Edision Enigma2 - Combine audio channels? NBC 103 W feeds

k1cza

SatelliteGuys Family
Original poster
Nov 26, 2021
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Yelm, WA, USA
Is it possible to combine multiple audio feeds on a channel on Enigma2 / Edision Mio or Amiko receivers?

I'm pointed at 103 W Ku for NBC primary feeds, but it seems that the audio tracks are broken out into 5.1. I can either listen to L+R or center, but not both, on the Edision Mio running TNAP 4.1/Enigma2 I just received.

I see the 10 year old threads about this, but I'm hoping someone has found a solution with these newer receivers. Thanks!
 
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Is it possible to combine multiple audio feeds on a channel on Enigma2 / Edision Mio or Amiko receivers?

I'm pointed at 103 W Ku for NBC primary feeds, but it seems that the audio tracks are broken out into 5.1. I can either listen to L+R or center, but not both, on the Edision Mio running TNAP 4.1/Enigma2 I just received.

I see the 10 year old threads about this, but I'm hoping someone has found a solution with these newer receivers. Thanks!
Yes, that has been annoying over the years. I swear I saw a post where someone had found a way but I think it involved using streaming and an external program. Always been easier for me to just select the audio that has what I need and ignore the rest. If I find the post I will link it here though. :)
 
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OK, found it. It was hiding in a thread about the Micro HD receiver. It wasn't by streaming. It involves using a PC running TSReader and a satellite tuner card. Apparently that allows you to select several audio channels and combine them so it's above the capabilities of a regular sat box, even the Edision, I guess. :(

 
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Nope, not that I'm aware of.
Thanks for confirming. That's a real bummer. I ordered a Geosatpro 90cm dish and a HH90 rotor planning to bounce between NBC and PBS at 125 W. I might end up selling that and just leave this HughesNet dish parked at 125 W. It's doing incredibly well despite using a pipe clamp as my LNBF mount :)

OK, found it. It was hiding in a thread about the Micro HD receiver. It wasn't by streaming. It involves using a PC running TSReader and a satellite tuner card. Apparently that allows you to select several audio feeds and combine them so it's above the capabilities of a regular sat box, even the Edision I guess. :(
Thanks for checking. I believe I saw a way to combine the audio using a tuner card and TVHeadend too, but I don't want to get in that deep.
 
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TS reader doesn't care about the source. It will provide the options with any transport or program stream. Point TS Reader to the network OS Mio+ 4k channel stream.

Should be easy enough to add to the Enigma2 distribution the ability to select multiple audio pids rather than a single APID from the stream. Bring it up for discussion on one of the E2 dev forums. Doubt there is much international demand for simultaneous multiple APID playout, but who knows.

Remember, this will not be a proper mix down, only a way to play out multiple APIDs.
 
I don't know if this will work with the receivers you mentioned, but I would think if you can record the program then you can post-process the recording to get the audio, which is covered in the first link. If you were using a satellite tuner card and running Tvheadend or something similar as a backend then it would be possible to do it in real time as is explained in the second link, but I don't think any standalone satellite receiver would let you do it in real time, unless perhaps one of them is running Linux "under the hood". In that case, there's a very slight possibility that you could install a build of ffmpeg (assuming it's not already installed) and somehow convert the audio stream in real time.

Fixing the audio on recorded programs from a certain network (which shall remain nameless)

Fixing the audio on live TV from a certain network (which shall remain nameless) in TVHeadend

I will note that if you do have a satellite tuner card, there are now two major networks that broadcast 5.1 audio in this way. However the other one also has a 2-channel stereo stream on audio channels 7 and 8, so most satellite receivers can receive that. It's only the one you're trying to get that doesn't have stereo audio. They used to have one east coast feed channel that was stereo only, but I don't think that one was ever offered on Ku band.

One other note about these articles, they are a bit dated and I believe the comments about the version of ffmpeg offered in the Debian or Ubuntu repositories not being true ffmpeg are no longer valid. It may not be the newest version of ffmpeg, but I don't think they are still pushing libav as if it were ffmpeg anymore.
 
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I tried to edit my previous post but apparently you only have 90 minutes to do that (which kinda sucks) but anyway this is what I wanted to add. Warning: What follows is untested and pretty geeky, not for those totally unfamiliar with Linux or unwilling to try using Tvheadend!

One other thing I would note is that if you don't have a satellite tuner BUT your satellite receiver will stream a live channel to your local network, it is definitely possible to install Tvheadend on a Linux server on the local network, and use that to capture and record the stream or to stream to other devices. And if your satellite receiver can be remotely controlled over the network (perhaps using some type of API call) it gets better yet, because Tvheadend might even be able to control your receiver to change to the correct channel on demand. In Tvheadend you would first need to create a new IPTV network, and you will want to limit the maximum number of input streams to 1 in that network (because your satellite receiver probably only has one tuner). And then using that network, you would have to create a separate new mux for each channel you wanted to tune, and in the mux URL field you would put something like this:

pipe:///home/username/channel_scripts/channelname.sh

In the pipe:/// URL you put a path to a shell script. And in that shell script you can run whatever commands you like, including sending instructions to your satellite receiver to tune to the correct channel, assuming that there is a way to do that. Then your last command in the shell script would be something like this:

(/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -loglevel fatal -fflags +genpts -i http://address_of_receiver's_stream -c copy -flags +global_header -strict -2 -metadata service_provider=Channel_Name -metadata service_name=Channel_Name -f mpegts -mpegts_service_type digital_tv pipe:1)

You have to replace http://address_of_receiver's_stream (which may also need a port number) and the two instances of Channel_Name as appropriate, but this MIGHT allow Tvheadend to receive the stream from your satellite receiver, and record it or stream it to other devices. If that works, then you should be able to add the ffmpeg options from the second linked article [in my previous post] to give you 5.1 channel audio IF and ONLY if the receiver will stream a .ts format stream that contains all the audio streams (basically you want it to just take whatever it is receiving from your dish and put that out on the stream, without processing it in any way, particularly with regard to the audio). So assuming that all works, you could use Kodi (with the Tvheadend PVR addon installed) on a home theater PC that feeds your TV or surround sound receiver, and that should give you all the audio channels. Note that both Tvheadend and Kodi are free, as is Ubuntu Server edition and most other variants of Linux. You can run both Tvheadend and Kodi on the same machine if you like, and it's a great use for an somewhat older system that once ran Windows or MacOS, assuming it is new enough to have a HDMI output to connect to your TV or surround sound system.

As I said this is untested, although I do know that you can use a pipe:/// URL to launch a shell script and then have the shell script run ffmpeg to convert the stream. You can run ffmpeg directly from the pipe:/// URL too (as is shown in the second article) but the advantage of using a shell script is you can do other things (such as send commands to the satellite receiver, if it will receive them over the network) before attempting to receive the stream from the receiver. If you were clever enough you could even trigger an IR sender of some kind from the shell script, to remotely control a receiver that doesn't permit control over the network (just note that if you attempt to use lirc for this, you are probably going to want to install a pre-1.00 version because the 1.xx versions are crap that don't work very well unless you are the one genius in a thousand that can figure them out). Sorry I can't give you "cookbook" type instructions on any of this but I did want to at least mention the possibilities here, since not everyone may be able to afford a DVB-S2 tuner card.
 
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I tried to edit my previous post but apparently you only have 90 minutes to do that (which kinda sucks) but anyway this is what I wanted to add. Warning: What follows is untested and pretty geeky, not for those totally unfamiliar with Linux or unwilling to try using Tvheadend!

One other thing I would note is that if you don't have a satellite tuner BUT your satellite receiver will stream a live channel to your local network, it is definitely possible to install Tvheadend on a Linux server on the local network, and use that to capture and record the stream or to stream to other devices. And if your satellite receiver can be remotely controlled over the network (perhaps using some type of API call) it gets better yet, because Tvheadend might even be able to control your receiver to change to the correct channel on demand. In Tvheadend you would first need to create a new IPTV network, and you will want to limit the maximum number of input streams to 1 in that network (because your satellite receiver probably only has one tuner). And then using that network, you would have to create a separate new mux for each channel you wanted to tune, and in the mux URL field you would put something like this:

pipe:///home/username/channel_scripts/channelname.sh

In the pipe:/// URL you put a path to a shell script. And in that shell script you can run whatever commands you like, including sending instructions to your satellite receiver to tune to the correct channel, assuming that there is a way to do that. Then your last command in the shell script would be something like this:

(/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -loglevel fatal -fflags +genpts -i http://address_of_receiver's_stream -c copy -flags +global_header -strict -2 -metadata service_provider=Channel_Name -metadata service_name=Channel_Name -f mpegts -mpegts_service_type digital_tv pipe:1)

You have to replace http://address_of_receiver's_stream (which may also need a port number) and the two instances of Channel_Name as appropriate, but this MIGHT allow Tvheadend to receive the stream from your satellite receiver, and record it or stream it to other devices. If that works, then you should be able to add the ffmpeg options from the second linked article [in my previous post] to give you 5.1 channel audio IF and ONLY if the receiver will stream a .ts format stream that contains all the audio streams (basically you want it to just take whatever it is receiving from your dish and put that out on the stream, without processing it in any way, particularly with regard to the audio). So assuming that all works, you could use Kodi (with the Tvheadend PVR addon installed) on a home theater PC that feeds your TV or surround sound receiver, and that should give you all the audio channels. Note that both Tvheadend and Kodi are free, as is Ubuntu Server edition and most other variants of Linux. You can run both Tvheadend and Kodi on the same machine if you like, and it's a great use for an somewhat older system that once ran Windows or MacOS, assuming it is new enough to have a HDMI output to connect to your TV or surround sound system.

As I said this is untested, although I do know that you can use a pipe:/// URL to launch a shell script and then have the shell script run ffmpeg to convert the stream. You can run ffmpeg directly from the pipe:/// URL too (as is shown in the second article) but the advantage of using a shell script is you can do other things (such as send commands to the satellite receiver, if it will receive them over the network) before attempting to receive the stream from the receiver. If you were clever enough you could even trigger an IR sender of some kind from the shell script, to remotely control a receiver that doesn't permit control over the network (just note that if you attempt to use lirc for this, you are probably going to want to install a pre-1.00 version because the 1.xx versions are crap that don't work very well unless you are the one genius in a thousand that can figure them out). Sorry I can't give you "cookbook" type instructions on any of this but I did want to at least mention the possibilities here, since not everyone may be able to afford a DVB-S2 tuner card.

You get longer time to edit posts if you're a pub supporter ;)