[mythtvnz] Hello! And DVB-S woes...

[Steven Ellis]

Tim, Donna & Erin Gibson wrote:
> Neil
>
> You've had some fun then haven't you...
>
> Blind scanning will not work, what you really need to do is borrow a receiver 
> already pre-tuned to stuff off B1/D1 and use your sat finder with that, best 
> also get a compas and point the dish as close to the right direction as you 
> can, similar frequencies of other satellites will make the finder go mad but 
> if you try to tune Myth or a receiver it may not work.
>   

One options is to use dvbtune under Linux to lock to the B1 multiplex
and then use the Sat Finder.

Steve
> Tim
>
> On Thursday 21 December 2006 23:29, Neil Bertram wrote:
>   
>> Hi everyone!
>>
>> I've just moved into a new place that happened to have a sky dish left
>> over from the previous owners. For some time I've been wanting to set up
>> Myth, so it seemed like a good idea to go get a DVB-S card and start
>> playing. So I did!
>>
>> I bought a Skystar2 ("ST STV0299 DVB-S") and it comes up fine with the
>> b2c2 module (btw tried all this with the windows software too, no luck
>> there either, but I'm primarily a linux person anyway).
>>
>> When we moved in, for some reason I took the sky dish off the house, so
>> I had to put it back once I got the card. The neighbour has a dish on
>> their roof too, about 2 metres away from where ours mounts, so I used
>> that as a rough alignment guide.
>>
>> I soon set to trying to get a signal with dvbtune, on the Optus B1 at
>> 12483MHz. I had one of the old Sky LNB's with fixed 11.3GHz LOF, so
>> translated that down to 1183000Hz for dvbtune. I used vertical polarity
>> and 22500 symbol rate. And I got nothing (the FE reported FE_HAS_SIGNAL
>> and FE_HAS_CARRIER only, which seem to always be present when the LNB is
>> connected, no matter which direction the dish is pointing).
>>
>> I tried wiggling the dish around, but still found absolutely nothing.
>> This went on for a few days of me trying absolutely everything I could
>> think of, including a blind scan between 10000 and 15000MHz (vertical
>> and horizontal pol) with the windows software, which turned up nothing.
>>
>> So I presumed the LNB was dead, and bought a new universal dual LNB from
>> freeviewshop. It's a Zinwell ZKF-DJ21, which I think at least one other
>> person on this list has one of? It uses the 22KHz tone to switch into
>> high mode, and diesecq commands to switch which LNB to use, and has a
>> 10.6GHz LOF in high mode.
>>
>> Naturally this didn't help things at all, I had the same result. Next I
>> replaced the cable with a brand new pre-crimped one, still nothing. Lots
>> of dish wiggling and frequency scans later, I decided I should probably
>> buy a satfinder to get better aim, so I did.
>>
>> With the satfinder I can sweep across the sky and it goes crazy across a
>> rather large horizontal patch at 45' elevation (which the dish has been
>> set to all along). The card still sees nothing (including after a
>> 10000-15000MHz scan in the area where the satfinder made the most
>> noise). When I put my hand over the LNB, the signal goes way down, so I
>> know it's picking *something* up... And it looks to be pointing in the
>> same direction as the neighbour's one still.
>>
>> So I guess at this point I ask is this a common thing? I haven't found
>> anyone by googling that's had this much trouble getting a lock on D1 or
>> B1 (I've been scanning for 12420V on D1 lately, as something that should
>> exist).
>>
>> I guess the card could be suspect, although it was brand new a month
>> ago, and it does lose carrier and signal when I unplug the LNB, so the
>> air interface appears to be healthy...
>>
>> My dvbtune line currently is "dvbtune -tone 1 -f 1820000 -p v -s 22500
>> -m", which is 12420V on D1 ((12420-10600)*1000). It tunes it fine, says
>> it has signal and carrier, then sits there polling and never seeing
>> anything.
>>
>> So that's where I am right now. I live in Wellington, so if anyone
>> either has a sky dish that I could hook the card up to to test it, or
>> could lend me a card/STB that I could use for testing on my dish, I
>> would be very appreciative! Advice is welcome too, but I'm pretty sure
>> I've tried everything by now...
>>
>>
>> Many thanks,
>>
>> Neil
>>
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>>     
>
>   


-- 
Steven Ellis - Technical Director
OpenMedia Limited
email   - steven@openmedia.co.nz
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support - support@openmedia.co.nz
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