06 Jul 2014 4:50 PM:

I live in the centre of Mallorca (Algaida) and have a ‘1.6’ metre dish (1.6 vertical, 1.5 horizontal). It’s on my garage roof and has quite a long cable run to the house. When 2E and 2F took over transmission I had problems with reception, but took the poor mans route of climbing onto the garage roof myself complete with my Foxsat receiver, small TV monitor, and a long extension cable and had a tweak. In my case it made a huge difference. Now I get no pixilation, apart from when it rains (OK, I did noticed a tiny bit one night on News 24). I have a friend who lives about 1.5  kilometres away and he only has a 1.25 metre dish. He, like you, was suffering pixilation, but not as frequent or as bad as you suggest you have. I went round to his finca with my Foxsat receiver, mintor etc. and managed to get about 5% more on the signal strength, but with hardly a noticeable increase in the signal ‘quality’ %, which is a very important part of the equation. He says that his reception is now appears to be better, but I’m sure he will still suffer slightly at times. I have suggested that he either lives with the problem, or takes the plunge and goes for a bigger dish.

Another factor that was noticeable when at his house was the comparison of how the sensitivity of various satellite boxes affected the reception for the same channel. His main SKY receiver was the poorest, followed by his basic Bush Freesat receiver, and the best was my Foxsat HDR box. Another factor to take into consideration in trying to solve your problem, but I would certainly suggest that you get a pro guy around to fine tune your dish.  

Because of the long run of cable I have at my house I did some experiments and tests with one of the cable boosters. Satandpcguy is absolutely correct. The booster will improve the ‘strength’ of the signal on a long run, but it can’t improve the ‘quality’ if it wasn’t received by the dish in the first place. They make no difference to pixilation problems. If you want to try it, you can have mine!

Rod

Thread: Satellite tv booster

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