Receiving Fashion TV ("F") on Intelsat 5?

[MJFlash]

Hi, Folks,

I've been tearing my hair out trying to figure out why I can't receive French Fashion TV from Intelsat 5 (as compared to Canadian Fashion TV on Nimiq, which is an entirely different story). My equipment is a Winegard DS-2076, motorized by an SG2100, with an Invacom QPH-031 Quad LNB. The IRD is a Viewsat Ultra. High-quality quad-shielded RG-6 is used throughout, and for this test, the results come from cabling directly from the LNB to the Viewsat with just 12' of coax, as well as through a DiSEqC switch (no difference).

I can receive a variety of transponders on Intelsat 5 (106 channels after an auto-scan, and I have no problem watching the FTAs), but I see an odd response on transponder 27, which carries "F". I see a continual flashing from 0%-~75%, and the Viewsat won't lock.

I have no problem receiving other sats, including picking up birds from 82 to at least 129 with no mucking around with the dish's actual physical arc using USALS. Across the various sats I've played with to date, I've got ~1,400 channels total so far, so the basics are pretty good. On IA-5, I can receive decent signals on, for example, 12115, 12122, 12146, and 12152 (plus others), but not on 12177. Dish settings for IA-5 are:

LNB Power: On
LNB Type: Universal
LNB High: 10750 or 11250
LNB Low: 9750 or 10750
TP Freq: 12177
DiSEqC: Port 3 (correct; selects Linear output from Quad)
Motor: USALS or User
Legacy SW: None

Within the channel scanning setup, the transponder appears to be properly set by the Ultra's defaults at:

Freq: 12177
Symbol rate: 23000
FEC: 3/4
Polarity: V

Channel scan, autoscan, or blind scan fail to find anything at all on 12177, and even adding the channel manually has no effect (PCR Pid 38[?], Vid PID 38, Audio PID 37). I suppose this is unsurprising, since I keep seeing the rapid flashing 0-75% signal level during dish pointing - but only on this transponder!

Does this bird by any chance have poor coverage in N. California (122.1W, 37.4N) on this transponder, or am I just somehow seeing a really odd basic setup/pointing problem?

I actually got into the hobby, and bought this gear, for the goal of receiving "F". Can anyone suggest what I might try in order to identify the root cause of this problem? Thank you very much!!!

Cheers!

 

[Mr Tony]

the QPH031 is standard so the LNB type should be standard and both high and low LO should be 10750

 

[MJFlash]

Hi, Iceberg!

Thank you very much for responding! Unfortunately, if I select Standard, I get no transponders at all on IA-5, or on other linear birds. I'm sorry if I'd misunderstood - I saw other folks calling the QPH-031 a Universal LNB. Might you have any suggestions at to what I may be doing incorrectly? Thanks again!

Best Regards!

 

[Mr Tony]

The QPH is a standard LNB...its not a Universal

so something may not be set up properly in the menus

 

[MJFlash]

Hi, Iceberg!

Believe me, I definitely wasn't disagreeing with you, I'm just trying to figure out why I only get a Quality reading above 0 when I select Universal - I just don't see anything at all when I select Standard! Well, I'll keep mucking around, and hopefully can identify any other satellite that'll give me non-0 Q readings when I run on Standard (this is also true on Galaxy 10, which I'm receiving just fine in Unversal, but not Standard), and will then work my way up from there.

[EDIT] In fact, as I'm working through it now, even my Signal reading goes to 0 on Galaxy 10 when I set to Standard mode. Perhaps I've got a defective LNB?

Thanks!

 

[MJFlash]

Whoops - I replied too hastily (surprise, surprise! ;-) ). On Galaxy 10, I appear to be OK in Standard mode, but I still get the loss of the Signal reading (~~70-80) on IA-5, and of course Quality is 0, too. Mighty strange...

 

[MJFlash]

Nah... wait a minute. It appears that I may be running into a bug. Back on Galaxy 10, the silly receiver is displaying a Q of 75, but won't display the satellite name at all, and in WatchTV mode, the Q is always 0. Time for a power cycle, and perhaps soon thereafter, a reset to Factory defaults (I'm running the latest BIN, for what it's worth). Thank you again!

 

[sunelec]

The Invacom QDH031 quad lnb is universal. Maybe you have that one instead of the QPH031 which is linear.The letters D and P could look similar on the label.

 

[SatelliteAV]

Are you sure that your dish is moving between the satellites? What firmware version # are you using?

 

[turbosat]

I have the same receiver , it scanned that channel in ok, I never looked at it before tonite. Does have great sound!! Im using the current firmware frm viewsat's site, 1.19
(and still waiting for their promised 'fix' for the AC-3 sound problem)
charles

 

[Mr Tony]

The Invacom QDH031 quad lnb is universal. Maybe you have that one instead of the QPH031 which is linear.The letters D and P could look similar on the label.

If he was able to pick upm scrambled stuff on 119 and the DBS slots means its a QPH031 (the Invacom quad)

 

[MJFlash]

Hi, Folks!

The Invacom QDH031 quad lnb is universal.

Sunelec: Ah-hah! I definitely do have the QPH-031 quad. All the confusion was simply that I'd apparently misread a comment on the forum that was referring to the QDH-031 as being a Universal LNB, and had thought that it applied to the QPH-031. Thanks for figuring that out!

SatelliteAV: Yes, my dish is definitely moving! Not only do I have different channel lists for every bird that I've been able to scan, I've been sitting just 6 feet from the dish every time I change satellites! In fact, that's an important element to point out, since there are several menu transitions on the Viewsat Ultra that don't properly move the motor, so I'm careful to avoid those or manually work around them, in order to be positive that I'm pointing at the right dish. Moreover, on the other transponders, the system properly identifies the satellite as Intelsat 5.

The firmware is revision PFTAUSW-070117U, applied out of the box before I even hooked anything up. I also have V17, V18, and V19 lying around, and may give those a try if things point in that direction.

Turbosat: Excellent news - thanks for confirming that everything should work out OK!

Iceberg: Thank you very much for helping out! I'd also like to thank you in general for the many other informative posts of yours that I've been reading - they've been very helpful in this, my first FTA install!

At this point, I've reset to factory defaults and will start the setup process over again. This time, I'll tackle F before loading up the box with all of those other channels - I'd done that the first time around primarily to verify that I'd installed everything properly, and that the pointing/tracking accuracy was at least good enough to get started.

I'll let you know how it goes the second time around!

Cheers!

 

[mastermesh]

Check the dish... sounds like it may be on the arc, but barely... may need a little bit of a tweak to pull signal in stronger?

I used to have quality signal issues long ago. I spent a weekend doing itty bitty nudges here and there to get on the arc. Now, I'm smack dab on arc and all is well. Wind does blow dish a little to east/west. When that happens I change USALS and 1.2 to adjust one or two degrees east or west as needed, but don't dare mess with the bolts on the dish since it's really good all the way across the arc at the moment.

 

[MJFlash]

Hi, Mastermesh!

You may well be on the right track - before wiping the box last night, I was surprised to find that I couldn't receive 148. If that repeats after I setup everything again, it may well be that the mast wasn't plumbed as solidly vertical as I'd thought it was. I'll make sure to check that again, too.

Thanks for the advice!

 

[MJFlash]

Hi, Folks!

Success! As it turned out, I didn't have to do anything to the dish at all. I instead discovered that I had indeed been chasing a bug in the Viewsat Ultra's motor handling. When I was first experimenting, I'd played with the User motor controls a bit, hunting back and forth for the strongest signal. Well, I've learned that if you have ever stored a position in User mode, even though the satellite is later configured for USALS mode, the Ultra will jump back to the user-stored motor position just before it starts to perform channel scanning. I had to sit right at the satellite to notice, but that's what had been going wrong. To fix this, I only had to first point the dish using USALS, then enter User mode, then just store the USALS-defined setting in User mode. After that was done, everything just worked!

Thanks to all of you who helped to get me up and running!

Cheers!

 

[Mr Tony]

cool
Glad you got it working

yeah there is a bug with the Viewsat and the motor (sadly)

 

[MJFlash]

Hi, Iceberg!

There are definitely a few bugs in motor handling. Another one that had me tripped up for awhile is that when you scan for channels, if the dish isn't already pointed at the appropriate satellite, the scan will miss a bunch of channels, since the receiver begins channel scanning while the dish is still in transit! The fix is simple: just manually point the dish in Antenna Setup mode first. If you forget, it's easy to just stop the scan (not saving the results), and rerun the scan a second time.

There's also another bug that I haven't been able to nail down yet, where after sufficient mucking around in setup, the receiver won't point to the proper bird in Watch TV mode. I'll pay more attention to this, and will try to understand exactly what causes it.

Oh yeah, and there's the silly bug which displays that the antenna is moving at the one time where it actually isn't... I'm off to enjoy F (great background wallpaper).

Thanks again!

 

[Mr Tony]

Hi, Iceberg!

There are definitely a few bugs in motor handling. Another one that had me tripped up for awhile is that when you scan for channels, if the dish isn't already pointed at the appropriate satellite, the scan will miss a bunch of channels, since the receiver begins channel scanning while the dish is still in transit! The fix is simple: just manually point the dish in Antenna Setup mode first. If you forget, it's easy to just stop the scan (not saving the results), and rerun the scan a second time.

The Coolsat 5000 does the same thing. It allows you to scan multiple satellites but the unit starts scanning before the dish has finished moving to the right spot. I think the newer factory software solves this but Coolsat doesnt have it on their site

 

[kstuart]

BTW, FTV is my current "default" channel (what the receiver is tuned to, when I am not watching a specific program). Beautiful women walking to generally good music, with excellent picture and sound quality - what's not to like? There is even English audio, although the programming originates in France.
From February 17-20, they plan live coverage from the Rio Carnival in Brasil, which could be .... er .... a lot of fun.

 

[MJFlash]

Hi, KStuart!

Exactly! The only disadvantage I see is that F apparently edits the U.S. version of FTV!!! Ah, well it's still a pleasant and very classy bit of ongoing friskiness!

Enjoy!