Fundamental sat reception question

[SwissBuster]

I've got a Technisat Multytenne (4 LNBs, small 45cm dish) with a Technisat CIVA receiver. All is working well, with full BBC/ITV reception. I tried to find the new Channel 4 and More4 FTA programs last night without success. These are apparently at 10729Mhz 22000 V; I scanned this transponder manually but only find Film4; the signal strength is reported on the CIVA at about 5.0dB or approximately 50%, similar to most channels on 28.5E. A friend living nearby picked these channels up no problem using a PC with a DVB card.

I don't understand if the receiver makes a difference to satellite reception or if everything is a result solely of the dish size/alignment. Can some expert educate me here?

For my particular issue, could it be that the signal is just too weak to register the channel? If so, why is Film 4 on the same frequency OK? Or am I doing something wrong when scanning for new channels?

Thanks to all for your help.

 

[rolfw]

See if there is a channel in your list 8350, that will be Channel 4.

 

[SwissBuster]

See if there is a channel in your list 8350, that will be Channel 4.

Tried that - it's not listed. I scanned the whole 2800+ channel list to see if it was hidden somewhere but couldn't find anything. There are 4 or 5 channels called 'Channel 4' but none of these work (I assume they are the encrypted channels).

 

[rolfw]

Make sure that you have the following transponder listed on your receiver:

10728 V 5/6 22k

If it isn't add it and scan it.

 

[SwissBuster]

Make sure that you have the following transponder listed on your receiver:

10728 V 5/6 22k

If it isn't add it and scan it.

I scanned transponder 10728 V 22000 (as well as 10729 as mentioned above). Both found only Film4. I'm not sure what "5/6" means in your post.

 

[Topper]

I'm not sure what "5/6" means in your post.

FEC stands for Forward Error Correction this can be

7/8 3/4 2/3 1/2 1/3 and is normally configurable on any receiver that can manually scan a transponder, there are however some where you cannot alter this value

 

[rolfw]

You might have to add it as a channel manually, by typing in the video and audio pids (you can find these at Lyngsat.com).

 

[SwissBuster]

FEC stands for Forward Error Correction... there are however some where you cannot alter this value

You might have to add it as a channel manually, by typing in the video and audio pids (you can find these at Lyngsat.com).

The Technisat is one of those machines where it seems you can't add the FEC. I have several options on my machine: searching for new channels by satellite (ie each LN, by transponder, or manually. I've tried all three options without success. When running the manual check, there are lots of parameters I can enter but these are different to those given at Lyngsat so I haven't had any success here (I don't the exact details here, but there are 3 PID fields as well as freguency, V/H, and whatever attribute '22000' is). The transponder search only uses three fields (e.g. 10728 V 22000) so I have used this a lot, but again without success. It only ever finds Film 4.

Last night I tried three new approaches:
1. Tweaking the dish alignment to get the absolute best signal possible. This moved the dial marginally from 4.7dB to 5.2dB, but didn't find extra channels. Maybe I need to wait until atmospheric conditions are perfect to get a stronger signal and try then.
2. I updated the firmware on the Technisat and the channel listing. I thought that without this my machine may not be able to find the new channels. It didn't help (although I've not scanned the complete list to fully check this).
3. I borrowed my mates PC with a satcard and scanned this. This uses the same nomenclature as the Lyngsat site (and what people on this site use) so several things became a lot clearer to me. However, this system is pretty complicated and introduced its own set of problems which, in the time I had, I couldn't solve. It seemed to 'only' find about 1000 channels rather than the 2800 I have on the Technisat. I think I'll chalk this one up as an inconclusive learning experience.

Maybe I can distill this down to a simple newbie question: do different satellite receivers have differing sensitivity to find channels? Or are all receivers created equal and my system cannot find Channel 4 because the signal is not quite strong enough?

 

[rolfw]

Can you take a picture of the manual search page, we can probably help with the correct information to insert.

If you can see one channel on a transponder, you can normally see all channels on a transponder, as they are all in the same data stream.

 

[SwissBuster]

Can you take a picture of the manual search page, we can probably help with the correct information to insert.

If you can see one channel on a transponder, you can normally see all channels on a transponder, as they are all in the same data stream.

Yeah, I'll do this over the weekend. I also thought I should be able to see all channels on a transponder, hence my confusion.

 

[SwissBuster]

Yeah, I'll do this over the weekend.

Here's a screen shot of the 'manual setup 'page. As you can see I've selected the satellite at 28.5°E. Then I have frequency, symbol rate and polarisation which all seem pretty clear. The next three fields are PCR-PID, Audi-PID and Video-PID.

My guess for channel 4 would be Video-PID = 2312 and an audio-PID = 2313. But's what's the PCR-PID? My guess was the SID value from Lyngsat but the value of 8335 wasn't accepted on my system.

I also have the option of a transponder scan where I only have to select the satellite, frequency, symbol rate and polarisation. Whenever I run this with these settings, the system only finds Film4, nothing else. This was true today when the signal strength was slightly higher than the last few days at 5.8dB (typically it's around 5.0).

No-where on my system can I find a menu which tells me what this setup data is for a particular channel. I looked for this to help me decode these inputs for a known channel, but gave up after going through every single menu combination and finding nothing.

 

[rolfw]

Th PCR PID is 2310 according to _http://en.kingofsat.net/sat-astra2d.php

 

[SwissBuster]

Th PCR PID is 2310 according to _http://en.kingofsat.net/sat-astra2d.php

Thanks. At least I'm clear on what data I should be entering now.

I've tried several things out overnight:

1. I got my mates PC with a sat card working properly and did a full channel scan. This picked up everything - Channel 4, E4, More 4, the works. This tells me that the dish/LNB combo is definately working properly and is capable of picking up Channel 4.
2. I updated the software on the Technisat box and updated the channel list. This didn't help.
3. I deleted all the channel information on the Techinsat box and did a full rescan of all channels. I can pick up about 2900 channels, or about 40 more than before. None of these (as far as I could tell, going through all the channels) are Channel 4. Doing a transponder search at 10729 V 22000 I now get E4 and E4+1, but no channel 4 and also no Film4 which I was receiving before!
4. I entered the details (as given above) for Channel 4 for a manual scan but this didn't find anything. This doesn't surprise me because the transponder search didn't find it either.

This is driving me potty. Yesterday I could only get Film4. Now I can get E4 but not Film 4 or anything else! Any clues, anybody?

 

[SwissBuster]

I finally resolved this one. I did a complete system reset back to the factory settings an re-scanned all channels. This produced the full channel list of transpoder 10729V 22000... I've no idea why it wasn't picking these up before.

To answer my own question ("do different satellite receivers have differing sensitivity to find channels"), on the basis of my experience it would seem that the receivers are all created equal, at least as far as the ability to recieve channels goes.

Thanks for the help in getting this fixed for me!