Sick Of Ubc?

[chokrai]

Just some info- If your ubc goes out first try taking out the card cleaning it a bit if that doesant work try cutting off the power to the box not just turning the box off and on.This seems to work for me most of the time.

[johnjesse1]

Option.

Buy a satellite dish.

You can buy for only 19000 baht two satellite dishes. One small one who is fixed and you can received about 56 channels. Cinemax, HBO, Discovery etc. and many good radio stations.

(no Thai Subtitles, but Malaysian) Who Cares)

The large dish is for (all) Asian channels and you can receive some European channels too. About 140 channnels

The large dish is including rotor and you can move the dish to 5 differents satellites.

No Monthly payments and great tv

Enlightened one, I look forward to your great words of wisdom to save me from my monthly sacrifice to UBC, and give me access to the Universe.

[johnjesse1]

Option.

Buy a satellite dish.

You can buy for only 19000 baht two satellite dishes. One small one who is fixed and you can received about 56 channels. Cinemax, HBO, Discovery etc. and many good radio stations.

(no Thai Subtitles, but Malaysian) Who Cares)

The large dish is for (all) Asian channels and you can receive some European channels too. About 140 channnels

The large dish is including rotor and you can move the dish to 5 differents satellites.

No Monthly payments and great tv

Can barely wait for your information on buying dishes mentioned. Am as fed up with UBC as everyone else, but suddenly realised that by reading all the moans I becoming a masochist!

[megashox]

Just pick up any Thai newspaper and check the pages where they have all those small classifieds selling mobile phones, computers, etc. You can find at least 3-4 companies advertising their satellite dishes / decoders. Talk to their technician (not the ladies who answer the phone because they know nothing) and find out from him which channels are available. This also depends on the position & angle of your dish (rooftop, adjoining high rises, etc).

Select a 6ft dish + rotor function with access to beams from at least 5 different satellite paths. Those satellites have a nasty habit of going out of range - sometimes for weeks and its better to have some spare sources. With a 6ft dish latching on the footprint of 5 satellites, it's a good chance that you have access to over 100 channels. I have around 145 channels - No monthly fees & no garish slides during commercials!

I read somewhere that the near-monopoly actually reported a profit last year. Probably it was from raising their subscription fees and dropping some channels. Its like some restaurants that raise their prices and reduce the size of your helpings at the same time.

[andreasbkk]

Hi astral,

I have complained for years about the way the signal disappears when it rains. They say it is normal. I have a degree in electrical engineering, and I say it is not. The dish is too small to cope with the lower signal strength in rain. I reckon a 1m dish should do the job, not the 70cm one that UBC fits.

Yeah, I have complaint many time about the raining, and about the stupid information running when they is real adversitement behind. I would prefer the real advertisement instead of this crazy info about schools and nigro music.

And what about the movies. You have to watch the same movies three times at each channel...

Now, I have stopped payment coz they couldnt explain anything but the usual stuff. "Please try unplug etc etc..." My problem has nothing to with my equipment.

It seems like staff at UBS are quite stupid???

And nearly 1,500 Baht???

Cheers,

Andrew

[Up2U]

Just some info- If your ubc goes out first try taking out the card cleaning it a bit if that doesant work try cutting off the power to the box not just turning the box off and on.This seems to work for me most of the time.

I don't have a box, or any way to check what channels are available.

The building management supply a cable to my apartment and all I can do is change channels with the remote. Don't even know if I am getting a full package of channels.

Only four Eng. Lang Channels - CNN, Discovery, Star Movies and ABC Asia Pacific. There is another channel called 'Now' that has people on it talking some sort of language that sounds like English, but I do not understand what they are saying ....

I watch a lot of Eng. lang. movies on a Taiwanese channel, but that seems to have changed to mainly Chinese now.

That is why I am looking at satellite reception. Will folllow the advice to check out the Thai small-ads.

[jingjog]

The problem of fading UBC satellite reception is often, that the dish is not aligned 100% exactly.

I never saw Thai technicians using a sat level meter, but it´s necessary for bad weather reserve. Exerpt of extremly thunderstorm the original UBC dish is big enough.

In the Receiver menue there is an option to see signal strengh and quality to align the dish properly.

[Basher]

The problem of fading UBC satellite reception is often, that the dish is not aligned 100% exactly.

I never saw Thai technicians using a sat level meter, but it´s necessary for bad weather reserve. Exerpt of extremly thunderstorm the original UBC dish is big enough.

In the Receiver menue there is an option to see signal strengh and quality to align the dish properly.

But to get to this menu you need the password...

Mine is 2123 by the way, I wrote it down when the tech installed it.

I too am looking for a replacement for UBC and have been investigating it for months, there is nothing apart from Astro that offers the same choices...

Sad init

Bash

[ChiangMaiThai]

Why is it that there is only one provider for the English channels that are most desirable ie. ESPN, Star Sports, BBC, CNN, HBO, DISCOVERY. Why is there no competition whatsoever? Surely another company could do a better job than UBC.

[jingjog]

@ChiangMaiThai:

Ask Thaksin! It belongs to him mainly.

[RDN]

I have complained for years about the way the signal disappears when it rains.

Rain? My picture goes when it smells a little damp outside I can predict rain about 45 minutes in advance - time to nip down to the 7/11 for last minute shopping and get back before the rain actually starts...

[RDN]

The problem of fading UBC satellite reception is often, that the dish is not aligned 100% exactly. I never saw Thai technicians using a sat level meter, but it´s necessary for bad weather reserve. Exerpt of extremly thunderstorm the original UBC dish is big enough.

In the Receiver menue there is an option to see signal strengh and quality to align the dish properly.

My installer DID use the signal level meter - and got it to read 255 which was the maximum. But I still lose signal when it's cloudy or raining.

Mine is 2123 by the way.

Bu99er Mine isn't

[RDN]

My new neighbours (I have moved recently) both have big black satellite dishes and I spoke to the installer for one neighbour. He said his system (19,000 baht one-off payment - as mentioned already by

Woohooo! Schumacher has smashed his car!!! Sorry, back to the thread....

one poster) has all the channels of UBC and more and porno

Take a look at www.psisat.com or www.dynasat.com

[sbk]

The problem of fading UBC satellite reception is often, that the dish is not aligned 100% exactly. I never saw Thai technicians using a sat level meter, but it´s necessary for bad weather reserve. Exerpt of extremly thunderstorm the original UBC dish is big enough.

In the Receiver menue there is an option to see signal strengh and quality to align the dish properly.

My installer DID use the signal level meter - and got it to read 255 which was the maximum. But I still lose signal when it's cloudy or raining.

Mine is 2123 by the way.

Bu99er Mine isn't

Sorry to disagree with you jingjog but my parents use one of those little dishes in the US and they lose reception in heavy snow storms, as does everyone else in the area. I think it is just the nature of the dish.

[khunphilip]

There is an alternative satelite company called PSI, which has a motorised dish and a choice of 17 different saterlites. These include several saterlites that screen English speaking films and programs such as Frost, also ABC Pascific programs and BBC World.

I know that there is a shop in Udon Thani and I think there is one in Ban Dung also.

Hope this info is of some use.

Have PSI System in Chiangmai best to buy direct from PSI Shop made the mistake of getting one from Siam TV not installed correct so have to get PSI to put right problem with football and sports from indonesia channels super soccer and epsn scramble signals but get football from vietnam and burma has good news channels and english speaking movies.

F.T.P.

[Aikido]

we made the mistake of buying the UBC system just over a yr ago, now Im sick an tired of it, its too expensive the programs are all repeats,

there is the alternative that someone sugested of buying a big dish with a motor 2 people on our mo bann have done this one has a motor the other hasnt,

they seem to be happy with them.

even at the worst consider this even if the independant system is almost as bad as UBC when youve paid for it its free no monthly subscriptions that i think would ease the pain, this is definetly what we will do next time.

[Up2U]

Ask Thaksin! It belongs to him mainly.

Here is a list of shareholders :

Shareholder List

[RDN]

Now that it's steadily pi55ing down in Phuket, I have been able to do some investigation of the signal strength. If you use your remote and go to "Menu, Setup, Receiver Info, Signal Value", you get a number from 0 (presumbably) to 255.

My signal is now going up and down. When it goes as low as 180 I get the "No Signal" message and the screen goes blank. The value never goes lower than 180.

And I get the "Low signal" warning message as soon as the value drops to 242!

So why do they set it up at 255? Surely, 255 is only just good enough to get a good picture.

I get the feeling that the installer can get 255 whether the dish is in perfect alignment or several degrees off. I also think that the system has a bug (or is not well designed), and that 255 is the biggest number that it can display (because 255 is the maximum value for an 8 bit unsigned number) and that if the system could display more, then the installer could align the dish more precisely.

[jingjog]

RDN, that´s correct.

You should use a sat-level-meter to align the dish properly.

And I mean an external analogue or digital device.

[Lourens]

This is my experience and I don't see why it won't work in Thailand:

I live in the middle east and have obtained a card for my decoder from a satalite service in Africa. (Don't ask - I just did.) Then I went to this website:

http://www.satcodx.com/eng/

and found the name and position of the satalite this particular service broadcasts from.

As an example:

PANAMSAT 7, 10 (68.5E)

Selected Orbital Slot 68.5° East

Your Location (Thailand) 8° North, 100.5° East

Azimuth 257.43

Elevation 51.75

The foot print for this satalite and many, many other satalites are available from the website.

Then I had a guy with a sat-level-meter come and install a dish and LNB and about half an hour later, I could watch programming from home. Everything from coded movies to radio stations. The important thing here was to know whether transmissions was made in KU-Band or C-Band because the LNB should be either one of these as should be the card for the decoder. At a small added cost I had another dish with 3 more LNB's installed for other satalites which gave me around 600 free channels to choose from, mostly rubbish but the wife can get Thai Global TV and that keeps her happy.

I pay the network provider by credit card every six months by a 5 minute phone call and have never been happier. My plan is to do the same thing in Thailand the next time I go there. If it works here, it should work anywhere. Right?

[Ned]

Euro 2004 coming up and nothing on UBC apart from a few highlights. Looks like I'm doomed to watch hours and hours of shampoo and skin whitening cream adverts during the games on the Thai channels who have exclusive rights to the coverage. C'est la vie.

[thebear]

Euro 2004 coming up and nothing on UBC apart from a few highlights. Looks like I'm doomed to watch hours and hours of shampoo and skin whitening cream adverts during the games on the Thai channels who have exclusive rights to the coverage. C'est la vie.

Not sure if that's true about Thai channels having exclusive rights for Euro 2004 but go check out ESPN STAR (Football) right hand side they list the Euro 2004 matches and screening times based on Singapore/Hong Hong (+Thai time 1 hour)

[RDN]

Unbelievable ! It is pi55ing down in Phuket and I still have a signal on UBC. It is bucketing down!! I got UBC to come here on Monday to adjust the dish because I was getting "low signal" when it was a little humid outside, but now... I am genuinely gobsmacked! Well done UBC - now, if only you could do something about the crap you broadcast...

[royar2002]

.

Rain? My picture goes when it smells a little damp outside I can predict rain about 45 minutes in advance - time to nip down to the 7/11 for last minute shopping and get back before the rain actually starts...

UBC is a good local weatherreport