Satellite Saga

It's been a weird few weeks here on the Prevuze Compound trying to get the blog out. It all started with some computer problems. No sooner did we get those resolved than we went on vacation. Traveling and doing Prevuze all boils down to one giant and frustrating hunt for wireless. Then right after we got back we lost the old DOOL feed and have been working ever since to get it back.

Norris arrived bright and early Monday morning and went to work. He finally found an old splice in our cable which he fixed temporarily, but he says we will probably need a new cable soon. Not good news since the dish is several hundred feet from the house and cable is going for about a dollar a foot these days.

Once he got the cable taken care of, it was a fairly easy matter to get the new equipment working, but of course he couldn't find the feed since it's only on early in the morning.

So I got up bright and early Tuesday morning and played around with the new equipment thinking I probably didn't have a prayer of finding the feed but somehow I did. For those who care, I promised I would publish what it took to get the new feed. For those of you who don't care or don't want to get a technobabble induced headache, you may skip this section.

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We purchased our equipment from Skyvision (www.skyvision.com) and would highly recommend it, if for no other reason than its support is excellent: Here is what we purchased:

• Traxis DBS3500 MPEG-2 Receiver
  
• FTA Pre-Loads for Traxis 3500, for both the C and Ku bands (It turned out this was unnecessary and doesn't help a bit to find the DOOL Feed, but does help to find other channels.)
  
• C/Ku-Band FTA MPEG-2 Accessory Kit
  

Once installed one of our readers instructed us to point the dish to the old satellite location (Anik F2 at 111.1°W, transponder 6 ) and tune the new device to:

• 3820 mhz
  
• vertical polarity
  
• 29125 s/r rate
  

This didn't mean a lot to us, but eventually we figured out how to do it. Add all that to your BUD (Big Ugly Dish), throw in a 4DTV receiver (which you should already have if you've been watching the feed) and you've got what you need to capture the new transmission.

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HEY, YOU IN THE BACK! YEAH, YOU! YOUR EYES ARE GLAZING OVER.

So that's it. It's been a long, frustrating and expensive journey but we hope we're set up to continue bringing you Prevuze.

We appreciate all the support we have received along the way. Several of you have emailed privately and offered to help with the expenses. We appreciate those offers very much and would be grateful to anyone who would like to do so.

In that light, I'm going to put a donation box up on the blog. We've been hesitant to do this in the past since we're really doing Prevuze for fun. On the other hand, Prevuze has never cost us much except time.

So here's what we are asking you to do. If you enjoy Prevuze and would like to help it continue, drop a couple bucks in the donation jar each month. We'll keep a button on the blog and you can donate through PayPal. We're not set up to accept credit card payments, but it's pretty easy to set up a PayPal account.

Please understand, we're not asking for the rent money, money you need for the kids' clothes or anything like that. But if you're in a position to help, please do so.

If you're not in a position to donate to the cause, there is still a way you can help, and that is by clicking on the ads and checking out our sponsors. When you click, we get paid. We're not asking you to do idle clicking, but if you see something you like, check it out. That's all it takes.

We're not in the poorhouse here, but the only reason we bought this equipment was to continue Prevuze. Anyway, as much DOOL as we watch, rather than being in the poorhouse, they would more likely put us in a mental institution.

If you're so inclined you can start here, or use the button at the top.

If you have trouble with the donation button or tuning the satellite, please email us (at prevuze@gmail.com) and we'll try to help. Thanks in advance for your support and for helping us to continue bringing you Prevuze. Have a great weekend and, oh, yeah, happy Broderick Crawford Day.