Not a thumper - sat TV

[guest27]

Hi There all

Not a thumper issue I know - but you have turned up trumps in the past for me.

Some 18 months 2 years ago I bought a Sat TV kit from Lidl (Should have known better - never have had any luck with their electrical products).  Friend also bought one at the same time.  Whilst he was here we tried to get one working - to no avail, assumed that we did not have two duff kits, so something we are doing.  Do not know how he is getting on with his - but from time to time I get inspired, get all the gubbins out - and cannot find a sat let alone any TV / Radio.  Cannot get even the slightest hint of a sat.  Turn the dish this way and that, align it horz and vert, change the LNB about - nothing, nowt.  Tonight I managed to delete all the preset sats off the box - seem to remember reading somewhere that this was a good idea - still nothing.  Any suggestions?

Totally different subject - asked once before but time has passed - anyone got an old 120 to 140 70(ish) /17 tyre I can nab - want it to fill the space on the back of the TZRotax. (Temp until it is built - to hold the rim off the floor and give me an idea of clearances, so has to hold air that is all - could even use a tube inside I guess.

Thanks

R

[ken]

There is a way  of  finding the direction for the satelite. Years ago i made a motor mount for mine on the old type before digital. You should be able to find how to get the settings on line but bascily you look for your area on  a map and use the lat or longitude do do a calculation and a compass is used as well. i never had a sat finder. It is very sensitive as is the LNB as well you only have to touch it to stop the transmission.
Ken

[guest27]

Have used the compass and protractor set up - have it pointing pretty much in the right direction - but not a sausage - as they say.

Thanks for the thought mind - it is currently propped in position...

R

[MrFluffy]

If its a digital decoder then it will take a few seconds to resolve the satelite anyway, and their signal strength meters are not realtime either, so you cant smoothly pan them accross the sky looking for a blip like you can a analog.
Is it a sky digital system, or a analog or a dmac.
My knowledge is in the sky field, but only amateur helping people site dishes and get them aligned up (I always tell people Ill help but its them getting up their own ladder, im just the "consultant") For the sky digi stuff, its quite finiky if you have the elevation incorrect, and propping it up to point it probally wont give you the required stability of mount to get it pointed up.
My usual proceedure with the sky stuff is to set the azimuth where I think it should be for the area (remember Im doing dishes for ex pats in france which means sky tv so they can still watch eastenders or the other usual soap drivel) then pan about 20degrees east and west of where my compass tells me it will be. I barely knock it, then re-pan, repeat for as long as it takes (usually a hour max). Once Im locked on, Ill tweak ever so slightly one parameter at a time, skew , azimuth etc then stop, then see if its worse or better in about 10 seconds after settlement.
The other weirdy is you can tell from the ID stream on the satelite setup menu if your on the RIGHT satelite, theres a bunch of them out there and Ive been locked and aligned onto the wrong transport stream most times Ive tried at one point or another. Ive been watching sky on a 60cm mesh minidish I put up myself on the balcony rails at a house in the south of france we rented a few years back, so right in the middle of astra's footprint up there in england the signals endstopping...
If after all this your getting jack, possibly youve terminated the F types wrong since the LNB is powered off a voltage thats sent up the middle of the cable, or the decoder isnt putting out the power to the lnb. You can stick a voltmeter on it and see fairly easy . Might be as well to check this first I suppose. Ive seen a good looking f type not pass current in the past...

[guest27]

Ahhh - voltage - I will check it - there is a set up page that has an option on some voltage adjustment - came set to zero, has an option on 12V.  Any idea what I should be seeing across the ends? - as to what type - it is a digital thingy, All I want is to pick up free to air, BBC3 and 4,  Digital radio in the lounge, Channel 4 as well as Welsh S4C.  Ideally I would also like to get a fix on Hotbird and Astra and pick up the European language drivel to help lil boys with their language, and maybe get better coverage of the Motorbikes...

R

[hondamichael]

hello one question first  when you only plug in the receiver thingy to your telly are you be able to get a test signal?
most of these receivers have a little switch or button at the back to swithch to test signal , if you cant receive it its very likely that your receiver is sending a signal on a frequenz your telly cant receive ,
there should be a very tiny hole in the back of the receiver with a tiny screw thingy ,where you can adjust the channel on which the receiver is sending to your telly , becasue if the channels of receiver and telly doesnt match up you wont get anything , had this problem years ago i coud not receive anything from the satelyt so i thougt but actually the receiver worked fin it was the telly wich didnt get a signal from the receiver because the frequencies didnt match up , but after fiddling around on this tiny scrw thingy it worked fine

[MrFluffy]

Re lnb voltage setting, Im betting thats why your getting *nothing*, your not powering up the lnb. What make model is the decoder + lnb, worth having a punt on google for the specs for it or it should be somewhere what the lnb voltage should be in the paperwork?
What the lnb does is transform the frequency down from satelite range (11Ghz) down to a frequency that can be squirted through normal quality cheaper tv cable, as 11Ghz requires some pretty special low loss coax, so by the time it arrives at your set top box,, its around 1.1Ghz instead, converted by the Low Noise Block (LNB) which also handles signal polarity etc. Some fancy setups have external power supplys for the lnb's (some of the earlier quad output lnb's are like this as they loaded the internal psu too much, which is marginal to start with), so the decoders have the option to switch off the internal psu sometimes.

For the fta stuff, you wont need a card as you already know, and you need to align to astra 1d, think from memory its 3d4 transport id but best go check that first...
*NOT* included on a FTA card are itv, ch4, ch5 and a few others you'd expect. And sky have encrypted motors tv and eurosport the buggers, so thats just men and motors in the clear automotivewise really. To get itv etc (but not motors tv etc *winge*) you need a fta card. How I got all mine was to ring SSL (sky subscription services ltd) on a special number, and they ask for the ID of the box from the setup menu. Then they post you out a sky card for the princely sum of 25 quid for life. You bung it in and a day or two later the channels drop in. This was because itv etc have regional agreements on their content, so they had to be seen to be enforcing geographic control, and by making you have a uk addy they can then say they enforce that. Of course theres about 10 zillion of the house cards on ebay at the moment and you can buy them at any expat sat dealer...
I know someone who picks eurosport with a english subcarrier up off a old analog setup, that he has on the pole next to his sky one. And theres "sky italia" too, but you have to have a fair old dish in the uk to pick up that one. *BUT* the encoding format is secam as italy mandated sky used existing standards, and the encryption usually lasts about a week before someone cracks it. If you have a dmac cam-slot capable decoder its worth a read up on, try dreamcam and sky italia in google... You will get the regional variations (eg bbc wales, bbc ni etc) on all cards, and the fta setups will carry the fta regional variances too. Usually in the 985 upwards range. The channel that sits in the master position (ie 103 for itv) will depend on what region your fta card has been issued in, if you go down the having a card route. You dont need it for radio either...

The tuner frequency michael is describing only applys if you connect the decoder to your tv using RF, if your using scart then all that goes away.

The really sad bit is I hardly actually watch the telly, but on the plus side my mrs does and she cant complain while I go out in the shed all evening to escape it

[guest27]

Hi again

Plugged it all back in again - I am getting 18V between the core and the sheild at the LPU end of the cable - so not that then...  Will have another try soon.

R