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we are just about to pick up our MH tomorrow and have been thinking of trying sat TV when we are away racing mainly in the UK but occasionally in europe.
I would like to be able to receive eurosport to keep up with moto GP etc.
My plan is to ....
Use the spare Sky digital dish in the loft with single LNB mount it to a tripod and take the sky+ box and card from home.
My question is... Will this work? I know that I will not be able to fully benefit from the sky+ as we will only have a single feed to the box from the LNB (although I could pick up a dual LNB from ebay I guess) but other than that am I good to go? I want to find out if we will actually use it before spending cash on a 'proper' system
you would have thought working for a company that owns its own constellation of satellites I would be able to answer this myself! LOL
We take our sky box from home, and it works a treat, be wary of the sky plus, when you order it , you have to be plugged into a telephone line for 12 months, so that would not work in the M/H. We have the tv with a maxview crank up, we plug our sky box in find the satelite, and off we go, this works perfectly in France for us too.
thinking about it we have an old standard box in the loft but i believe that the card is paired to the box so we would not benefit from our full package of channels on the move.
I have never had my box plugged into BT line as I found that it worked without it being in and in the same way I would not plug my PC into an open connection I refused to do this with my sky box.
I assume they monitor your watching habits via the phone line? I know that it is used for buying movies etc its the Return Channel for the DVB or DVB-RCS as we call it in the trade
Yep. It will work fine, but it may be fiddly to set up unless you make sure you can easily adjust the dish mounting on the tripod.
Without wishing to be personal , if you have some cash to spare I wouldn't even consider a tripod setup. It will rob you of a major benefit of truck travel - "set up and pack up within a couple of minutes."
Have a look at the Maxview Crankup. Snelly does them and he's a specialist and great to deal with - or ODB has them too.
No storage problems.
No unpacking, assembling, pegging down, aligning, dismantling afterwards, wiping dry, packing away, searching for pegs in the grass etc..
No fiddling about outside in the freezing rain.
No yelling back and forth to the wife when trying to get a lock on the satellite.
Usually less than a minute to get a lock. (Not as quick with a Sky box as their response time is slower than many other decoders. So you get colder and wetter with a tripod setup - and fall out with the wife! )
Worth checking out even if you are still not convinced.
Crankup does not need power, so no probs there. More or less the same price too.
You can buy a number of very small 12 volt decoder boxes for as little as £35 - Ken (Gaspode) is pretty clued up about these. Most of them have a fast response time too. (With luck Ken will soon notice his name in bold and red)
These don't do Sky, but the Dreambox does. More expensive of course, and you would certainly be wise to quiz Snelly about them.
Don't know about the Multimo - but everybody you ask (well almost everybody ) rates the Crankup very highly indeed.
I had a minor problem with mine when it was delivered, and the aftersales service from Maxview was brilliant.
Why not talk to Shane (Snelly). He will offer unbiased advice, which is refreshingly rare from a dealer. He won't try to flog you more than you need.
(Edited to remove evidence of senility. Crankup does not need a power supply! )
Last edited by Zebedee on Sat Oct 25, 2008 10:53 am; edited 2 times in total
the link to outdoorbits didnt work but I assume you mean something like this: Maxview
The plan would be to mount something like that if we actually use the TV in the van. I assume that I would just plug the sky+ box into that. We have a digital aerial on the MH already (not sure which one at present)
Major advantage is it's mounted permanently on the roof of the van - so couldn't be more convenient. The controls inside the van (on the ceiling) are very neat and unobtrusive too.
You can also check out the Dreambox(es) and other small decoders on his site.
The Maxview one for £99 is brilliant - but doesn't do Sky of course. I think the Dreambox is the only one that takes a Sky card.
Last edited by Zebedee on Sat Oct 25, 2008 10:59 am; edited 1 time in total
or, would we be better off biting the bullet and purchasing something like the <a href=http://www.outdoorbits.com/product_info.php/cPath/11_60/products_id/296>Multimo</a> Sat dish which is 12v?
the sky box is 240v I would assume anyway so we would have to be running on MHU or genny anyway.
The Multimo Sat Dish is NOT 12v, there is no electrical input for the dish you just attach it to the back of your receiver 12v/240v. We have put our Multimo up for sale because the new van has a Maxview Semitronic already fitted so it is surplus to our needs.
We have used a normal Sky Digibox in the past but now use a 12v digibox from Maplins. It was £39.99 and it is excellent. This is in the motorhome of course.
Be aware that Sky does monitor your viewing, and if you get Sky plus, and disconnect it from you phoneline, a message comes onscreen, saying service not availabel, that is why we are sticking to the old receiver, i would like sky plus, but prefer to have my old box to watch abroad, explanation my hubby likes to watch the Tour De France on eurosport while we are on hols.
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, if you have some cash to spare I wouldn't even consider a tripod setup. It will rob you of a major benefit of truck travel - 
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