Astra 2D Reception Overseas, BBC, ITV and Channel 4 overseas

Astra 2D Reception Overseas

This section is intended for those of us living outside the limited footprint of the Astra 2D satellite. Reception of Astra 2D is not impossible, people are watching this satellite from Cyprus in the east to the Canary Islands in the west!
When trying to receive a weak signal outside the official coverage area, all factors in your "reception chain" must be considered, it will be the difference between getting a usable signal or none at all.
Use the biggest dish you can, bigger really is better, this will dramaticly increase gain better than any other link in the chain.
Use a good LNB, a Blueline MTI or Invacom if possible, don't be fooled by fancy low noise claims or expensive "top of the range" LNB's.
Use a good quality cable, change this every few years, as this can become damaged by hot, cold or wet weather.
Choose a good receiver, one with the lowest signal "Threshold", this is the level at which the receiver will give you a watchable picture.

Many thanks to Snap for his contributions and advice on this page.

Sky Receivers

Good for fringe reception

Amstrad DRX 100 (Discontinued)

Amstrad DRX 200
Same tuner as the Panasonic 30, discontinued.

Amstrad DRX 550
Not as good as the Pace 2600 C1, though a good receiver.

Grundig GDS300 (Discontinued)

Pace 2600 C1
The best Sky receiver for fringe areas, it has a 'stuck on early software version' bug, discontinued.

Pace 430n
Not as good as the Pace 2600 C1, though a good receiver, discontinued. This model has a 'coloured lines' software bug.

Panasonic TU-DSB 20 (Discontinued)

Panasonic TU-DSB 30
This receiver does work well in fringe areas and has a low threshold, however there is a software bug with this model and it will crash when no or not enough signal is available. No longer in production.

Panasonic 35

Panasonic DBS40

Panasonic DBS50

Sky+ & Sky HD

Pace TDS470n Sky+ V3
Prone to failure on secondary dish input.

Thomson HD receivers
There are apparently three versions of the Thomson HD, with no identifying features. Early versions have a catastrophic PSU failure rate, and frequent temporary 'no signal' messages.

Not recomended in fringe areas

Pace 2500s
Very poor Ziff Tuner, discontinued.

Pace 2500 (Discontinued)

Pace 3000 Sky+

Pace 440
Very poor tuner, discontinued.

Pace 445n
Very poor tuner.

Panasonic TU-DSB 31
This is the worst receiver for fringe reception, discontinued.

Sony Receivers (all models)

Freesat receivers

Good for fringe reception

Humax FOXSAT-HD
Very good receiver with a low threshold.

Grundig GUFSAT HD

Dishes

There are a few of large dish manufacturers in Europe, the main companies are:
Channel Master
Gibertini
Irte

LNBs

Theoretically the lowest noise figure obtainable from any device is limited by any components in the signal chain with the highest thermal noise. The first component in the chain would be the detector circuit and on a Universal LNB this would be a pin diode. At Ku band the detectors are rated at manufacture to about 40K which converts to a figure of 0.5 dB.
Presently the LNB market is active by those selling what appears to be an extraordinarily good device, some use the best of the component batch - and end up with good performance overall (rare). Some modify existing LNBs by the use of fancy smoothing circuits to eliminate any further incoming noise from the power supply - there are definite improvements when used with cheaper receivers, especially those with switch mode supplies (few).
Some simply take the lowest noise figure during tests at a particular frequency, and then claim that this is the figure of the LNB (so you could have a 0.5dB LNB at 10.8GHz which has a 1.1dB noise figure at 11.6GHz, however it will be rated at 0.5 (depressingly common).

Click HERE, for more information on LNBs.

MTI Blueline AP8-T2B (0.6dB)

Blue Line LNBs are suposidly carefully selected from MTI's qualitative yield and meticulously tested under harsher conditions to deliver a Blue Line LNB with high cross pole performance, marginal phase noise, full-band low noise figure, and linear curve behavior accimmodating the demands of digital signals.
The Bluelines perform better than the Greyline models.
I have used single 0.6dB version of the MTI Blue Line for a few years now with excellent results. It gives a good picture when other LNBs can not. However this LNB is one of the good MTIs, I have tried another single MTI Blue Line, same model and noise figure of 0.6dB which gave far inferior reception.

The same has to be said of a twin version I tried, it seems to be pot luck buying an MTI, and one is left wondering if they really do rigerously test and select their top of the range LNBs?

MTI Blue Supreme Line (0.2dB)

The MTI Supreme (Blue Line) 0.2 dB Universal LNB is suposidly an enhanced version of MTI's popular Blue Line Universal LNB with better cross Polar Rejection qualities.

I have personly tested the twin version of the Supreme Line with very disapointing results. Both outputs performed far worse than my good single 0.6dB MTI, in fact the Supreme Line with its 0.2dB noise level even performed worse than my not so good MTI Blue Line twin which also has a 0.6dB noise level.

Invacom LNBs (0.3dB) Invacom Website

Invacom designs and manufactures high performance LNBs for professional and domestic use, either with an integrated feed horn or with a C120 flange. They claim to produce some of the lowest noise figure LNBs available, with their 0.3dB LNB as market leader. This low noise figure has been disputed by some users, who find the MTI Blueline to give slightly better performance.

Syntec 2000 (0.3dB)

It is claimed that the expensive Syntec 2000 can greatly improve reception with its low noise level of 0.3db. I have carried out my own tests, read & received reports that do NOT backup this claim. The improvment in signal gain is marginal, the only real way to improve signal gain is to increase dish size.

Tests carried out by The Association Of Professional Satellite Installers, indicate the following problems with this model:

The Syntec 2000 LNB appears to be 'biased' toward High Band reception, consequently suffering loss of Gain in the Low Band frequencies (0.8dB typical).
Also, it appears to have a tendency to be over sensitive to the 22kHZ tone output from certain receivers, causing an inability to discriminate between High and Low Band, on certain of the lower frequencies.
The net result being, that the LNB remains active in High Band, when the receiver has selected Low Band. To overcome this particular problem, they recomend fitting a Low Band 22kHZ Tone Blocking device to this LNB.
In fairness to SYNTEC, it must be pointed out that this particular problem can also be caused by faulty receivers - In particular the Panasonic DVB 30model, which has an inbuilt Tone fault preventing Tone turn off when Low Band is engaged.

The Syntec is a very over priced LNB, and performs no better and in some cases (against MTI and Invacom LNBs), worse than far cheaper models. Don't expect any miracle reception with the Syntec, the manufacturers claims are over inflated!

Weak signals and LNB Skew

It appears that if you don not get the "LNB Skew" spot on, result can be a poor BBC or ITV signal or non at all. Double check your LNBs skew setting to maximise your signal gain.
What is Skew? This is turning or tweaking your LNB slightly left or right to maximise a weak signal, this could be the difference between a good picture orpoor reception.

Inline amplifiers

Inline amplifiers will not increase your weak Astra 2D signals, infact they will probably reduce your signal. They are only intended for use where very long cables are required.

Sidelobes

Spain & Portugal (Iberian Sidelobes)

Reports in from both Spain and Portugal, indicate that sidelobes exist in both countries. In Portugal dishes of 80cm have picked up 2D in the Algarve! On Spain's Costa del Sol, dishes of 1.2m have also managed to pick up the weak 2D signals. Could the signals be leaking as far away as the Canaries?

Italian Sidelobe

From posts, it would seem that Astra 2D's footprint seems to like the boot of Italy! Suprisingly small dish sizes for the north, 85cm! Southern Italy seems to be another story, reports from south of Rome, suggest that 2D can be picked up on a Patriot 3.8m dish.

Sidelobe in Sweden

There is a 3dB difference in strength between Horizontal and Vertical (Vertical weaker). There seems to be a sidelobe in Sweden. In Stockholm Astra 2D can be picked up on 85cm-1m dishes. In the south of the country you will need a bigger dish probably 1.5m or 1.8m.