mungaits wrote:Just curious, can i use my DSTV dish with a FTA satellite decoder to access other channels?
In Tz they have pay TV distributed "kienyeji" via cables and has some very interesting channels. Anybody with 411 on how they do this.
Asanteni
I do not have info on getting pay TV via "kienyeji", but I do have info on how to use your DSTV dish with your FTA decoder to accesses "other" - all possible FTA channels.
To access an FTA channel, that signal needs to reach your dish, since you are on KU, then a KU FTA needs to fall on your dish.
Along with the signal falling on the dish, you will need to know the channel's frequency, symbol rate and polarity.
If your FTA decoder has what is known as "blind scan", it will be able to search and pick up the FTA channels for you automatically, these will be the FTA channels in the satellite that your dish is tuned to. Note that some decoders with "blind scan" do not do that job effectively, resulting in some channels not getting picked up automatically, in such a case, you will need to have the channels details so that you can manually tune it.
To find FTA channels, you will first need to find satellites who's footprint cover your area, then investigate and get info on the FTA channels that are available in those satellites.
There is a site that has made finding FTA channels easy
http://www.flysat.com/fta.php
You can find FTA channels based on country. Since you wanted Tanzanian channels, just click on Tanzania, then see the channels along with the satellites that carry the signal. Since Tanzania is right next door to Kenya, it is highly probable that your will also receive that signal. To ensure that the footprint covers your area, note down the name and location of the satellite that has the FTA channel that you want, e.g. Channel "TB1" can be found in "Intelsat 904" at "60 E". With this info, go to
http://www.satbeams.com/footprints and search for that satellite at "60 E", once you have found and clicked on the satellites location, there will be a sub section, in order to see the full footprint, click on the appropriate subsection, in this case, it will be "global".
Now you can go through all FTA channels in all possible countries and investigate if the satellite that carries the signal has the footprint in your area. The only challenge that you will have will be re-adjusting the dish to the different satellites, unless you have multiple dishes, one for each satellite or unless you have one of these costly devices:
http://www.raysat.com/sp...le_satellite_tv_antenna
RaySat's mobile satellite antenna's can be mounted on vehicles thus allowing live mobile satellite tv on the move. It can lock to any KU signal that falls on it, without need of any physical adjustments. Because it can be mounted on vehicles and lock on satellites without physical adjustments, there is no rule that says that it cannot be used at home for multi satellite reception.
RaySat also got solutions for mobile, on-the-move VSAT, pretty cool.
To find all the FTA channels in a particular satellite, simply locate the satellite in
http://www.flysat.com/satlist.php. The satellite that carries DSTV's signal is the "Intelsat 7/10 (IS-7/10) @ 68.5° East "
http://www.flysat.com/is68.php Once in the satellite’s page, the FTA channels are the ones in grey, not sure if there are other FTA channels in other colors, the frequency and the polarity are in the second column from the left, the symbol rate is the third column from the left. On the symbol rate, when you see e.g. 6680 3/4 it mean that the "0" at the end can be either "3" or "4".
Kenya's FTA channels and their satellites
http://www.flysat.com/tv-ke.php
All the best.
They tried to bury us, they didn't know we were seeds.