Satellite v Freeview

From a consumer's perspective does satellite viewing have any
advantages over Freeview other than a wider selection of stations? Is
it less prone to interference/reception problems?
--
rbel

In message ,
lid writes
From a consumer's perspective does satellite viewing have any
advantages over Freeview other than a wider selection of stations? Is
it less prone to interference/reception problems?
I've got both, Freeview on the TV and a separate Freesat/HDD/Blu-Ray
cutter and the picture from the satellite is always good.
--
Clive

In message ,
lid writes

From a consumer's perspective does satellite viewing have any
advantages over Freeview other than a wider selection of stations? Is
it less prone to interference/reception problems?

You have stated the main advantage.

After this it does depend somewhat on the location of the consumer,
there are some areas where Freeview reception is not good and satellite
would be better.
Satellite is less likely to suffer from local interference, thermostats,
trees, other radio transmitters, radio hams, CBers etc. and by the look
of news reports 4G too.

-----------------

There again satellite can suffer from problems in heavy rain and snow,
rain is temporary for the duration of the storm and can be mitigated by
using a larger dish. Snow can be similar, except when it sticks to the
dish, as it did to me a couple of weeks ago, when I lost all satellite
comm's for a day until the snow melted.

There is normally less to go wrong with a Freeview aerial than a dish,
alignment is not so critical and fewer electronics to fail.

Most TVs have a built in Freeview RX whereas a sat' RX would, obviously,
be needed for satellite.

OK they were disadvantages and you only asked for advantages, but I hope
it gives a slightly wider view. I'm sure others will be along with
other ideas too.

--
Bill
( A different one )

On Sun, 24 Feb 2013 12:16:15 +0000, rbel wrote:


From a consumer's perspective does satellite viewing have any
advantages over Freeview other than a wider selection of stations? Is
it less prone to interference/reception problems?

As a general rule, bitrates tend to be more generous on satellite.

It's worth noting that although there are more (mainly dross) FTA
services available on satellite, there are a handful of watchable ones
that are currently FTA on DTT, but not satellite.

--
Graham.

%Profound_observation%

On Sun, 24 Feb 2013 12:16:15 +0000, rbel wrote:


From a consumer's perspective does satellite viewing have any
advantages over Freeview other than a wider selection of stations? Is
it less prone to interference/reception problems?

A larger selection of rubbish is about it. The disadvantage is the
dish.

Steve

--
EasyNN-plus. Neural Networks plus. http://www.easynn.com
SwingNN. Forecast with Neural Networks. http://www.swingnn.com
JustNN. Just Neural Networks. http://www.justnn.com

Stephen Wolstenholme wrote:
On Sun, 24 Feb 2013 12:16:15 +0000, rbel wrote:

From a consumer's perspective does satellite viewing have any
advantages over Freeview other than a wider selection of stations? Is
it less prone to interference/reception problems?

A larger selection of rubbish is about it. The disadvantage is the
dish.

Steve

Who cares about a chuffin little dish 18" across? They're everywhere,
haven't you noticed, like windows and doors.

Bill

On Sun, 24 Feb 2013 14:21:37 +0000, Bill Wright
wrote:

Stephen Wolstenholme wrote:
On Sun, 24 Feb 2013 12:16:15 +0000, rbel wrote:

From a consumer's perspective does satellite viewing have any
advantages over Freeview other than a wider selection of stations? Is
it less prone to interference/reception problems?

A larger selection of rubbish is about it. The disadvantage is the
dish.

Steve

Who cares about a chuffin little dish 18" across? They're everywhere,
haven't you noticed, like windows and doors.

Bill

IMO they look awful. I admit that I had one on my previous house. I
decided it was a bad idea when it collected a load of leaves. They
aren't everywhere. From my window now I can see four houses. All have
windows and doors but no dishes.

Steve

--
EasyNN-plus. Neural Networks plus. http://www.easynn.com
SwingNN. Forecast with Neural Networks. http://www.swingnn.com
JustNN. Just Neural Networks. http://www.justnn.com

There again satellite can suffer from problems in heavy rain and snow,
rain is temporary for the duration of the storm and can be mitigated by
using a larger dish. Snow can be similar, except when it sticks to the
dish, as it did to me a couple of weeks ago, when I lost all satellite
comm's for a day until the snow melted.
...................

Yes, same here. But only half an inch over the bottom third of the
dish. Came good after I threw some tepid water over it!

Richard

"Bill Wright" wrote in message
...
Stephen Wolstenholme wrote:
On Sun, 24 Feb 2013 12:16:15 +0000, rbel wrote:

From a consumer's perspective does satellite viewing have any
advantages over Freeview other than a wider selection of stations? Is
it less prone to interference/reception problems?

A larger selection of rubbish is about it. The disadvantage is the
dish.

Steve

Who cares about a chuffin little dish 18" across? They're everywhere,
haven't you noticed, like windows and doors.

The problem is not dish as such, it's the fact that it's usually mounted on
a wall relatively low down (eg first floor window level) whereas a TV
aerial, as well as being a bit smaller, is usually mounted higher up and
towards the ridge of the roof (eg on a chimney) where it is less visible.

We've got both Freeview and Sky, and my perception is that Freeview provides
a better quality picture, with fewer compression artefacts. This is unusual,
given that satellite bitrates are supposed to be higher than DTTV. I wonder
whether some of it is losses in the (Amstrad) Sky hard disk recorder,
causing recorded programmes to be different to live ones, whereas DTTV
(recorded using Windows 7 Media Centre and a Hauppauge USB DTTV decoder)
seems to give indistinguishable results for live and WTV recording. I'll
have to do some side-by-side comparisons of live and recorded on Sky to see
if there is any degradation.

Satellite HD recordings seem to be bad: the recordings we made of the
opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics showed horrendous low-bitrate
artefacts, plasticky colours and objectionable banding of graduated tones.

I've not had many reception problems with either satellite or terrestrial
(eg glitches and dropouts). The only problems I had with terrestrial were in
the days before the changes brought about by switchoff of analogue, and they
were confined to one multiplex, the ITV1/ITV3 mux, which suffered periods of
unwatchable recordings, with perfect reception at other times. I traced that
to a duff length of aerial cable between the wall socket and the DTTV
decoder; since I changed that, I've not had any problems. I think the ITV
mux may have been the lowest UHF channel of all the muxes at the time, so it
may have been that the old cable was attenuating lower frequencies. Only
that socket/decoder were affected; the other feed (via a splitter) to the TV
and hard disc recorder were fine. I've not got any equipment that can
receive HD on terrestrial so I can't comment on how rugged that is. I really
should get a DVB2 decoder for Media Centre...

Even in torrential rain and heavy snow (both falling and settled on the
dish) I've not experienced any reception problems with satellite.

In message , Stephen
Wolstenholme writes

Who cares about a chuffin little dish 18" across? They're everywhere,
haven't you noticed, like windows and doors.

Bill

IMO they look awful. I admit that I had one on my previous house. I
decided it was a bad idea when it collected a load of leaves. They
aren't everywhere. From my window now I can see four houses. All have
windows and doors but no dishes.

Steve

Maybe they are just well hidden?

--
Bill
( A different one )