Satellite TV hardware Pattaya area

[Litlos]

So with building a house a bit South East of Pattaya and need to look at satellite TV, mostly for the Thai soaps for the TGF, but will probably put something a bit better in in case I want to update later.

I already have an Android box, but believe that the internet may be a bit slow in the area, but will not be able to confirm this until I move in. Also not interested in soccer or rugby. I will have 4 TV outlets in the house, though initially only 2 TV's. All my cabling is coming back to a patch panel setup for coax and Cat6.

My research so far seems to lead me to look at about a 1.8m dish with maybe dual vertical and horizontal LNB feeding a Diseqc switch to provide the feeds to each TV point, a 3x4 switch will also allow me to plug in a terrestrial TV antennae as well if needed . At the TV point I can then decide on which box I use for decoding the satellite.

For the dish I think it needs good view to the south west for the normal Thai satellite. Maybe a rotator later though I am really hopefully on being able to use IPTV.

So any hints welcome and especially if there are any up to date information on satellite shops that know what they are talking about and not super expensive. I believe there is a good shop over in Ban Chang near the offshore bar so that is my fall back option. I am regularly coming down from BKK to see how the build is progressing, so can look in either BKK or Pattaya areas.

Cheers

[lopburi3]

You can get a good overview using translations of 9sat website as they provide most systems at reasonable cost. You have good tuners by both GMMZ and PSI for normal C-band free channels and can add to both with subscriptions if wanted. Believe you 1.8 dish and feed to the four outputs from combiner/splitter should work fine (I run 7 sets without additional amplifier). As dish and wire should not cost much I would use a local shophouse as they will have the required tuning receiver and know how to mount - sorry can not be help on specific place as live in Bangkok.

[RichCor]

A 1.8m dish (C-Band) can also be used to C-Band and Ku-Band signals from nearby satellites without needing to repoint (motorize) the dish. The great thing about those 'switches', they're designed to allow multiple feeds from almost 'anything' to be directed to almost anything.

Currently I use a C-Band dish with dual-feed LNB on Thaicom 5/6 and a dual-feed Ku-LNB mounted nearby on the same dish that looks at NSS 6. My IPM HD DTV-S2 receiver uses the Diseqc switch setting to automatically remotely select the proper feed when channel surfing. No need to specify the SAT with that receiver, it displays ALL the receivable channels from all the enabled birds.

[astral]

I wonder if you really need a 1.8m dish?

1m is usually enough for the Thai channels on C-band

IME the wire dishes for C-band do not perform well at the higher frequencies of Ku band

[lopburi3]

Believe 1.5 is the smallest mesh dish normally used here in Bangkok - 1.8 is better for multi outputs. The Ku band dish is normally 60cm. But you do get more than just Thai channels.

[johng]

I wonder if you really need a 1.8m dish?

1m is usually enough for the Thai channels on C-band

IME the wire dishes for C-band do not perform well at the higher frequencies of Ku band

Depends on the size of the holes in the mesh ...from memory anything over 1cm will let KU band signals through and so be less effecient.

[Litlos]

Thanks for the replies. I went down to Pattaya to look at the house and my tablet would not connect to 3g, so reduced to using the phone for the internet and as I suffer from fat fingers gave up on trying to do any typing replies.

I asked the builder about installing a dish as he has some good ideas. No problem to put a support through the roof and as will be black mesh against charcoal tiles will not even notice it unless you are looking. I did a quick check and for KU 18ghz is the upper frequency which equates to 16.6mm wavelength, so if I keep the mesh size below 8mm should not have to many problems with slippage. So looks like I can get a 1.8m mounted virtually out of sight and the prices do not look to be to much different.

I had already tried the 9Sats site using google translate on my work computer in the Middle East, complete gibberish was the result, went back and had another look at home on my PC and a much more readable result, so it looks like our IT people have messed something up somewhere, again.

I like the sound of the IPM receiver doing things automatically, so will probably investigate that one for as well for at least one of the receivers. I may go for a wander down to Chinatown on the Weekend as I have heard there are several shops there that sell equipment and I might even get lucky and find someone who speaks English.

Cheers

[RichCor]

[...]

I like the sound of the IPM receiver doing things automatically, so will probably investigate that one for as well for at least one of the receivers. I may go for a wander down to Chinatown on the Weekend as I have heard there are several shops there that sell equipment and I might even get lucky and find someone who speaks English.

Cheers

As I wrote, the IPM receiver channel menu will display all of the enabled channels on an integrated channel menu. The receiver takes care of the necessary switching. I'm sure that IPM isn't the only receiver that does this. I only know that the non-HD boxed I have (gmmz, psi) require the user select the satellite they wish to view (a real pain on a multi-sat c-Ku system).

Oh, and there's no shame adding in one or two small Ku dishes if the main dish offset bounce doesn't work for you. Just add all the feeds into your Diseqc switch network.

[lopburi3]

I suspect the reason for having to select is that it is an automatic system with OTA updating (PSI/GMMZ/CTH) and needs no operator intervention for most people. If they have C-Band that is what you would want to use as provides 3 times the number of channels and all the Ku band material is also on C-Band without rain fade issues now that the new bird is in place.