Satellite Anime F.A.Q.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Why watch satellite TV anime?
A:You can tape the Manga Videos you didn't buy. Then there's all the European anime! OK, the shows may be old and dubbed into a foreign language, but there are advantages. It's very cheap, you see anime you won't see anywhere else without immense effort, and finally there's a LOT of difference in picture quality between NTSC fan tapes and PAL direct broadcast from filmstock.
Q. What hardware do I need to receive these anime programmes?
A. Any basic Astra receiver outfit will get you started. It's not necessary to have a decoder. It's very useful to have teletext, and a PAL video recorder with SP (and LP). Ideally, you want a dual-satellite installation for ASTRA 19.2 E and INTELSAT 13 E. Note that Eutelsat have (Nov. 1998) just installed two more powerful "birds", thus greatly increasing the probability that you can get their programmes with an Astra-sized dish.
Q: I don't have a satellite receiving outfit. How much will it cost to buy one?
A. An Astra outfit costs from about £200 including installation. An Astra/Eutelsat 13deg twin LNB installation (which gives the best value in terms of anime progs. per pound spent) will cost from around £300. These are not common on the housing estates but a good dealer will know exactly what is wanted. A well-designed system will let you time record from any combination of channels. Only viewers with very specialised needs are likely to need a system more elaborate than this. With a motorised system, many more satellites can be accessed, but the number of further free-to-air analogue channels on them is quite small, and the addition of assorted decoders and pirate cards can cause the system cost to ratchet rapidly upwards. (And having just installed one, I can testify that they are liable to be less suited for general viewing & time recording than a fixed installation.) It's not surprising that motorized dishes (distinguishable by the long powered actuator, or an unusually bulky mounting on a large dish) are relatively rare.
A motorised multi-satellite outfit with assorted decoder boxes and cards will leave little change from £1000, professionally installed. Luxury outfits with Chaparral or Monterey receivers cost £1500 upwards, but these are mainly for rich stay-at-homes. In the past, such systems have used dishes well in excess of 1 metre in diameter.
Q: But I'm sure I've seen them much cheaper than £200!
A: Read the small print. You only get it for £100 or £50 if you subscribe to Sky, which costs several hundred pounds a year - many sat. users do, of course. (Or perhaps buy some expensive electrical goods). You may also have to pay for installation; it depends on the terms of the offer.
If cost is a problem for you, please don't be discouraged. "Satellite Surplus" of Telford can supply you with a dish, LNB & 16 channel receiver for £25 or so, which will at least start you watching anime on RTL2.
Q: How much does installation cost?
A: About £50 for an Astra dish, from £150-£250 for motorized.
Q: Can I install it myself then and save £50?
A: No! This sort of technical task is simple if you have the knowledge, and a van full of cable, clips, bolts, ladder, power tools, satellite meters, etc etc. But if you haven't, leave well alone! Just buying the cable and supplies will eat up half of your £50, and you could make a bad installation, cause thousands of pounds worth of property damage, infringe planning regulations, and even severely injure yourself. Anyway, it could take you so long to get it right that you could have earned the money to pay the man. A professional can attach a fixed ASTRA dish to a brick wall in as little as half an hour, but if you have to install a 1.2 metre dish (required for some worst-case British Eutelsat installations) in a gale-lashed location, it will be more like civil engineering with steel and concrete.
Q: I can't tune my receiver to JSTV or tm3. What's wrong?
A: If your receiver is more than about 3 years old, it may be unable to receive any signals from the Astra 1D satellite. Don't despair; all you have to do, if you are otherwise satisfied with your receiver, is to buy a "Global ADX frequency shifter" for £19.99, and attach it to the back of your receiver following the simple instructions.
Basically, this shifts the new signals, which hopefully pass through your LNB. to a band 500MHz higher, where you can find them and tune them in on some spare channels. I've got one and it works very well. The other answer, of course, is to buy any new receiver and an "enhanced" LNB.
Q: Do I need a decoder?
A: Not really. There seems to be all the anime most people could find time to watch on the clear Astra and Eutelsat channels. If you are keen to explore Spanish and Italian sats., you could get the decoders for various Eurocrypt, D2MAC and Syster channels, but this would cost hundreds of pounds for the boxes alone, before you paid for the subscription cards.
If you DO have a Videocrypt decoder (which is integrated into most modern receivers) you then have the option of paying through the nose for SKY and various pay English-language anime-carrying channels &/or being ripped off by various illicit card suppliers for other services. (You also get an excellent Channel 5 picture without using a card!).
Q: It still seems expensive.Can't I get something cheaper?
A: There's always second hand stuff; and there is some seriously cheap kit around, especially if Cable is being installed in your town. In Bedford, rumour has it that the milkmen were following the cable installers around, collecting the sat. receivers that the new cable customers had been induced to sign away. I started with a receiver, LNB and new dish that cost a total of £35 from Satellite Surplus of Telford. You tend to get what you pay for, of course. And you need to swot up on the satellite technology before you start.
Q: All this seems too complicated. I'm not technically minded. Do I have to be?
A: Not at all. Just find a shop that sells sat. receivers, tell them what you want (the cheapest Astra outfit?), have them install it, and press the buttons the nice man tells you to press. And feign deafness when they try to sell you a Sky subscription with it.
Q: Can I adapt my fixed dish to get more than one satellite?
A: There are various answers:
a) If you really want a decent watch-the-world multisatellite outfit, given that such a system and a Astra system have almost no components in common, the best thing to do is to dispose of your fixed outfit and start anew. The components for a multisatellite system can be quite expensive, with typical prices of £500 for a high performance dish, £700 - £1800 for a receiver, and £100+ for a quad band LNB. However, with satellite parts being mass produced for ASTRA, much cheaper components such as 80cm pressed metal dishes, 40mm neck Universal LNBs, and receiver/positioners that cost little more than ASTRA receivers can be had at ever-decreasing prices. Systems put together with these components perform quite well and cost from about £400 (excluding installation, which is not a trivial task). Some industry commentators think that with satellite powers increasing, such 80cm. systems will be the multisatellite receivers of the future.
b) If you want two, or maybe 3 satellites very close in the sky, you can get away with having extra LNB's attached to your fixed dish. (The dish size may need to be uprated, though with the new "birds" installed Nov 1998 this is less likely). For anime, a twin-sat setup for 19.2deg.E/13deg. E offers the most anime per pound spent. Bearing in mind that the dish may need to be sized up for the weaker signals, the extra cost is from about £75.
c) Many dealers will offer you motorized upgrades for a fixed dish, for about £100 - £150, depending on whether you elect for manually activated positioning or fully automatic. This gives a quite useful motorized system, of similar performance to the cheaper multi-satellite outfits.
d) Install a second fixed dish. This seems a popular option, mass-produced dishes being cheap; and a second receiver is unlikely to be required. You will need planning permission for two dishes, or one dish over 90cm, on the same property (or just mount them somewhere out of sight). (One of my neighbours has three dishes and nobody seems concerned).
e) If the neighbours have dish phobia, note that soon, with satellite powers increasing, a movable 60cm dish in the south-east UK will (from Nov 1998) suffice to receive the majority of analogue and digital transmissions from ASTRA and EUTELSAT as well as the SKY digital satellite at 28.5 deg. E. Even smaller dishes may give good results, if you pay a large premium for a precision engineered product.
Q: I managed to get a French channel, but it's all in black and white. What's wrong? What's this SECAM?
A: The French colour system is incompatible with British PAL TV's. So you need a multistandard (SECAM) TV or a SECAM/PAL converter box, costing about £90. (If you own a multistandard VCR, it wouldn't hurt to read the handbook...)
Q. Is it worth getting a motorised (multisatellite) system?
A. Not for anime; you could buy a lot of good retail anime tapes for the money. But some people find that finding obscure satellite channels is a fascinating hobby in itself. The number of extra "clear" analog channels is distinctly disappointing, but you will be able to access digital, D2MAC or Syster encrypted signals on various satellites. If you do go for it, make sure you end up with a fully automatic system, ie one that can wake up via timer, find a channel, find the satellite, record, and shut off. And get the 36 volt power type, they work a lot quicker than those powered by the LNB cable. It's not worth cutting corners just to save a few pounds. If you're D.I.Y. upgrading, I strongly advise that you visit a dealer and buy a mount over the counter after discussing your requirement. Even if it costs more, you are more likely to get the mount & adapters that mate with your dish, and install without problems. Mail order of other parts should not be a problem.
Q. Any disadvantages to motorised systems?
A.Contrary to the impression given by all the satellite magazines, there are disadvantages other than the cost. Compared with the silent and instantaneous selection of a 2-sat. setup, the motorised system is slower, noisy, less reliable, and prone to unwanted dish movements. For instance, if you have programmed a daily time recording, the dish will move at the weekend unless you figure out a way to disable it. The noise isn't a joke; some of the motor arms can be heard hundreds of feet away on a quiet night. Also, the dish movement trips up the AFC on some receivers so that the picture on the first channel selected for that satellite may be severely affected.
Do I need a timer in the satellite receiver?
A: You do if you want to record from more than one satellite channel (or indeed more than one satellite) while you are out. If you don't, just leave the receiver on and rely on the VCR timer. (Don't use the satellite timer unless you have to, as it's another potential source of errors and disappointment.)
Q: Why don't I put the dish somewhere accessible and push it a few degrees horizontally by hand to get Hot Bird etc?
A: Nice idea in theory. In practice, unless you can see the result of moving the dish as you do it, or set up some accurate scales and pointer, you just won't try it and risk losing your favourite Astra progs. Unfortunately, unless you are a wizard at home mechanics, there is no way of remotely moving the dish a few degrees that doesn't cost nearly as much as a proper motorized upgrade.
Q: What about these new digital TV channels?
This is all quite new. The BSB service is now operational. This is a digital service with around 200 channels, hovever according to some reports it doesn't offer a whole lot you can't get on their analogue service. The cost? £200 for the receiver (or £150 for existing Sky customers), FREE digital dish with FREE installation. stiff monthly fee depending on what you opt for. Note the service & equipment is NOT compatible with European digital satellite services or the free-to air receivers already on sale.
Next month (Nov) the terrestial digital service should launch in the UK with 30 channels. A set-top box will be required, & a modest subscription. Note the equipment will NOT be compatible with the Sky OR the European digital satellite services.
Many European digital channels are already in operation, and more appear every month. Typically, six digital channels can be transmitted on a satellite transponder, in place of one analogue. Some digital channels are 'free', others require a subscription card. Some channels used for digital services can be tuned by existing LNBs and dishes, but others are above 12.000 GHz, requiring a Universal LNB (hence all the hoo-ha about 'digital ready') or even a new satellite position, such as 28.2 deg.E, which will be used by Sky. As for the receivers, you do need to acquire a digital receiver, and your choice will depend to some extent on whether you just want a particular service, or want a more general purpose unit. It seems that various subscriptions are legally available in the UK. It is looking as though most analogue channels will be duplicated on digital - many are already - so if you have a working digital receiver you won't necessarily need an analogue receiver as well. A digital receiver currently costs about £400, and you may have to add the cost of subscriptions and dish hardware to that. For further information, get a copy of "What Satellite" (or equivalent for your country), which lists the digital channels in two pages of very small type.
For general satellite FAQ, checkSatcure
For satellite channel info, check Satco DX
G.Cowie 30.10.98