Question for CTH satellite subscribers

[rakman]

.... <snip>

Only one thing which helps, is a bigger dish. Every extra dB gain doubles your reception!

.....</snip>

For the record, 3db is a doubling of signal, 6 db would be 4x signal.

Signal strength bars are typically logarithmic, but vary in what the values are. For example, possibly a 10x improvement in strength ups a bar.

[Nomad97]

Paul1970. To reply to your original question I think your signal strength readings are fine. You posted:

Box 1

Strength 74-77%

Quality 54%

An easier way to see your signal strengths is on the bottom information screen when you exit the programme menu screen. Mine are of a similar order and I live in Surin.

When the man had finished installing the satellite dish he tuned in the set top box. He specifically drew my attention to the signal strengths and said words to the effect, "Do not worry, those are the maximum signal strengths you are going to get. The Vietnam satellite is further away other satellites and the signal strength will never be 100%."

[monty]

.... <snip>

Only one thing which helps, is a bigger dish. Every extra dB gain doubles your reception!

.....</snip>

For the record, 3db is a doubling of signal, 6 db would be 4x signal.

Signal strength bars are typically logarithmic, but vary in what the values are. For example, possibly a 10x improvement in strength ups a bar.

Whoops, indeed.

For example, in the case of the Jonsa brand (a rather big Taiwanese manufacturer of dishes), a 120 cm offset dish has almost 6 dBi more gain then a 60 cm dish,

So doubling in diameter results in about 4 times more signal!

[howzat]

It must be raining,I have no picture.

No only joking,I will have a butchers and report back later.

My figures about same as Paul from mid sukhumvit satelite in 6 floor. Picture seems ok with 54%

[crazykopite]

You would think in this day and age that all dishes could work in harmony I have now a CTH Dish and True Dish mounted on the same wall pointing in opposite directions however having had wall socket ariels built into the property I only have one coax line which then leads to all rooms ny body got any ideas would like to keep True as the wife likes the Life style channels ( Silver package )

Basically because the wiring to all your outlets was likely done wrong!

They often just "loop" the television cable around the house using splitters (or Taps) to every room. This way, every room gets the exact same signal, be it satellite dish or cable TV.

Instead, if each and every room would have one cable running to a central place, then what you want is easily done.

Simply feed any and all dishes/LNB's you might have to that central point, into a satellite multi-switch, and presto, in every room you have reception from all your satellite dishes through the one cable going to that room.

You do need a satellite installer who knows a bit more then average, as the receivers will have to be properly set up so that they can request the proper signal from the multi-switch.

So perfectly "doable" in this day and age as long as the wiring in your house is laid out properly.

Have managed to locate where each cable goes to it seems that when the true guys installed my dish a few years ago they made a short cut by just cutting into one of the cables Tomorrow I have an independent TV engineer coming tomorrow so heres hoping he will sort it out has quoted me 300 baht plus any splitters

Edited August 13, 2013 by crazykopite

[ThaidDown]

taotoo, on 11 Aug 2013 - 15:56, said:

paul1970, on 11 Aug 2013 - 15:39, said:

taotoo, on 11 Aug 2013 - 15:04, said:

Sorry to hijack this thread, but if my True box has 100% strength but only 18% quality, does that mean that my LNB has somehow got rotated?

My True box's all show a quality of 100% and the quality bargraph is near the bottom and underneath the bargraph a value of about 70e-07, the quality is being shown as BER or bit error rate so the lower the better. Mine box doesn't show quality as a %age so maybe we have different boxes.

Ah - I think I have the same box as you and therefore the low reading on the bargraph is a good thing... I must have just assumed it was labelled as % - the 70e-07 thing feels familiar.

Not to do with CTH box but to answer the above specifically, A higher reading on the quality graph is better, at 100, as mine usually is, the error rate is 0.0E-7, ie no errors. This is with a True HD box.

In heavy rain or raincloud conditions, in line of sight the Quality falls and the error rates increase.

Edited August 13, 2013 by ThaidDown

[paul1970]

Been looking into this and found some very useful websites, especially

http://www.satellite-calculations.com/

It looks as though the setup I propose to do (150 cm dish and high gain LNB) according to the calculators on the website above will have too much signal for the STB but wanting to make sure I minimize the chance of losing signal from rain fade I was thinking that I will keep the original CTH dish and have the 150cm dish both going through a disecq switch. In fact 3 dish's connected, original CTH, 150cm dish and original True dish.

The question I have is that will I be able to use the 2 dishes with the one CTH STB or does disecq only work to choose the one dish per STB ?

[ignis]

to make sure I minimize the chance of losing signal from rain fade

Just got back from a little airport, now those 2 dishes guess would be ideal ? must be about 5 meters across solid dish.. or would that be over kill ?

[monty]

Been looking into this and found some very useful websites, especially

http://www.satellite-calculations.com/

It looks as though the setup I propose to do (150 cm dish and high gain LNB) according to the calculators on the website above will have too much signal for the STB but wanting to make sure I minimize the chance of losing signal from rain fade I was thinking that I will keep the original CTH dish and have the 150cm dish both going through a disecq switch. In fact 3 dish's connected, original CTH, 150cm dish and original True dish.

The question I have is that will I be able to use the 2 dishes with the one CTH STB or does disecq only work to choose the one dish per STB

With a disecq switch you can make your receiver choose between many dishes.

Probably will need a bit creative thinking to set your box up.

You'll likely need to set up two "bouquets", each bouquet looking at a different dish.

In a normal situation, one bouquet would be the channels from one satellite (e.g. CTH), and the other bouquet the channels from another satellite (e.g.Truevisions)

In your situation, both bouquets will have the same transponders programmed, so you'll end up with two bouquets with identical channels, one "rainy weather" bouquet and one "good weather" bouquet.

[angryfarang]

After hours of playing around, I can't get more than 85% signal and 54% quality here in Samui.

This is with a 120cm solid offset ku-band dish. I tried both the sharp universal lnb (from CTH) and also a Technomate TM-2 high-gain 0.1db twin lnb. No improvement.

I spent about 2 hours today re-aligning my 120cm ku-band dish using a satellite finder meter. I also spent some time playing around with LNB skew and focus with no improvement.

There is also only 3m of cable from my stb to the lnb (it's on the wall directly opposite)

I guess if I want any higher, I need a bigger dish. I don't think you can get bigger than 120cm in Thailand. I've looked on-line with no joy.