Digital TV in the outback

Hello Michael, Hmm. Understand what you mean about the captioning, just not sure whether it works. My caravan is in a storage lot at the moment but will be going there in a couple of days ( it's a bit of a security blanket thing, I just need to give it a pat) and will check out the decoder. However, having just looked at TV and decoder at home, I know that our TV has Teletext capability and I can get captioning via page 801. However the decoder at home has no such feature. Is it available on Austar/Foxtel satellite transmissions? From a test I did, it seems to me that captioning is only available via terrestrial free-to-air. Anyway, I'll check out the setup in the BT and get back to you. In the meantime if you, or anyone, can shed light on the topic of captioning via satellite it would be great. It would mean that I could watch TV at night without Mrs Motley telling me to turn the bloody thing down!

Pete,
Correct, no captioning being transmitted via sat.
tv.
David

Hi again Peter & David, Satellite decoders when fitted with a free to air card do have captioning providing the decoder has teletext capabilities. Only the pay TV channels such as Austar and Foxtel do not have captioning - too mean with their money to provide that service. My parents who live in a remote area and have satellite TV have a decoder with teletext capabilities do receive captioning however when live captioning is transmitted such as live news and sport, the captioning is a bit flawed in the way that the old captions are not erased before the new ones are shown which results in overwriting of captions thus making it unreadable. However, those programs that are not live have good captions. I think it all comes down to the decoder brand and whether that decoder has teletext capabilities. I will go to my parents this afternoon and check out the brand name and get back to you. I am wondering if the Abrolga dish must have a particular decoder brand or will it accept any decoders? Mmmmm - need more research on this..... Cheers, Michael.

Michael, You (I) learn something new every day!! The decoder which comes with the Abrolga is made by UEC. Have a look here - http://www.uec.co.za/sa/products.html I will check mine out and get back to you. However, the decoder is independent of the Dish. In our case the decoder is fixed mounted in the van and directly connected to the TV. It might be worth contacting the guy who makes the Abrolgas, Grahame Kermonde and explaining what you want. We went to meet him at his home and he is certainly very knowledgeable in the subject of satellite TV. Not only is he the saleman, but he puts every Abrolga together himself! Contact details are: telephone (03) 9380-2548 or email abrolga@bigpond.com Pete

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Michael,
You are correct about the free-to-air channels
having teletext capability, I was referring to the pay tv services. The Abrolga
dish can be connected to any decoder, we did it at Cania and it worked fine.

As Peter knows, there are much cheaper solutions
that the Abrolga set up, they would require a little longer to set up, however
you could purchase any decoder including those with a HD for recording programs.
I don't know whether the Abrolga vendors will sell the dish without the decoder
to offer you that flexibility.
David

Pete Motley wrote: "It would mean that I could watch TV at night without Mrs Motley telling me to turn the bloody thing down!" Angie wrote: Peter, because of that very reason we are also getting supplied a pair of remote headphones. Can even listen to the TV outside under the awning without annoying the neighbours. Might be worth the investment to you so that you don't get disturbed by Mrs Motley. LOL.

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Hi again, Found out my parents satellite decoder is the UEC DSD700 model. So I am pretty sure yours should have the teletext feature Pete. I enjoyed looking through the website you supplied. I found that there is a decoder with a 80GB hard drive for recording approx 40 hours of programs! (lipsmackinggrin) Cheers, Michael.

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Has anyone had a look at this site (US system) - apparently there's an agent in Sydney but probably costs mega bucks. Anyway, the problem remains about getting the thing to show pictures......http://www.kvh.com/main/index.asp?flash=yes PW

You can bet it outputs an NTSC signal.
David

We have just returned from a Murray River - Source to Sea using an Abrolga Sattelite Receiver and normal TV. Brilliant reception in bush camps from Kiandra to the Coorong and on a houseboat out of Renmark. Dish is fairly large but can be stowed under bed if you have 765mm+ in front locker. You need to build a frame for it to slide in neatly. Costs about $1750. Ref: (03)9380 2548 email: abrolga@bigpond.com

The Abrolga sounds very good for TV reception but can it also be used to access the Web? Can it be aimed at the Bigpond. Sat and pick up e-mail as well? This will enable at least an initial saving - although it will still require the Telstra sat fees. For those interested ( like me ) in getting e-mail out bush: I recently purchased the R290 sat phone from Ericsson which has a rate of 9,600 bytes per second ( as does all phones) . THis means that it is only slightly better than a carrier pidgeon for sending/receiving messages, and with the call rate via Globalstar ( better than Telstra) it still hurts the pocket. If you just want to keep in contact from time to time with various people then it would be a feasable option......especially like somone mentioned - with the 1 hr free deal.Although that deal only applies to CDMA or GSM systems I looked into the "two way" sat from Telstra - IT STILL REQUIRES A PHONE LINE for the request portion of accessing the web..........very frustrating. Cracker

Cracker, The TV reception, Free to Air, Austar and Foxtel and BigPond Satellite all share the same satellite - Optus C1. So, in theory, your email is available to you via the satellite dish. However, from a practical perspective, I don't think it's a goer for two reasons: one you need the telephone link even for Telstra's two way satellite connection and they will only instal at a fixed location. We have found that the fastest transmission speed is via CDMA - 28,800bps. There is a new technology available called CDMA 1x which offeres speeds of up to 114,000bps but it's so far only available in "civilised" areas and it averages out at about $10/mb PLUS call costs. Inteernet cafes (and there are plenty of them and growing) still seem to be the most cost effective option. Incidentally, for urgent communication, in circumstances where there is no guarantee of phone contact, we still rely on the service offered by VKS737 via the HF Radio. After the initial purchase, extremely low cost and you can connect to the telephone network at much lower call cost than Satellite