johanson
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Jun 13, 2012, 10:46 AM
Post #3 of 8
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It’s great news, YucaLandia. You know with DISH TV there is a satellite located at 110 degrees W, one at 119 and the third at 129 W. So depending upon your needs and whether the signal strength was strong enough in your location you would use a separate dish to point at each different satellite. Maybe 5 years ago I also had a DISH system and in those days it was recommended that I use a 4 foot on one, a 6 footer on another and on 129 W. I used my 8 footer. And yes even with satellite dishes this size the signals were marginal and often you would loose channels if it even thought about raining. As DISH upgraded their satellites, and shrank their bleed over into Mexico, I finally simply gave up my DISH subscription, brought the (not my) receiver back to the US and sent it back to the owners, DISH. Imagine now a standard Ku satellite positioned at 101 degrees West, that might have been the one you were pointed at. DirecTV now two has higher frequency, I think Ka band satellites located 1.8 degrees East and West of the Ku band broadcasting at about 20 megs as I recollect. Well the three are so close together that you are able to use one satellite dish with three closely positioned LNBs at the front of the dish. Here is a story I wrote on the subject in the Guadalajara Reporter last year.
Tech Talk by Pete Johanson Sat TV Breakthrough?
techtalk@laguna.com.mx
Do you remember in the early 1990s when we had to have 12 to 18 foot in diameter satellite dishes to pick up our “North of the Border” (NOB) English language TV programming and how now the Shaw Direct satellite dish, for example is only about 2 feet across when watching in Canada? And how the Dish and DirecTV satellite dishes are about the same size if you are watching the programming in the USA? That’s because the frequencies used increased from approximately 4 to 12 GHz. And with the frequencies three times has high (In oversimplified terms) the receiving satellite dishes need to be about 1/3rd as large. Sirius and XM radio use even higher frequencies and that’s one of the primary reasons their satellite antennas/dishes are even smaller.
But along with putting up satellites that broadcast at higher frequencies, therefore requiring smaller satellite antennas to receive the signal, the designers are getting better at focusing their signals on the intended country with less bleed-over into adjoining countries like Mexico.
So to counteract the very weak signals that bleed over into Mexico we need bigger satellite dishes. In fact we need such large satellite dishes to pick up the HD signals from DISH USA that many have given up on DISH altogether in central Mexico. Why? Because even with the largest Ku band satellite dish readily available, 2.4 meters (8 feet) in diameter one could not get reliable signals from the satellites carrying the HD programming
Guess what www.cp-electronics.com out of Guadalajara discovered? DirecTV USA has bounced up the transmission frequencies on some of its newer satellites to about 20 Gigahertz therefore requiring an even smaller receiving satellite antenna in the US. And here in central Mexico, one receives a reasonable signal on the 2.4 meter (8 foot) Ku band satellite dish, which is as explained above, not the case with some of the US DISH Network satellites carrying HD.
It gets better; while with DISH USA, if you want the standard and HD programming, one often has to have three satellite dishes each pointing at a different satellite, the three DirecTV geosynchronous satellites are so close together (the higher frequency satellites are positioned 1.8 degrees east and west of the center Ku band satellite) that you can pick up the signals from all three satellites at once from a single 2.4 meter satellite dish.
Warning: Just like DISH USA, DirecTV sends network programming for most cities on spot beams focused so tightly on those cities, that they’re not viewable more than a few hundred miles away from that city. It would appear that the only the cities of SF and/or NY are available in our area. Check with your satellite dealer to make sure.
My favorite satellite TV delivery system is still Star Choice (aka Shaw Direct) because I can get the network feeds for my home towns of Seattle and Vancouver plus most everything else I like to watch and on a small 2 by 3 foot elliptical dish.
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