I need help to get free OTA Satellite with Armenian, Russian, Persian channels

[mkanet]

Although, I am a very experienced SageTV user related to American cableTV and receiving local ATSC broadcasts, I know nothing about setting up my sageTV PC to record reliably free over-the-air satellite channels.

I just want an extremely simple setup with a non-movable satellite dish (smallest possible non-moving satellite dish that will get reliable reception for as many Armenian/Russian channels as possible.. if it happens to get persian/farsi, that would be good too.

Can someone please tell me the following:

1. Which is the best USB tuner/receiver for Windows Vista that is fully supported by sageTV?

2. What is the most popular, smallest, more reliable fixed point dish and respective single LMB for my PC receiver. I dont need any other receivers for this dish.

3. Information and tools needed to point this dish perfectly to the right place in the sky from North California, USA

4. Which website will tell me exactly which satellite is the best satellite with Armenian channels that I can receive in North California. I would like a satellite that provides information to sageTV Guide. This is VERY important.

Thanks so much,
Michael

[svalmorri]

Michael,

the best source for satellite information (packages, frequences etc) is Lyngsat: http://www.lyngsat.com

According to it the only Armenian channel you can tune into is US Armenia whose beam is North America KU: http://www.lyngsat.com/freetv/Armenia.html

Hope this is a good starting point.

[mkanet]

LOL... oops this is a relatively old post. I already have all the FTA satellite channels integrated into my sageTV setup. It's actually my 11th tuner... It works great!

[KJake]

Doing a little necromancy here myself... Did you document your FTA adventures with Sage anywhere Michael? It is something that I've been interested in a while and wonder if it is worth it. I would like to get stuff from Asia/EU.

[mkanet]

Oh, I forgot to report back. I ended up first setting up DVB satellite reception with a cheap DVB FTA receiver pointed at Galaxy 19 (97.0W).. which has a bunch of channels I was interested in. After I got the best possible reception, I just replaced the standalone receiver with 2 World DVB Tuners DVB Tuners (one USB, one PCIe). Surprisingly, I was able to split the signal into 2 coming from one cable using a signal stacker; which works perfectly. I used DVB Dream as a Network Encoder instead of trying to get sageTV to natively scan and tune the channels... since I needed some extended features. All in all, it was definitely a good addition to my sageTV.... Its pretty nice to have sageTV's Guide seemlessly have ATSC, CableTV QAM and R5000 and DVB FTA all in one Guide on all my clients.... It's pretty cool to be able to watch News from Armenia live while driving to work via my wireless broadband connection+SageTV Placeshifter on my Netbook. Best of all its free indefinitely after its setup.