StarChoice experiment

[Inno]

Yeah, maybe this weekend I'll get around to it. My schedule suddenly got crammed full of stuff this week and I have my son this weekend so...........oh well, all the rest is still up and running.

 

[amerhi]

unable to get Anik F1

Hi guys
with all the talking about Anik F1 makes me go crazy, I envy you.
I have 90cm Fortec Dish, and a fortec lifetime ultra reciever, and a standard 0.3 Lnbf mounted.
I have spent half my day trying to find Anik F1. but to no avail, there is nothing blocking the dish and all my Coax cables are in good condition.
But I do get 87% on the Level bar. but qaulity is Zero nothing Nada. I arm went num from moving the dish for such a long time.
please help me out. I'm located in Montreal

 

[Mr Tony]

AnikF1 uses digicipher II coding....the Fortec box is DVB only

so you wont get anything on AnikF1 except for maybe a couple feeds

 

[Larry1]

With a StarChoice box you can sometimes get some of the HITS channels on X4 (Gallaxy 4R 99deg w). I have a nice collection of Tarzan movies from a few years ago. You can experiment with rotating the LNBF 90deg for added combinations of channels or you can modify your channel maps with the 4play software if you want to edit the maps. I tried this a few years ago and gave up as it was very time consuming.
http://www.coolstf.com/4play/
I was able to pickup X4 with a StarChoice 24" dish and LNBF (0.8db), but have not tried again for a few years now.

 

[Inno]

With a StarChoice box you can sometimes get some of the HITS channels on X4 (Gallaxy 4R 99deg w). I have a nice collection of Tarzan movies from a few years ago. You can experiment with rotating the LNBF 90deg for added combinations of channels or you can modify your channel maps with the 4play software if you want to edit the maps. I tried this a few years ago and gave up as it was very time consuming.
http://www.coolstf.com/4play/
I was able to pickup X4 with a StarChoice 24" dish and LNBF (0.8db), but have not tried again for a few years now.

Hi Larry, thanks for the info. Just how did you go about getting some of the HITS channesl on Galaxy 4? That's what I'm after. Did you have to manually tune the receiver? What model receiver were you using?

 

[Inno]

Just did a little reading on the website, from the looks of it, it will only support a 4DTV receiver......I have a couple of old star choice boxes that are not the 4DTV ones.

 

[Larry1]

I have the StarChoice version of the 4DTV box. With it you can use the generics in the 4DTV to search for channels (manually, trial and error). With the other StarChoice boxes, you are confined to the channel maps that are programmed into it by StarChoice. You can manually turn your LNBF 90deg to get some other combinations of polarity and frequency as well. The 4PLAY software will also work on some of the other Starchoice boxes, (I have used it on the 421B) but it does not seem to be quite as nice to use on the other boxes as it is with the 4DTV box. For me it was much more stable on the 4DTV box than the 421B box, but it does give someting to play with. The BDM cables come in 5V and 3.3V versions, so you need to check the interface voltages of the boxes you want to work on. If I remember correctly, I used a 3.3V BDM on the 421B and had to make a custom cable with one wire removed at the connector to attach to a clip to attach it to a 3.3V point on the board. The 4DTV uses a 5V BDM. ***warning, I might be wrong on this*** Interesting enough, StarChoice uses a simple cable to the serial port (just wires and connectors) to upgrade the software through the BDM port on the 421B and to reset the machine settings. At one point early on, one of their tech people loaded a beta software for me to try out. The 4PLAY software however requires a BDM cable to download/upload the channel maps. I was able to edit some of the channels on the 421B, but found working with the 921 (4DTV) box much easier. I only edited the existing maps on the 421B, did not merge or add new channels.

 

[Inno]

Very cool stuff. I had heard a little bit about the 4play software quite some time ago and wondered about it's usefullness. I think I have a 421B somewhere, it might be at a friend's place as he was going to buy it but found it was better for him to get the whole works from star choice as a new subscriber.
Thanks for the info, might be worth looking into when I have some more time.