Sky Dish

buzi

why after all tech advances do people still have to have an ugly big sky dish to watch sky tv?

ariba10

There are far more uglier things about than a Sky Dish.

lowdownbug

It's not the dish I mind so much, ours is tucked away on a corner at the back of the house where no-one sees it anyway, it's the fact that it loses the signal so easily in anything more than light rain, thunderstorms knock it out completely, so does snow, and we have a really strong signal here too!

Anyway, do you have a suggestion for an alternative to a dish or was it just a rhetorical question?

penrhyn

What would you propose you use to receive Satellite signals Sherlock? Maybe a Squariel!!
!!!!!! they don't do a bad job of picking up the signal from something thats in geosynchronous orbit over the equator.
The current dishes are half the size of the ones needed to receive the old analogue broadcasts.

macman

It's not the dish that is ugly, it's where Sky install them. They always put them on the cheapest and quickest location possible, so they're frequently on the front elevation. if it's a row of terraces or semi's.
They can be installed much more discreetly, but it takes a bit more time and care, and a bit more co-ax. If they're doing six installs a day, the aesthetics of it is the last thing on their mind.

Heinz

Mine's on a T&K stand-off pole at the back of my bungalow and looks over my roof. It's only visible to one neighbour from her kitchen window (pay a decent installer and you'll get a good job).

[Deleted User]

lowdownbug wrote: »

It's the fact that it loses the signal so easily in anything more than light rain, thunderstorms knock it out completely, so does snow, and we have a really strong signal here too!

If your dish is losing signal in anything other than extremes of weather then you may need to have it re-aligned. Mine goes off at the most about once or twice a year and, even then, only for a few minutes.
I admit this year's snowstorms were problematical, but I only lost viewing for one night in total.

buzi

just done a quick check on google for other ways to watch sky without an ugly dish and there are a few, which begs the question why sky still use the ugly dishes and especially as people on this thread have stated that they fail in bad weather!

davemurgatroyd

buzi wrote: »

just done a quick check on google for other ways to watch sky without an ugly dish and there are a few, which begs the question why sky still use the ugly dishes and especially as people on this thread have stated that they fail in bad weather!

Satellite dishes only fail in bad weather if they are either undersized for the area (Northern parts of the UK need a slightly larger dish) OR they are poorly aligned (the usual problem) OR very exceptional bad weather conditions (I personally have only lost signal for a matter of minutes twice in the past two years).

Satellite is the only way to receive the full range of "Sky" channels - VM cable has a majority but NOT all of them and BT, Talk Talk and Sky Go all via internet connections only have a very limited number of them. So yes there are alternate ways to receive some of the Sky channels but only in areas with either VM coverage (about 45% of the UK) or high broadband speeds (again a limited part of the UK). So satellite dishes can be used in a far greater area of the UK and is a far cheaper method of distribution for the broadcaster and the viewer who would also have to pay for broadband/cable provision on top of the subscription (whereas there is no ongoing charge for a dish except for maintenance/repair every 6 or more years).

A satellite dish can be sympathetically installed by an independant installer at about twice the maximum price Sky will charge for installation (which can often be negotiated cheaper or even free).

So you pays your money and makes your choice.

googler

buzi wrote: »

just done a quick check on google for other ways to watch sky without an ugly dish and there are a few, which begs the question why sky still use the ugly dishes and especially as people on this thread have stated that they fail in bad weather!

Basic physics. Sky broadcast from a satellite, in geostationary orbit above Europe. In order to receive these broadcasts, some form of receiving equipment is required. In this case, a dish and LNB designed to match the broadcast signal, and a digibox. The design of the dish has to be of a certain size and shape to receive the signals. Since the satellite is to the South of the UK, viewers in the far North need larger dishes than those in the South.

There's one point of transmission, the satellite, which is broadly unaffected by geographic features (hills and valleys), and which covers most if not all of the UK. Contrast this with traditional TV transmission, where transmitters have limited range, so a network of them is needed to cover the whole country, and where, since they're mounted at ground level, they are badly affected by geographic features between them and the receiver.

There's no other way to get the full range of channels, with an EPG. Some of the channels may appear on other platforms, such as cable, or freeview, but both of those require some degree of ugliness to gain a connection - in the case of cable, digging up roads and pavements for installation, and in the case of Freeview - an 'ugly' TV aerial.

googler

buzi wrote: »

why after all tech advances do people still have to have an ugly big sky dish to watch sky tv?

To which 'tech advances' do you refer...?