Freesat dish advice needed
 

Erm not sure if this should be in freesat or sky so please move if needs be.

At the moment we have two sky digital dishes on our walls, one serving the freesat upstairs and one serving the free from sky downstairs.

Quite recently though we have had a branch fall on one of the dishes and knock it out of position so I was thinking of buying a quad lnb and wiring it upto the dish that works.....but what I want to know is this just a case of lifting off the old lnb and fitting the new one?

If not I asked the person who fitted one of the dishes how much he charges and he quoted me £70 for a new quad lnb and three rooms wired up (2 wires downstairs so we can a freesat pvr and one in each of the two spare rooms upstairs)....is this a good price?

Thanks for any advice.

Re: Freesat dish advice needed
 

The LNBs are not expensive but I guess setting them all up coax and tsting signals will take time . If parts costs what 30 quid he is only charging 40 for his time so it aint bad really

Re: Freesat dish advice needed
 

And to answer the first question, yes the LNB's are directly replacable, but if the dish is out of alignment it'll normally need a sat signal meter to determined correct alignment.

Re: Freesat dish advice needed
 

Which dish has been knocked out, the Freesat one or the Sky one? Sky minidishes often have non-standard couplings to the LNB so if it's the Sky dish you're still using, and you want to put a non-Sky LNB on it, you may need an adaptor first. These are easy to come by - Maplins have them.

Other than that, a quad LNB from the remaining good dish to all the boxes in your house is a perfect solution. In fact I can't help wondering how you ended up with two dishes in the first place?

Re: Freesat dish advice needed
 

Usually the installer saying "you don't wanna do it like that, you need another dish you do!!!" :(

Re: Freesat dish advice needed
 

Ah they were both sky mini-dishes but I mentioned that when I enquired about the price so hopefully he would have taken that into consideration before quoting me a price.

As it is my neighbour has given me his old sky mini-dish today with a quad lnb on it, if I take a picture of that will someone be able to tell me if it's the right type I need?

Thanks for the help so far guys :)

Re: Freesat dish advice needed
 

The type (as in freq/tone) will be OK, all you have to do is see if it fits in the mount OK (if not as Chris has pointed out you just need a simple adaptor.

Please note that if you;re swapping round an LNB then please mark the centre line of the LNB (they can be rotated inside of the mount) and replace the new LNB witht he same rotaion... Just that as you go north/south from the equator the horizontal/vertical of the sat antenna is mismatched the more north/south you are ;)

Re: Freesat dish advice needed
 

Would it be easier to take down the dishes from my wall and just replace them with the one my neighbour has given me?

Btw would something like this http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=48667 do the job of finding the signal for me?

Re: Freesat dish advice needed
 

You could replace the two dishes with the one dish, that way you know that the LNB would definately fit ;)

Although it is possible to fit a dish without a sat finder (like what you linked to on the maplins site) it is very hard and very hit/miss.. I used to do it with someone watchign the TV with a handheld radio to give me a running commentary as I moved the dish about ;)

The sat finder though is great as you can fine tune the orientation as just a mm can make a hell of a difference.

Try eBay as that's where I got my last sat finder for less than half the price delivered than the unit you linked to.

Re: Freesat dish advice needed
 

Thank you very much Kymmy I will give ebay a go and try and fit the dish myself.

Is there any special tape I need to put around the connection on the lnb?

Re: Freesat dish advice needed
 

I presume you're talking about self-almalgamating tape (it forms a watertight seal as it bonds to itself)

You can put that on if you wish to.. or there are barrier greases that you can buy (they're very common for motorcycle electronics) or some people just use a simple gasket/silicone sealant to prevent water ingress..

Re: Freesat dish advice needed
 

So what's better the tape or something like the grease (just there is a motorcycle shop across the road I could buy some from :D).

Kymmy btw thank you for all this help it's appreciated

Re: Freesat dish advice needed
 

Grease is easier if it's gonna be messed with (i.e.. upgraded ona regular basis)

If it's an install and forget then the tape is more weatherproof

Re: Freesat dish advice needed
 

I actually contacted the person who was going to fit the lnb for me and he is that desperate for business he said he would take my old dishes down and put up the one I have with the quad lnb and then run the 4 wires to the various rooms from it for only £40......not too bad.

I plan on following your advice though because I want to add an additional dish to be able to pick up some German channels....any idea if a bog-standard digital setup from aldi or lidl will be able to do that?

Re: Freesat dish advice needed
 

Yes if you want the digital german sats (but a lot of the decent channels are encrypted), but the old analogue 19.2 is also broadcasting a lot of german channels (including non-encrypted eurosport with german/english audio) so if you have an old sky system or get one cheap..