Saturday 25 August 2012

David adds his 2 cents , he is an American

I'll add my 2 cents to the ongoing discussion. As a retired, now obsolete Electronic Engineer I used to know something about this subject.
I agree with those who say wait & see. The published 'footprints' may well be misleading. The ones for the current satellites show our area as being for more marginal than they are in actuality.
Another possible solution if the signal is marginal is to buy and install a larger dish. The larger the dish the weaker the signal it will pick up.
The 'anchor free' solution does work. ( In essence what this does is make it seem as if you are located in the Uk when you go onto the internet. Once online you can search for and use the BBC iPlayer. [don't know about ITV, but probably yes].
You can then watch live which is OK if you have a fast connection or you can download any program for later viewing if your line is slower (our supposedly 2Mb line is marginal). We did this for the Olympic opening when a thunderstorm knocked out the sat reception. Once downloaded playback is perfect. On my 19" monitor the picture is excellent. If you have an HDMI connection then you can get good playback from any computer.
It seems as if we won't have any definitive answers until around year end. as once the birds up they take quite a while for tweaking & testing.
David Hatfield