Feedhunting
Feedhunting is a hobby of people who are enthusiastic about satellite technology.
The term feedhunter is a combination on the one hand of the English word feed , which stands for supply - and on the other hand of hunting, which in German is called hunter .
The feedhunter is concerned with receiving broadcasts and live broadcasts from TV stations or mobile DSNG trucks directly from the news satellite before the raw material is broadcast in possibly cut form on the actual TV station. That can be B. news interviews, sports broadcasts, press conferences, concerts or pre-produced programs / broadcasts.
reception
Feeds cannot be found on the usual television satellites like Astra or Hotbird. As a rule, for reasons of cost and capacity, older and less powerful satellites are used in unpopular positions in geostationary orbit .
To receive the transmissions, parabolic antennas from 90 cm in diameter are often required due to the weak transmission power of the satellite . The reception technology used differs only slightly from conventional satellite reception - this is also how the DVB-S and DVB-S2 standards are broadcast. Only the 4: 2: 2 color subsampling can often only be decoded with a professional receiver or on a computer (e.g. with ffdshow ). This 4: 2: 2 transmission enables the broadcaster to have a significantly lower-loss picture than the conventional 4: 2: 0 that is otherwise used. Since the transmitter is not intended for reception in private households, high FEC values (5/6, 8/9) and unfavorable modulations e.g. B. DVB-S2 8PSK are used, which increase the data rate, but make reception much more difficult because you need a much better signal for reception.
In the meantime, the first feeds in even higher modulation modes - such as DVB-S2 16APSK or DVB-S2 32APSK - have already been viewed, which at the moment can only be received with professional PC cards.
The narrow-band feed transponders are only active for the short duration of the transmission, which makes it much more difficult to find them. For example, satellite receivers with a blind scan function are preferred for feed hunting . In contrast to conventional satellite receivers, these can start a real search, even without entering the exact frequency parameters such as B. polarization , modulation , symbol rate and error correction rate . Some feeds are also broadcast in encrypted form, making it impossible to watch these channels.
The name of the station found often differs in that it does not give any information about the broadcasting program, but rather contains the name of the broadcast vehicle or the manufacturer, such as TandbergTV .
For comparison: With the search function of a normal satellite receiver, only a transponder list stored in the device is scanned with defined parameters; new carriers are not found or only found with the DVB-NIT .
The Ku band (10.7 to 12.75 GHz) or the C band (3.4 to 4.2 GHz), which is little used in Europe, is searched. Some orbital positions are partly used for direct reception. One example is Astra 23.5 ° East, which serves the Dutch and Southeast European television market directly and in which the feeds (e.g. the 3rd soccer league ) are in the 11.45–11.7 GHz ranges vertically / horizontally and 12.55-12.75 GHz are vertical.
Satellites known for feed broadcasts
Europe :
- Eutelsat 36B (36 ° East)
- Eutelsat 33A (33.2 ° East)
- Astra 3B (23.5 ° East)
- Eutelsat 16A (16.0 ° East)
- Eutelsat 10A (10.0 ° East)
- Eutelsat 7A (7 ° East)
- Astra 4A / SES-5 (4.8 ° East)
- Thor 5/6 Intelsat 10-02 (1 ° West)
- Amos 2/3 (4 ° West)
- Eutelsat 5A (5 ° West)
- Eutelsat 8 West A (8.0 ° West)
- Eutelsat 12 West A (12.5 ° West)
- Telstar 12 (15 ° West) Often feeds from America to Europe
- NSS 7 (22.0 ° West)
- Intelsat 905 (24.5 ° West)
- Intelsat 907 (27.5 ° West)
- Hispasat 1C / D / E (30 ° West)
- Intelsat 903 (34.5 ° West)
Middle East :
- BADR 4/5/6 (26 ° East)
- Eutelsat 21A (21.6 ° East)
- Eutelsat 3C (3.1 ° East)
- Rascom-QAF 1R (2.8 ° East)