Question about TS recording

[Martyn]

Can anyone help me with understanding TS recording mode? I am recording a transponder that contains one TV service and two radio services.

When I play the resulting .ts file in VLC, it gives me options for the TV and two radio services in the Playback>Program menu item, but the two radio channels are silent. In fact, they're not just silent but VLC seems to skip through those tracks at a much faster speed than the TV program.

When I view metadata for the file, the two radio channels appear alongside the TV channel in "Stream 1" and I know there is radio being broadcast on the two channels.

But I'm not sure if I am supposed to be able to hear them in the recording. Does a TS recording contain the metadata for the entire transponder but only the data for the service being recorded, or should it contain everything?

The receiver in question, which I am sure no one has ever heard of, is a Skybox A1 and the software looks a bit like that included with some of the Chinese Freesat receivers, so it's not a top of the line model but is what is generally available here.

If it shouldn't contain the radio, does anyone know a method of capturing an entire transponder? Do I need to switch to a USB receiver and PC software to accomplish that?

Thanks!

 

[kofi123]

Basically, your receiver didn't record the radio channels, but recorded the table within the signal's transport stream showing that those channels exist. So, VLC Player knows about them, but has no data to play them.

I don't know about your particular receiver, but recording everything within a transponder is easy with a PC tuner.

 

[Martyn]

Thanks kofi123. That's what I suspected. I'm going to look into getting a PC tuner.

 

[Brett58]

Thanks kofi123. That's what I suspected. I'm going to look into getting a PC tuner.

I would recommend getting a TBS6903. (Don't get the newer one with the 'X' on the end, its got very little software support).

About five years ago I wrote a Windows program named 'GRB Streamer' that would capture the data stream from the NOAA GRB weather satellites. The data from that satellite was in raw BB Frame mode. But I also added an option for it to capture and record a transponder stream.

EBS Pro can do the same with transponder streams.