The Advantages Of A Motorized Satellite System

Satellite systems have become a popular way to receive TV. There are subscriptions and viewing cards for a large range of different packages all around the globe, you probably have one too and are getting the channels with a dish. Most likely you have a small dish but that's often all that's required to watch the channels from your country because the footprint is centered around its targeted country. The interesting thing is that if you tried to turn the dish you would be able to get channels from another satellite, like from a different country. The horizon is full of satellites and free channels which very possibly don't require a big dish. The most viewed satellites in Europe are 13E and 19E which carries a large amount of FTA channels in different languages, like Spanish, French and Arabic. It perhaps does not sound interesting to watch the foreign channels. But now lets say you would die to watch a sports event that is not broadcasted on the viewing package you have but the match is on a FTA channel on another satellite, wouldn't it be great to watch it? Believe me there are a lot of channels out there. Its not that much fun having to go outside and manually rotate the dish each time between satellites. This is where motors come into action. There are different to choose from, such as DiSEqC, 36v H to H and actuators. DiSEqC are the most talked about and they are pretty good for dishes up to 90 cm. With this type of motor it uses your satellite receiver as power that runs on 12v/17v. The receivers have limited output power for the motor as it shares it with the LNB, this tends to make them slow and not as powerful as 36v H to H motors. Still its an easy and cheap upgrade as it uses the existing coax cable that already connects to the LNB on the dish. 36v H to H motors and actuators are more robust, can cope with higher wind loads and drive larger dishes and they use their own dedicated power via a receivers built-in 36v positioner. Many receivers don't have a built-in positioner but don't worry, in this case you could use a device like the V-Box. The advantage of the V-Box is the positions are stored inside it instead of into the receiver. So all the motors are made to do the same thing, tracking the satellite arc within 180 degrees. Its not possible to go further as all the other satellites would be below the horizon, meaning they are out of sight. Its a good preparation to plan where to put the dish so trees and buildings are not blocking view to the satellites you want to catch. If you get it all aligned correctly the dish will rotate to the satellites location as you hop channel. This will open up to a whole new world of satellite TV as you can tune into channels from many countries around the world. You are now only limited by the dish size. Visit Lyngsat to find out which dish diameter you need from your location for any targeted satellite. The larger dish you have, the more channels you will be able to view.

I should mention there are different types of bands, each of them working within different frequencies. C-Band are lower frequencies and often needs large dishes. Ku-Band which is the most common, works at higher frequency ranges. Both these bands have Vertical and Horizontal (Linear), Left and Right (Circular) polarization. LNB's are either Circular or Linear, you can still use both of them on the dish if you put the two LNB's next to each other. If you do this you can use a 2/1 DiSEqC switch, this will automatically inform the receiver what LNB to use for each type of signal. There are many choices of dishes, motors and LNB's but don't give up its not as difficult as you might think. The sky is containing loads of satellites and frequencies that anyone can watch with the equipment currently available on the market.