Odd Skystar 2 problem

stefmeister2005

I have a Skystar 2 PCI card that I've been using to pick up 19.2e for the past 2 1/2 years, I now wish to use it to get the Sky Satellite at 28e using my Sky Digital Minidish.

Weird thing is that when I hook my SS2 upto my Sky Dish I get no signal, however when I plus the Dish into my Sky Reciever or Technomate 5200D Reciever using the same cable the signal is perfect. Also If I setup my 80cm Dish indoor's & align it to 28e & plug my SS2 into that I get a good signal, although some channels are missing due to the dish been indoors.

I have plugged my SS into the Sky Dish before & its worked OK, only difference now is that my Pc has Vista installed rather than XP.

Its odd how it all works perfectly on one dish but not on another?

Anyone got any ideas on possible solutions?

BTW I've tried using all the major software, Alt-DVB, ProgDVB, DVB Viewer Pro & DVB Dream & I have the same problem on all of them.

Topper

Certainly seems a puzzler, I can see you are reasonably experienced in the hobby so I suspect we can rule out the obvious like a strand of braiding shorting things out, just a thought though is the central core long enough as it may be just a bit short for the SS.

I assume you are checking a frequency etc that does exist on 28.2 East

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stefmeister2005

Central core is long enough, thats one of the 1st things I checked. Im also trying it on frequencies I know exist & have active channels on them, also tried tuning to the frequencies that came up as having the strongest signal strength on my Technomate 5200D Reciever.

Something I forgot to mention in my 1st post was that back when I was running Windows XP I did hook the SS2 directly to my Sky Minidish a few times & was able to recieve a signal via the same cables Etc... Im trying to use now. I also made up a 2nd cable tonight & connected that straght to the Sky LNB & again no signal, hooked the same cable into my 80cm dish & it once again worked fine.

Little info on the Dish/LNB, I've got a 60cm Minidish with a Sky Quad LNB with 4 outputs, 2 are been used by 2 Sky Reciever's, one of those has been plugged directly into my SS2 & having used that cable on my Pace Sky reciever & my Technomate 5200D I know the cable's good & As I say above I have plugged the same cable into my SS2 before & got a signal under Windows XP.

The LNB I have looks similar to this one, I think its a Cambridge AE140 Quad LNB:
_http://www.selkirkshire.demon.co.uk/analoguesat/images/lnb.jpg

The thing thats really puzzling me is that I know all the hardware to be good, the SS2, cables, Dish & LNB are all fine so Id usually start looking at software problems, however since I can recieve a signal & pick up all the channels when I plug the SS2 into my other Dish I don't necisarily think it is a software problem, if it was surely nothing would work.

One final thing, something I did notice is that when Im hooking the SS2 upto the Sky Dish I don't get a shock if I touch the metal F Connector of the cable, when I hook it upto my other indoor dish & touch the F Connector I do get a small shock. Could it be a possibility that for some reason there isn't any power going to/from the Sky Minidish LNB? Howver thinking about it if that were the case why would it work with the other dish.

Anyway, if this can't be solved can anyone suggest another cheapish DVB-S (Or S2) PCI or USB card that is perhaps more compatible with Vista? I know this may not be the issue here but still could be worth buying a newer card thats more compatible with the OS Im running.

Topper

I agree with you, when I was testing Vista candidate I could not get my USB DVB-T to work at all and that is one of the reasons that I still use XP Pro and wouldn't dream of changing until I was forced. Vista is written so that nothing works or opens a port unless you tell it to do so when running an application. It maks it very secure but frustrating when application fail to work for no reason. I'm sorry I cannot recommend a card I do not use them

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HB13DISH

I suspect antivirus or Internet Security suite (Firewall).
My ZoneAlarm didn't open ProgDVB or the Hauppauge application until I changed some settings in the application like Allow, Trust, etc.
Which protections are you using?

stefmeister2005

Not using any Firewall software, using the built in Vista firewall & the one built into my Router as a backup. Reason for this is that I did use ZoneAlarm when I 1st installed Vista but it caused some problems with my Lexmark Printer, made it print really slowly for some reason. As for Anti-Virus software im currently running Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0.

Llew

Strange about the dish problem, otherwise I would have said it was an SS2 driver incompatibility.

Might be worth updating the driver with one that was built for use with Vista -

_www.dvbskystar.com/ has a Technisat Vista driver update (refer to the 12/10/2008 section).

Llew

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stefmeister2005

Already installed them, I have the latest Vista/BDA Drivers installed (Ver. 4.5.0.0).