Where are all the feeds, it's just black? MPEG 4:2:0?

Tom Mountford

Hi all, it's been a hell of a long time coming (and I eventually had to give up and get a professional installer to set the dish up) but my 120cm motorised system is now up and running. I am able to get most satellites from 42 degrees east to 30 degrees west. I bought all the kit so I could watch feeds but I have only had limited success finding any.

Here's the kit I've got and what it's doing:

Technomate TM-1000 CI: This controls the dish steering and it picks up all the regular TV channels and any feeds currently carrying a video signal, i.e. always-on circuits like the two Globecast Serte Paris links on Atlanta 3. The IF output from this receiver is daisy-chained on to:

Scientific Atlanta PowerVu 9225: This is a bitch to setup (it's meant for broadcast installations) but when I scan a satellite it saves hundreds of channel presets, some carrying the same channels the Technomate has found, the other 90% just black-level video, however it doesn't display a 'no signal' or 'no audio/video' warning so I assume these channels at least contain sync. Do satellite providers leave transponders displaying nothing but black when they're not in use? Would the receiver display black if the signal was MPEG 4:2:0 rather than 4:2:2?

So - I've got the dish, I've got the receivers, I'm picking up the satellites... so where the hell are the thousands of feeds????

Llew

Hi

Dusting down the notes for my(now neglected) D9234, I found that I had to change from 'Powervu' to 'Non-Powervu' in the OSD menu to resolve non PV channels.

It goes something like this -

Menu
Press Info twice
Press 4,0
This displayed 'Fixed Pids'
Go to 'Tune Mode'
Press Select several times. This brought me to Non-PV or PV
Press Select Non-Powervu then 1 to save.
Exit.

Maybe your 9225 has different OSD options, in which case the above won't help (sorry).

BTW, why bother with the 9225 when the Technomate will do everything that receiver can do (apart from Powervu of course if you have the authentification) - and a lot easier to use?

Llew

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Tom Mountford

Thanks for the advice, I'll give that a go. I got the 9225 on Ebay a couple of years ago, without a manual, but soon realised it was a 'fit and forget' piece of installation kit and pretty rubbish for searching for feeds - it doesn't even steer a dish. I got the Technomate just to drive the dish but realised it would probably be the better for viewing - I kept the 9225 as I wasn't sure if it had any advantages when it came to decoding different MPEG streams.

So, let's assume the Technomate is what I want to get feeds on. Take Eutelsat W1 - there should be hundreds there and the Technomate is getting a great signal of about 86% yet only finds a handful of channels - all of them commercial TV. I have got the receiver to blind-scan for the channels (with 'network search' enabled) and haven't got round to loading up the '4000 channel' list from the Technomate website... presumably this would load the receiver with the frequencies of all the channels on a satellite regardless of whether or not it is able to receive them?

Cheers,
Tom

rossy

Your assumption that there should be hundreds of feeds is incorrect I am afraid.

The main satellites for feeds are 16e 10e 7e and to a lesser extent 8w 12.5w 18w 20w 22w 30w 43w. If you want details of feeds available in real time then there are several boards/forums giving details of the feeds.

Regards

Tom Mountford

I've left the Technomate to 'auto-navigate-blind-scan' every satellite in its list - all polarisations and all transponders in detail. It has already found several channels on satellites way outside the arc I thought I was limited to. I can see why the installers didn't bother scanning everything - it's been going for 35 hours already and still hasn't made its way to the ones I have already scanned... so I'm hopeful of a very large channel list once it has finished searching!

Could someone put me straight on the technical words in the receiver setup, here's my interpretation:

Frequency - The part of the spectrum the channel is in (in Gigahertz?)

Transponder - An individual receiver and re-transmitter onboard the satellite... does each transponder carry a different channel lineup or are they just backups?

Polarisation - Is this a way of multiplexing two channels into the same frequency on a single transponder???

I'm only asking as the installers just scanned the transponder with the strongest signal on each satellite.

I'll let you know what the channel list comes up with.

Cheers,
Tom

Tom Mountford

I think I've got it! With a combination of SatcoDX and the various feeds websites people have directed me to I've found out how to manually add transponders to the Technomate... et voila! Empty studios... people waiting to go on air... reporters tidying their hair. It's great.

One query though - on regular commercial channels on the pre-programmed transponders I get a signal strength of between 70-85% so I know the dish pointing is spot-on, when I add transponders about half of them sit at around 20-30% and the receiver doesn't find a channel, do different transponders require the dish to be moved a little to optimise the signal or are they just weak because there isn't anything currently broadcasting????

I'm finding some very amusing stuff though, I had no idea just how bad some foreign television actually is!

Cheers,
Tom

Topper

Well I am pleased for you Tom, yes you really do see some very funny things since half of the people there do not think the camera is functioning. The thing you have to remember though is that different transponders can be configured to provide different footprints even though it is the same satellite, so yes 30% would not be unusual as the footprint could be over north Africa or elsewhere. Lyngsat.com does give a general insight as the transponder configuration and its footprint as I assume it would be too laborious to reconfigure the transponder each time a feed is required although probably not impossible. As you can see here indeed if you click in this case on Europe you will see the footprint. You can check this for all satellites on Lyngsat.

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Jeff_19341

The blind scan/power search on the older TM 1000 series was very very very slow, the TM 4000 series is a lot faster. I cannot find the email from Technomate telling me this.

pothead13

now you can get technomate 1000 super which has fast blind searh

Analoguesat

Tom - join the Feedhunters yahoo group - it will give you info on whatevers up and running at any time - (its a VERY high traffic group, so expect to be inundated with emails!)

Tom Mountford

Hiya - I had noticed the somewhat slow blind-scan on the TM-1000, having left it scanning for nearly two days only to find that it had frozen at about 20% through!

Most interesting find so far has been colour bars idented with 'GLOBECAST NY', I Googled for Globecast's address in New York and found there is a teleport on Staten Island... on Google World Map I got a satellite image of the area and would you believe it there was a field full of huge uplink dishes pointing out towards the Atlantic! SERIOUSLY COOL!