Advice sought: Freesat product from Echostar doesnt work via multiswitch,Humax works!

D

DouglasBeaumont

Member
My Satellite Setup
4LNBs, Multiswitch, Freesat+ Humax, Topfield
My Location
West Sussex
Hi,
I'm searching for a solution on how to get a Freesat+ box from Echostar to work in our building.
We have a sat dish with multiple LNBs and a multiswitch with LNB for 19.2E on port 1 (German TV), and port 2 connected to LNB for Astra2/28.2E (UK channels). Multiple outputs supply numerous rooms.
Our Freesat/Freesat+ boxes are Humax models. They all work and are connected to the sat dish via the multiswitch. When setting-up they immediately found all Freesat channels and work fantastically.
All other sat receivers in the building (are DiSEqC boxes) work fine too.
A very recent new purchase (Echostar Freesat+ box) has problems though and after searching for details on the Internet it appears the problem is its lack of support for DiSEqC.
I was unaware that some sat Freesat receivers don't support DiSEqC as I thought it was very much a standard (and I hadn't had any such issues before).
I suspect to get round this issue I just need to swap ports 1 and 2 on my multiswitch to get the non-DiSEqC box (from Echostar) which presumably uses port 1 by default to find the LNB it requires?
Or does Echostar's Freesat box not function via a multswitch?
Can anyone confirm my suspicion or otherwise?
 
Common practice in the UK is to wire 28E to port 1 on the switch and other satellites to the other ports, in order to avoid the issue.

Freesat receivers are not required to have diseqc functionality, nor are Sky receivers, though some Freesat receivers do.

Presumably when getting the Humaxes to work you had to set them up with Diseqc capability?

Best thing to do would be to put 28E on port 1.
 
As Robbo says the best thing is to put Astra 28 onto port 1.

If that's not possible then there are such things as DiSeqc tone generators. An example is here _http://www.emp-centauri.cz/products.php?id_kateg=6&id_pkateg=44&id=117 but that's not in the UK.

Now you know such things exist you can ask the specific question of some UK suppliers starting with our forum advertisers.
 
Hi Robbo and PaulR,
Many thanks for the infos and for confirming what I half suspected. I would agree with your suggestion Robbo of changing the ports as it would solve my problem and avoid future problems too. Big change though now! ;-(
Also really useful to know that such a thing as a DiSeqc tone generator exists, Paul. That would of course save a *lot* of hastle as every single device connected to the multiswitch (it has 16 outputs but maybe not all are in use) would have to be re-programmed to get it to work and that will need a bit of planning and organisation.
I'm going for the easier route first I think with the tone generator - if I can get hold of one of these little box of tricks reasonably easily - obviously checking out forum advertisers.. ;-)
Thanks for the incredibly fast and helpful response!
 
Hi,
I wasn't able to get hold of a tone generator (at least not at short notice from stock) so took the plunge and removed Astra 19 from port 1 and put it on port 2 and put Astra 28 on port 1.
That did the trick and the non-DiSEqC Freesat box picks up its Freesat channels wonderfully. Of course nothing else worked after that and everything had to be re-programmed. But this wasn't as bad as I had anticipated and took only a few minutes on most of the receivers, just a question of changing round the LNB settings for the two satillites. Fortunately I had taken the precaution of checking which menu the setting is made on each box beforehand so I knew roughly where to make the changes and the outage was minimal ;-)
 
Well done, Douglas ............ these things are seldom as difficult as at first they might seem!
 
Excellent result.

What you've done is certainly the cheapest and best in the long run. I offered the tone generator idea in case it wasn't physically/contractually/legally possible to change them over
 
Back
Top