breakaleg Posted October 15, 2009 Posted October 15, 2009 Well, I went to the NEC show yesterday and bit the bullet, seen dave and with his advise ordered a autosat krystop automatic satelitte system. With a free to air digi box. Now I was expecting to buy a dish, but this looks more like a brick. Does anyone else have one? does anyone know how far through europe i can realisticly recive channels 1 to 5? Many thanks Pete
Butty Posted October 15, 2009 Posted October 15, 2009 I was looking at those you will have to let me know how good they are.
Guest JudgeMental Posted October 15, 2009 Posted October 15, 2009 Bit of a risk dont you think? I cant find any reviews regards this....it is the square one? May I ask why? and not a dish or a dome? whats better about this?
colin Posted October 15, 2009 Posted October 15, 2009 I don't know that particulair system, but size for size the flat plate antennas are (should be) far more effienct than a 'normal' dish, they only require 1250cm.sq. to get same signal as 60cm(2800cm.sq.) dish.
breakaleg Posted October 15, 2009 Author Posted October 15, 2009 Hi All, I know nothing about satellite, I Didn't want anything sticking up to high when folded (we park on the road) so I asked Dave Newall and Dave said, that he had used one for about 4 years and thought it excellent, I must admit to a few doubt's, but when spend this amount of money, i feel I'm entitled, lol. I did see a few in Europe on mostly french and German vans, but just thought it would be a round dish that i would end up with, having it fitted a week Monday, but not going abroad again this year. Dave said that he got the five main channels down as far as biarritz (excuse the spelling) and as far as Dusseldorf, And he recons it may be possible as far a Switzerland in good weather conditions, then switch satellites for sky news etc. Hope i have chose wisely. Pete
Mike88 Posted October 15, 2009 Posted October 15, 2009 I spoke to several manufacturers at the NEC yesterday. Everyone said dish size is all important. Even the dome manufacturers decried the claims that a 45cms dome is the equivalent of a 70cms dish. The KVH, Maxview and Camos people told me that you could not expect a dome to perform as well as a 66cms Maxview crankup because the dish sizes are smaller. BBC and ITV much beyond Barcelona is not viable was the general message for a crankup and a little less for the domes. I did not see the Autosat dish but I only hope that the suppliers did not make exagerated claims.
wooly Posted October 15, 2009 Posted October 15, 2009 Hi ALL, Let's try and help! We had a crystop flatsat fitted by Roadpro in May and have tried it since then in quite a bit of England and Wales and in the last 3 weeks in a fair area of france. The fitting was straight forward and obviously no different to any other auto sat system, we managed to pick up a cable for the auto retract so the sat folds down when the van engine is started. Operation is very simple, after the first time there is only one button to press for the dish to raise and autosearch for the satellite, it takes between 30-60 seconds to lock on, turn tv and sat receiver on and you have got a picture. Very Quick, Very simple. Results - All England and wales - Excellent Northern France - Excellent Central France (Decize) - Excellent Dordogne (souliac)- mainly perfect except for a short time in evenning Lot Valley (cahors) again some distortion early evenning Bordeaux - Excellent The reception pretty well fitted in with the pedicted map the distortion only occuring early evenning The flatsat is the same dish as the camos flatsat (except fully auto), but will be better if the larger dish as in camos flatsat plus can be used. In conclusion it largely does what it says on the box and is very neat and fits very tidily on a van conversion where space is limited.
davenewellhome Posted October 15, 2009 Posted October 15, 2009 breakaleg - 2009-10-15 7:22 PM Hi All, I know nothing about satellite, I Didn't want anything sticking up to high when folded (we park on the road) so I asked Dave Newall and Dave said, that he had used one for about 4 years and thought it excellent, I must admit to a few doubt's, but when spend this amount of money, i feel I'm entitled, lol. I did see a few in Europe on mostly french and German vans, but just thought it would be a round dish that i would end up with, having it fitted a week Monday, but not going abroad again this year. Dave said that he got the five main channels down as far as biarritz (excuse the spelling) and as far as Dusseldorf, And he recons it may be possible as far a Switzerland in good weather conditions, then switch satellites for sky news etc. Hope i have chose wisely. Pete Whoaaa!!! I never said I'd used it down as far as Biarritz, i don't do France! I have never used the Crystop autosat personally, I have however used the Camos crankup flatsat (same "dish" but manually operated) as far as Dusseldorf and it worked perfectly every time except for one site in Holland where we were flanked to the south by trees. You shouldn't need to switch satellites for Sky news, you should still be able to receive that channel, and others, from Astra 2 (28.2 degrees east), but you may well find that you can't get BBC and ITV channels all the time, if ever in Switzerland. If you do go outside of the footprint for Astra 2 and have a Free To Air (FTA) receiver then you can switch to a different satellite, Astra1 or Hotbird for example, where you can pick up some English language channels such as BBC World, which, as far as I'm aware is a TV version of the World Service. Hope this clears up any confusion. D.
breakaleg Posted October 16, 2009 Author Posted October 16, 2009 Whoops,Sorry Dave, I didn't mean to mis quote you, I told you I know Nothing. Pete
davenewellhome Posted October 16, 2009 Posted October 16, 2009 No worries Pete, just wanted to put the record straight ;-) . D.
Frankkia Posted October 16, 2009 Posted October 16, 2009 At least when it comes to sat dishes size does really matter. Any dustbin lid will get you an Astra 2D signal in northern europe as far down as the south of France the difficulty comes when you want to get a dose of Eastenders in Spain /Portugal or for that matter Berlin. I have managed to get Sky News and BBC News channels in Spain with a 40 cm dish but if you want Astra 2 D (the sat broadcasting the majority of the BBC and ITV channels) in Spain you have to go BIG. It is also helpful to be able to adjust the LNB either manually or automatically to compensate for the fact that you have moved either east or west and are therefore at a different angle to the signal. If you never leave these shores or only travel in France or Germany (to about 2/3 of the way across) almost any dish or flatty will get you a signal. One other thing to note is if you want to get all 5 of the "normal" channels both now and for the future in more remote locations it would be wise to get the biggest and best you can afford. This is because things change - for example last year Ch 5 and all the other 5 channels were being broadcast from astra 2C. This sat has now been removed from the 28 deg service and 5 has moved to Astra 2D (much smaller footprint). The life expectancy of a sat is about 15 years which means that some of Astras fleet are getting towards the end of their service and it is possible that they will be replaced with similar ones to 2D which can be focused more on to the intended target market making it even more difficult for snowbirds to get their Corrie fix in Spain.
breakaleg Posted October 17, 2009 Author Posted October 17, 2009 Thanks, Dave Wooley and Bernie, You have cleared my confusion, as Dave knows, I don't have a lot of space on the roof of my van. Also, the furthest I have traveled is to the Italian Lakes, so most of my viewing would be in northern Europe, that's not to say that one day I may go further. My worry was, that most dishes that I have seen are round, and that I was concerned that a house brick wouldn't, do the job. Thank you all Pete (lol) (lol)
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