dm800hd tuner

fintannl

Regular Member
My Satellite Setup
Single Sat Dish and DM800
My Location
Ireland
could someone help me with an alternative tuner to the dm800hd clone i have. its pretty obvious that while the clone is a decent machine the tuner is of poor quality. so if anyone has ideas on a good quality tuner i could buy it would be appreciated
 
The latest Rev.L3 tuner is available to buy from Satronics.By the way have you tried an inline amp?
 
yep, b16mcc advised on this and without doubt it improved the situation. however i still get freezing on my local card. i know the dish is aligned properly and the lnb and cable are fine as there is no issue when using sly box. so i'm guessing the clone tuner is simply not up to scratch. will have a look at the new tuner you suggest. thanks
 
I get small issues from time to time with my geniune DM800 rev K tuner. This is using a zone 2 dish on 28e too ! It really should be spot on. The same dish / lnb also feeds the 2 built in tuners in my DM8000 and the signal is through the roof !
I might look to replace it myself.
 
i've just ordered the new tuner. will post feedback when it arrives next week
 
so my feedback. well i took the current tuner out that was Rev J and installed the new Rev L3 tuner i received. Absolutely no change. HD still doing my head in. So have read around further and will report on other ideas that i have not given up on yet. maybe it is clone associated but i will not give up that easily. will update soon on other possible options as i discount or can approve them
 
ok, a further update on this. connected in-line amplifier and now things are running a lot sweeter. had connected the in-line amplifier on the Rev J tuner but while it improved things I still had freezing issues. Without doubt the Rev L3 tuner combined with the in-line amplifier is a huge improvement
 
and so to the final piece of the equation. while the in-line amplifier and the new L3 tuner has definitely improved the freezing issues with HD channels it still was not perfect. so lastly it was a matter of changing the tone amplitude of the tuner. To check the current value telnet to the box and use command cat /proc/stb/frontend/0/tone_amplitude. The tone amplitude on my tuner was 7. I then changed the value of the tone amplitude with command echo x > /proc/stb/frontend/0/tone_amplitude where x is the tone amplitude ranging from 1 to 10. When you hit a value you find gives you the best reception (I found 3 did the job for me) then save the echo command line to /etc/init.d/bootup so it will execute at startup. And thats it. Another dreambox issue bites the dust. Now to find out how to get digital text for BBC and Sly channels
 
Hello fintannl and thanks for your suggestions

I have entered the command echo 3 > /proc/stb/frontend/0/tone_amplitude on the bootup file but once the box is restarted it goes back from 3 to 7.
I have tried putting the script line on top, on the bottom, in the middle of the other scripts it does not seem to work.

Any suggestions please?
Thank you in advance
 
ok, i'm working on this issue. likewise i have had the same problem. will let you know
 
ok, i give up. i have been unable to save the line to /etc/init.d/bootup so that the system maintains the new value for tone amplitude. is there anyone out there who has an idea why this may be. thanks
 
by the way b16mcc, what version of satellite tuner comes with the dm8000. i assume it must be different to the dm800. or is it the processing power of the dm800 that is causing an issue with a perfect hd signal on the dm800?
 
its just strange. today hd is poor even though weather is fine. if i look at satfind i see that i'm getting around 10.9db and 67% reception. yesterday it was 11.9db and 75% with no change to the system. all the tweaks have improved things but I'm still waiting for the ultimate answer. its just not quite right watching manu and chelsea freezing on a fairly regular basis
 
fintannl said:
its just not quite right watching manu and chelsea freezing on a fairly regular basis

Oh, I dont know about that - but then I do follow Leeds Utd. (Sadly)
 
now to be honest it would be difficult to take advice from a Leeds Utd fan at the best of times :-)
 
the ongoing saga. well its driving me nuts. on dream elite i get 75% reception based on the integrated satfind function. and yet i still can't get perfect reception for hd channels. so i modified my rev j tuner removing one capacitor and including a similar capacitor in a different place. results are promising. now hd is not absolutely perfect but its definitely better with the modified rev j board as compared to the new rev l3 tuner module. note that i continue to use the in-line amplifier. without the amplifier the reception is really poor. so now i get a freeze every few minutes as compared to every 30seconds on the revl3 tuner. i have rotated the dish as best i can to get the best signal but 75% is the best i can get. funny thing is that with the modified rev j tuner i have got better signal strength. begs the question if the new tuner is in fact reducing the input signal strength
 
I don't want to tread on toes here, but dish alighnment is one part of the dish/lnb setup. It is imprtant to get the focus and inclination of the LNB right too. Might get a very strong signal strength and still have poor quality if the LNB is not set correctly. (Sorry I don't know the technical jargon), but you have to push the LNB in/out to get good focus and twist it in the mount to get vert/horis alignment with the transmitted signal. Boosting the signal will improve signal strength, but will not solve signal quality. To check whether you have a LNB algnment problem see whether the freezing channels are always Hor or Vert. If so you probably have a LNB alignment problem, if not it still does not eliminate the possibility but it is more remote.
Note that for a given dish orientation it is more important to get a good quality signal than it is to get a strong signal, so if at a lower signal strength you get a better quality signal, that is the better setup.
 
shumifan, once again great information. went out and played with the lnb. just with a little play on it the signal strength has improved and the picture quality is perfect. this has been an ongoing problem for time and its great to put it to bed. thanks a million. the answer is always simple when you know how. thanks again
 
i'm really sorry to change stance on this. now i do have the dream elite image on my dm800 and based on shumifans advice i have gone from a paltry 11.5db to 16.5db signal strength (100%). all i can say is that this is fantastic. so now i have minimal high def problems (but some freezes that are noticable). then i connect the in-line amplifier and i get a minor freeze every 10 minutes. why does the in-line amplifier help with already sizeable signal strength? at a loss to understand!!!!
 
problem solved. bought vu+ duo. hd is perfect and it has dual tuner for recording. signal strength is 99% without changing anything and no need for in-line amplifier. will never buy a clone again. total pain. thanks for all the help guys
 
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