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The Gravity issue when choosing Freeview or Freesat

MikeSh

MikeSh

Well-Known Member
We are likely to be moving house to an area where terrestrial (Freeview) reception is marginal, so I'm wondering about changing to Freesat. (We currently run two HDR FOX T2s.)
But being neurotic I wondered if (when) an event of a 'Gravity' type of catastrophe wipes out most satellites I might regret that choice.

So I've been thinking ... Is such an event likely to affect the geostationary band? Possibly not. I guess some debris would get knocked off into that general direction, but the chances of it hitting something out there must be slim.
Secondly, how dependent are terrestrial transmissions on 'low orbit' satellites? One would think that they aren't, but I know from recent news items that, for example, the time signals of GPS satellites are used for synchronization by some computer systems.

Yes, the loss of all those satellites would probably have detrimental effects on the whole of civilisation as we now know it, but I can't make a choice about most of that.
Freeview vs Freesat I can :p
 
You need to hope that if such an event were to occur that they have not already shut down LW radio as that is were your portable radio needs to be tuned to follow emergency broadcasts on the progress of any space debris heading your way and giving advice on which type of table to hide under.

My advice is to run both to give a wider spread of available programming. For example, the NW200 road race highlights were only broadcast on BBC1 NI.
 
Phrases such as 'Re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic' spring to mind, I'm sure if such an event happened people would be confronted with more important issues than whether they can still get the latest instalment of EastEnders reliably, to use another user's saying - It's only TV. I don't think such extreme possibilities really need to be taken into account when deciding on a purchase of this sort
 
gomezz said:
You need to hope that if such an event were to occur that they have not already shut down LW radio as that is were your portable radio needs to be tuned to follow emergency broadcasts on the progress of any space debris heading your way and giving advice on which type of table to hide under.
Click to expand...
Oh, I'm not worried about bits falling on me. I doubt much of the stuff involved would even reach the ground even if it was still more or less in one piece on reentry.

Ezra Pound said:
Phrases such as 'Re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic' spring to mind, I'm sure if such an event happened people would be confronted with more important issues than whether they can still get the latest instalment of EastEnders reliably, to use another user's saying - It's only TV. I don't think such extreme possibilities really need to be taken into account when deciding on a purchase of this sort
Click to expand...
Well that's rather the question. Would the loss of all the low orbit satellites actually be akin to nuclear war? There are doomsayers, but on the other hand critical systems will likely have a fallback from any satellite dependency. I mean, not knowing exactly where your delivery lorry is may be a little annoying, but most of them will still reach their destination eventually.
Would the cloud of satellite debris surrounding the planet after such an event effectively block transmissions to/from the geostationary set?

More pragmatically perhaps I ought to be asking what the difference in channels and quality is like between Freeview and Freesat (I'm assuming we won't be able to get lower power Freeview muxes like Com7).
 
I think the debris would be in decaying orbits - question is how long before it disappears.
Difference in quality - has to depend on equipment and your location. At root, they are the same definition, but there are differences as to channels supplied.
 
dandnsmith said:
Difference in quality - has to depend on equipment and your location. At root, they are the same definition, but there are differences as to channels supplied.
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I thought there were some differences in SD quality due to the different compressions, etc, used.
I was studying the Freeview channel listings in RT earlier (which seem to include Freesat) and there seem to be a lot less HD versions on Freesat. Annoying that BBC4HD is on Com7 which we likely won't be able to get.
I've discovered that the house is currently 'Sky', so there is already a dish as well as an aerial. I also have one spare slot on my HDMI switch, so maybe I will just get a Foxsat box in addition to the FOXes and see how it goes.
 
You need to consider that if you had Freeview debris from satellites could fall and hit your aerial.
Best bet is to stock up on DVD's so in the event of a catastrophic failure you will still have something to watch. In fact I think official government advice may be to stock up on essentials such as the complete DVD set of Corrie.

Sent from here using a computing device.
 
kevindickinson said:
You need to consider that if you had Freeview debris from satellites could fall and hit your aerial.
Best bet is to stock up on DVD's so in the event of a catastrophic failure you will still have something to watch. In fact I think official government advice may be to stock up on essentials such as the complete DVD set of Corrie.
Click to expand...

You had me thinking that was a really good idea .... until the last word :rolling:
 
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