Storm - General Discussion & Chat

Finally good news and some positive rearrangements of channels & transponders on Astra 2E/F/G:

11597V (previously a DVB-S2/HD-Transponder) on Astra 2G is now:
- 11597V 22000-5/6 (a copy of Astra's 2E UK-beam 11386V)

Looks like some channels prefer the wider Eurobeams and that means the following channels are available again for european viewers:

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Studio 66 still accepts european callers, therefore it makes sense to have all their channels on transponders/frequencies that are "receivable" and can be seen in these countries...

Nice to have Studio 66 TV 2, Studio 66 TV3 and Stormbabes.tv back!

Well, first of all I would like to "thank" SES Astra, Freesat and Sky

...for the enormous downgrade that followed for the european viewers after the aging Eurobird 1 (E28A) was taken out of service and replaced by Astra 2E/F/G. After days and weeks of chasing channels and transponders around (never seen such a mess on Astra 19.2), the dust has settled and all the channels have found their final destination on Astra 2 and their new "home". There were a lot of concerns in the last months that plenty of the Eurobird1-channels would end up on UK-spotbeams, european viewers would end up pretty much with nothing and sadly that's indeed the case now. Less channels, more crap sums it up with only a few words. The last transponders that "moved" from 2F to Astra 2G were:

11.141H 22.0 5/6 QPSK DVB-S
11.171H 22.0 5/6 QPSK DVB-S
11.464H 22.0 5/6 QPSK DVB-S
11.479V 22.0 5/6 QPSK DVB-S
11.509V 22.0 5/6 QPSK DVB-S
11.538V 23.0 2/3 8PSK DVB-S2

At first I thought/hoped that the solution with the 2E UK-beams for 11386V/11386H/11426 would be only a temporary solution and a backup to the more and more failing transponders of Eurobird 1. I was quite sure that as soon as Astra 2G is ready the transponders would be moved back to the Euro- or at least PE-beam. That didn't happen because of a very complex situation and a serious legal hassle between Eutelsat and SES Astra about a hostile takeover of some frequencies/transponders some time ago. With some massive support of Sky SES won and got their way in most points. Back then Eutelsat had already planned to replace the aging Eurobird 1 and their new Quantum-Satellites are damn fine birds and imho superior to everything SES Astra has to offer at the moment:

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Now we are slowly getting to the point why so many channels on the Eurobeam ended up on UK-spotbeams: The companies & channels on Eurobird 1 were Eutelsat-customers, in fact they still are of course (part of the courts decision). Because of the actions of SES Astra & Sky Eutelsat has no longer own satellites on the 28.2-position in the orbit, but officially they are still operating from 28.2E. To be able to do that they have to lease capacity from Astra on 2E/F/G, therefore Eutelsat owns the frequencies from 11200 to 11450Mhz. Only 250Mhz is not much and doesn't provide enough space on Astra 2G for all the E28A-Transponders, so the only possibility was to split the channels and transponders between the three satellites - Astra 2E, 2F and the new 2G.

Sadly Astra 2E and 2F doesn't have Eurobeam-transponders between 11200-11450Mhz, only UK-spotbeams. That's why so many good channels are gone now for european viewers. There's no more capacity on the new 2G in this frequency-range, the last available space was filled with the Astra 2F-transponders listed above. Happened two days ago.. There are also Eurobeams (Pan european-beams) on 2E/2F and alltogether with 2G there's plenty of free capacity, but not for Eutelsat-customers. That leaves european viewers only with the Horror channel, CBS Reality +1 and the Travel channel. There are still some good music channels on the Eurobeam, but the video- and audioquality (128Kbps MP2) is really horrible.

Regarding Babechannels pretty much everything is also on UK-spotbeams, only Studio 66's first channel and Babestation's 60p-channel and both Xpanded-channels are available for european viewers. All the other CBS-channels, the Horror Channel +1, True Drama, True Movie 1+2, True Entertainment 1+2, Food Network 1+2, Studio 66 TV 2+3, BabeStation, Babestation Lucky Star, SinTV, StormBabesTV and so on - everything gone if you live outside the Uk.

That's what I call a "downgrade". It was quite something to have all these channels in the last years, but that seems pretty much over now and I don't expect significant changes in the next months - at least not for the better. The only good news is that the Horror-channel is still there...

I'm sure the situation would be different if SES Astra and Sky wouldn't have kicked Eutelsat out of their deal. Eurobird 1 would have been replaced by one of their own high power-satellites and all the interesting and good channels would still be on the eurobeam, therefore let me close this post with

SES ASTRA sucks big time!!!

Maybe I have to expect a letter from their overpaid lawyers now...


Footprint of the pan european-beam, the UK-spotbeam and the eurobeam of Astra 2:

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I hope I have explained the more or less complicated technical details reasonably accurate and I also hope that it's at least interesting and informative for 1 or 2 people here

Another small update: Xpanded 1 + Xpanded 2 - no signal on the Eurobeam

Not much left for european viewers on 28.2E at the moment, most of the good music-channels, the CBS-channels , the babechannels - everything gone. The FTA-channels on the superbeam that can be found today are mostly not even worth mentioning. Ok, the news- and business-channels, but you can get them on Astra 19.2 + Hotbird as well. The rest are plenty of homeshopping-channels, religious channels, some datachannels and lots of scrambled Sky-channels. Every interesting channel on Eurobird 1 went straight to the UK-spotbeams...

A small update regarding the babechannels on 28.2/28.5E and sadly so far it is as bad as I've expected it:

- Studio 66 TV1: Eurobeam
- Studio 66 TV2: UK-beam
- Studio 66 TV3: UK-beam
- RLC 1: UK-beam
- RLC 2: UK-beam
- Playboy TV-chat: UK-beam
- Babestation: UK-beam
- Lucky Star: UK-beam
- Get Lucky: Eurobeam
- Xpanded 1: Eurobeam
- Xpanded 2: Eurobeam
- StormBabesTV: UK-beam

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Well, bad news, most of the channels gone but that's how it is since today and I don't expect any changes soon. I have no idea why they have moved/transfered almost all the babechannels to the UK-spotbeam. I don't see a reason for that because it would be no problem at all to broadcast them all over Europe. It can't be a rights or licensing issue - strange... Astra has moved all the transponders from the aging Eutelsat 28A only to the UK-beams of their satellites...

Enjoy the Storm caps & videos of Kimberley, Brookie, AllyLou and Stevie-Louise I've posted here. Hope you like them - it's quite sure now that there's nothing more that I can add to the Storm-section of the forum because the channel is really "out of reach" for me now.

Nothing good happens on Mondays, especially Monday mornings. Not in work and it seems not even in my holidays...

I guess most of you will not be very interested in the following, but maybe it's at least a little bit informative for some members. The 11390V-transponder on Eurobird1 was already on the table and discussed here (2 posts below). Playboy was the owner of the transponder for quite some time now, but with the end of the RLC-channels they have understandably no interest and intention to keep it. A complete satellite-transponder costs millions every year (although the capacity on Eurobird 1 is the cheapest of the fleet because it's the oldest satellite with lots of technical issues), therefore Playboy used 11390V not only for their own channels. They subleased and shared the capacity with other channels and amongst them were many babechannels:

- Studio 66 TV2
- GoldenGirls TV (Studio 66's third channel)
- StormBabes TV
- all RLC-channels

As long as 11390V was in the hands of Playboy they have put as many channels as possible on the transponder. Usually between 13-15 TV-channels and because of that the quality was overall a complete disaster. Average bitrates of 1300, 1400Kbps leave no room at all for a watchable quality, especially not on bigger TV's. This morning not only 11390V has left Eurobird 1. That's how my channellist for this satellite looks now:

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Plenty of channels gone (I'll also miss CBS Action & Drama) including most of the UK-Babechannels (Sin TV on 11426V also disappeared).


Some general information:

What's in short described mostly as "Sky" are two satellite-positions.

- 28.2E Astra2E/F/G
- 28.5E Eurobird1 or also known as Eutelsat 28A

The 28.5-satellite is no longer owned by the Eutelsat-company, because last year Astra (supported by Sky) took over the 28.5E-position without the approval of Eutelsat. Eutelsat, although they got a very nice compensation for that, still speaks about it as a "hostile takeover" and I fully agree with them. Ok, now we know that there are two satellite-positions, but that's not all. There are also two different footprints, one so called superbeam and a spotbeam. Here's the difference:

Superbeam (Europe):

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Spotbeam (United Kingdom):

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I'm from Austria (the most beautiful country in the world by the way - seriously ;-) ) and as you can see on the superbeam-picture a good 60cm-dish pointed at 28.2/28.5E is absolutely enough for the channels on them and even offers some reserves for very bad weather. Since Astra is in command of 28.5 they have moved more and more channels/frequencies/transponder to the UK-beam. A few weeks ago two of the three BabeStaion-channels (the better ones) and today it could be nearly all the babechannels. It's impossible to receive the channels on the UK-beam in eastern Austria, not even a 3m-dish would make a difference when there's no signal at all.

Additional to 11390V some other transponders have also left 28.5E today. The automatic search of my receiver has only found 132 FTA-channels on the Superbeam an hour ago, incl. lots of radio and datachannels (487 channels a week ago). I think if the channels don't "come back" on the superbeam in the next hours, then it means "game over". Aside from the Xpanded-channels only Studio 66's first channel is still left on the superbeam.

I think it was only dirk362, Mauro and my humble self who recorded the TV-versions of the channels. Dirk lives in the UK, superbeam or not - it makes no difference for him. For Mauro and me it's an impossible task to receive the UK-babechannels via satellite if it stays as it is now. It's the last chapter for me anyway here, but when the channels are no longer available on the superbeam, then I would close the book even sooner.

Ok, TV-recordings have annoying OSG's in them, but it's much more comfortable to record them via a settop-box and the recordings are usually absolutely flawless. It was always my intention to get the best possible quality out of the source-material I had. Most of the members here may find it ridiculous to "invest" so much efforts and time to create videos, but for me it is very important that whatever I do, I have to do it as good as it's possible. That's not only a general rule fo me - that's "hardwired" in my DNA. It's no option for me to deal with blurry quality, unreliable webstreams with plenty of freezers in them (thanks to Firestorm).

Well, there's pretty much nothing that can be done, let's wait and see if hopefully at least some of the channels appear on the superbeam again. Time will tell, but I don't have much hope to get the more interesting channels back...

Has anyone got any info on the storms calendar please could you Pm me please

Sadly the avg. 1300Kbps videobitrate is pretty much the standard of what you get from most of the babechannels today. Ridiculously low and far too low for a decent videoquality, especially when you're considering that 40/42-inch TV's are already the standard and people tend to buy bigger & bigger TV's every year. Watching the babechannels (with the technical quality they have today) on such screens shows clearly and even in the first second how bad the picture-quality really is now.

Yes, some things were indeed better in the past and that also applies to the technical quality of the babechannels. Two years ago or so Studio 66 delivered by far the best quality of all. One channel was even in 720x576 and bitrates between 2900-3100Kbps. The other three channels 544x576 and 2200-2600Kbps. RLC in 544x576 and 1700-2000Kbps and BS was similar if I remember correctly. Storm was the worst channel when it comes to technical quality at that time and still is today imho. Well, at least some things haven't changed...

Due to the economic situation, maybe ofcom, changing circumstances and some bad decisions of the channels things went pretty much downhill since then. Just look at Studio 66 today and then think about the "golden years" of this channel some years ago. In my opinion it's quite obvious that it has become much more difficult for the babechannels to make a good or even a profit at all these days and some new ideas, new concepts didn't probably work as well as they have thought. I guess at some point (when things get difficult) there was no other possibility for them than to reduce costs whereever it was possible. That's what the UK-channels have done in the last two years and maybe it was the only way for them to stay in business. I think it must be even more difficult for Storm - 26p all the time and 70% of the time only one girl on the screen - it can't be easy for them, but they are still there and for some reason the "underdogs" always have my sympathy.

Broadcasting via satellite is very expensive and reducing bandwith is quite popular these days and it can save the channels millions of Euros/british pounds. I don't like it, but that's the way it is today. I can understand why it was done and I don't expect it to get better anytime soon. What we get today is ultralow bitrates across all babechannels (with the exception of the first Studio 66 channel) and that makes it sometimes impossible to create videos that have at least an acceptable quality for my standards. When the source material is so bad/ruined then there's not much that can be done...

... but there are a few things that could be done by whoever is responsible for the sets and by the technical crew. A few days I watched another stunning show of Clare and she's been on Studio 66's second channel. As expected the bitrate was very low with only avg. 1420Kbps, but what has ruined the picture-quality completely was the unnecessary perforated metallic plate in the background. It needed a lot of bitrate for nothing and the result was that the videoquality was extemely bad - very blurry and horribly blocky. That could have been avoided and it would have cost Studio 66 not even a cent or penny. It's the same with RLC because they use elegant, but very detailed sets and that needs a lot of bitrate - bitrate that isn't available anymore. It only needs a little bit of camera-movement and you'll get a screen full of "pixelated garbage". The same for constantly moving OSG's - they "eat up" way too much bitrate. The same also applies to fishnet-stockings - the girls shouldn't wear them - they need too much bitrate (not joking here) Luckily Kimberley took them off after a couple of minutes...

Another point: Storm & BS should really think about the "prehistoric" MPEG2-Encoders they're still using - they make bad things even worse and to make a very long story very short: Yes, MPEG4 would be the only solution to bring a decent videoquality with the current bitrates back.

PS: I don't see such a problem with bigger filesizes of the videos. I've uploaded plenty of videos with 800-1000MB and most of them got quite nice download-numbers. To get an unlimited high-speed internet access is not a problem anymore in Europe and even a 1GB file can be downloaded in a couple of minutes. Storm-videos tend to get much bigger because of the very lets say problematic source-material (bitrates of the filtered & encoded videos are between 1500-2200Kbps depending on the set) but if I can manage to upload, then I'm sure others can manage to download it

.. and a litte bit of patience shouldn't be too much too ask for, especially when all the work is already done and all there's left to do is to click the "download-button"

There's been a few babes move to this channel in recent times, and without a decent picture on $ky or the web stream, I guess we'll never see them again on these forums.

I did record and encode Georgie Darby for example, but due to the sheer crap picture quality this buggers up any sensible sized file you can create for a set. No one is going to download a 1Gb file for an hour of a babe, even if they are smoking hot and have amazing jiggly-boobs!

It's not entirely Storm to blame - they rent space on a transponder that is over subscribed. The owner (I think it's still Playboy TV) has put far too many channels on, meaning they all get a measly 1300kbps average bit rate. For an mpeg2 stream that's just not enough, no where near enough. It might be just about enough if this was H264.

Storm however can be taken to task in terms of the constant moving of the OSGs and the ticker-tape text, and the complete lack of understanding that a sparkly blue background will play havoc with the picture quality. That said, whoever is the set dresser at Storm appears to also moonlight over on RedLight and S66, both of whom also have at least 1 or 2 sets that just don't work on TV or web stream.

That's my rant over for Saturday morning - I can't promise there won't be another one along sometime soon - my rants tend to be like red buses (UK readers will know why I mean)

Well, she's back. And if I'm not mistaken, she goes to the one channel that doesn't have a webstream

Hate to imagine what quality the stream would be if there was one given the picture quality on TV tonight. Looks like the morning European show this evening.

HEXiT wrote:was wondering whats happened to this channel...
no webstream?
i see the link in, watch live! but it doesnt do anything other than show a schedule.

(been away from the channels for a while so im not up on the news)

There is no working stream around i'm afraid

was wondering whats happened to this channel...
no webstream?
i see the link in, watch live! but it doesnt do anything other than show a schedule.

(been away from the channels for a while so im not up on the news)

I haven't tuned into Storm in a long time, so thought I would give it a go this afternoon and was pleasantly surprised by the daytime show output.
Jade was sitting in a very ..erm.. comfortable position. Imagine if this happened on S66 , the producer would go into panic mode.
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any news on the stream? i just stumbled upon their twitter page and they have some smokin hot girls there now. rly a pity that there is no working stream out there :/

bigdog99 wrote:does the link to storm tv ever work?

It did but not for quite some time now