Question about TV and satellite

it has been bugging me for a while, i have tried to research some stuff on google about it but cant find what i am looking for so here goes.

setanta beam worldwide, sky can be received all across europe. so what technically stops sky being gotten in america, i am assuming its to do with the position of how the satelite "beams" i.e. its out of range or something to be picked up in the states, but then how does setanta work? i spose i just want to know why it isnt possible to get sky in america.

btw FSC over there is a great channel

Satellites have a "footprint", very much like the light from a bulb. Setanta is probably on several different satellites.

The earth is round :)

Sky are on Astra satellite at 28.2 irc that only covers a spectrum of Europe, to cover USA they would need to be on more sats, Setanta are on cable in the US so can easily be seen anywhere there tru sat or cable.



kdjac

Setanta in the US and Setanta in Ireland is very different. Even the UK and Irish setantas are way different. And in the US they're not available on any conventional cable packages, they sell to pubs/clubs only

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Originally Posted by kdjaC

The earth is round :)

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Yeah but it spins too. Maybe Setanta can only be gotten in the US at night time? :D

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Originally Posted by pete

Yeah but it spins too. Maybe Setanta can only be gotten in the US at night time? :D

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Is that why I get blue screen after the hub with my FTA set up. :D

The Satellite's rotate around earth at a speed so that they stay in the same position above earth. They then beam down the signal over a footprint, which restricts reception. The Astra 2 cluster is focused on the UK (hence a smaller dish for much of England compared to even the east coast of Ireland). Some are more focussed than others - the BBC and ITV channels are on Astra 2d which has a much tighter focus on the UK. This is the reason you get anomolies such as encrypted sky channels being easily got in Spain, whereas Free To Air BBC1 is much harder to get on the same size dish..

ok i assumed it was something like a "footprint", but to get beamed from several satellites is that a broadcasting issue or is that just simply a case of paying enough money, so who actually "owns" these satellites?

The satellites are owned by companies like SES-ASTRA and Eutelsat and sirius. Companies like Sky lease transponder capacity on these satellites.

Setanta for example at an event broadcast from their OBU to a satellite they use for uplink the dishes at the setanta center pull this down and rebroadcast it to various other sats, mostly astra at 28east, and I believe they send the content for the US via a netlink where it is then uplinked again for various satellites.

As said, the earth is round, it is impossible to recieve the satellites used for american stations here, some people report success of recieving the amazonias satellite on 61.5west using a 2.4m dish in sligo but this seems to have been a once off.

You can get some transatlantic feeds of american channels such as NBC, FOX cnbc etc on Telstar satellite at 15west.

Main satellites that can be gotten in ireland on a 1m dish for example would be from Turksat at 42east all the way to 58west. past 58 west you get into the satellites with beams aimed specifically at the US and no matter how large a dish you have you aint gona get them.

ronnieb, very insightful thanks, how does the fox soccer channel work then showing all live premiership games?

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Originally Posted by paul_oshea

ronnieb, very insightful thanks, how does the fox soccer channel work then showing all live premiership games?

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Technically not live, theres a delay i found that out by listening to the match online in New York and watching it on Fox Sports about 20 to 30 seconds delay from 5 live to tv.


kdjac

As KDJAC stated the matches on FOX are not live, there is a delay of upwards 45seconds. I think they are getting the feed via a dedicated net link, not sure of this but to my knowledge it is one of the ways.

Another question lads. I know the game tomorrow is on TV3 while no channel this side of the water is broadcasting it.

I don't know if this is correct but a work colleague told me that I should be able to tune in TV3 on the "add channels" section of my Sky package as it broadcasts of the Astra satellite. Is this possible? I checked a website he mentioned and got the frequency details etc Freq- 10744, PolH- SR22000, FEC- 5/6.

I haven't actually ever added any new channels to my package so would appreciate instructions if it is possible.

You need to have an Irish $ky card. Otherwise you won't get it.

Cheers Noby. Nice simple answer. Radio it is then.