My Dear Kiwi Friends

[cunion]

According to Craig from Apsattv posting over at vetrun:

"Snippetts of info coming in at the moment would suggest Optus D1 has a few issues. Which could be quite a problem.

The first unconfirmed bit of info is that the NZ beam has been configured as H pol by mistake. Which might explain why test signals I saw where H pol!

Optus are said to be blaming the manufacturer..

meanwhile Sky, TVNZ and BCL all held a rather panicy 4 hour meeting on Friday.

Anon says "techs said the signal could be down by as much as 6DB on the NZ beam" oh dearrrrr" "

For us over here in Aus, this does raise the prospect that when the birds are switched over from b1 to d1 that the NZ pay TV services may very well end up on a beam that we can pick up over here in Australia. THe other beam (the one that apparently will do vertical) is a much wider beam with a much bigger footprint than the one that was originally meant to be aimed at NZ.

The changeover is due to happen on Tue/Wed...

If any of my Kiwi friends are reading this and you would be interested in taking part in some CS experiments with a trans tasman friend later in the week (if indeed i can get the signal here, which is entirely theoretical at the moment), please PM me!

c.

[cunion]

I should add that it's a real long shot (if that's not already really obvious) but someone with a dreambox or some other dream/newcs/ compatible gear and a card in NZ would be handy to know of in case it happens - particularly in case it happens v. briefly in the switchover.

c.

[bodgie]

Thank's for that info,it will be good if your prediction is right.

[cunion]

It's definatley not a prediction! It's just a very intriguing possibility... I am just posting it here in case it happens because i would really like to have some kiwi friends if it does! I would imagine if it does happen, it might only be for a very short period of time. Apparently a lot of the LNBs in kiwiland are single polarity fixed Vertical which may mean no other choice but to put it on the fatter beam.

If you look at the footprint maps here:

http://www.optus.com.au/portal/site/...0029867c0aRCRD

and you imagine that they have to turn the AU beam and aim it at NZ OR that they have to put the services on the AU/NZ beam it would mean that big parts of it would probably be receivable in AU.

c.