No, not a stupid question: can a 311 "see" anything on 72.7 ?

[Pepper]

Yes, obviously I know that Eastern Arc is for MPEG4 receivers only. By "see" I mean register on the signal meter. Reason I ask is I have a 311 and portable TV I can easily carry outside. Put a dish on a pole, direct connect to the 311, load up the signal meter screen and find 61.5, then in theory a little further west and further up and I should be on 72.7. I've been fiddling with that and not finding it at all.

But then it occured to me, and I verified at lyngsat, every transponder on 72.7 is SR21500 with MPEG4, and the 311 might not be able to handle that. It does handle the 8PSK on 61.5 though.

Anybody got an EA setup and a spare 311 lying around? Care to hook it up, run a check switch and see if anything shows signal on 72?

 

[JohnL]

Yes, obviously I know that Eastern Arc is for MPEG4 receivers only. By "see" I mean register on the signal meter. Reason I ask is I have a 311 and portable TV I can easily carry outside. Put a dish on a pole, direct connect to the 311, load up the signal meter screen and find 61.5, then in theory a little further west and further up and I should be on 72.7. I've been fiddling with that and not finding it at all.

But then it occured to me, and I verified at lyngsat, every transponder on 72.7 is SR21500 with MPEG4, and the 311 might not be able to handle that. It does handle the 8PSK on 61.5 though.

Anybody got an EA setup and a spare 311 lying around? Care to hook it up, run a check switch and see if anything shows signal on 72?

Pepper,

The answer is NO. All of the transponders at 72.7 are using MPEG4 compression, and the only Dish receivers that will recognize all the signals from 72.7 are VIP receivers (which are all HD receivers).

John

 

[Pepper]

Yeah, I know they all have MPEG4 compression but I was reading signal on 61.5 transponders that have MPEG4. It's the encoding and symbol rate that affect the meter, and at that point it's not looking at compression because it's not decoding anything, I thought.

Wait a second, let's see if I remember this right. 72 and 77 use 8PSK-TURBO and 61 uses 8PSK. Bet the 311 doesn't do turbo.

Guess I need to find another way to aim.

 

[garys]

There is mpeg2 sd on 61.5 as well as mpeg4.

 

[Dah-Henny]

My phones have an intercom on them, and I just turn it on & carry a handset with me to the dish, with another handset at the source...works well.

 

[Pepper]

This is getting frustrating. I do this stuff for fun all the time, then they pick the coldest week of the year to send me out there to try to find something I've never pointed at before in the freezing rain. Maybe I should give up and call dish, dangit.

 

[digiblur]

Yeah, I know they all have MPEG4 compression but I was reading signal on 61.5 transponders that have MPEG4. It's the encoding and symbol rate that affect the meter, and at that point it's not looking at compression because it's not decoding anything, I thought.

Wait a second, let's see if I remember this right. 72 and 77 use 8PSK-TURBO and 61 uses 8PSK. Bet the 311 doesn't do turbo.

Guess I need to find another way to aim.

If I remember correctly 311's have 8PSK tuners in them. So yes, you can use it to check signals, but of course it won't tune the video as you already know that.

All Dish uses is 8PSK Turbo... they also run QPSK turbo on 77 and 118.7 I believe.

 

[Mr Tony]

yes the 311 has a 8PSK tuner in it. Folks use them for those locals that dish says you need a 8PSK tuner to pick them up (Marquette, MI and one DMA in Louisiana IIRC)

 

[Pepper]

that's why i asked in the first post, I humbly request somebody who has EA and a 311 in the closet or whatever, run check switch then tell me what if any transponders show any signal on 72. We can theorize all we want but when someone who actually can do the test tells me there is or is not anything there, that is proof.

By the way, I also tried with the motorized dish and the Coolsat 7100. I didn't have any better luck, I think it is probably the older type of tuner like the 301 and the other old dish legacy receivers.

I was basically looking for a way to get the HD channels I'm missing without risking having all my HD turned off till a tech gets here, or having to pay for something I *should* be able to do myself, or having to agree to a commitment, or whatever else they might decide is required when I call in.

 

[tempVAdish]

that's why i asked in the first post, I humbly request somebody who has EA and a 311 in the closet or whatever, run check switch then tell me what if any transponders show any signal on 72. We can theorize all we want but when someone who actually can do the test tells me there is or is not anything there, that is proof.

By the way, I also tried with the motorized dish and the Coolsat 7100. I didn't have any better luck, I think it is probably the older type of tuner like the 301 and the other old dish legacy receivers.

I was basically looking for a way to get the HD channels I'm missing without risking having all my HD turned off till a tech gets here, or having to pay for something I *should* be able to do myself, or having to agree to a commitment, or whatever else they might decide is required when I call in.

Check out "the list" link at the top of the page... 05 & 07 have SIRIUS audio on them, just listed as MPEG AUDIO, but like others have said, the compression shouldn't affect the 311 from seeing the signal, just can't decode the information once you get the signal...

 

[Mr Tony]

By the way, I also tried with the motorized dish and the Coolsat 7100. I didn't have any better luck, I think it is probably the older type of tuner like the 301 and the other old dish legacy receivers.

The Coolsat 7100 can only see DVB signals...not Turbo 8PSK so when they swapped 72W out I removed that sat from my list on the Coolsat

 

[Pepper]

so "probably" I could have found it, given enough time and patience.

moot point, the installer is coming on Sunday to swap me to a 1000.4 - I'll just wait till that's done, connect the 311 to it and run the test myself.

By the way, as long as I've been here I should have known this belongs in the technical discussions area, somebody please move it.

 

[Pepper]

OK, got my answer. I would never have been successful.

Connected to a 1K.4 the 311 sees 77, "Conn" where 72.7 should be, 61.5, and whatever is connected to the LNB-IN port (in my case 110). Hmm. So what's the difference between 72 and 77 then. Time to take a close look at the tables I guess.

 

[Pepper]

It appears that transponder 29 is the only one a 311 can "see" on 77. I also get a fairly large list of channels, but I know that most of them are MPEG-4, besides the receiver is deactivated so most are red and the smartcard is obsolete so obviously I cannot view anything.

So a 311 could be used in a pinch to aim a dish at 77, however 72 is apparently out of the question.

 

[digiblur]

It appears that transponder 29 is the only one a 311 can "see" on 77. I also get a fairly large list of channels, but I know that most of them are MPEG-4, besides the receiver is deactivated so most are red and the smartcard is obsolete so obviously I cannot view anything.

So a 311 could be used in a pinch to aim a dish at 77, however 72 is apparently out of the question.

Interesting...apparently the 311 doesn't like the MPEG4 flags attached to the channels on those TP's. I figured the point dish screen would only care about the NIT.

 

[delta_charlie]

Hi all, I played around this past weekend setting up a dish 500 on 61.5, 72.7, 77 and finally 129 and learned a few tricks that might help others. The first thing you want to do is buy one of those cheap squeal satellite meters from one of the sponsors at the top of this page. I found the audio meter on my VIP 222 to be very slow and unresponsive so the first thing to do is use the squeal meter to peak the dish on the satellite. Now wait to the receiver to lock and start sounding the audio meter. After you confirm the receiver is on the correct satellite go back out to the dish and peak it slowly using the receiver audio meter. I found if I crank up the volume on the TV I was able to hear it on the other side of the house so if you dish is about 100 feet or less from the TV you should be able to leave the HD receiver inside the house and hooked up - just crank up the volume and open a window! On my set-up it was easy to separate the main dish from the wing at the grounding block so that's what I did. I hooked up just the wing dish and ran a check switch so the receiver was only looking at the one dish. I found this less confusing but your mileage may vary. It's a good thing to be able to peak the dishes yourself as it can be handy if a storm blows the dish off of alignment and you might want to get it back up to watch the news or sports and don't want to wait for an installer to come out. Hope this helps, DC

 

[Pepper]

Those are great tips for sure.

Sure would be nice if dish would add those 99xx channels to 72 and 77 in good old MPEG-2 FTA for us tinkerers.