The satellites are placed some 36,000 kilometres above the Equator in a geostationary orbit referred to as the Clarke Belt. In simple terms looking south the satellites are spread East to West. For example the Astra satellite where the big dishes are aimed at is where the sun is at 11.00 am. There are some 70 satellites with TV channels that can be viewed from Spain. Many of these satellites are in clusters or close together and can be viewed with a single dish.
To have access to the full range of important satellites there are three options :
- Motorised dishes
- Multiple dishes
- Dishes with multiple LNBs
The motorised dishes would appear to be the solution in that they are relatively inexpensive and take up little space. Once the set top box has been programmed, the box will signal the motor to change position depending on the channel and satellite selected. I used to install these systems and found they fell far short of my expectations.
The problem is that with some satellites particularly those that are important to receiving English channels in the Valencia Region i.e. Astra 28° and Nilesat, it is impossible to tune the motorised dish to realize the full potential of these satellites and receive all the channels. This is due to the fact you can’t adjust the inclination for individual satellites
Finally you have a system that hasn’t been tuned perfectly for specific satellites and then when you change channels which require changing Satellites i.e. Sky News on Astra 28° to a film channel on Nilesat 7° you have a seemingly long wait for the dish to move to a new position and then probably it will fail to receive all the channels.
Note these motorised dishes can be well tuned for satellites from Astra 19° (east) to Nilesat 7° (west) but this is of no use to English viewers wanting to view all the channels on both Astra 28° and Nilesat 7°
For all those frustrated owners of motorised dishes the solution is to take the motor off and consign it to the nearest rubbish bin. Use the existing dish and support to access the Astra group of channels and Eurobird and install another dish to access Nilesat.