Maplins Satellite System £79.99 NOW £59.99 !!! Forums

kands

Well i am going to do the same as Jim and wait until the weekend when we are on a field in the middle of nowhere to try to set mine up.

Incidentally a big well done to Maplins...............
I received my dish after being really ticked off that 24 hours after ordering it they dropped the price by £20, and only just got round to looking at the invoice....
Guess what??? They have only charged me £59.99 all in, so I am well happy now and it just goes to show that they actually invoiced at the same time as delivery not at the point the order was taken.....

Keith

kbee

I saw the lidl unit for sale this week and thought cant wait for Maplins so bought it then and there , and quess what its just like jims 38 and 11 with or with out the lnb on ,I live in the wilds of Lincolnshire flat as a pancake still no better signal wether upstairs or down , it seems these units are perhaps made by the same people .I'm in the dog house now with the other half cos I bought a satnav last week without telling her,at least this tomtom works a treat . anyone got a remedy for ear ache !

ScotJimland

m3cuf

Hi all,
Just got home and had a play with the maplins satellite in a suitcase and i have the same results give or take as the rest of you, 31% signal and 11% quality.I set it up on my bedroom window sill which is just above my sky dish and seems to have direct line to the sat, and nothing Confused

even when i take the cable out from the back the signal meter stays the same.Cursed it, then put it all back,ill probably have another go at the weekend but at the moment im not impressed at all Rolling Eyes

C7KEN

Hi folks I just bought one from Lidl Spain, I can't see us getting much on it here unless we use a much larger dish however I wanted it for use in UK during July Aug and can't see why it would'nt work if it has a good line of sight, will have to leave it to you guys to do the field trials, remember to move the dish one mm at a time and wait between moves starting off from east and moving towards south, look forward to positive results Smile

patr

Keep the faith guys

Once you do get a picture you will realise what a cracking buy it is. I remain very impressed even though I paid £79.99 (!). I have mounted the dish on the outside wall of our bedroom so that we have satellite upstairs. It takes seconds to remove the dish when we take off in the MH.

However, if you cannot get it to work properly then return it to Maplins for an immediate refund or to Lidl and wait while it is returned for testing before you get a refund. I cannot speak for the Lidl set but the Maplins one has both a compass and an electronic satellite finder. The dish must be almost perpendicular as RH described earlier and you must ensure that the correct satellite is selected using the remote control. I have used the electronic one but find the compass to be excellent.

The Astra 28E is the easiest to align and, if you use the compass which attaches to the dish, ensure you select the correct city ( I use a point between Glasgow and London as I am almost mid way) and then move until the compass points to the Astra mark. Once there the most minute movement left or right will find the satellite position. As I said before I get BBC 1,2,3,4 and News 24 as well as all the ITV channels and Sky news. Some of the channels on the other satellites are very interesting as well!

You do need a line of sight so trees and other obstacles will cause problems but that applies to other mobile satellite dishes as well.

Hoping you have eventual success but if you do still have problems then find a six year old. I find they are more adept at setting up kit than I will ever be.

Pat

m3cuf

Hi Patr,
Thanks for the words of encouragement,this weekend i will get it working even if i have to hang it of Astra 28E Rolling Eyes

altair

Hi all, I am a newbie to motorhoming.
We are taking our first holiday in a rental van to france in 3 weeks and looking forward to it. If all goes well we will look for our own van afterwards The navigator has a precise specification of what the wants
.
In trying to get to grips with the analog TV shutdown I brought the Maplins unit, I will use it in the van on holiday and check how far south the small dish will pull in a signal. This is my first encounter with satelite ( we are on ntl broadband for everything at present) and after about ten minutes of frustration I think I have cracked it and its great.

Out of the box it has 2 german channels working. What I did was to use the MENU to set the language to English then swing the dish witrh the tone on till I found the satelite.

Then I set the unit to AUTO SCAN and left it to get on with it. The unit then found 185 channels on the satelite all german.
Next by pressing OK on the remote I got the channel display back with the satelite tuned to at the top of the menu. the > and < buttons let you select different satelites I selected ASTRA28EAST.
Then with the tuning tone on (this bit is in the hanbook but not much else) I swung the dish untill I got maximum signal. You need to adjust elevation as well as azimuth(up and down as well as round and round). The dish is about vertical when it is correctly aligned. when I switched off the tuning tone I had BBC 1 loud and clear with a steady picture and another 200+ channels all in English

The manual is not very helpful but if you persist you can good get a good result.
Just remember to screw in the screw on the base of the mains plug before you start or else the unit will not get any power, the screw clamps the UK adaptor to the continal wall wart unit that provides the 12 volts
Hope this helps.