| Hi Folks! Nearly the end of the month and a Bank Holiday weekend for most of us. My wife is dragging me away to visit our eldest son and his wife so forgive me if I don't answer your questions immediately. Please note that SatCure Sales will be CLOSED during the Bank Holiday weekend from 5pm Friday 27th till 9:30am Tuesday 31st.
Grundig Interference Equipment made by: Grundig Sky
Model number: GS3000 Connections: Dish to receiver as installed by Sky. Receiver to TV via RF cable Web pages and eBooks read:
Piping TV Around the House Grundig GS3000 picture quality problem when outside temperature is high. Can the heat affect the dish alignment or LNB transmission quality ? The fault history: About 2 weeks ago, my Grundig Sky box started to lose picture quality in that the image goes B&W and is full of cross hatch type lines. The box is about 2 years old and this fault is on any channel including the EPG menu. My observations: It appears this only happens between about 11:00 and 16:00 each day, ie when the outside temperature has recently got very hot. I suspect this is a LNB/dish type problem as once the outside temperature drops, the signal goes back to normal and remains good until the next day. Tests/checks that I've carried out: I have checked all the connections at the dish/LNB and the receiver and they are all good. The box itself does get hot, as you mentioned it would in your forums and articles, but even leaving the box switch off for an hour during the 11:00 - 16:00 time slot and then retrying, I still have the fault. Could this be just an alignment problem that gets worse due to dish expansion in the heat or something. I am contemplating having Sky+ installed so wondered if the instal of this could cure this or am I looking at something worse ? Jon H. No, that's unlikely. I think the interference is from your TV aerial. Try disconnecting it from your Digibox. Let me know the result. Martin You are a blooming genius !! I did as you said and the picture is now perfect. In fact further investigation on my part found it to be caused by a 4 way booster amp in the loft (aerial is loft based) that goes funny in the heat as it was affecting one other TV fed from this. I replaced the booster amp with a better quality one and, hey presto, all is good. Now the acid test will be a really hot 30'C day ! Thanks once again for a superb and accurate service - must take a look at your catalogue for a new high quality booster amp Jon H I recommend "Global". Nokia 221T Freeview My Philips Freeview receiver has never given reliable reception, despite having the correct aerial, cable etc. so, on your advice, I ordered the Nokia 221T receiver that's on special offer. Just FYI, I installed the receiver last night. Took about 15 minutes to connect it and have it find all the available channels. It then took the best part of three hours for me to work out how to get it working with Tivo as well as the previous one. The Philips box allowed any channel found to be assigned to any channel number. Thus if Tivo thought that in my area BBC 3 should be channel 10, but it wasn't, I could move it to 10. On the Nokia I had to create a new 'folder' of favourite channels. I mistakenly added just those I wanted, little realising that it made the selected channels appear sequentially from number 1. Kind of makes sense, but no use if you want specific channels on specific numbers. In the end I added a load of garbage channels so that I could position those I wanted where I wanted them - the garbage channels acting as the filler between. So now BBC 3 is on channel 10, UK Hits is on 18, TMF on 21. and Tivo knows where to find them! Over the next few days we should be able to see if the reception problems have been cured. The Philips box was horribly stuttering as I pulled its plug and told it what I thought of it! Next thing to try is plugging into the Philips box and using that as a backup into Scart 2 of the TV so that we could watch a digital channel on that while Tivo is recording a digital channel from the Nokia receiver. Then it should be like Sky Plus without as much garbage. ;-) Thanks, Rob. (top)
Rubber Boots For ages people have been asking me for an alternative to self-amalgamating tape. Some LNBs come with "rubber boots" that slide up the cable and cover the "F" connector. Well at last I found a supplier but we were having to charge £1.25 each - really too expensive. Now I've found an alternative supplier and we can sell these at just 65p each! This is far more reasonable and these boots are better quality, too. You can see them here: http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/boots.htm
Lightning! All this Global Warming is doing no good at all. Last week we had the most horrendous thunderstorm I've ever experienced and a lightning strike flashed quite near to my house. I saw a flash and something close to my Apple Mac G4 made a loud "crack" as the Mac announced "USB device disconnected". At the same time my Apple Mac G3 switched itself off then there was a loud clap of thunder. I dashed around pulling plugs and fearing the worst. When the storm had passed I booted up both computers and there was no obvious damage at all. It turned out that a telephone interface that I'm beta-testing had sacrificed itself and protected everything else. Although we sell surge protectors, I'd never actually installed any at home, so that was a lesson for me! Now, I used to be a telephone designer many years ago - in fact I designed the push-button "Trimphone" which some of you may remember from the 1980s. I remembered that we used to fit surge arrestors inside the 'phones in those days because there was no "Master Jack Socket" in houses then. In one particularly expensive 'phone we fitted additional protection in the form of avalanche diodes. So I phoned an ex-GEC colleague who is now Director of BABT and asked him if he could remember what we used. Between us we were able to get the information together and I ordered the parts. As a result, I've fitted my own "DIY surge arrestors" to the incoming 'phone lines and I feel a bit safer now. If any of you are also feeling insecure and can wield a soldering iron, you might like to look at our new DIY Kit. http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/phonesurge.htm If you don't fancy that, we also stock the Belkin "Master Cube". (top)
Loft Boxes As we are now selling Loft Boxes, I have prepared some information pages to supplement the information in our eBook "Piping TV Around the House". http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/loftbox.htm (top)
FIND! It seems a lot of PC users don't know how to use the "Find" function in their browser. I get lots of messages complaining that "I can't find LG in your list of remote control codes" or "I can't find tvLINK on your catalogue page". OK, on an Apple Mac you press [cmd] [F]. Under Windoze it's [ctrl] [F]. So find the web page in your browser, press the magic key sequence to get the "Find What?" pop-up dialog box, type LG (or whatever) and hit Enter. Go on, try it right now! By the way, there is a big campaign to dump Internet Explorer right now. Its popularity has dropped a little this year but millions of people still use it and end up with tons of "spyware" and viruses that they'd rather not have had. So I urge you to either dump Internet Explorer or buy an Apple Mac! :-) Read about it. - Read more - and more If you want even more, simply do a Google search for "dump Internet Explorer". OK, you probably think this was way off-topic (not satellite TV related) but my job is to help my customers. If your computer is not operating correctly, you might miss placing an order with us. And that would never do! ;-) On a similar topic, may I urge you all to DUMP OUTLOOK EXPRESS if you use Windows! This software is notorious for picking up viruses that hunt out MY email address from my last reply to you then YOUR PC sends it to MY Mac. Thankfully my Mac doesn't know what to do with it, but it's still a nuisance. (Yes, you know who you are. Please DUMP O.E.) Since I'm so far off-topic, I may as well continue. The ISP wars have begun with "Wanadoo" leading the pack by offering 1Mb broadband speeds for the price of 256/512. But the way ISPs can afford to make this offer is by "capping". They stipulate the maximum the amount of data you can send and receive in one month. Now that's important because, if you are receiving a lot of junk mail, you could go over your monthly quota and get penalised! So you need to minimise the amount of junk that is sent to you. How the heck do you do that? A spam filter on your computer won't help. There are two ways: 1. Use an external filtering system that emails the sender and asks him to click on a web page link to confirm that he really is the sender. (This is a real pain in the butt! Please don't place an order with us if you use this because you won't receive any replies from us!) 2. Dump your email address, use a different one and use an email form that hides your new address. Information here:
http://www.satcure.net/getscript2/ Note: You will need a web site at £22 a year.
Premiership Football "I want to watch Premiership football on satellite and I dont want to pay Sky. I have heard I can see it for free on some strange foreign channels. How?" This is one of the most common questions that Martin and I (Ross) are asked. Until recently, it was actually fairly easy to pick up the channels that were in the clear radiating from the satellites serving Europe. For example, last season TV Sport Romania on 5E was a popular choice, as was NTV Turkey on the easily received Turksat 42E western European beam. Also available was Top Channel on Eutelsat W2 at 16E. All three showed live Premiership on a Saturday afternoon, and could be received with an 80cm dish and a cheap digital receiver. Heaven for football fans who refused to join the Sky service. However, in the last 12 months or so, things have changed drastically. First to fall by the wayside was the NTV service. They were switched from the west beam onto a steerable and much weaker beam. They could still be received - just, but were much more difficult to lock up. This season has been most frustrating for FTA football addicts. NTV 42E is still showing the Premiership - but not on their S1 beam. That service is blanked out during the football and it is only available on the east beam - which doesn't cover northwestern Europe. By the beginning of this season, TV Sport Romania on 5E had lost their rights completely. BBT Bulgaria on 1W took over, although being on a Sirius 3 Nordic footprint, their signals are marginal at the very best in the UK. To make matters worse, in the last couple of weeks, BBT has disappeared into Conax scrambling.... Top Channel seems to have stopped showing the games, too. Lider TV from Azerbaijan picked up some live rights for this season. They are available on 13E and Sesat at 36E, and are free to air. Most of the time... When they are showing the football they go scrambled. So - all the free avenues have been closed. What next. Well some enterprising football fans have signed up to the ART Sport pay tv package which is transmitted on the Hotbirds at 13E. Art Sport shows lots of Premiership. However, some bad news for you enterprising souls - there is a nasty rumour going round that the Premiership football will be removed from the 13E transmission in the near future, and will only be available on Nilesat at 7W! And unless you have a seriously big dish in the garden, you can wave goodbye to Art Sports Premiership coverage. One positive happening this season has been a new channel on the French TPS pay tv platform. A dedicated channel called "English Premier League" started broadcasting at the beginning of the season. So - where does this leave the dedicated soccer fan. You pick a pay tv service and pay of course. And by the time you have stumped up for all the gear to pick up the foreign channels, you may as well have subscribed to Sky Sports in the first place. Its enough to make a strong man cry into his beer. :-( Please note. Do not email Martin or myself asking questions about hacking pay TV services so you can watch them for free. We don't know any details about it, and won't answer. Ross (top)
Happy Customers This month we have been overwhelmed by the response from happy customers. I make no apologies for including these because many of them include really interesting and useful information. Keep them coming! :-) Hi Janet Thanks for your email enquiry. I hope you don't mind me replying when I don't have a problem, but I want to thank you. You wouldn't believe the difficulty I've had in trying to find an item like this. Fortunately, someone on the uk.tech.tv.sky forum recommended SatCure and I found just what I wanted. The SLx4B 4 way Amp was as described, simple to install and worked perfectly. I'm also extremely pleased with how promptly it arrived considering that I paid with a cheque rather than online with a credit card. I have no hesitation in shopping with you again or recommending Satcure to friends and other forum members. Please pass on my thanks to all concerned. Once I've tidied up my cables a bit, I'll take a pic of the setup and send it to martin in case he wants to use it. Kind Regards, Matt
Satcure, "SkyWare single output LNB" Compliment, compliment, compliment. Right part, very quick delivery, fitted in seconds, cured problem for £165 less than the git quoted for an independent fix and with a new part rather than a recon. part which SKY wanted £39 more to come out and fit. Happy customer, glad of simple write ups on your website. Ta David
Hi, thankyou for your email inquiring as to whether i recieved my goods and they were as expected. the answer to that is YES..speedy delivery and the cable and conectors were of the quality described!! I shall definately be using your services again and recommending you to my colleagues. Thankyou once again,especially for your follow up, so unusual in the world we live in today!! Mr.A.Coman
Many thanks Book received, excellent value. Regards Robin
Hi Janet, I received your email as a follow up earlier today. Yes, I received the two shipments the following day as promised. Thank you. However, in the throws of moving house your email has helped to prompt me to think about this now. There was one very tiny glitch. I didn't receive the 75 Ohm resistor with the diplexer. I have exchanged a couple of emails with Martin...I will try to get some pictures and a description written up. We are officially in a fringe area for digital TV, all our friends who have tried have failed to get a signal, but with the Yagi resting in my study on unpacked boxes (plugged into my new Panasonic box and PCTV card) I have managed to pull in every station! OK, we are higher up the hill, but wow, what a difference a few dozen metres elevation makes! Now that I have a decent Yagi that I can point in the right direction I have discovered that Sutton Coldfield also transmits Channel Five (Ch37)--well, I am picking up a strong ChFive signal and it isn't listed as being a ChFive broadcaster on the BBC website, the only other place would be from Fenton, but that is listed as Ch35 and is V polarisation. My question is this: the diplexer I bought has the channel split (from memory here as I am at work) at Ch38 -- as I thought that the lowest channel would be BBC2 at Ch40. Would it be possible to exchange this for one that has the split lower so that I can still use the ChFive on analogue please? I haven't yet used the existing item. So, on the whole it is 'excellent feedback' but with a couple of follow up questions. I hope that it's OK to send back the diplexer for substitution and would you also be able to pop in a 75 ohm resistor on the way back please? With kind regards, Eugene (Resistor sent with alternative diplexer).
Hi, Just following up on your e-mail about my recent order. I am very pleased with the service that I have received and delivery was very prompt. The aerial that I ordered is now installed and working very well indeed. Thank you very much for your help Kind regards Andy
"Installing Sky Digital TV" The Ebook downloaded fine and has been duly copied to a CD-R. Very useful. I now have 70% signal quality from my Sky dish (up from 10%) as I have cut down most of a tree! Thanks for an excellent product. Cedric
Thanks for the contact number here in Cyprus, we telephoned Norman and he promptly arrived today, re-aligned our dish, which was totally out of line, apparently its the high winds we get here in the winter that moves the dish, now we have all the BBC channels plus ITV back. Thanks for your help. Regards, Brian
Hi Guys, Just like to say thanks for the service. I ordered a Technomate 5500 DCI Plus and 0.6dB LNB on line and received the whole lot in the post the next day. I don't think anyone can beat that for fast delivery. I decided to invest in this equipment (on a whim or is that an impulse) to help the wife and I who are both trying hard to learn Greek. Our teacher at the local college is very good (I suppose being Greek helps a lot), but 6 days of the week we were left to our own imagination. My idea being that receiving the FTA Greek channels on Hotbird should help and as I still use 80cm dish I figured I could get the thing installed and working without any fancy kit. Within about 4 hours after returning from work I'd got the whole lot setup and receiving Hotbird and Sky Digital using only the signal strength and quality meters of the satellite boxes , I had the Prime focus on Hotbird and the new LNB jury-rigged on an old 6 deg LNB bracket with an old washing machine spanner (one of those flat metal items with a multitude of hex holes in it) extending out to give me the extra extension for 13deg East. Who needs these high tech Sat finders when you know what you want? The next evening I fabricated a full length LNB bracket from some aluminium sheet I had in the garage. I now have Hotbird giving a signal strength of 100% and Quality of 100% on the W beam (I assume that the W is "west") and the others on "E" I assume this is wide beam Europe giving around 90% Signal Strength and 70% quality. I'm not sure about Sky digital, the best I can achieve is around 90% signal strength, but only 40-50% Quality. Sky is working fine at present, with no sign of any picture artefacts but I'm concerned that we may lose the picture in bad weather. If we do I'll try a new bracket and offset both. Anyway thanks again and keep up the good work. Regards, Bob PS I'm in Hampshire about a mile North from the coast. The LNB skew should be adjusted for maximum signal quality. But 40 - 50% is good enough for all but the worst weather.
Received GLO44 Global tvLINK (SILVER) + Standard Sky Remote Qty: 1 at £ 14.5 GLO43 Global tvLINK EYE (BLACK) Qty: 1 at £ 7.95 with thanks. Plugged it all straight in and it works! Thanks for your prompt service. A Gwilliam
260-4287 Apple extension cable Thank you Janet, I received my order the following day and it was exactly what I was looking for, I have bookmarked your website for future orders, Regards, Niall
FF5MB - black lead 5m and 090-3078 Threaded F barrel Hi Janet, The cable arrived this morning, and works great ! Great service, Thank you. Sean
Hi Janet, Amstrad DRX100 tuner Nice to get your mailshot and no I did not have a problem with my order. I was very impressed witth the way the order was handled and it was delivered here on the following Friday morning, about 2 days to get here which is something of a record considering the state of the postal service. Unfortunately I was not here at the time so I didn't get it until Tuesday as it was a bank holiday weekend here. When I fitted the tuner the digibox worked first time, some of my (by now ex) pals proclaimed that a miracle as well. Thank you for an excellent service and informative website. Best wishes, John
Dear Janet, Whilst your email appears to be automated, it is only another example of what I found to be an excellent service. When my Sky box died I was shocked to find out how much hold Sky have over their customers, pay £65 to have a visit and for them to provide me a second hand box with one months warranty. So I decided to find my own sky box. At first I was faced with spending a minimum of £100 for a new box, but then I discovered Martin's hints on finding the problem and then a repair kit for the Power supply board. In the end I spent £35 on a new LNB, some replacement capacitors and some postage and packaging. I had a great time replacing the capacitors with my wife and youngest son helping to pull out the capacitors whilst I heated them up, but hey if it didn't work, the box was useless anyway! I nearly peed my pants when it fired up and actually worked. The kids think I'm a genius, I saved a lot of money and got one over on Sky- not bad eh? Please foward my thanks to Martin for his technical knowledge and your team for a simple but well excecuted order. I shall be back when I can afford an upgrade and have already told everyone and his dog about your wesite. Thanks Richard :-)
CPU cooling fan kit with heatsink Everything is fine. Arrived in a couple of days. It was (& is) exactly as described. Now fitted & functioning. Consider me a very happy customer. Thanks Andrew
090-2824 Right angle F adapters Hi Janet, Many thanks for email. I ordered the parts on-line Thursday evening; all parts arrived safe and well Saturday morning and went straight into use. I was really impressed - especially as I had an email on Friday to confirm that the parts were in stock and were in process of being despatched. OK, only six of the same item, but what more can I say: an excellent service! Many thanks, Nick
Dear Janet, thank you for enquiring about how my order went, the answer is fine apart from one small problem; capacitor C18 was missing from the DRX400 reliability kit! Not to worry though, using the list provided I was able to go to my local electronics shop and purchase said item. It cost all of 5p by the way. Since I was going to have to go there anyway to purchase a replacement fuse I don't feel too put out by this. As for fitting the parts I had no problems, but then I was trained in electronics and still had a soldering iron, solder and "solder sucker" kicking around in the garage. I'm pleased to say that having fitted all the components my Sky Digibox is now working again, so I consider this twenty-odd quid money well spent. I am curious though as to a situation where a company such as yours can sell kits like this (and I'm sure you sell lots!), without somebody like the trading standards office deciding there's something decidedly fishy about those Amstrad boxes - after all I would expect a piece of solid-state electronics with no moving parts to last longer than 18 months or so. I bet it's no coincidence that Sky try to charge you seventy quid a year for a maintenance contract. Anyway, enough of my ranting, thanks for your prompt service and kind enquiry. Regards, Mike. (Reply from Martin follows:) Mike, please accept my apologies for the missing capacitor. I've passed your message to Nicola to check the other kits in stock. Unfortunately we rely on human beings to pack the kits and mistakes can and do happen. As for Trading Standards, they do their own thing. And "Watchdog" were more concerned that the DRX100 tuner module was loose (it wasn't) than the fact that the earth connection didn't comply with safety standards. In fairness, however, I did discuss capacitor failure with Amstrad chairman Alan Sugar. His reply was that "all our parts are Industry Standard 12-year-life components". In fact I think he simply lacks the technical knowledge to understand that electrolytic capacitors have a limited life that's determined by temperature. If you run them 10 degrees hotter they last half as long. 20 degrees hotter than specified and they last a quarter as long. So it doesn't take Einstein to realise that, with an internal ambient temperature of up to 40 degrees in some cases, plus the localised hot spots in the power supply, the capacitor life can be as little as 12 months. This is especially the case for Grundig power supplies where I've seen failures in as little as 9 months from new! So, keep it cool and keep an eye on those capacitors. Replace every 3 years to be safe. Oh, and congratulations on a successful repair. This particular kit is a new one in our range and yours is the first feedback we've had. Best Wishes, Martin Martin, thank you for your (very informative) reply. I suspect I was the architect of my own downfall as I was in the habit of leaving the Digibox permanently on. Needless to say I shall be turning it to "standby" when not in use from now on. I guess from your point of view if everyone built solid, well-specced equipment it'd be a bit harder to make a living selling repair kits! Thanks again for your kind concern, and congratulations on your excellent customer service - if you need a testimonial please don't hesitate to ask. Regards, Mike. (In fact "standby" make little or no difference because the Digibox still uses around 90% normal power in standby.)
(top) Note: Mediabullet has moved servers From Radio Bullet ( http://www.mediabullet.co.uk/radio/ ): From Sky Digi Online ( http://www.mediabullet.co.uk/skydigital ): (top)
eBook Updates - "The Freeview Bible" on 8/8/04
- Moved Cool Book Shop to:
http://www.The-Cool-Book-Shop.co.uk | 
