Captain Jack said:
It seems to work for me (the blind scan plug in on the Uno) but I tried blind scanning 3E the other day and, although it found frequencies to scan, it wouldn't actually scan the channels in.
CJ, it is a two step process. The first step looks for transponder parameters and returns them to the plugin. Those transponders can be right down in the noise way below the lock limit. Second step is the plugin hands a list of those transponders over for a regular search for services (which is identical to doing a manual scan from satellites.xml). The filtering happens between steps 1 & 2 so only wanted transponders are searched for channels.
I think the Openboxes do a 2 step scan like this too, which is why they are so fast compared to conventional blind scan receivers which step slowly through every frequency and search for channels at the that time.
No to the spectrum. To do a spectrum you need to compare the peaks to the baseline and I doubt there is hardware to measure the baseline, and even if there were you would need that to be written into the driver and the driver is closed source. TBH, step 1 is pretty fast and accurate as long as there is a reasonable signal level, but not so good for stuff right down in the noise. Oh and lastly you still get a spectrum trace anyway even if you are not pointing at a satellite, it's just that this corresponds with the peaks and troughs that are native to the LNB amplification circuits. What I'm really getting at is spectrum is not necessarily as useful as people who don't have it might think when it comes to channel hunting. Sometimes there is a big peak with nothing on it, and other times the spectrum is almost flat and blind search finds channels.
