Okay pal, I'm assuming you want something that will give you a mix of news, family and entertainment channels (e.g a mix of Nilesat 201, Eutelsat 7 West A, Eutelsat 8 West A and Eutelsat 7 A). Based on that, i'd say you require:

i. a FTA satellite decoder. Many varieties and brands of this exist, including Strong, Openbox, Technosat, Skybox, etc. Locally, we mainly use the Strong brand coz of ease of getting software updatea as well as affordability. personally, I'd recommend SRT-4922HD. See the specs here.

ii. a satellite dish of minimum size 180cm primefocus or 120-130cm offset. This will provide you with appropriate signal stability for a wide variety of satellites. Specifically for Eutelsat 7A, a 160cm offset would be most appropriate to nab the goodies on Europe-B beam but seeing as this is elusive locally (unless you talk to Posta to sell you their redundant ones) then you may consider what we euphemistically call a BUD (Big Ugly Dish) or DKK (Dish Kubwa Kuruka) which is a 240cm primefocus dish. this is a huge one.

iii. an appropriate LNB, dependent on dish type and type of signal you wanna receive. for Ku offset, we have Samson Twin, Eurostar ESKD QP4 Gold and Inverto Black Ultra Quad. For Ku primefocus, we have Fuji Stargold mono or quad output. For C-band, we have Eurostar ESCDT-700 Twin, Supermax 777 Plus, Eurostar ES-51 and ES-21.

iv. an appropriate good quality cable of at least RG-6 quality. A common brand is Astel. RG-56 is cheaper but lower quality. We recommend RG-6 coz we are dealing with fringe reception here and would like to minimize signal loss. For the same reason, cable run should not exceed 30m/100' from lnb to receiver.

v. smaller consumables such as F-connectors, DiSEqC switches, etc.

vi. depending on complexity of your set-up, budget at least 4-6k installation costs.

Next question I know you're gonna ask is the costs of these items. Well, I do not have those with me but will give you a few shops where you can check them up, just a bit of window shopping to get an idea as you budget.

In Nairobi, check Mwalimu Communications, Riwara Electronics, Spikes Spares and Electronics, Alfa Sounds, etc all in or around Luthuli Avenue. Someone had once mentioned a shop in Eastleigh but unfortunately I seem to have misplaced the name.

In Msa, check Space Electronics and Abasheikh Electronics around the Mwembe Tayari area.

Finally, in your free time, have a look at this forum and see what fellow Kenyans (and other Africans too) are up to in matters FTA Satellite Tv. Feel free to sign-up and share your experiences and queries as well.

See how in normal radio transmission we have FM, MW and SW bands? In satellite too we have C-band and Ku-band transmission. In days gone by, primefocus dishes were referred to as C-band dishes but not anymore, nowadays even offset dishes can be adapted for C-band reception. The only difference is that while in primefocus we have a 'flat' scalar ring, on offset the scalar ring is conical. In short, both offset and primefocus dishes can receive both C-band and Ku-band with the right equipment.

Conical scalar ring:



Flat scalar ring:



Ordinarily, the C-band frequencies are four figures while those for Ku-band are five figures. For instance, on this page , the frequency (or transponder) 4064H (with AlJazeera English, CCTV & EWTN) is C-band while the frequency (or tp) 11050H (with dstv south africa) is Ku-band.

That's only because it is easy. Before you get your satellite meter, consider installing any of the following apps in your smart phone and using the same: Dishpointer Augmented Reality apps, Sat Alignment, Dish Align, Eutelsat Finder, SatDir. Also consider installing a 'spirit-level' app such as iLevelmeter for iOS to assist in ensuring the surface on which the dish is mounted is both horizontally and vertically true.

When you eventually decide to get the meter, please ensure it's a DVB-S2 meter capable of decoding up to 32-PSK or even 64-PSK signals. In short, it should have specs either similar to, or superior to those of the decoder. which reminds me of this post where one of the shops I'd mentioned, AbaSheikh in Msa, was mentioned as having some of those digital satellite meters. You may check them out.

And finally, congrats on your experiments with that office dish. If nothing else, it tells me that you have your azimuth right. Without changing that, play around with elevation only and see what other channels you'll nab. You may just surprise yourself. As we say in the FTA world, the possibilities are endless. More grease to your elbow. Careful you don't contract ASAS though.

@kysse you're not alone. I was comfortable with my KBC stuff. But I guess I've given in to family pressure to provide digital. What to do!

Congrats on your successful trials. Th reason you were initially failing is that the Astrovox 290 FTA Plus is DVB-S while most of the transmissions on Nilesat are DVB-S2. Since it cannot decode DVB-S2 signals, you cannot watch.

I hope you got your software either from the stron website or from crosat.us as these are the only sources of genuine software for that STB. The file you download is usually zipped and you must first extract using winzip or winRAR software on the comp. After extracting, save the .stb file in your flash disc, load to the machine.

Confirm that the software you're loading is more recent, i.e. newer than that already preinstalled in the decoder.