The ten foot dilema
As per my post yesterday, I’m always trying to improve the quality of SpaceVidcast (and dare I say anything I do). To this end I want to have access to the HD satellite feed that NASA provides but alas that requires a 6 foot or larger dish.
I was complaining about this tonight to PSB, who very quickly found me a TEN FOOT satellite dish. The advantage of the larger dish is it will get a better signal than a smaller dish, and by smaller dish I mean the smallest a C-Band dish can go is about 6 feet. A 10 foot dish is basically a broadcast quality dish designed to ensure that one gets the best signal possible. Oh, you think 10 feet is large? Then come larger. A lot larger.
So what to do? A ten foot dish is huge, unsightly and a pain in the butt to work with. Having access to the HD feed from NASA would be a huge score for SpaceVidcast.com. That box I just received will be able to decode the HD signal and record it straight to the iMac for recording and re-broadcast, so I would be in a great position that other space video sites like space.com, etc. won’t be in.
We had one of these behemouths when I was growing up. Whenever we wanted to watch certain shows, we’d have to go outside and crank it by hand to pick up new channels. They are actually pretty cool, but there’s no getting around the eyesore part of it.