With the imminent launch of Freesat this afternoon, the question is whether you will be able to receive the service at your location. Freesat has 98% coverage across the UK and only if you don’t have a clear line of sight to the satellite, will you not be able to get it. So, how do you check the clear line of sight? Just go to DishPointer, enter your address (street address rather than just postcode as the second part of the postcode is omitted) and then select 28.2E Astra from the satellite list. A satellite image map of your house should show up with a marker and a line indicating the direction of the Freesat satellite signal. You need a clear line of sight along this line. The big marker can be moved by clicking and dragging it to the exact location of your dish. The small marker is to calculate the maximum height of any obstacles along the line without interfering with the signal. “d” stands for distance to the obstacle and “h” for the maximum height it can have.

Example
There is a tree right on the line not far from your dish. You’ve dragged the marker and got “d” = 20m and “h” = 10m. Your dish is on the roof at a height of 8m.
This would mean that the tree is 20m away and that the tree must not be higher than 10m from the base of the dish or 18m from ground level. If it’s any higher than you’d have problems with the signal reception because there wouldn’t be a clear line of sight.

There is also a satellite help section on DishPointer.

The first time I heard about satellite broadband was about 15 years ago. I liked the idea of connecting my satellite dish to my pc and surf the internet. The good thing was, at that time, the high download speed and that it was immediately available – who knows when I could ditch my dial-up internet and get ADSL through BT or any other broadband ISP.

Read the rest of this entry »

For all the US and Canadian visitors, here is your chance to win a FTA Receiver. I’m running a competition on my satellite calculator website – you just need to drop a line to enter, ends March 16th.

And for the UK visitors, I’m hoping to run something similar soon. I’m just in talks with some sponsors, so keep checking this spot.

This is a FAQ about FreeSatfromSky, for the newly launched FreeSat from BBC and ITV see the articles on the main page

What is Freesat?
Freesat is a name for all the UK satellite TV and Radio channels which are availabe for free in the UK. No subscription is required and no monthly fees charged in order to access to the service.

What do I need for Freesat?
You need to have a satellite system installed. This includes a satellite dish with an LNB pointing at the Astra 2 satellite, the cabling, the satellite receiver such as a Sky Digibox, and – if you want to watch C4, Five, Five Live, Five US and Sky Three – an FTV card. The FTV card is available for a one-off payment of £20 and there are no further monthly or subscription charges.

Read the rest of this entry »

Finally, there is an update to the Sky/Freesat alignment calculator which helped you so far installing or setting up your satellite dish. Not only can you now enter your address, postcode, city or geocode for any location on earth but you can also choose the satellite you wish to point to, making this version of the satellite alignment calculator a global tool (you can now use it in e.g. Spain, France, USA to find Hotbird, Astra 1, DirecTV etc.)

But the coolest thing is that it will show you on a close-up satellite image on which wall to fix your satellite dish and where to point it! Just try it out!

For the UK, only the first part of the postcode is considered, the second part disregarded. So don’t be suprised when the marker is a few miles away from your home. But you can click and drag the marker.

Elevation is measured from the horizon upwards. If it gives a negative value then the satellite is below the horizon, i.e. it’s physically not possible to receive that satellite.
Azimuth is positive clockwise and measured from True North. If (and only when) using a compass, you will need to adjust the azimuth by the magnetic variation for your location.
LNB skew is positve anti-clockwise when facing the dish and is a theoretical value, in practice it may differ (e.g. for Sky UK add 7.5°).

I’ve tested the virtual satellite image alignment on a few real installations and must say that the accuracy is amazing.

Here’s how to use it:
Choose a satellite (default is Sky UK), enter your location and hit go. If it has found your location correctly, zoom in closer and then switch to the satellite map view. Then click and drag the icon where you want to install your dish. The blue line will show you the direction in which you need to point the dish.

You will need a fast internet connection such as T1, ADSL, cable broadband or satellite broadband as the tool downloads about 1MB of satellite images. I’d recommend a minimum download speed of 1Mbps. If you don’t have broadband and are on a dial-up, you can still use the old calculator.

Update 21.08.07: I’ve added the elevation and LNB skew calculation results just underneath the map. These are calculated and displayed in real time as soon as you move the marker or change the satellite. The old calculator should be really obsolete now.

Update 05.09.07: Within two weeks, the calculator has been used about 40,000 times making this one of the fastest growing satellite tools ever. That’s why I decided to place the calculator on a single, separate site called www.dishpointer.com. The calculator will be available on both sites with the same versions (I’m going to keep only Dishpointer.com up-to-date) but I believe the dishpointer.com site will be more suitable for non-UK visitors. There will be also various language versions of this tool on the dishpointer.com site, so if you feel you could help me out with translating a few lines of text into any language, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

If you don’t speak another language but still want to contribute, then please spread the word, buy from the partner-shops or make a small donation (see paypal button on the right – remember, calling a Sky installer to re-align a dish costs £70, and no amount is too small to be donated here).

Update: Latest version with many new features on www.dishpointer.com

Click here if the video doesn’t show.

These satellite finders are really useful little helpers when it comes down to perfectly aligning a satellite dish.

In this YouTube video we can see how sensitive the meter is. This sensitivity allows finding the sweet spot of the satellite dish. Here, we’ve got already a perfectly aligned dish, the meter is at the maximum. Even the slightest movement of the dish to either side of the perfect alignment reduces the signal level (and audio tone) of the meter. You can see that once the fine-tuning is finished, the signal level is again at the maximum.

Some people are trying to align their satellite dishes with the on-screen digibox signal bar which is way too slow, inaccurate and not sensitive enough for a good alignment. Save yourself the hassle and get one of these satellite finders – the prices dropped down to almost 5 quid (they were 40 quid 5 years ago).

For more detailed instructions, see the perfect satellite dish aligment how to guide.

Ready for the start of the Barclays Premier League, Sky has announced two new initiatives to bring more sports action to mobile phones:

24-7 Football
Sky, The Sun and News of the world have launched the website 24-7football.co.uk with an on-demand service for mobiles to view video clips of football goals as they happen, and highlights after the whistle from every Barclays Premier League and UEFA Champions League game.

The service is available for a monthly subscription of %5 or on a pay per view basis (50p for a video clip). Users don’t need to have a Sky TV subscription to access the clips and they are available on all major mobile networks.

Sky Mobile TV
Sky Sports 1, 2 and 3 will be available on Sky Mobile TV from 11 August. Sky Sports Xtra will be added in the coming weeks. These new mobile channels will stream all of Sky Sports’ 92 live Barclays Premier League games and live matches from every round of the UEFA Champions League, as well as Coca-Cola Football League, Carling Cup, FA Cup and Euro 2008 Qualifiers. Not to mention live coverage of International and Domestic cricket, European Tour Golf and Guinness Premiership Rugby.

Sky does not charge at the moment to access the service but the mobile operators will charge for the data downloaded, so you better check your tariff before using Sky Mobile TV.

The Bourne Ultimatum starring Matt Damon tops the US Cinema Charts in its first weekend taking in $70.2 million and pushing The Simpsons Movie to the second place. The first two movies in the Bourne series took only $27.1 million and $50.5 million in the opening weekends, thus making the third one the most successful movie so far. But not only that, it is also the most successful movie ever released in August.
Read the rest of this entry »

Virgin Media and five other firms pulled their ads from the social-networking site facebook after the ads appeared on the facebook site of the British Nationalist Party (BNP). The firms have no control on where the rotating ads appear. To avoid a negative image by being associated with the political party, they decided to pull the ads alltogether.

With the football season starting soon, the question is where and how to watch the games. The BBC tries to answer this question in a pretty good article, listing all the available options including BBC, BT, Club Channels & Websites, Five, ITV, Setanta Sports, Sky Sports, and Virgin Media.

Here is the full article.