Satellite hacking

I picked up a cheap satellite setup from Lidl at the weekend. I've always been interested in satellite TV - not just to catch up with stations from Eastern Europe where part of my family come from, but also there's just something very *cool* about picking up signals from satellites miles above the earth.

The whole kit was just under £60, and including an dish, LNB, receiver, all the cables, and a dish mount.

Fitting everything took a couple of hours - luckily my house has a south-facing single storey side extension with a flat roof, so there was a nice space to mount the dish there.

Hotbird 13E was very quick and easy to find - just kept the dish horizontal and roughly south, and bam, we have a signal.

Astra 28.2E was a bit more hassle, which was annoying because that was the main one I wanted to pick up, as it has all the channels you can get via Freeview in the UK.

I'd picked up a satellite tuner as well, which is a nifty box you plug inline in the cable between dish and reciever. It beeps and shows LEDs for signal strength, which was what I needed when the compass showed I was in approximately the right location.

Now I've got the 'Big 3' positioned, I think its time to pick up a motor for the dish. The receiver that came with the kit is a Silvercrest SL65, with has DiseqC support, so will work with any DiseqC compatible motor. Thanks to this it can also support multiple LNBs, although the receiver itself only has one co-ax in port.

All in all I think the set was a bit of a bargain, and has provided a cheap entry into the full world of satellites. Once the motor is in place, I'm going to have to run a co-ax feed into the office, and start playing around with satellite software on the computers.

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satellite, hacking, hotbird, astra, lnb