True Satellite Television

[phetaroi]

We just subscribed to True internet (which so far is very good for us) and True satellite television (which is not very clear).

What are any of your experiences in regard to the clarity of satellite t.v. here?

[scott_cos]

Two words - TRUE SUCKS! rain fade, poor programming, extremely bad customer service (for internet and TV). As much as I am against pirating - I watch TV programs off the Net now.

[longball53098]

I have been a True sat user for more than 3 years now and my picture is always clear. I loose the signal briefly in the heaviest of rain clouds which is normal for this type of system. Service has always been good both the signal and customer service. No complaints.

[monty]

If you come from regular cableTV then True visions will look pretty good.

But only because generally the quality of cableTV is utter crap...

In reality True is poor quality as well. They jam a lot of channels on one transponder, so you have highly compressed/low bitrate TV.

If you compare with Multichoice (South Africa), watched on big screen TV or projector, you'll see that the latter gives much sharper images, without compression artifacts...

The only one worse I ever came across (image quality wise) was the Philippine DreamTV network...

And the rainfade is there, but can't be helped! It's the nature of Ku band feeds. Biggest advantage of this Ku band is the small dishes needed, allowing a lot of condo dwellers to use it as they are small enough to fit on a balcony (if looking in the proper direction)!

C-band does not have rainfade, but needs a dish of 1.5 meters upwards...

[LivinLOS]

I have been a True sat user for more than 3 years now and my picture is always clear. I loose the signal briefly in the heaviest of rain clouds which is normal for this type of system. Service has always been good both the signal and customer service. No complaints.

Define clear ?? I do all kinds of computer based MPEG clean up filtering on the RAW digitial bitstream and I promise you.. its AWFUL.

But then some people can look at it on a 20 something inch lowdef set, or watch Thai cable TV and think its fine.

Go look at some 1080p highdef on a proper display.. Then look at UBC !! Hence why I download nearly all my viewing, only thing UBC supplies in the news.

[longball53098]

I will not define clear anymore than to say for me the picture quality on my 42 inch LCD is always "clear". No digital break ups except in the heavy rain and depending on what channel I am watching I can see blemishes and other things on the faces of actors. The definition of detail for me is acceptable for a broadcast signal.

[astral]

Anyone wanting more info on rainfade can read here, about half way down the page.

http://www.geo-orbit.org/sizepgs/Noise.html

Don't let True tell you it is normal.

Why don't they get it on the uplink, and they don't??

They use a bigger dish!!

70cm is the lower limit of size in Thailand.

[monty]

Anyone wanting more info on rainfade can read here, about half way down the page.

http://www.geo-orbit.org/sizepgs/Noise.html

Don't let True tell you it is normal.

Why don't they get it on the uplink, and they don't??

They use a bigger dish!!

70cm is the lower limit of size in Thailand.

Not entirely agree, and I don't think that the writer of that article is saying that either. He clearly states that in Mexico, even with his top notch Ku band receiver/dish/LNB combo, he still suffers a total outage in rainstorms.

And we know rainstorms over here are notoriously heavy (Mexico as well!!)

No rainfade on the uplink? Yep, very true. However the uplink sending unit has no limits as to dish size and output signal.

The transmitter on the satellite however has to run of the very limited solar power it has, along with the obvious limited dish size.

The uplink can simply blast through the rain, while the downlink cannot.

It is true however that a bigger dish will improve reception during rain, but if the rain is heavy enough there simply isn't anything to receive. The limited satellite output will be virtually 100% attenuated in the rain! You can then have as big a dish as you like with no reception at all.

Additionally, in my experience a high quality/low noise LNB will get you the same better reception as a big dish, and is much easier to install.

The UBC LNB's are utter Chinese made crap, and apart from poor reception and high noise levels, they get damaged very easy on top of this (lightning, even the little static from a strike hundreds of meters away can fry them).

[astral]

That is a good point about the LNB quality.

[Nevo]

Make sure your True Box is connected to your TV via the AV connection and not the ariel connection.

Had the box changed last week due to a fault and the picture was terrible. Called them back and they connected via AV. The picture is near perfect now.

[monty]

That's another thing with UBC (Truevisons), their receivers are not necessarily crap, they are just outdated.

Heck, even a 700 Baht DVD player nowadays has component video out!