Determining unknown DCII VCTs

[Corrado]

When searching out unknown DCII feeds with a commercial receiver, what's the best way to determine unknown VCTs?

Lyngsat has some published but many are not included and the fields are blank. Any tips or tricks?

 

[emuman100]

Acquire the signal, and just chose the VCT that is picked up. On Motorola IRDs, I acquire the signal, wait a few seconds, go to change the VCT, and all the available VCTs are selectable. Most of the time there is just one.

If you chose to tune a different multiplex, the old VCT is still stored, so you have to ignore it and chose the one that was acquired. If you chose the old VCT, the signal will drop. These IRDs are designed to automatically download the VCT numbers, so just chose the one downloaded.

 

[Corrado]

I figured it out last night. The available VCT first is the trick and from there to the channels mapped. This is using a DX Antenna DIR 767 receiver that appears to be GI or Motorola 4400 receiver. What confused me is the that there were several, apparently previous VCTs still in memory.

By comparison, I learned how to read the VCT in my 4200V. On that model it's in the diagnostic data "A" screen toward the lower right second column up from the bottom. I never needed to know what VCT it is on that box since it just finds and displays the channels most of the time. Now I can cross check with the 2 when in question.

 

[B.J.]

I figured it out last night. The available VCT first is the trick and from there to the channels mapped. This is using a DX Antenna DIR 767 receiver that appears to be GI or Motorola 4400 receiver. What confused me is the that there were several, apparently previous VCTs still in memory.

By comparison, I learned how to read the VCT in my 4200V. On that model it's in the diagnostic data "A" screen toward the lower right second column up from the bottom. I never needed to know what VCT it is on that box since it just finds and displays the channels most of the time. Now I can cross check with the 2 when in question.

Yeah, that's the bad, good, and bad thing about the way the 4200V works.
BAD, because the 4200 only holds one VCT, so you have to go through the reset to factory each time you tune a new mux with a different VCT.
GOOD, because you don't have to know anything about the VCT, compared to some other receivers where you have to choose which VCT to use.
BAD, because if the signal being viewed contains no VCT, more than one VCT, or an incorrect VCT, then you are out of luck, as you can't view anything. This has happened several times with these recent muxes that have moved from sats that G15 is disturbing. On some of those muxes, they apparently have more than one VCT, and my 4200 picks up the first one, which is the VCT that the mux was using on the old satellite, so it has transponder freqs that do not correspond to the freqs being used on the new sat, so I can't view the mux. Also, back before OETA moved from AMC5 to AMC21, there were a couple months when that mux apparently wasn't even sending out a VCT, because one would never load on that transponder. It eventually came back.
Anyway, I wish there was a way to specify what VCT the 4200 loads.

 

[PopcornNMore]

I have that same DX Antenna DIR 767 receiver. What a great toy.

 

[Corrado]

I wanted to get a commercial receiver or 2 for when 4DTV goes away. If by some chance they lose the generic satellite ability, I wanted something else to play around with. So far between my DIR-767 and my 4200V I'm happy.