Archive news 2004.
This is the news that was on the front page of the site in 2004. I've moved it here as it was taking up rather a lot of space.
30th December 2004: The site passed 40,000 on the front page counter today :-) .The 1m dish is a great success. Currently got it set on 5E with the Baltic stations on Sirius 3 available if its not raining. Also got an offset lnb on 5W for the French analogue stations. Offset reception isnt perfect, but its ok.
17th December 2004: Eutelsat W3 has a new name - its now W6 at 21.5E. On 28E, AuctionWorld has had its broadcasting licence revoked for not paying the £450,000 Ofcom fine, and has been removed from the Sky epg.
5th December 2004: Ive now got a Orbital 1m dish to play with. Pointing it at 5E brings in the half dozen or so fta Baltic services (on Sirius 3) nicely :-) Its a solid dish ordered from Satcure, and was very easy to assemble. At the moment its propped up on the usual temporary car tyre mount, although it will be getting a proper mount over the Christmas holidays when Ive got plenty of time to set it up.
23rd November 2004: Auction World TV has dropped into administration today. BBC News is reporting the company is £14,000,000 in debt and 27,000 customers are owed goods or refunds. "Auction World.tv" and sister channel "Chase It" is almost certain to be pulled off the Sky epg in the next couple days.The channels will not return in their current form.
22nd November 2004: ITV 2 is now ftv on 28E :-) so you no longer neeed to have a Sky subs to watch the programming. However, at the moment you still need a sky digibox and a ftv card.
20th November 2004: If you use AuctionWorld.tv on Sky you might want to read this very carefully. AW are in severe trouble with Ofcom (their regulatory body) and have been clobbered with a £450,000 fine and a threat of having their operating licence revoked!
14th November 2004: The new pop up adverts that Geocities have imposed on the site seem to have broken how some of my hyperlinks work within the frame system I use :-( Apologies if you get some unexpected effects. Im planning to move the site onto a proper paid for server soon.
7th November 2004: If you want terrestrial Freeview and free to air satellite, but dont want two boxes, check out this little beauty.. No idea how it performs, I ran across it whilst I was looking for something else! In the evening, On Sky Gems tv have computer problems and cant sell anything for over half an hour!
6th November 2004: Radio Caroline are changing frequencies on Eurobird 1 again.
2nd November 2004: the 600' radio mast at Peterborough collapsed over the weekend of 30th Oct! Pictures here - the mast collapsed after a fire in the transmitter buildings, and is now lying over the buildings. More dramatic pics here - some obviously taken by one of the Crown Castle employees.
1st November 2004: ITV 3 has launched fta on Astra 2D 10906V sr 22000 fec 5/6 :-) Details of the test cards carried in the days and hours preceding launch can be seen here
12th October 2004: More computer problems in the last couple of weeks, so apologies for lack of updates recently - had to start again with a clean hdd:-( Now wrestling with the wonders of Windows xp - and finding quite a bit of my old software wont even load let alone run on it.....
For anyone with Sky living outside the ITV London area, you will find ITV1 London on epg 963 at the moment with Channel 4 London on 964 (different adverts only)
17th September 2004: New additions to the test cards page, and the off air slides (captions radiated by part time channels when they are not broadcasting)
13th September 2004: Want to know what High Definition TV will look like? he BBC was testing a HDTV feed on 33E a couple of days ago, and one of the Digital Spy contributors grabbed some screen shots.
9th August 2004: Here's a picture of me in the garden yesterday surrounded by satellite bits / dishes etc searching for Arabsat 3A :-)
8th August 2004: Ive been doing some careful alignment with one of the better quality dishes, and half an hour of tinkering with the alignment results in Arabsat 26E re-joining the charts :-) Its been almost 3 years since I got anything off 26E...
7th August 2004: With the football season coming up, many folks will be wondering what footy is available. Well, if you dont have the Sky Sports package, the L J Football on Satellite site may be of interest. It lists all the football games being shown on the European satellites, & which encryptions are used. Of interest to fta users are the games which are shown in the clear. (Not much English stuff, so dont get your hopes up). Look for "FTA Mpeg" on the pages.
26th July 2004: New page - getting TV from Thailand in Europe.
25th July 2004: Ive been off on my summer holidays - 2 weeks cycling and hiking in the Brecon Beacons. Two weeks with only 4 tv channels (one of which transmits mainly in Welsh) is a bit of a shock after getting used to multi channel tv here....... I'll be updating the frequency charts over the next few days. (The Breconshire Brewery has a brewery tap pub in the middle of Brecon, and the beer is officially recommended as being very nice!)
6th July 2004: Hmm the google site search isnt working. Back to the drawing board! I'll leave the Google search engine up for now.
3rd July 2004: Im experimenting with a Google search engine for the site. You should be able to search the web and the site if I can get it to work properly :-)
23rd June 2004: Good news if you want to watch the Turkish channels on the Digiturk platform on 7°E. I had one of my 80cm dishes round on W3A last night, and discovered that the Turkish channels are now easily received here. They used to be broadcast on an Aegean spot beam off W3, and were difficult to get in north western Europe. However, now they are broadcast on the Europe B beam on W3A, they are an easy catch. I get 50% strength and 50% quality having just knocked the dish round from 5E and I didnt bother tweaking the alignment at all. :-) Please note if you want to watch the scrambled programming you will need a Cryptoworks receiver, and an appropriate subscription.
1st June 2004: Apologies if the site has been unavailable. Low Cost Names who run my domain name have been having problems with their address routing...
25th May 2004: new page - the complete list of Astra 2D tv channels.
18th May 2004: Eutelsat W3 was turned off last night, and all services transferred over to the brand new Eutelsat W3A. The older craft will be moving to 48E in the next few weeks.
16th May 2004: Woohoo - Ruslana from the Ukraine won Eurovision last night. The first time I picked the winner for 20 years! :-)
15th May 2004: Its Eurovision night, and one of the biggest nights of the year for satellite transmissions. Dozens of broadcasters are taking the signals from Istanbul. Just channel hopping aroud 19E and 13E, so far I have noted RTP International, ARD 1, TVE International, TRT International, TV Romania International, RTS Serbia, ERT Greece, MKTV Macedonia, Slovenia 1, RTV Montenegro, and of course our own BBC 1 on 28E taking the pictures.
My personal favourite is the Ukrainian entry, and apparently the group (Ruslana) broke the stage with their dancing in the rehearsals!
1st May 2004: Radio Caroline should be joining the Sky epg sometime over the summer :-) Latest news suggests sometime in June.
26th April 2004: Did anyone get one of the Lidl digital receivers & dishes which were available today? They seem to have been very thin on the ground, with many stores only having 2 or 3 available. The staff at my local store (Hawick) were even more clueless than normal, and didnt seem to know anything about the offer......
18th April 2004: Apologies for the lack of updates in the last 2 -3 weeks - Ive been off on my travels again. Ive been soaking up the sun and exploring the area around Albufeira in Portugal. Albufeira is a bloody awful place full of bars claiming to be "authentic British bars" serving Boddingtons!. Interestingly, almost every bar and hotel has Sky Digital available - (I even saw 1 big place advertising 20 screens PLUS 2 big screens....) Someone is doing a very good trade in exporting cards to the Algarve... The area inland of Albufeira is very nice though. I have now made a start on updating the tables again.
29th March 2004: new page - Forum Jump. Find out about the interesting world of satellite internet forums. Join one or two, and find out all sorts of useful information.
27th March 2004: new page - pictures from todays coverage of the sinking of HMS Scylla. The ship has been deliberately sunk to form a new reef just off the coast at Plymouth.
23rd March 2004: New page - pictures from the launch of Eutelsat W3A on 16th March.
15th March 2004: For anyone using a Sky Digibox for Sky services, there will big a big re-shuffle of channels in the Entertainment section on Tuesday 23rd March. Channels in the 136 - 295 range are affected. The new numbers for the fta chanels can be seen here.
14th March 2004: Some sources are now giving the launch time for W3A as 2305 UK time on Monday night.
13th March 2003: Eutelsat W3A will be launched next week - current schedule is for Monday night (15th March) at about 2350 UK time. Fucino Earth Station in Italy will be taking the feed and relaying to Europe via Hotbird 6 at 13E. Check out 11179H, the channel labelled "HB Channel 2". Launch pics will be added to the site next week. :-)
6th March 2004: The Libyan has gone off air again. A new page the Space News Feed. Updated weekly with loads of news from all around the world. Also a look at the channels in the UKTV network - part of Sky Digital.
29th February 2004: There is a new Libyan station on air off 13E - broadcasting partially in English! 9.9.99TV is a new service broadcasting for Africa. Check out 12577H, sr 27500, fec 3/4. Other 13E unusual stuff spotted recently - STN is a Somalia station which is on air for an hour a day on 12207H, sr 27500, fec 3/4 using the VTV4 channel.
24th February 2004: Can anyone add any info about stations which have closed off Sky Digital. Ive found a bit more info, but its hard going... Someone must have some info about when channels opened and closed! (Full credit given to any useful contributions of course)
22nd February 2004: Ive set up a Site Map of all the pages across the web site. You can navigate directly to every page from here. / The European beam of Amos 2 at 4W has been activated, although I havent found any sign of it yet here. have a look at 10793H sr 6670 fec 3/4. (Its carrying PowerVu signals, so you wont get any pictures. The info is given so you can have a look to see if any signal is received at your location). / E-bird at 33E is reported to be carrying tv signals as well. An OpenSky promo is being carried on 11472H sr 30000 fec 5/6.
12th February 2004: I've registered a proper domain name for this site. The new name is.... www.digitalsat.co.uk I assume someone didnt renew their registration - I had been after it 6 months ago, but it was taken at that point. Please start using this one to get to the site, as I may be moving the site away from geocities at some point.
9th February 2004: New page added - the channels that have closed off Sky Digital.
18th January 2004: E-bird at 33E is finally on air, although it's only carrying internet data at the moment. It looks like the in orbit testing failure was confined to Spot D (The Polish beam).
12th January 2004: Ive added more new pages - "I want to watch programming in <insert language>. Which satellite do I need?" / "Which satellites can I receive in north western Europe with simple reception equipment?" / Dish sizes for reception of Astra 2D right across Europe.
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