GETTING BACK INTO FTA after almost 10 years

[Meter Repair]

Hi everyone,

great to see this forum exists. ill give you some background on me...
in summer of 2007 i picked up a Viewsat VS2000 Ultra box, and a 36" dish with Sadoun motor.

i had some success with manually pointing the dish at various satellites but i couldnt get the rotor to work well, probably a setup issue on my end, i plan on revisiting this soon.

some of the most interesting things i found were
several video only feeds of cameras at traffic intersections, where the intersections were? i dunno.
found several backhaul feeds, guy picks nose off camera kind of stuff.
found numerous audio feeds, one seemed to be music for mall stores, found some other elevator/doctors office music type stations

im most interested in the unusual stuff, im into ham radio and finding unknown signals is my main interest in FTA

so, i read some posts, they indicate my Viewsat is very old technology and theres more modern signals now requiring newer boxes.

im also interested in recording the unusual signals i find, and would like to ask the community, what is a good recording device? also, i would like to save the videos as a common Mpg4 or similar standard video format for storage on my PC for later review.



thanks for your time

John

 

[Comptech]

You should be looking for something along the line of a linkbox or a used microHD. If you want to go on the cheap side a X2 will work pretty well also.

 

[KE4EST]

Welcome to SatelliteGuys!! Meter Repair

 

[Meter Repair]

You should be looking for something along the line of a linkbox or a used microHD. If you want to go on the cheap side a X2 will work pretty well also.

thank you for your reply,
i just looked up the linkbox 9000i local and it states in the specs...USB PVR "ready" (FAT16/FAT32/NTFS,Format function ,Recording,Playback,EPG Time record)

sometimes "Ready" means its not a current available feature but with the addition of something else, board/software upgrade it will work.
can you confirm that ready means it will work out of the box, with a USB external drive? and it doesnt specify the type of video file, does it use a MPG4 or other standard video file?

thanks,
john

 

[Comptech]

Nope, not in this case. Almost any box insert a usb flash drive and hit record and it works. Some boxes have trouble with timer recordings but to record on the fly they all work.

 

[SatPhreak]

They usually record in a TS format. You would need to covert to a mpeg4 file if you want, but a TS file can be played back on a computer or the receiver.

Sent from my SM-N900W8 using the SatelliteGuys app!

 

[kittyhas1000legs]

They usually record in a TS format. You would need to covert to a mpeg4 file if you want, but a TS file can be played back on a computer or the receiver.

Sent from my SM-N900W8 using the SatelliteGuys app!

Exactly how my 9000i Local works. It seems like the most recent update fixed the clock issue on mine too.

I haven't tried a flash drive, but the external hard drive worked easily. Just plug it in and the screen reads "USB a connected".

 

[SatPhreak]

My micro HD clock is from the satellite so sometimes it is right, sometimes it is wrong.

Sent from my SM-N900W8 using the SatelliteGuys app!