TUNER differences between AZ PREM and PREM PLUS

[AcWxRadar]

I made an observation today that you will wish to be informed of.

There are two specific channels on a particular satellite that have H264 video type signals. I have been viewing these channels with my AZBox Premium Plus for a while now.

Today, I reconnectd my original AZBox Premium receiver to test some applications regarding channel list loading and a few other things and I observed that the tuner / processor of the original AZBox Premium will not process these H264 video signals. Whereas, the Premium Plus will.

I went back and forth between the two boxes many times to verify and confirm this and it was absolutely a hard fact. There was no mistake.

I thought that you would appreciate knowing of this difference between the Premium and the Premium Plus.

PLEASE NOTE: I am not certain that this is a function of the tuner itself or further adaptations to the processing circuitry. Thought I better clarify that point.

RADAR

 

[stargaze]

For as long as the Premium has been out no one has seen this or reported this before?
I assume the firmware version is the same.
I wonder if there is something else causing this. If it is the signal I think it is then it may not be the tuner but some things that have changed on certain muxes may be causing what you are seeing right now.

If you want to you can email me the particulars and I may be able to have a better answer for you.

 

[AcWxRadar]

For as long as the Premium has been out no one has seen this or reported this before?
I assume the firmware version is the same.
I wonder if there is something else causing this. If it is the signal I think it is then it may not be the tuner but some things that have changed on certain muxes may be causing what you are seeing right now.

Stargaze,

As far as I know, there are no other channels on Ku band that have this H264 video format and they haven't been available for very long (just a couple months that I am aware of).

I was rather suprised that the original Premium AZBox did not detect them. Same firmware, 0.9.5020, with a cloned channel list (so no need to scan 85.0°W).

RADAR

 

[Beano_face]

so whats the channel, fq- sr?

so mabey others could test it out with thier AZ?..?..

I have a premium and would like to test it out...

 

[AcWxRadar]

Stargaze and Beano,

If you wish to experiment with these channels, they are on 85.0°W, TP 12040 VER SR 27597 KS/s. One channel VPID 5170 APID 5171 and second VPID 4130 APID 4131.

Please don't mention the channels by name in open forum, of course. Let's keep 'em up there.

RADAR

 

[stargaze]

Radar those channels have been in my receiver since August, recently they have been doing some strange things on that mux.
They recently added over 30 more channels over a week ago making the pq horrible. Then they began doing things similar to the cw mux and a blind scan would not pull in the channels. Then they began doing some other things and once in awhile the scan would work and later it would not.
I've seen this on the Ultra and the P+ receivers, that is why I questioned the tuner difference you seem to think is on the Premium box.
I do not think there is a tuner difference or more people would have related this since the Premium has been out for some time now and the plus is very popular so others would surely have noticed this if it were so.

I've seen these receivers do some quirky things so it does not surprise me what you relayed in the original post.
I had my ultra connected to the same dish as one of my premium plus receivers and I wanted to scan in one channel on c-band last week, the premium + was fine but the ultra did not even give me a signal quality reading, nor would it scan in what I wanted.
I finally shut down the Ultra and the next morning tried again and it came in with no problem. (oh I did reboot the receiver the night before but that did not help either.)

 

[Beano_face]

Stargaze and Beano,

If you wish to experiment with these channels, they are on 85.0°W, TP 12040 VER SR 27597 KS/s. One channel VPID 5170 APID 5171 and second VPID 4130 APID 4131.

Please don't mention the channels by name in open forum, of course. Let's keep 'em up there.

RADAR

cool... thx

I will test it out after work, and report back...

 

[Beano_face]

both channels are working fine on my AZ premium(fw 5020)...
pic quality isnt the greatest...

 

[AcWxRadar]

AZBox Premium Failure ?

Well friends,

It appears that there was more to this situation then met the eye. Beano and Stargaze are both able to view these H264 video type channels with their AZBox Premium (the original Premium model).

My Premium receiver failed about a day or so later. I do not know the nature of the failure, but it became locked up in the "BOOTING" sequence upon a power up and would not exit nor complete. I had to power down and retry. It then displayed the error "NO DISK" indicating that it is not reading the DOM. I attempted to install another DOM that was already formatted and programmed, but got the same error.

I therefore suspect that there was an underlying defect that prevented me from viewing the H264 channels and it was not a result of any difference between the two models (Premium vs Premium Plus).

When I get the unit repaired, I will try again.

RADAR

 

[beavs2112]

i am sad to hear your premium is having issues

 

[AcWxRadar]

For discussion and FYI purposes, here are the two different DVB-S2 tuners for the AZBox Premium and the Premium Plus. In the attached photos, the tuner on the left is from the Premium Plus receiver. The tuner on the right is from the original Premium model.

The identification numbers that I can read on the tuners are:

Original Premium
DNBU24512|CC
090116 BAAATRM

Premium Plus
DNBU24513|ST
090916 NAAATRM

The Premium Plus tuner has SAMSUNG stamped into the metal shield. The original doesn't have any make shown. I am not entirely certain what the character preceeding the "CC" and the "ST" actually is. It appears to be a straight vertical line, like some delineator, but it could also be a lower case "L". It is difficult to make it out.

The tuner from the Premium Plus has two circuit board edge connectors (eleven contacts on one and seven on the other). On one side of the board, there are two pairs which are doubled - you will be able to see them in the second pix.

The tuner from the original Premium has a removable ribbon cable with 31 pins (or at least there are 31 receptacles -they may not all be utilized).

Another difference is the IF IN and the LOOP OUT F-connectors. On the original Premium DVB-S2 tuner, the LOOP OUT connector is on the top. On the Premium Plus DVB-S2 tuner, the IF IN connector is on the top.

RADAR

 

[Lone Gunman]

That tuner on the right appears to be exactly like the one that is in my Elite, ie, ribbon cable connection only to the motherboard. That would make sense as the original Premium and Elite probably used the same motherboard but the Premium had an external power supply, which made room for an internally mounted hard drive.