Starlink

Gale Hawkins · Mar 15, 2021

I notice Starlink gets a lot of air time by the media. Perhaps it drives ratings or just fills in news slots. It is amazing what Starlink is doing for the outlying population around the world while meeting the communication needs of our military at a lower cost than in the past I expect.

BigBlue1 · Mar 16, 2021

Just got FedEx notice that mine has shipped. A week after Pat's (above), which is also how much after him I placed my order. By next week I can be streaming away happily...

Rob

downsizingnow48 · Mar 16, 2021

Mine is still on the table in the front room. Has not got to the top of the to-do list yet. Maybe tomorrow afternoon if the weather stays dry.

cqaigy2 · Mar 16, 2021

Oh man! I'm jealous.

forgeblast · Mar 17, 2021

I hope ours golden ticket gets punched soon. We will save about 135$ a month by dropping direct tv, and frontier and going with streaming services. I really hope it happens soon.

jaydee325 · Mar 17, 2021

A couple of things about streaming from our experience.

If you want local news/network programing, you will have to pay for it through the streaming service. This made the savings much less than anticipated.

Streaming services will advertise that you get certain programing, but it is old/not up to date. For example, my wife likes Food Network. One of the streaming services had Food Network, but none of the programming was current. Really made my wife mad to read about something coming up on Food only to find it was not available on streaming services.

We ended up adding a basic + cable package to our plan that got locals and the other channels we wanted. This, along with internet/streaming was still less than Dish Network was, but certainly not the savings we thought we would be getting by "cutting the cord".

One of the things I like about the streaming services is that you can start and stop them easily via their website. We move around to different services at will depending on what they have available that we want to watch.

YMMV

Citydude · Mar 17, 2021

downsizingnow48 said:
Mine is still on the table in the front room. Has not got to the top of the to-do list yet. Maybe tomorrow afternoon if the weather stays dry.
View attachment 690410

My wife's to-do list would put that at the top.

cqaigy2 · Mar 17, 2021

For "local" TV, we have locast and get Seattle area local TV. It's donation run rebroadcast of local TV channels onto the Internet.

Wakey · Mar 17, 2021

jaydee325 said:
A couple of things about streaming from our experience.

If you want local news/network programing, you will have to pay for it through the streaming service. This made the savings much less than anticipated.

Streaming services will advertise that you get certain programing, but it is old/not up to date. For example, my wife likes Food Network. One of the streaming services had Food Network, but none of the programming was current. Really made my wife mad to read about something coming up on Food only to find it was not available on streaming services.

We ended up adding a basic + cable package to our plan that got locals and the other channels we wanted. This, along with internet/streaming was still less than Dish Network was, but certainly not the savings we thought we would be getting by "cutting the cord".

One of the things I like about the streaming services is that you can start and stop them easily via their website. We move around to different services at will depending on what they have available that we want to watch.

YMMV

Try weaning yourself off network content altogether. YouTube has much better content than broadcast TV by far. Change is difficult but better programming is out there and it’s FREE.

forgeblast · Mar 17, 2021

We feel between, prime, netflix, locast and disney + we would have everything we want, plus there is youtube. All those streaming services would be new to us as we cannot stream at home, so we have a lot of programs that we can watch.

two_bit_score · Mar 17, 2021

Wakey said:
Try weaning yourself off network content altogether. YouTube has much better content than broadcast TV by far. Change is difficult but better programming is out there and it’s FREE.

We did that and between on the on air tv and Hulu, etc. we don’t miss cable TV.

BigBlue1 · Mar 17, 2021

I was happy to part ways with DirecTV (and cable before that) a little over a year ago. Went with YoutubeTV. Already had Prime and Netflix. It was great at that point, when YoutubeTV was $49.99. Then it went up to $65 and that sucked. But overall it is still better than paying DirecTV $110/mo because it is more flexible and more on-demand features. We're not missing anything we liked previously. And the month-by-month basis (no contract) is a big plus.

Rob

Avenger · Mar 17, 2021

We cut cable long ago. Have Netflix, Plex (with drobo full of movies and tv shows), Disney+ for the kid. I use youtube, but find myself on Odysee more lately. I cant bring myself to pay for YT.
We use Plex more because it doesnt use our data. Everything we have is on a local plex server. When Starlink comes around, I see more Netflix in my future.

two_bit_score · Mar 17, 2021

We have an Echo dot in the shop building and I listen to anything I want to out there. It usually is playing something almost all day when I’m out there. Sure like it better than sitting in front of a TV screen.

downsizingnow48 · Mar 17, 2021

For testing I set the dish on the dump trailer which is in a place open to the sky. First speed test with the Starlink app was 150 mbps down, 54 up, latency 25 ms. In comparison our Verizon LTE connection is 5 down, 2 up, 35 ms. The satellite connection could be 5x worse and still be 5x better.

I can put it permanently on the garage roof but then have to get the signal to the house about 80 ft away.

Although as I think about it. Given the angle of the dish, which is not far off of straight up, I am going to try it on the house roof. I cut down the real close trees years ago for fire and safety reasons, so there might be a hole big enough for the satellite to look up through.

Avenger · Mar 17, 2021

Ahhh... you're makin me so jealous!!

Congrats though.

Justin Smith · Mar 18, 2021

Hello.
Can anyone please tell me the dimensions of the Starlink pole, specifically :

1 - The length of the 35.8mm section from the end of pole to the chamfer point where the diameter increases to 38.2mm.
2 - The length of that 38.2mm section from the chamfer to where the cable comes out of the side.

I need to know because I am trying to think of a better way to attach the Starlink to a pole than the Starlink pole adapter which I consider to be a very poor idea indeed.
Possibly using a 1.5" pole coupler :

Which is a smaller version of this :

rekees4300 · Mar 18, 2021

Justin Smith said:
Hello.
Can anyone please tell me the dimensions of the Starlink pole, specifically :

1 - The length of the 35.8mm section from the end of pole to the chamfer point where the diameter increases to 38.2mm.
2 - The length of that 38.2mm section from the chamfer to where the cable comes out of the side.

I need to know because I am trying to think of a better way to attach the Starlink to a pole than the Starlink pole adapter which I consider to be a very poor idea indeed.
Possibly using a 1.5" pole coupler :

View attachment 690630

Which is a smaller version of this :

View attachment 690631

Scott shared 26 photos with you

downsizingnow48 · Mar 18, 2021

Standard steel and aluminum tubing with 1.5" OD comes in .035 wall thickness which gives ID of 1.43". So the dish tube (1.41") will be a slip fit in it, same as the three-leg base. I looked that up because I am going to put the dish on a length of that tube.

Justin Smith · Mar 18, 2021

downsizingnow48 said:
Standard steel and aluminum tubing with 1.5" OD comes in .035 wall thickness which gives ID of 1.43". So the dish tube (1.41") will be a slip fit in it, same as the three-leg base. I looked that up because I am going to put the dish on a length of that tube.

Is 0.035" 0.9mm or 20SWG ?
If so that's far too thin for anything except for a very short pole, particularly for a a pole holding a satellite dish outside.
If I've got that right about the wall thickness( inches to mm conversion) you can't even get alloy pole that thin in the UK. It depends on how long the pole is but if, say, 10ft, with an 8ft unsupported length, I'm not even sure I'd be recommending a 1.5" alloy pole at 1.6mm (16SWG) wall thickness.
Steel is stronger but rusts of course. A 10ft x 1.5" x 1.6mm (16SWG) steel pole would probably be OK, but they're not that easy to get, particularly galvanised.