receivers that tune below 950 IF ?

  • WELCOME TO THE NEW SERVER!

    If you are seeing this you are on our new server WELCOME HOME!

    While the new server is online Scott is still working on the backend including the cachine. But the site is usable while the work is being completes!

    Thank you for your patience and again WELCOME HOME!

    CLICK THE X IN THE TOP RIGHT CORNER OF THE BOX TO DISMISS THIS MESSAGE
Status
Please reply by conversation.

B.J.

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Oct 15, 2008
2,029
1
Western Maine
I'm just curious whether anyone has run into any of their FTA receivers that would tune below 950 MHz IF freq, which would be less than 11700 on a standard LNBF or above 4200 on C band, OR below 12200 on a circular DBS lnbf?

I'm aware that our LNBs and LNBFs give signal above and below their published range, and it's pretty well know that you can tune above 1450 IF, such as to tune the 12224 Nimiq signals using a linear LNBF on G17.

However, it's always been my assumption that there weren't any STBs, or drivers for computer card receivers that would tune below the 950 MHz bottom of the IF band. I think my receivers give an error if I try, although I really haven't tried it on all of them. But it's been a bit frustrating to see that Anik F3 sat sitting there at 118, and not being able to tune it with a circular LNBF because it would be below 950, and not being able to get good reception using a linear LNBF because it's circular.

Well, today, I accidently tried tuning one of the F3 transponders with the Genpix, using the QPH-031. It WORKED. It worked well actually. I was actually able to tune down at least to 12002 L 20000 , and might have been able to go further except I suspect that the signals I tried lower than that, but that's where I stopped getting locks.

I was real surprised at this, because that means that the Genpix is tuning down to 750 MHz, which is a pretty wide frequency range without going through some changes in IF freqs or something.

But then, I tried tuning those freqs with my old Twinhan, and it "seemed" to be locking transponders too, so I decided that I must be remembering wrong that I had tried this before and failed. But then a couple hours later, I remembered that TSREADER with the Twinhan has this habit of if you've tuned out of range, it will just give you a lock on what you last tuned in succesfully, so I tried it again, this time looking at the channel lineup, and found that the Twinhan was NOT actually going below 12200, but was locking on a transponder above 12200.

But the Genpix actually IS locking on signals up to 200 MHz below the 950 lower end of the IF band. Of course, there wasn't anything to view down there, but I found it interesting that it would do that.

I'll have to check to see if there are any linear sats, like over the atlantic, that have signals down below 11700, that I can try with the Genpix.

Anyway, I'm just curious whether any other receivers do this, and/or is it just the Genpix that is capable of sub band tuning?
 
Many PC-based tuners can be run lower (and higher), but it depends on the driver. Linux is normally the most direct path to make such tricks work.
 
I assume that all FTA receivers that are known to be popular with so called "pirates", are capable of tuning Anik F3 whole emitting freqs range. There seems to be plenty of circular LNBFs on the market with 10750 LO that help make it happen. :) But I'm not sure if any clear programs are still left on that sat, or were available before.
 
be aware that sometimes the receiver is locking signals below 950 but they are actually *images* of higher signals, I noticed my dreambox was locking many signals far below 950, then I noticed these same freq higher up lol. I will defn try my genpix though, would be interesting to see.
 
be aware that sometimes the receiver is locking signals below 950 but they are actually *images* of higher signals, I noticed my dreambox was locking many signals far below 950, then I noticed these same freq higher up lol. I will defn try my genpix though, would be interesting to see.

I'm familiar with images from scanners, but I didn't think the LO freqs in sat receivers made this likely. As I mentioned above, I have seen transponders appear to LOCK below the 950 IF, when they were actually locked on a higher freq, but that was mainly with my Twinhan, since it has a habit of just locking on the last transponder with parameters within it's acceptable limits, when you try entering something out of range.

But that's not what I'm seeing with the Genpix. I verified that it was indeed seeing the lower band by pulling up the NIT on the transponder, which shows what channel numbers should be on each transponder on ALL DN sats, and the channel numbers matched what I was seeing on the transponder.
 
Status
Please reply by conversation.

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Total: 0, Members: 0, Guests: 0)

Who Read This Thread (Total Members: 1)

Latest posts