Only getting BskyB BBC channels.

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Hello there.

I just got a satellite TV receiving system from my wife as an early Christmas pressie - the antenna is a Self-Sat H30D single LNB unit, and for a box I got the Telestar Digibit R1 Sat>IP unit that connects to my home network.

I'm brand new to all this Satellite stuff, and have spent the last few days on a VERY steep learning curve.

I bolted the antenna (I feel odd calling it a dish cos it's flat, and very un-dish like, maybe I should call it a baking tray!), onto the flower boxes on our balcony and aligned it by using a nice google maps helper page I found on the internet, to (I believe) one of the Astra 28 satellites at roughly 153°/29°.

When I do a scan on my box, I can only ever get BskyB, and ALL the channels are BBC and that's it. I'm very happy to get those channels, but I'd also really love to be able to get ITV and Chan4 as well.

I've moved the baking tray around a bit, side to side, and up and down, but still only get these BBC channels.

I might go out on monday and see if I can buy a reasonably priced "sat finder", as my smartphone and even the compass that came with the baking tray go completely bonkers and I can not get a reliable direction reading in my apartment at all. There are 2 stinking great cellphone towers on top of the apartments near us about 50 metres away, maybe they are doing that, I don't know, but it's certainly unnerving!

Plus whenever I see pictures of these baking tray antennas, they always seem to be mounted on a slight angle, never flat as I have mine, as you can see here -

i-do-it.co.kr/download/PDF/01_Home_Antenna/7_H30D/Specification/H30D_H30D2_H30D4_Spec_sheet.pdf

Can anyone tell me what that angle is for, and how I come about calculating it?

Any help and advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks :).
 

timo_w2s

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The angle is for the skew. On a normal dish you would rotate the LNB on the front of the dish a few degrees depending on your location to get the best signal, but on these flat baking trays you have to rotate the whole unit to achieve the same thing. This should improve the signal levels and could help you get more channels.

The other problem you may have is your receiver may not be tuning to the whole section of channels available. You should look for something like network scan or auto scan in the menus to see if it will find some missing frequencies. You can also check manually looking up the tuning details for channels you want from websites like lyngsat.com and entering them into your receiver.

Be aware that the Astra satellites are undergoing a change over the next few years to Astra 2F (just launched), Astra 2E (summer 2013) and Astra 2G (2014) which may change the reception possibilities in your area. The BBC (and probably ITV and Channel 4) will be moving next summer to 2E and right now we don't know what reception will be like outside of the UK, but if you can get Channel 5 SD, which is now on the new 2F, there is a chance you'll be OK. Otherwise you may need a bigger dish.
 

timo_w2s

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I meant to say dishpointer.com is useful for skew angle look ups in your area.
 

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Yes, seconded: Receiver's pre-stored Transponder lists will be out of date.

Either Blind/Auto Scan or just Edit the list to correlate with current data from Flysat, Lyngsat or King of Sat.

Quite impressive you got the basic alignment right, so well done!

I'd be inclined to leave the dish well alone until after you've updated the Receiver and scanned again ..... If it ain't broke ..........................!!
 

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Chack also that you have the correct Astra satellite selected in the receiver menu, probably listed as Astra 2.
 
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Thanks for the help and positive feedback :).

Sorry about that link I tried to post, must have stuffed it up somehow :/.

I rotated the "Baking Tray" this morning, but sadly I could only turn it about 4° because the flower box gets in the way, so i'll have to go out tomorrow and buy some metal so I can make a new bracket to bolt the Tray onto the other side of the balcony where there's more room. But I must say the 4° rotation made no difference whatsoever!

I did manage to work out a bit more in the settings of the programme that does the channel scanning, at first I was scanning to an empty list, but then I managed to find and download a .ini file from kingofsat.net which had all the channels for Astra 28.2E, and I eventually figured out what to do with it. It goes into the folder - C:\ProgramData\CMUV\Telestar SatIP\Transponders, and then I can select that file from the drop down Transponder List.

Here's what it looks like -

(sorry, can't figure out how to do a nice thumbnail).

I'm still waiting for the scan to complete right now, but hopefully it should then show a new entry on my Channel List menu called "Kev's 28.2" with all the found channels under it. It's been a real headache trying to figure out this programme, as there is hardly any documentation that comes with it, and what there is is in German and really doesn't say much at all. These R1 boxes are very new to the market I believe and everything is still really in beta stage, plus of course everything is setup exclusively for getting German channels which made it a lot harder.

Well the scan finished and I still get the same nine BBC channels, repeated several times -


Very strange öÖ.
screencap003.jpg
screencap005.jpg
 

timo_w2s

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If you are getting a fairly decent signal quality I wouldn't worry about the rotation of the antenna at the moment.

Those screen shots seem to suggest you are getting hundreds of channels?
 
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Yeah, that's the odd thing, all those listed under "Astra/Eurobird 28.2E" (476 of them) don't work, apart from the BBC ones that are in there, and the "Scan 23/12/2012" list has 189 Channels, but they're all the same! There's only 9 channels but they're copied many times, it's very odd.

I believe I'm doing something wrong that is very simple, but I can't figure it out.
 

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Without being able to see all the frequencies you are scanning it's had to say what is going on but the ones you've listed in your screen shot are from 10818/V.
 
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I was under the impression that I was scanning from 10714 to 12726mhz as shown in picture "screencap003.jpg" in post #6 above, but I find this programme very confusing to use.
 

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Scrub it and just do a Blind/Auto scan instead.
 
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I'm pretty sure that's what I did before I discovered these .ini files, and all I get is hundreds of copies of the same 9 channels. I just did another scan that took ages, it found 189 channels, but as before that's just copies of the same 9 channels! I really don't understand this, how on earth can it keep finding copies of the exact same channels across the whole scan range?

On the options->scanner page, it has 2 buttons - "scan frequency" & "scan range". If I leave the boxes "target root" & "transponder list" empty, then it creates a new channel list called "scan 23/12/2012" with the channels in there that it finds. If I do the scan by clicking on the "scan frequency" button, it takes seconds to go through the scan process, and finds 9 channels (all BBC, & always the same every time I run it). If I click on "scan range", it takes ages (about an hour) and finds 189 channels, but they're all just copies of the same 9 channels!

This is driving me nuts öÖ.

EDIT:

I also tried a scan using a frequency "step" of 1mhz (it shows 5 as standard), it took several hours, found over 4000 channels, but again these 4000 channels were all copies of the same 9 BBC channels!
 

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That's because the "Range" is currently limited to one frequency ............... It really means "Scan all the Transponders I've currently got stored" - and you've only got one.

There should be some other options eg Auto/Blind/Network that will find some/most/all of the other live Transponders but, if not, then forget all that and go back to the state of an empty Transponder list.

Manually add Transponders as shown on the listings sites and then Scan Range.

If you do a handful first to gain confidence, then you can add a few more.

Most of the decent FTA Channels are confined to the Transponders at the low frequency end of the Band, so it shouldn't take your more than a few minutes to make good progress.
 
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OK, I deleted ALL .ini files in c:\program files\Telestar\Transponders, ans ALL files in C:\ProgramData\CMUV\Telestar SatIP\Transponders, and re-ran the programme.

The "target root" and "transponder list" boxes both showed as empty, and so I simply clicked on "scan range" and 3600 programs were found, and yet again all 3600 were simply copies of the 9 BBC channels!!

As you can see here -

http://christiane.homeip.net/pub/sat/screencap007.jpg
 

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manually set some transponders up using the parameters in this list:

www.flysat.com/28east.php

So 10714 H 22000 5/6

will give you the channel 4's
 

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Being in Germany may be the reason the BBC signals won't come in. I guess you need a slightly larger dish.
 
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Sorry to annoy you all, I know this is extremely frustrating, I'm gradually going bald myself here!!

Actually it's the reverse of that, I get ONLY BBC, and nothing else :confused, that's what I don't understand. It's like I'm pointing at a BBC only satellite, and that can't be right surely?

I would have thought that logically if there are other (non BBC) channels on the satellite that I am receiving, then they should show up as well, as long as they're free to air?

I managed to remove ALL transponder lists, and made a new one with just this in it -



[SATTYPE]
1=0282
2=Test1-28.2E

[DVB]
0=3
1=10714,H,22000,56,DVB-S,QPSK
2=10729,V,22000,56,DVB-S,QPSK
3=10744,H,22000,56,DVB-S,QPSK</pre>

<p>It appears in the "transponder list", and when I scan it guess what I get - you guessed it, the same old 9 BBC channels! :-HB.

EDIT:

Oh yes, and I have no idea what DVB-S and QPSK mean either, something to do with Queens Park Rangers or something? lol
 

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Exactly and precisely what BBC Channels are you getting ................... not BBC World, by any chance?
 
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I get -

CBBC Channel (eng)
-> CBBC Channel (NAR)
BBC1 South
BBC1 S West
BBC1 Oxford
BBC NEWS
BBC1 NI
BBC2 NI
ETV 6 (another BBC channel)
BBC3

...and then they repeat ad infinitum.

Here's a screenshot showing all the info -

christiane.homeip.net/pub/sat/screencap012.jpg

There's all the other screenshots that I took in that folder too.
 
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Hmm, I just had another thought - the http config page for my Digibox shows the following -
christiane.homeip.net/pub/sat/screencap013.jpg

(I hope these links are working)

The box has 4 inputs but I bought the antenna with only 1 output and I set it to "unicable" mode which just uses channel1. The config box shows editable frequency ranges for each LNB channel, but I just leave it at default which is 1076. Could that have something to do with it?
 
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