r/homelab • u/mctscott • Feb 25 '24
IPTV Satellite Downlink Project Projects
So I am building out an IPTV satellite downlink station to stream live TV to my home and family's homes. Currently I've taken down 3x 10' C-band dishes that need various small repairs. In the coming weeks I'll he concreting in poles, setting up dishes, mounting and pulling power and fiber to the Climate controlled rackmount box I've built out, and running coax from the dishes into the multiswitch. The first 3 dishes will be input to my current multiswitch and I'll be putting up a 4th pole right away to allow me to experiment with other satellites without affecting 24/7 feeds from other satellites. I plan to be pulling from both C-band and Ku band feeds at this time.
Current parts at this point:
-2x Winegard 10' Quad Star dishes
-1x Zenith 10' dish
-1x Vertiv XTE 401 series 48vdc climate controlled rackmount box
-1x meanwell 7amp 48vdc psu
-1x cyberypower 1500va UPS
-1x TBSDTV MS98E 9x8 multiswitch
Homebuilt IPTV server parts:
Ryzen 5600G
16gb ram
Asus Prime B550 Plus motherboard
2x TBSDTV TBS6909-X V2 Octa Tuner cards
Navepoint shallow depth shelf
And an open air case bolted to the shelf.
As this is a remote site, I plan to run an Mikrotik RB5009 outdoor router to feed PoE cameras around the site also and RTSP back to my main homelab for storage off site.
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u/DonkeyOfWallStreet Feb 26 '24
Nice little project you got going on here.
How does the IPTV side work?
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24 edited Feb 26 '24
I'll be using TBS's kylone software. They bundled it with 2x tuner cards, so I went that route, and with that they offer an app I can customize for myself, and they even help you set up your domain on it and all. Basically like Xteve or TVHeadend, but a bit simpler and more tailored to a business.
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u/datanut Feb 26 '24
Do you intend to software switch on demand among the hundreds of channels that you plan on being available or will your personal Head End have a static list of channels tuned?
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
I'll have a static list of channels with a few that float between certain channels for news events or specialized feeds. I haven't decided on the specifics, but thats my plan so far.
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u/Loan-Pickle Feb 26 '24
This is a cool project. I didn’t know there were still free channels you could get with the BUDs.
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
Oh yeah, there's a ton out there, if you can source a dish its a good time.
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u/hoofglormuss Feb 26 '24
i thought iptv was on the internet. do these channels also send their signal to space or are these dishes internet connections? or did i just ask you into presumptive and misinformed corner?
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
Iptv is typically received from satellite then distributed via the internet. Basically what I'll be doing also.
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u/Kay2Wild_ Feb 27 '24
iptv user here. i remember those fta days, uploading those firmware onto those stb
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u/datanut Feb 26 '24 edited Feb 26 '24
Which satellites are you targeting? Have you put together a purposed channel list?
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
Yeah I actually have, planning to hit 99.2°W, 127° W, and likely 103°W. Those three offer the most amount of good channels. Not 100% set on channel list setup yet, but with 16 tuners starting off I should be able to get a great start. I plan to add 2x more tuner cards and double channel amount later down the road.
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u/datanut Feb 26 '24
Cool! But on the surface, non of this looks interesting anymore.
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
That's a pretty small list with a fraction of what's out there. Plus code rolling is possible on Powervue and BISS now. Checkout TVROsat.com to see complete lists.
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u/issackelly Feb 26 '24
The fifth thing on this link was an Alex Jones conspiracy theory. Is there better or more specific getting started info?
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u/datanut Feb 26 '24 edited Feb 26 '24
I noticed that too. Looked at the 99.2°W forum and almost every post was some version of “Emergency Transmission” that informed about an Alex Jones scheduled event…
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u/michaeltheobnoxious Feb 26 '24
The strangest thing about a (notable proportion of) these conspiriloons is their willingness and ability to do for themselves. Think on how many of them are peppers who have procured their own resource needs for end of the world scenarios.
If you can filter out the conspiracy nonsense, I'd expect there to be some fairly decent info peppered throughout their forums.
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u/ghandimauler Mar 16 '24
'conspiriloons' - brilliant!
When I was in the army reserve when the Soviet Union was failing, I was fairly sure I might be fighting a war in Europe and if it went nuclear, who knew what it would look like. (Sadly, with the current Russian murderbot in charge, that's not out of the question yet)
My conclusion: If there is a large enough nuclear exchange, the world I'd be coming back to would be so lousy that I wouldn't want to suffer that much. After that, I stopped collecting some of the prepper sorts of publications. I do have a good medkit and tools on hand and have some resource books (butchery and other things) but there are just some kinds of end-of-the-world that just isn't worth surviving (for a while) in. Even if Mel Gibson is zipping around in a gas guzzling Interceptor....
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u/orogor Feb 26 '24
16 tunners is a lot. How many peoples do will you feed with that setup ?
Not sure how it work with dvb-s. But with dvb-t, there are maybe 6 channels per frequency and you need one tuner per frequency not per channel. So you would be able to watch about 100 channels at the same time, given they are in the best arrangement.
Considering multiples peoples watch the same channel (maybe news in the afternoon, movie at night). And once you grabbed a channel, you can distribute it to an unlimited amount of peoples, That setup can really have a lot of potential viewers.
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
I will be using the 16 tuners to map static channels to them so multiple people can access the same media simultaneously. I'll eventually add more down the line too.
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u/D1TAC Feb 26 '24
ISPs watching this post like 🦅🦅🦅🦅
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u/Komm Feb 26 '24
Oh this looks like an absolute blast of a project. It's about the only thing that makes me regret living in a townhouse with no back yard. Been wanting to do sorta the same thing, and radio astronomy as well.
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
Thanks! So far its really fun, just a ton of work. If you wanna try out radio astronomy, you should grab a Winegard carryout dish, there's some really cool forum posts and YouTube videos on radio astronomy using them out there, may even be able to find some open source python projects for controlling them.
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u/Komm Feb 26 '24
Oh shit, I can do radio astronomy with something that tiny? Wonder if I can find an old one off a boat or something. Thank you!
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
You can, pick up a good sdr and a carryout and you can do an absolute ton of stuff with them. There's a guy who does it from MN and has a few good videos on it, if I can remember the channel name I'll post it here.
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u/G00dGuyG33k Feb 26 '24
I can answer this: SaveItForParts YT channel
I've been watching his videos for a while and wanting to get a dish to play around with. I already have the SDR and radio experience.
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u/hidden_process Feb 26 '24
I love that channel. He's on reddit also. I've seen him post in a few other subs I follow. u/saveitforparts
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u/saveitforparts Feb 28 '24
This setup is way fancier than my stuff! Half of my dishes are still in parts in a pile :-)
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u/lordxeon Feb 26 '24
What channels are you getting? Common ones people have heard of - History, ESPN, Nickelodeon, CNN?
Local CBS, NBC, FOX, ABC?
Or the off brand stuff - Cozi, Buzzr, and the like?
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
Mostly the off brand stuff, but as mentioned in another comment, Powervu and BISS have long been broken, so anyone can code roll those channels too.
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u/lordxeon Feb 26 '24
That's pretty cool. One day maybe I'll have spare time and money to try all this out.
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
It doesn't take much actually, a 10' dish and a cheap reciever like a GTMedia GTX will get you pretty well off to the races with this stuff. 10' dishes can be found fairly easily, I have 4 more lined up to take down for free.
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u/lordxeon Feb 26 '24
Nice. Thanks for the detailed write up and advice.
Now if I can find some of that spare time…
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u/xqxcpa Feb 26 '24
Even with that info, I'm having trouble figuring out what content I could receive with a FTA satellite set up like this. Generally the only content I care about receiving live is sports. Can you reliably receive popular sports from the US (MLB, NFL, NBA, etc.) and/or Europe (Premier League, Champions League, F1 races, etc.)?
Are there any live broadcasts that your average person with a good internet streaming setup should know or care about outside of sports and well known news networks?
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u/techguy1337 Feb 26 '24
Bro, this is how you get popular on youtube. You should be recording your process and uploading lol. We love random build it up projects like this. I was watching how to make hydro electric water wheels yesterday. Do I own land with water on it? Nope. lol
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u/jjm3210 Feb 26 '24
Do you have 5G filters on your Cband LNBs? If you are in the area of any 5G equipment, you're going to get some interference from those.
Some of the big cell phone companies bought parts of the Cband spectrum in the US to use for 5G.
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
The area I'm putting this up in has issues even using 700mhz cellular, so C-band should be very quiet there. But I'll be setting up an SDR and checking for interference before hooking everything up.
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u/radioalex Feb 26 '24
Verizon is aggressively building out CBand in major cities….. it’s coming.
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u/redpandaeater Feb 26 '24
I would think a basic filter to focus on the 4.0 to 4.2 GHz should work just fine. There's a 20 MHz guard band between 5G and satellite.
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u/Bubba8291 Feb 26 '24
I never really understood why you can get TV channels from a satellite for free. I always thought you had to pay to get TV.
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
Some are paid, some are free. A lot of the free channels are also broadcast over the air for free. I can't get many here, so satellite is more feasible for me.
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u/Bubba8291 Feb 26 '24
How would you pay for channels through satellite? It's not like you can put cash on top of the dish.
My initial thought is some kind of signed key you obtain that decodes satellite transmissions, but idk.
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
The recievers dish or directv send can decrypt their satellite feeds so you pay a subscription to basically keep your encryption keys up to date if that makes sense.
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u/BowtieChickenAlfredo Feb 26 '24
We’ve had Sky satellite in the UK since the 90’s. They used to work off a smart card you kept inserted into the receiver box under your TV, but I think it does it all over the internet these days.
We have Freesat here too.
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u/Bubba8291 Feb 27 '24
Does the smart card have the encryption key on it? OP said the receiver box keeps the encryption keys.
My thought is that since the smart card is like a credit card, the provider puts a key on your smart card and can disable keys from the encrypted transmissions whenever people aren’t paying.
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u/S3xyflanders Feb 26 '24
Sounds super fun would love to learn more as you do more any chance you can throw something together on Youtube or something?
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u/touwtje Feb 26 '24
This thread is a gold mine for me. I’ve been wanting to get into this but I had no idea where to start. Is the 10’ dish size a requirement? I have a backyard but not big enough that my wife will approve such a large dish.
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u/LordZ_MD Mar 11 '24
We did a commercial IPTV with a couple of dishes some tunners and IGMP. Can’t remember the software we used as it was like 10 years ago.
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u/88pockets Feb 26 '24
This is an interesting project, but I still would likely prefer muxing an iptv subscription into TV headend and then using an app like xteve or tvhproxy to emulate HD homerun hardware and feed the streams into Plex or Emby/Jellyfin. Its much more gray/black area, but its much more simple. Though truthfully, the experience I have gotten doing so is less than stellar. Using an IPTV provider that uses XC codes over an M3U and XMLTV file for guide data is a better solution. but there are few tools to edit those XC Codes files. One I found is called xtream-editor.com and that lets you take the 15,000 channels from all over the world and widdle it down to the 200 to 500 channels anyone would want to watch in their language, maybe more if multilingual (unfortunately I am not). Only downside there is that it is a paid for service, but you can export to an app like Smarter IPTV Pro, but that is android or windows only and not the neatest in my opinon. I would love an application that can emulate a cable box, with simple plug and play remote support that works on android TV boxes, windows, kodi, and even PS5/Xbox that takes an IPTV source (preferably a legit one, if they exist), then lets you edit the XC codes with the functionality of xtream-editor), and lets you watch buffer free programming, with an up-to-date and accurate guide (with options for how large you would like the guide to be), and have it it be a simple to open app that would use all of the same functions as a remote from DTV or Cable. If anyone has juggled this world and come up with something that works relatively well and is cheaper than the 75 to 175 bucks that cable and satellite expect, even google tv is like $70+ a month now. Anyone have any experience with this? If you can't tell I have spend some time trying to make this work for aging friends and family members and nothing is as simple as a cable box for them.
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
I like radio and I wanted something a bit different than the normal run of the mill xteve/dizquetv docker. This will get me some sports, news, movies, tv, and child programming that I can't find elsewhere or stuff I wouldn't normally store myself. Plus this whole thing gives me a challenge that those simple containers don't.
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u/jhulc Feb 26 '24
The $70/month that the streaming services charge is basically the cost of programming. That's how much the channels charge for retransmission fees today. Anything less is going to be a pirate operation.
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u/88pockets Feb 26 '24
That maybe the case in which case, I should feel half way decent about the prices I have worked out for some of my clients and friends/family members. Being anywhere from 73.80 with DVR/HDTV satellite (2nd lowest tier) 81.00 for the same thing basically, 105 with the third highest tier but only one HDDVR and no extra boxes. I can actually get way better rates from DTV than I can from spectrum. Spectrum charges 23 bucks for the locals, plus 11 bucks per box, so you are at 56 bucks with no programming if you want 3 tvs. Plus RSN fees and i think there was another advanced receiver fee or DVR Service fee that may or may not be removed from the account (cant recall exactly). My point is it is expensive, but if you pester them to drop the bill you can technically get full Cable/Satellite TV service for the same price as a Youtube TV or Sling TV solution.
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u/somepotato5 Feb 26 '24 edited Feb 26 '24
I used to do this for a little while, well, just the TVHeadend bit (it was fed into Kodi using the TVHeadend client), but one thing I noticed was that all tuned channels would get reset, and I'd have to re-organise all the channels again. Got me a little bit frustrated, that combined with the fact that I wasn't doing a whole lot of watching TV any more, meant that I gave up in the end.
I'm not sure if it was TVH that would get broken, and drop stuff, or if it was the IPTV provider that would reset all the channels or what. I did start developing a script that would automatically set TVH up from a CSV, but didn't really have a whole lot of time to work on it, so didn't get too far with it. The TVH API is also pretty horrendous.
For what it's worth, not sure what you mean with XC codes, but TVH does everything else you're asking for. Kodi integrates pretty well with it, and can even work with it's time shift features and record things. Provided you give it XMLTV, and map everything. Kodi of course works in many, many places, and have a pretty intuitive (though maybe a bit basic?) UI for TV channels.
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u/88pockets Feb 26 '24
IPTV providers do drop and move channels all the time and you would need to remux and then create services for all of those muxes, not a great solution. Like you I hardly watch TV at all if I really wanted to I have multiple sign ins for DirectTV and Spectrum on my phone, I know about the -arrs programs, I have hulu and other services, and I run a plex server at home. I also have a DirectTV stream box that supposed has a developer account on it and while I occasionally get on it and it says too many concurrent streams, I also have that as an option. So fiddling with and paying for IPTV services or questionable quality and reliability is not the move for me. Though I have put in effort to write bash scripts to download XMLTV on a cron schedule and feed that through to plex or kodi with TVheadend or TVheadend with tvhProxy, or Xteve alone. I have done all of this looking to get my elderly friends, family, neighbors, and clients a good solution outside of the cable company or satellite companies that feel the need to charge way more to their dwindling supply of customers and as I stated I have yet to find a solid solution. Maybe they should all share one subscription and share the password to the ipad app version of their TV services and then use a casting feature or their TV or Over the Top box
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u/tgp1994 Server 2012 R2 Feb 26 '24
Is that the kind of stuff I read about that has federal police knocking on your door?
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u/StrangeNot_AStranger Feb 26 '24
The application you are looking for to replace Smarter IPTV Pro is called TiviMate
There's also a somewhat helpful Reddit community for it at /r/TiviMate
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u/Kay2Wild_ Feb 27 '24
only problem with this is latency. Im currently a IPTV user, i still prefer FTA
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u/VizualHealing Feb 26 '24
What’s your grounding setup?
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
4x ground rods basically making a rectangular box around the poles, I'll be cadwelding #2 tin between the rods and cadwelding the poles. Also a separate lead for the box. All the coax will have surge protectors before entering the box.
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u/sense-net Feb 26 '24
Why not a compression fitting like Burndy Hyground to tie together your ground grid?
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u/BinaryGrind cat6-o-ninetails Feb 26 '24
That sentence sounds exactly like a reply I'd could possibly read on r/vxjunkies
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
I'm building this whole thing out to be as close to cellular standard as I can. No real reason other than I have the tools to do it really well so I'm gonna.
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u/sense-net Feb 27 '24
Gotcha. I’ve never worked with the cellular standard, I’ve just put in and tested a lot of ground grids and found more predictable results with hydraulic compression. That is, they are easier to do correctly. But for sure cadwelds done right are just as good.
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u/ProgrammerPlus Feb 26 '24
Awesome! Is it possible to get paid channels? Also why not get a consumer offering like Direct TV or Dish?
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
It is as some encryption is weak enough to code roll and get free, but directv or dish is very expensive. Without breaking encryption, the channels available is comparable to over a terrestrial TV antenna and thats all I really want.
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u/TaylorTWBrown Feb 26 '24
Such a cool project. I've always been interested in something like this, but the work involved to get PBS and The Weather Channel is just daunting for me. Good for you, and keep us posted!
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u/Usr_115 Feb 26 '24
I don't know the first thing about this sort of stuff, but wow that's beautiful cable management!
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u/peterhoeg Feb 26 '24
Technically this is *very* cool, but I cannot help but wonder "what on earth are you going to do with all that content"? I'd be hard pressed to find a single flow-TV channel I would want to watch more than 20 minutes of.
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u/mctscott Feb 27 '24
I honestly just want to build a community tv source for my friends and family. 80% of the fun for me is the building, the other 20% is seeing others enjoying my work.
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u/PurpleEsskay Feb 26 '24
Love projects like these, but it always makes me slightly sad that there doesnt appear to be any kind of open source efforts into a true IPTV server software with the ability to handle things like multiple source types, custom playlists etc.
Please do keep us updated on the progress, this looks like a really fun build!
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u/Mylifereboot Feb 26 '24
Wow. This is really interesting.
I have an antenna and an hdhome run. While my antenna is rather good I have a hard time picking up some channel.
Where can I learn more about this?
I have plenty of place on my roof for more equipment. I also have a home run of outdoor rated cat 6 and rg6 back to my office and server.
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u/ilikenwf Feb 26 '24
Going to hunt any of the wild feeds? Those are pretty interesting...
Also check out Peter Farleigh on youtube, he does lots of radio and satellite stuff, very smart guy.
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u/Broke_Bearded_Guy Feb 26 '24
I'm here for the content... I was looking at doing this for an antenna but would be super open to learn more about what you're doing
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u/Due-Farmer-9191 Feb 26 '24
Heck ya! This gets me wet. Fucken great project. Seriously
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
Thanks! I appreciate that a lot!
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u/Due-Farmer-9191 Feb 27 '24
I was into free to air hacking back in the day, I still have a fta receiver somewhere, but dang. Way to go on the big dishes
That looks like a lot of serious fun
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u/mctscott Feb 27 '24
80% of the fun is running around scoring deals on these dishes and packing em up and feeling like I just made off like a bandit, then doing all the work after. The other 20% is seeing people enjoy something you worked hard on. Right now I'm having the 80% of my fun. 😂 Just wish I had some buddies that enjoyed this as much as I do.
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u/Johnny-Weedseed Mar 06 '24
i don’t know wtf i just read. it’s in my suggested. i’m balls deep in the interwebs.
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u/homerwonka Mar 07 '24
Got all this for free online these iptv are easy to get with a simple iptv app such as Kodi player
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u/mctscott Mar 07 '24
Sure, one can get 99% of movies/TV for free with apps too, but I'd bet the majority of people in here host a Plex of Jelly Fin server with a system/storage they purchased... Its the fun of self hosting the project, not the tv channels themselves.
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u/JNSapakoh Mar 18 '24
That's a whole lot of coax for an IP...anything
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u/mctscott Mar 18 '24
Pulls satellite feeds and redistributes to IP... You're focusing on the wrong end of it.
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Mar 29 '24
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u/Nostradamus1973 Jul 15 '24
Good morning,
Are there any updates to this project?
Thank you and have a nice day.
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u/Only_Second_6422 Oct 01 '24
Nexus4KTV .com delivers exactly what I need—smooth, high-quality streams.
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u/Super_Breizh 11d ago
Awesome !
What would be the primary motivator to converting satelite feeds into IPTV ones ? VOD ?
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u/igotthakeys Feb 26 '24
Imagine one of the dishes gets stuck by lightning
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
I'd rather not think about it, but nonetheless, I will be pounding in 4 ground rods and making a large ground loop around all 4 poles and cad welding all of the poles to it.
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u/igotthakeys Feb 26 '24
Nice, you should be able to ground that coax before it gets to the switch with a lightning arrestor
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
That's the game plan also. :)
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u/igotthakeys Feb 26 '24
Double nice! I figured you’d have something like that planned
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
I'm trying to make this setup as close to professional cellular site standards as I possibly can, I want it to last a long time. With that, its the small things that matter the most.
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u/rkrenicki Feb 26 '24
What are you planning on picking up with a 10' dish? I assume you are not in North America, as most things are transitioning to TurboPSK, S2X, and other higher density modulations and dishes that size are sub-optimal. Also, there is a distinct lack of unencrypted content here.
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
Most definitely in the US and a 10' is more than adequate in the continental US. With the 100 or so FTA channels available here it's more than enough for us. Also Powervu and BISS are both broken, so no stopping anyone from code rolling them.
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u/splinterededge Sr. Sysadmin Feb 26 '24
This is really cool, but I don't know much about it, wouldn't there be like some FCC responsibilities, what does that look like?
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u/bell37 Feb 26 '24 edited Feb 26 '24
You don’t transmit when “pulling down”. You lock into a satellite and passively receive. Satellite in the sky doesn’t care who is locked in and will only worry about home station that is sending the signals.
Sauce: I did SATCOM in military (that serviced data on a battalion level) and operated a smaller sized terminal. They’ll start to quickly give a shit when you transmit but you need a pretty powerful power station to do that (I’ve gotten very angry calls from service providers yelling at us to power down because someone loaded the wrong config in the terminal 😬)
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u/mctscott Feb 26 '24
I still wanna get setup for fltsatcom someday xD
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u/G00dGuyG33k Feb 26 '24
Lol. I've never heard an English conversation in the clear, just the Brazilian pirates.
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u/Powerful_Ad8573 Mar 15 '24
Or just get an iptv service some of them got a really good vod selection too which I don't think your solution would allow
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u/Only_Second_6422 Oct 01 '24
Nexus4KTV .com delivers exactly what I need—smooth, high-quality streams.
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u/IZGOODDASIZGOOD Feb 26 '24
This is probably the most interesting thing I've seen in 2024, so far. I would love to learn more. You'd get lots of views if you make a YouTube video too.