Instructions: How to watch CART Live on your Sky Digital system....

[Ian-S]

OK, firstly the Disclaimers:

I cannot be held responsible if:
1) ABMoteurs Scramble the CART transmissions
2) You damaged your Sky Digital Box
3) You loose your Sky Digital service by moving the dish
4) If anything goes wrong

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DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES MOVE OR FIDDLE WITH YOUR
SKY DIGITAL MINI-DISH, IT IS TOO SMALL FOR ASTRA ANYWAY!
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WHAT YOU NEED:

1) A 60cm Satellite Dish with Universal LNB.
2) An analogue receiver (for easy tuning).
3) LNB Switch (www.maplin.co.uk part code: MY03D £6.99)
4) Some extra F Connectors (10 min also sold at Maplin, sorry no part code) and Coax Cable.

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How to do it...

Preperation:
Make a short, 2 foot cable with F Connectors on the end, attach one end to the middle connector on the LNB Switch.

Hook up the analogue satellite system and tune this into an channel on the Astra 19.2 Deg East Satellite (the old Sky Analogue Satellite), once found, fine tune the signal then bolt it in place

Installation:

OK, assuming you've now got your old analogue dish up on the wall and tuned in with the analogue receiver, unplug your Sky Digital digibox from the mains, and remove the A/V cables from the back (remembering where they were plugged in!!!).

Remove the LNB cable from the back of the box, attach this to line A on your new switch box and attach your new dish to line B.

Attach the two foot centre cable from the switch box to the LNB in on your digibox.

Re-attach all the cables and, making sure the switch box is switched to A (for Sky Digital) and switch on your Digibox.

Let the box re-initialise, if you get a no signal message, switch the box off, check the cables, and try again.

Once the box has re-initiallised, switch it to standby mode, then alter your switchbox to LNB input B (Astra).
(Do not unplug the digibox from the mains at this point).
Switch on the digibox again and wait for the no signal message to come up, the press:

Services
(number) 4
(number) 4

and type the following:

Frequency: 12.265
Polarisation: H
Symbol Rate: 27.5
FEC: 3/4

Hit the "Find channels" button and wait a bit (if you get no signal, check the cables, alignment of the dish and above settings).

A Few channels will come up, the one you want is called ABMOTEURS, goto this and press the YELLOW button on the remote control to store the channel (a yellow tick will appear next to it) then press Select.

Voila, you've just tuned in ABMoteurs, they have european exclusive rights to show CART this year, be aware that the commentart is likely to be in French, but at least you'll get to watch the race

To switch back to Sky, put the box into standby, change the switch to input A, and switch the box back on.

OK, now some little bits, the Sky Digital box is never actually OFF unless it is unplugged from the mains, so when you put in into standby mode it is simply switching off the A/V outputs, the digibox doesn't like having the input changed, it likes to look only at Sky Digital, so if at any time you get a no signal message, firstly don't panic, just switch the box into standby, then go to the switch box and switch back to the other input, then back again, if the worst comes to worst, do a power reset (unplug from mains for a few seconds) and make sure you've got Sky Sigital set as the input LNB.

Everytime you unplug the box from the mains it will do a cold boot, this means it looks for the channels again, when doing this make sure Sky Digital LNB is selected.

Some of the digibox range take longer to boot, sometimes it will ignore remote control commands while it is booting, don't panic, wait until you hear a bleep on the TV, or see the power LED flash then try to switch it on.

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OK, sorry this post is so long, but I wanted to cover all aspects, it's not dangerous and won't break your digibox, maybe upset it once in a while, but not break it.

Other frequencies from Astra that may be of interest:

12.480, V, 27500, 3/4 : DSF for German F3.
11.836, H, 27500, 3/4 : Das Erste showed German 500 last year
11.953, H, 27500, 3/4 : ZDF for DTM.

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One last thing, once you've got these channels tuned in, to access them, press Services, (number) 6 and you should see them listed.

Have fun
Ian

P.S. On Astra ABMoteurs is Free to air, but on Hotbird it is a scrambled channel, so I have no idea why 1) it's FTA on Astra, and 2) whether they'll scramble the CART transmissions.

[Ian-S]

BTW, ABMoteurs also shows:

NASCAR on Thursday/Friday after race
Narcar Craftman Trucks week after race
Indy Racing League - LIVE
IROC highlights

[Ian-S]

Now confirmed that ABMoteurs will be the only channel broadcasting CART live this year, and it will be free to air from Astra 1.

[touring fan]

I've got an analogue satelitte sytem, got a digi box,could get hold of the extra parts needed, got instructions. The only problem is, the b****y remote control for the analogue satelitte doesn't work and they don't make them anymore so I can't tune the channel into it!!!! Looks like it's back to listening to the audio feed from the computer then

[Ian-S]

surely the analogue system should still have at least one station in it's memory? (or at a last resort a 4in1 from Homebase (£20) remote should have it's codes).

Sorry to be a downer, but there's no Cart Radio Network either this year

[SILVERS95]

Originally posted by Ian-S
Now confirmed that ABMoteurs will be the only channel broadcasting CART live this year, and it will be free to air from Astra 1.

now im really happy , because ive ordered my HUMAX ! roll on live cart coverage.

[ghinzani]

That new moteurs channel on sky is alright - will they start chargin xtra for it or what??

[Ian-S]

Originally posted by ghinzani
That new moteurs channel on sky is alright - will they start chargin xtra for it or what??

Doubt it, they (Moteurs) have not charged before.

I don't think this is ABMoteurs though, is it?

@SILVER95 - which Hummy you got? 5400?