Ubc Outtage

[dippy]

My UBC has spent all day Searching for a signal. Now i know it's been bad weather here in Bangkok today but it's been all day. Not once has it came back on. Anyone else in BKK seeing this?

[jdinasia]

unplug your box ... wait 30 seconds ... plug it back in <total power down>

[dippy]

unplug your box ... wait 30 seconds ... plug it back in <total power down>

I'm in the soi 93 area and i think it's out all over here. What area are you in?

[astral]

Have you called UBC?

[phazey]

we've started having problems daily now. this morning at 8am it was flicking between searching for signal and the channel. happened last night at 18:00, and the night before.....twice i've had to power down the receiver as it had "hunh"...would not respond to any input either from the remote or front panel.....

[dvk1951]

Don't have the time to confirm but this may all be related to higher than normal solar flare activity. I seem to recall some verbage on the TV screen several days ago warning of temporary signal loss due to flares.

[jcgodber]

I am a non UBC user and am getting all of 900 + channels in whatever languages they are speaking. The problem is probably not solar flares

[Khutan]

....The problem is probably not solar flares

Sun Outages normally are only a few minutes, so I agree with you there.

My UBC does not work either. But I think that is because I had the equipment removed and the account terminated.

[robhudd]

Hello all

Sun Outages are caused not by solar flares but in the rare event that the sun and the satellite are in alingment. This should happen only a couple of times a year for a short period of time.

Cheers

[bkkmick]

jcgodber and khutan

Is there a decent alternative to UBC that has good english language content?

Cheers

[monty]

For those wanting to know if UBC is telling BS, check out this link:

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

So there are indeed sun outages this time of the year for the Thaicom satellite, but they only last from a bit over 2 minutes up to over 12 minutes.

Yesterday I was changing between satellites with my moving dish when suddenly some satellites simply dissapeared

Obviously Mr. Murphy took care I was changing right when an outage was occuring

Bkkmick,

There are several good options, the most popular being Astro (Malaysia), DreamTV (Philipines) and Multichoice (South Africa).

You can get official subscription cards for them with Astro and dream both being cheaper then UBC, while Multichoice is extremely expensive (over 40,000 Baht/year).

You can also receive them using some dodgy techniques, which we obviously are not allowed to discuss over here

[bkkmick]

Thanks Monty.

I don't suppose you have any URL's for BKK based representatives of Astro or DreamTV?

No problem if you don't, I'll have to dig deeper into Google to find one.

All the best

[monty]

Bkkmick,

here you go:

http://www.satthai.tv/satellite_n/sat_product.html

More info on the packages they can arrange:

http://www.satthai.tv/satellite_n/sat_prod...ard_menber.html

Contact them for more info, they do reply to e-mails in English

[Mobi]

Monty,

Two questions.

1. (If I've asked this before, please excuse me on the grounds of senility.) If I get a much larger dish (120cms?) for my UBC set up, will it improve the constant 'weather' outages that I currently suffer from?

2. This multichoice set up that you mentioned, was offered to me the other day by the local UBC rep. He said it has an incredible choice of programmes. But I'm puzzled on the 40k PER YEAR. If it's an annual subscription, it seems to suggest it's legal - otherwise why pay annually? Is it guaranteed to to work without the guys coming down from Korea to update the smart cards?

[nephilim]

My UBC went down about an hour ago and sure hasnt' returned, no matter what i try.

"customer" "support" are, of course, not answering.

[monty]

1. (If I've asked this before, please excuse me on the grounds of senility.) If I get a much larger dish (120cms?) for my UBC set up, will it improve the constant 'weather' outages that I currently suffer from?

probably yes. The 60cm they use is perfect in clear weather, but on the smallish side in rain weather. I hooked my official UBC decoder up to my 10 feet dish, and it has never ever dropped out on me, apart from the recent sun outages...

2. This multichoice set up that you mentioned, was offered to me the other day by the local UBC rep. He said it has an incredible choice of programmes. But I'm puzzled on the 40k PER YEAR. If it's an annual subscription, it seems to suggest it's legal - otherwise why pay annually? Is it guaranteed to to work without the guys coming down from Korea to update the smart cards?

I'm not sure what the UBC reps offered you, they certainly are not allowed to sell multichoice in Thailand

If you get an official smartcard you'll have a guaranteed working system.

Problem is that Multichoice transmits several channels of which UBC has the sole rights for re-transmission in Thailand (Hallmark, HBO,...). Hence Multichoice is not allowed to sell in Thailand.

So that means to get an official card, somebody in South Africa will have to subscribe, pay and the send the card to Thailand. These middlemen result in the inflated prices charged for the official cards in Thailand. (actual price in SA is around 5000 Rand/year, or 15000 Baht/year)

So no Korean engineers involved

Astro is available in the same way, but probably because Malaysia is pretty close, the extra to pay is very small...

P.S. extra davantage of multichoice is in the fact that they transmit on the c-band (big dish only) instead of the Ku-band. So no weather outages! Also image quality is many times better then UBC due to much less compression. UBC is at VCD quality while Multi transmits most channels at DVD quality. Especially watchabel on big screens!