Astra 28.2 and 19.2 Success!

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sjr56stn

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Astra 28.2 and 19.2 Success!

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Post by sjr56stn » Sun Sep 30, 2018 10:02 am

Exasperated by the news that Channel 4 will only be showing one live F1 race next year (Silverstone), I finally decided to add a second LNB to my satellite dish to get Astra 19.2 and RTL. It turned out to be very easy to do, the most difficult bit being mechanical modifications to the dual LNB bracket necessary to attach it to my dish arm (it being intended for a larger different make of dish). Realigning my dish about 5 degrees to the south, it was easy to get the two LNBs working well on Astra 28.2 and 19.2. There seemed to be plenty of signal on both, despite my dish being only a 43cm elliptical. (I am located in the UK about 15 miles west of London.)

I purchased a DiSEqC switch to connect the two LNBs to the long coax cable, which terminates in my media centre computer in the lounge. WMC recognised the switch and the two satellite inputs, although it seemed to be necessary to start a complete WMC TV retune in order to get it to ask the DiSEqC question, and ask the identity of the two satellites. I first did a ‘manual’ retune just for the satellite inputs in order to check that they were both working well (and facing the correct satellites!), but in the process I had lost all the terrestrial channel tuning, and when I eventually came to retuning the terrestrial tuners (Freeview) I seemed to reveal a WMC or tuner driver bug when it failed to find any of the Freeview HD TV channels. I puzzled over this for some time, repeating the Freeview retune a couple of times, but eventually in desperation I went back to a complete WMC retune in ‘automatic’ mode and hey presto the tuners found the additional 34 Freeview HD channels. I use EPG123 to provide my program guide, and it was easy to add the Astra 19.2 channels.

So for the outlay of about £30 on new satellite hardware, and a few hours of installation and WMC retuning, I can now watch live F1 on RTL. I now just need to learn German!

Steve

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