Bored Of Ubc

[marquess]

For the last five years I have had UBC, the package that orginally cost about 1300 and has now gone up to 1500 per month. At the moment I have a little black box and no sat dish. I am however truely fed up with UBC, the last strall was last weekend with I did not get to see Federer v Nadal live, due to the lack forethought programming, in addition there is no coverage of the world championship snooker. If one is a an ardent football fan then one doesn't have a problem;but tennis fans like me tend to suffer outside of the grandslams. Want I want to do is have UBC on a satellite system. Like the kind that one commonly finds in Pattaya, for on such a system I have seen people picking up Eurosport and a couple of other sports channels, which seem to be beyond the narrow minded, football football coverage to the detriment of everything else. At least I will be able to get to watch some womens' tennis live for once. I live in Northern Bangkok, does anyone have a satellite in that area, and if so what sport channels can you get that are beyond UBC's control and how much does it all cost??

[Firefoxx]

UBC has the sat service (DTH), which is essentially the same as the digital analog service, with the exception that you can have it anywhere and it's susceptible to the whim of the weather. My relatives have it, and if it's a bit overcast, there is signal interruption.

There is sat programming outside UBC, and you can get it with a generic dish and sat box. The box may also have a slot for which you can put in a UBC smart card to also get the UBC DTH programming. Maybe this is what you want? Again, bad weather can ruin your day.

[Khutan]

A large dish will fix the atmospheric roblems to a certain extent, as there is more gain on the bigger dish. If you let them sell you a 7.5 foot dish rather than a 10 foot or bigger, then you will see the difference on rainy days.

You can use as a rule of thumb Pi r squared to calculate the area of the dish, and the bigger is the better.

From Experience, the stuff you will actually watch is not a great deal more. You can get ABC Asia Pacific on the Telkom Sat over Indonesia, and some Philippino Bible Channels on Agilua Ku, apart from that, the programming is simailr.

I am also interested if anyone can prove me wrong and say the locations of genuine Free To Air programming that is significantly different and can be seen from Bangkok, not the rubbish that needs special illegal crack codes.

Normally, when I connect to the Dish in Surin, I take my UBC Box and card and locate Thaisat 2/3 and watch UBC most of the time. When I want a Change I look at Telkom and watch the Australian Stuff.

[Thaigreg]

Hi,

Checkout JSAT (http://www.jsat.tv/) they are located in Bangkok. I think they have what you are looking for!

[xty]

If one is a an ardent football fan then one doesn't have a problem

Even I'm a football fan and had UBC sat dish since several months. It's not that I don't like English football but I'm getting sick and bored of those all 4-5 sports channels playing old matches over and over again! If only I can switch to better provider...

[marquess]

If one is a an ardent football fan then one doesn't have a problem

Even I'm a football fan and had UBC sat dish since several months. It's not that I don't like English football but I'm getting sick and bored of those all 4-5 sports channels playing old matches over and over again! If only I can switch to better provider...

I don't mind seeing the odd game of football, but like you said we are having it ramned down our throats. No, satellite seems the better option, as I have seen people picking up stuff like Euro Sport, which tends to show a bit more live. What has really got my goat, is that they could have shown the Snooker Championships live, it would have been on in the late evening, would have been better than showing Go Cart Racing and Ball Room Dancing, I am not paying 1500 per month to watch that! Just as I was leaving the house today at 1600 I caught the end of the last session of the World Champions on channel 35, which apparently they showed f rom 11.00 to 16.00, but of course there was not forewarning in the scheduling! These guys seem to be running the channel with, little if any regard for the veiwing figures, once they have your monthly subscription, tough luck. I am still awaiting a reply to my query about their programing!

[rainman]

i'd like to see an alternative to UBC channels as well ...what would be great is some UK- German- and Spanish-based TV channels in Thailand...can't be that difficult. i mean with today's technology ...come on.

[monty]

You'd be out of luck on getting the same channels you can get in Europe.

All European satelites are below the horizon when seen from Thailand, so not receivable.

So availability would rely on these channels being forwarded from sat to sat until they are on a satellite which is visible from Thailand.

Renting these satellite channels (called transponders) is extremely expensive, the reason why most countries have some kind of "world channel" so they only have to rent one transponder channel...

So we only get BBC world, Rai international, DW, for Dutch speaking people, the Belgian and Dutch TV had to hook up to make one international channel (BVN) to make it financially viable...

So watching anything European will be only possible through internet means, not easy with Thailands finnicky connections!

[The Coder]

A large dish will fix the atmospheric roblems to a certain extent...

I have never seen a UBC satellite TV work when it's raining, anywhere. Never was it more striking than in the world cup 4 years ago the signal was going out on all the big screens in Bangkok during the most important matches with millions of Thai's seeing nothing but a black screen. It goes out just as predictably in the most modern and nicest highrises in the city. The real problem does not appear to be dish size, but that UBC seems to have inappropriate frequency/bandwidth to cope with the atmospheric conditions normally found here. In California, with DirecTV and a tiny 0.5 meter dish I never once had a satellite signal cut out; it just never, ever happened. With UBC it is a very common experience and happens at the worst time; when it's raining and you have little else to do and want to turn on the TV.