Digital Breakup on 101 C Band

[wvman]

I have a 7 1/2 foot Unimesh dish with a dual digital LNBF hooked to 2 GeoSatPro HDVR-1200 receivers. The LNBF is brand new, so is the cable and all the connectors. The receivers are under 2 years old, and on Heroes and Icons, Decades, MeTV 1& 2 and Movies, I am getting a lot of video breakup. the odd part of the scenario is that the signal level can be in the 60's on quality, and it still breaks up. MeTV does have a tendency to have signal as low as 50 on the quality.
Galaxy 16 on the other hand tends to be rock steady with an occasional incident of breakup, but it is rare. I located 3 other satellites east of Galaxy 16, and for the most part the video is rick solid, with no breakups, but RetroTV and a few others have a tendency to pause for a half second, and resume. Not exactly sure what's going on. I do not have the dialectric block in the LNBF, which I presume is only for circular polarization satellites. Any suggestions? I have not did a firmware update on either of these receivers, as I did not know where to find them. Some forums had an "update", but they spoke of bricking the receiver. I don't have a J-Tag, so if I brick one, it's bricked forever. I'd love to find a remedy for this problem.

 

[FaT Air]

You may try tuning up the dish a bit. You may not see a increase in the Quality reading. But tune for the breakups to be minimized.
Included besides the elevation and azimuth, is the feed. Both the focal length and skew. Get it Optimized to the utmost.

These TP's on 101 are narrow. A PLL LNBF may be helpful.

A 10ft BUD may also be the answer. More gain and not susceptible to adjacent satellite interference.

I do not have the dialectric block in the LNBF

That's good. It's only used for circular polarity. Only satellites over the Atlantic have that.

 

[bpalone]

If you are talking about this happening a while back, like week or thereabouts, it wasn't just you. But over the last few days, like over the weekend, they have come back and been ok. Don't remember what days. But, I did lose MeTV on 101 for a spell on Friday, but it came back up a while later and has been solid all weekend.

 

[waylew]

I have a 7 1/2 foot Unimesh dish

Is your main problem,even on my 10' and 12' dishes those channels can be troublesome,especially during the day.Whether it's adjacent channel/satellite interference or something else,I don't know.Usually at night they seem to work ok tho.

 

[bpalone]

I spoke to early. Just moved over to 101 and had total signal drop out the H&I, Decades and Movies. Was only momentary and came back up. Guessing that they may be doing something on the uplink end, as they were good all weekend on my 8 footer.

With Luken stuff, they are changing where they reside, so who knows. I have only had issue there once and that was somewhat recent when reprogramming satellite positions when I changed actuators and didn't see them at all on 87. But, they were back an hour or so later. Otherwise, they have always been very stable.

 

[wvman]

If you are talking about this happening a while back, like week or thereabouts, it wasn't just you. But over the last few days, like over the weekend, they have come back and been ok. Don't remember what days. But, I did lose MeTV on 101 for a spell on Friday, but it came back up a while later and has been solid all weekend.

It seems like it's more bothersome during the day. I work all week and don't get to watch much TV until after 7PM, but I do have Saturday and Sunday where I watch more. It's a pain in the butt since it seems to show up right when I want to sit down and watch the weekend westerns or war movies. Everything is new except the dish. I do have a couple 10 footers available that I can swap out, but I wanted to make sure before going to all that trouble. I also have a Prodelin 3.7 meter fiberglass dish up back I could set up. The beam width is much narrower than any of the wire mesh dishes I've been using. It's recommended for 2 degree spacing.

I have enough dishes sitting around to point them at ten or more satellites and tie them together with a DISECQ switches and eliminate the use of a motor arm. Been kicking that idea around a while. They're already on poles, and all I'd have to do is point them and wire them in. May do that. I am a bit curious about this problem though.

 

[wvman]

You may try tuning up the dish a bit. You may not see a increase in the Quality reading. But tune for the breakups to be minimized.
Included besides the elevation and azimuth, is the feed. Both the focal length and skew. Get it Optimized to the utmost.

These TP's on 101 are narrow. A PLL LNBF may be helpful.

A 10ft BUD may also be the answer. More gain and not susceptible to adjacent satellite interference.

That's good. It's only used for circular polarity. Only satellites over the Atlantic have that.

I just installed a Titanium Dual PLL LNBF over the weekend. Seemed to help a little, but still didn't eliminate the problem. Does anyone in here use the GeoSat HDVR 1200 receiver? I am trying to find a new flash for this receiver. I've been a bit reluctant to use a couple flashes I found since they are a couple years old, and not from a very reliable source. I would not be a happy camper if I bricked one of my receivers. I kinda leaned towards an outdated flash.

 

[wvman]

If you are talking about this happening a while back, like week or thereabouts, it wasn't just you. But over the last few days, like over the weekend, they have come back and been ok. Don't remember what days. But, I did lose MeTV on 101 for a spell on Friday, but it came back up a while later and has been solid all weekend.

MeTV seems to be more problematic than the rest. The signal seems to be a bit lower than the other channels on the same satellite, and it seems like they mess with it more than the others. The only channel that prompted me to put my big dish back into operation was Shepherd's Chapel Network on Galaxy 16. They finally went digital, and we didn't want to lose it. All the other channels were just a bonus, but we've gotten used to them and would hate to lose them.

 

[waylew]

Right now H&I is completely worthless.Tried to record Mannix,but constant breakups and dropouts and half the time after a dropout it would come back as DECADES.Was monitoring while recording,gave up deleted and shut everything off.
Personal opinion,for their uplink they went for cheap,as opposed to robust.

 

[bpalone]

Just took a look and H&I is going from 70 to 0 to 70 on the Q meter, for what it is worth. They must be doing something, since it was OK over the weekend.

 

[KE4EST]

I just installed a Titanium Dual PLL LNBF over the weekend. Seemed to help a little, but still didn't eliminate the problem. Does anyone in here use the GeoSat HDVR 1200 receiver? I am trying to find a new flash for this receiver. I've been a bit reluctant to use a couple flashes I found since they are a couple years old, and not from a very reliable source. I would not be a happy camper if I bricked one of my receivers. I kinda leaned towards an outdated flash.

The 1200 is no longer made and I doubt there will be any new firmware for it. What you have that is a couple of years old is probably the most recent for this receiver.

 

[FaT Air]

I just installed a Titanium Dual PLL LNBF

After installing the PLL LNBF, did you delete all transponders and rescan the satellite? The previously scanned frequencies could be off a few Mhz, This may be enough to throw the 1200's afc to the limit it's capable of locking reliably. With an SR of only 2700 some, it's a pretty skinny signal.
Without rescanning, you may manually shift the TP Freq up or down and find a 'sweet spot'. I'd try 1 Mhz steps to a max of maybe 3 Mhz.

 

[. Raine]

I haven't been having problems with MeTV, Heroes, etc, recently, but something I've noticed the last week or so with MeTV is that the HD channels have a Q of 73 or so and the SD ones are right around fifty for me. Before, the HD channels were very weak for me and would usually break up and the SD ones were always in the high sixties. This is with the 9' dish, MicroHD and a C1WPLL.

 

[wvman]

The 1200 is no longer made and I doubt there will be any new firmware for it. What you have that is a couple of years old is probably the most recent for this receiver.

What would you suggest as a viable replacement? I'm kind of new to FTA, even though I was a satellite dealer for nearly 30 years. I've never been a big fan of digital, for just this reason. When you're dealing with a digital data stream rather than raw video, this is what you end up with. I'll admit digital is easier to pile up a large selection of channels on one satellite, and the equipment is relatively inexpensive, but when it comes to reliability, analog has it all over digital. But, it is what it is, and I can live with that.

 

[KE4EST]

What would you suggest as a viable replacement?

Right now there are only two receivers that I would recommend.
One being the Manhattan and the other being the Linkbox 9000.
The LinkBox comes in two flavors, one with and one without an extra OTA tuner.
Both can be purchased at Hypermegasat.com. Casey over there is a great guy and will treat you right.

 

[wvman]

The 1200 is no longer made and I doubt there will be any new firmware for it. What you have that is a couple of years old is probably the most recent for this receiver.

What would you suggest as a viable replacement for these receivers?

 

[wvman]

The 1200 is no longer made and I doubt there will be any new firmware for it. What you have that is a couple of years old is probably the most recent for this receiver.

What would you suggest as a viable replacement for these receivers?

 

[wvman]

You may try tuning up the dish a bit. You may not see a increase in the Quality reading. But tune for the breakups to be minimized.
Included besides the elevation and azimuth, is the feed. Both the focal length and skew. Get it Optimized to the utmost.

These TP's on 101 are narrow. A PLL LNBF may be helpful.

A 10ft BUD may also be the answer. More gain and not susceptible to adjacent satellite interference.

That's good. It's only used for circular polarity. Only satellites over the Atlantic have that.

I played with the receiver tuning and got MeTV and Heroes & Icons to play. I found if you retune the receiver, it will eventually hit on a combination you can live with, but a couple of the channels are still messing up. The dish is aligned perfect, as is the elevation, and the feed is positioned at the correct focal point, and the feed is within 1/16 of an inch of being perfectly centered in the dish. I've though of installing the Prodelin dish I have in place of the Unimesh because it's a solid dish, deep and has a beam width of less than 2 degrees. Now all I need to do is find a couple FTA receivers that can deal with the tuning problem. I am open for suggestions.

 

[wvman]

Right now there are only two receivers that I would recommend.
One being the Manhattan and the other being the Linkbox 9000.
The LinkBox comes in two flavors, one with and one without an extra OTA tuner.
Both can be purchased at Hypermegasat.com. Casey over there is a great guy and will treat you right.

I appreciate the information. Will look those up. Thanks for the help.

 

[wvman]

Right now H&I is completely worthless.Tried to record Mannix,but constant breakups and dropouts and half the time after a dropout it would come back as DECADES.Was monitoring while recording,gave up deleted and shut everything off.
Personal opinion,for their uplink they went for cheap,as opposed to robust.

I'm having a lot of problems with that one as well. However, after retuning the receiver a couple of times, most of the other channels settled down, and MeTV was rock solid steady the last couple days. I do think it's an outdated receiver problem rather than the other electronics. Apparently the tuning range between channels needs to be narrowed down.