Viewsat Platinum and the art of motorcycle maintenance

[flyznest]

So I got this Viewsat VS2000 Platinum yesterday and thought it was a good cheap find... Its turning out to be a nightmare.

So... to quote my favorite late night personality..

the Top 10 issues with my VS2000 that you MIGHT be able to help me with:

1) Editing the channel list with Channel Master does not survive the round trip.. I can upload the channel/bird list to my PC, but when I download it back to the STB it loses sat positions and LNB/diseqc/USALS info... and I have to fix all this back up in the STB. To fix this I have had to switch to ODSEdit wich is not as nice and does not have all of the features.

2) When I change channels the STB doesn't know when to change satellites.. I have to manually go to antenna setup, go to the USALS menu for a particular bird, and select "move"... that gives it the jumpstart it needs. I have the motor option selected as "USALS" for every bird so I'm not sure what the issue is here.

3) I can't delete satellites in the STB menu's... it gives me the option but just does nothing when I try.

4) When I do a channel scan, AC3 channels always come back with the APID value 8192... To fix this I have to suck the channel list into a channel editor, change to the real APID, and reload it.... BUT.. ODSEdit does not have the AC3 option so I have to use Channel Master.. which causes other problems... see item 1 for explaination

5) I'm not sure whats going on when I do a blind scan... progress bars keep changing... and as soon as one hits 100, another starts at 0... and the cycle just keeps repeating... Maybe it just takes this long but holy cow. They could have put an overall progress indicator to give you some rough idea of where you are in the process. I tried twice and lost patience after 10 minutes or so each time.

6) As stated before... I have no clue what versions of software are the latest. I have boot version 0.0C, and SW version 2.78... and I have ODSEdit v1.8 and Channel Master 1.20.3

7) the first channel is 4000? really? why not be.. i dunno... 1?!?!?!?!

8) I know there is no helping this problem... but... downloading channel lists should NOT be the job of the bootloader... Power cycling every time I want to screw with the channels is silly. I'll have to call this a fundamental design flaw.

9) After loading the channel/sat lists to the STB, the sats appear out of order from my editor... this gets confusing... it seems to be some random order.. not alphabetical or position or anything... combine that with issues #1 and 8 and channel changes get to be a long tedious process.

10) got nuthin at the momeht... but a top 9 list just doesn't have the same gusto.

Thanx in advance for any help offered... If I can't get things figured out, this thing will hit the landfill.

 

[lonewolf454]

Without getting myself in trouble, let me just say that the Viewsat Platinum was mainly used to view Dish Net without authorization from dish (jeez sound like the guy on the pirate channel)

So, it is not a very good box for fta. It will and does receive SD DVB. It will not do HD DVB-S2.

You should be able to delete sats from the delete satellite button and box should change satellites by itself based on channel selected. One thing I have had to do it to go back to antenna setup and to save settings where it says dish is moving please wait - a second time, and then it will move by itself. Hopefully you do have your longitude and latitude set in the antenna setup and the box needs to know coordinates of the particular satellite.

I am not sure if you are using it for ku only or for c and ku. It will do both. I recommend downloading the factory bin and loading it into receiver with the Loader2 program both are available on viewsatusa's website. Do a factory reset.
If box was previously used as a hack box, you lose a few features.

It does have a software based blindscan, it will work but not very accurate and very slow.

If I was you, I would make sure I am using factory bin file then I would look for a good sat list such as one available from top of this website or over at lyngsat, and plugging in tp's and sr's for each satellite and then doing a scan sat.

Here's a couple of ku channels it should be able to get, Galaxy 19 @97W
LNB type=Universal LNB High=10750 Lo=9750
11966 H 22000 DVB River Broadcasting
12153 H 20000 3/4 DVB Aljazeera Intl

Here's c band to try @99 W
LNB Type=Standard LNB freq=5150
3735 H 3776 WAPA AMERIC
3776 H 3255 3/4 KCWY NBC WY

I still use the Viewsat for some ku and for 99W c-band in a bedroom (I get what is listed above) but it will be replaced with a dvb-s2 receiver when finances permit.

I do not recommend using channel master or ODSEdit, it screws up the receiver and may be the root of some of your trouble. Do a factory reset and factory file, and resetup the box.

 

[guapoharry]

Funny post, Fly...

Mess around with the settings. Things like the channel 4000 thing might go away...

 

[turbosat]

Harry back when I had a VS Ultra, it did the same thing with the channel-numbering. First channel scanned in was numbered 4000. Never hurt anything, it never held anywhere near the total number of channels they claimed it would store anyway, before it started acting crazy. And I used that thing for nearly 2yrs before the factory firmware was ever fixed to properly do the AC-3 passthrough.

 

[Mikhel]

Here's c band to try @99 W
LNB Type=Standard LNB freq=5150
3735 H 3776 WAPA AMERIC
3776 H 3255 3/4 KCWY NBC WY

That WAPA channel it's not there since... well a couple of months, and at least a few hours ago when the baseball began on the fox channel in the PR mux there, the WAPA was not there =) (in case fly can't scan that channel =))

 

[Skyscanner]

Fly,
I feel your pain, bro. I bought a vs2000 ultra new, it has never been near eyepatch software, and it has always been a real crapstain. It will delete some sats, but not all. Resetting changes nothing. USALS changes the orbital location of some sats by itself. It is absolute garbage for motor control. Works switches OK, though. If you want to get rid of the 4000 numbering of your channels, go to menu, select user setting, then option. You will see "sort by sid", turn that OFF and it should give you normal channel numbering of 1,2,3, etc. Good luck, I do use mine a little, but in my opinion, it's only fit for taking to your dish and using it to tweak.

 

[flyznest]

thanx lonewolf!!! that "save" thing is quite the tip!!! that completely changed the way the box works. The USALS menu always displays the correct values by default.. so I didn't make any changes... so I never thought to save.. After went back through my sat list a second time... and I saved the settings for each sat... the USALS stuff began to work correctly!!!

I did figure out how to use Channel Master and ODSEdit with the viewsat. Because of varying bugs and silly memory mappings on this unit, Channel master only works for sat lists, and ODSEdit only works for channel lists... period... Using channel master to edit your channel list will give you a headache because it duplicates the sat list with conflicting info. Furthermore, Channel Master stores all of these duplicate conflicting sats into a section of memory that is only clearable with a factory restore(hence the sat delete problem)... Adding and removing sats and TP's in the STB just takes way too long and ODSEdit is incomplete causing you to do half the stuff on the STB anyways... so now that I can add/edit/remove channels at will... I am a good bit of the way there....

I also found the correct firmware... with that firmware it I couldn't get AC3 working no matter what i did... So I hate to admit that I re-installed the eyepatch-ware that came with the box now I get AC3... I just have to edit the channels in ODSEdit to get it... but thats no biggie to me... as long as I have some path...

Thanx to Skyscanner I got the channel numbering correct...

I don't have C-band.. only KU for now... I'll eventually get a BUD but I'm having fun at the moment and see no need... my positioner is pretty close and I am getting 25 birds pretty reliably.

So... This thing is no prize and I wasted a few evenings... But I learned a ton in the process.... was fun... the box will work just fine in the bedroom...

 

[Mikhel]

I wasted a few evenings... But I learned a ton in the process.... was fun...

That's what's great about FTA, you spend a few hours every other day and you'll always end up learning something... I'd call it 'invested' instead of wasted hehehe ;-).

Cheers!

Mike

 

[purenrg]

Hay Fly, I have a Extreme and a Ultra and was also wondering if my AC3 is working. Can you tell me what channel on @97W is using AC3, so I can check to see if it's working or not?

This is the only Sat that I'm set-up on, I haven"t a motor yet. Thanks

 

[Jim S.]

Russia Today has normal audio and AC3. It defaults to normal on most receivers, but you can select the AC3 stream and see if it works. I think that's the only permanent channel on 97w Ku with AC3.

 

[flyznest]

According to the list, the church channel and JCTV on TP 12177 both have ac3.

 

[purenrg]

Thanks I didn't mean to high jack your thread