do need a new plastic cover on the outside reciever, but the rest of the setup is in good shape.

any opinions? my wife wants me to use it, or cut it down.

[MM03MOK]

1 or 3 meter? Who is the service provider? If you think you can just point the dish and receive a load of channels......most signals are scrambled (anything that's worth watching). You need to subscribe to a service, which authorizes viewing. If it can only look at one satellite at a time, you'll need to allow time inbetween "channels" for it to track.

[whd507]

I dont know which provider he was using, it all came with the house. I never found any un-scrambled signals when I was playing with it.

how much does a subscription cost? we have directtv, so we have as much tv as we can stand already.

If I could figure out how, and knew the correct settings, I would affix the hughesnet antenna to the big "dish" to see if a bigger dish would make it work better...

[MM03MOK]

Ah, you're already subscribing to a satellite service. The other popular one one is DishTV. I'm sure there are other subscription services out there.

C Band Dishes

C Band requires the use of a large dish, usually 6' across. C Band dishes vary between 3' and 9' across, depending upon signal strength.

Because C Band dishes are so much larger than Ku and Ka Band dishes, a C Band dish is sometimes referred to in friendly jest as a BUD (Big Ugly Dish).




http://www.tech-faq.com/c-band.jpg

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C-Band uses 3.7-4.2GHz for downlink and 5.925-6.425Ghz for uplink.



The lower frequencies used by C Band perform better under adverse weather conditions than the Ku bankd or Ka Band frequencies.

The Ku band downlink uses frequencies between 11.7 and 12.7GHz.



http://www.tech-faq.com/ku-band.jpg (http://www.tech-faq.com/ku-band.shtml)
Ku Band Dish Antenna Compatibility


If you have a solid dish, you should have no problem converting from C band, to Ku band.


However, with a mesh dish- if the "holes" in the mesh are greater than a quarter inch, the chances of computability are not in your favor, due to the fact that your dish won't reflect Ku-band signals properly.

http://www.tech-faq.com/ku-band.shtml

[sailsmen]

It's only good for one thing, a bird bath.

[hdwrenchtx]

they still make those?

[Raudermaster]

Dish sucks, don't bother with them. Direct TV was great, but if you can get Verizon FiOS, get that, you will never even look at a dish again.

[Aren Jay]

you can make a big parabolic mirror and warm you swimming pool.

[BLACKMARAUDER04]

Its Great For Getting Backhauls Of Basketball And College Sports, However It Is Just Like Any Other Dish Where You Need To Pay For Programming. I Have A Big C Band Dish That I Use For Backhauls And Nfl Sunday Ticket Otherwise I Have Cable Tv.