Digital satellite receiver from unknown manufacturer...

[davygora]

Hello everyone,

recently I moved into a new appartement in a two-family house with a shared satellite dish. Having to buy a receiver and being a stupid cheapskate I decided to buy the cheapest that I can get. And so I ordered one in a german online shop diepreisjaeger.de. This was a receiver called "Digitaler Satelliten Receiver" (how original!) and there was no information on the manufacturer, which, however, did not stop me from buying it.

It was delivered in a couple of days in a box with the full set of accessoires (manual, remote control, etc.). By the way, the manual (in german language) can be found LINK REMOVED , although it's not much help. At first, everything seemed to be OK. I have made a full scan of the Astra 19.2E satellite, got a whole load of channels, good.

When I started to sort the channels, I noticed that there were only about ten german channels, and the most interesting ones (like ZDF, Sat1, 3sat, german Eurosport, etc.) were missing. I looked up the transponders for the missing channels on the ASTRA-SES website and tried to manually configure the receiver (which seems to have firmware from the year 2005). It turned out that the receiver knew those transponders but didn't find any channels when trying to scan them.

I have tried to perform a firmware upgrade via satellite. It wouldn't work. First the receiver would check something for about 10 minutes or more then it would say that the check had failed and the upgrade process would stop.

In the manual it says that an upgrade via serial port is also possible. However, there's absolutely no details on how to do it. After several days of googling I have found some website providing some .bin files, however I am not quite sure that these aren't some piracy firmware files used to watch encrypted channels illegally - this is something I don't wanna do. I just want to make my receiver detect all free channels that are transmitted by ASTRA 19.2E. And anyway, if those even were the firmware files that I'm looking for, I have no idea how to flash them onto the receiver. I couldn't find any flashing tool.

The online shop that has sold me the thing provides no support. They even won't answer my e-mails.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you all in advance!

Best wishes
Yuriy

 

[NukePower]

As it is a shared dish , have you checked to see if your neighbour knows which satellite it is pointed at?
Do they get the channels that you are after?
NP

 

[Analoguesat]

What channels are you actually getting on the screen?? The dish may not be pointing at 19E!

 

[Channel Hopper]

The receiver, if it came in an orange box, still has updates directly from Astra 1 so, as others have suggested, check which satellite you are getting signals from.

 

[davygora]

Thanks for the answers, everybody!

Well, the dish may not be pointed at ASTRA 1 ideally, since the signal quality is almost always near 70-80% and not 100%, but all other satellites give a signal of about 30% and less quality. To talk with the neighbours is unfortunately useless. They are very nice old people, keen to chat and friendly, but they know nothing about the stuff (as well as other modern technologies), they had invited some guy years ago to install the dish and configure their receiver. What I surely know is that they do receive the channels that I want.

Apart from that, as mentioned before, I do receive about 10 german channels (including, e.g., Das Erste, BR, Phoenix, etc.) in a very good quality from the ASTRA 1 satellite. But these seem to be rare exceptions. On most of other transponders this god-damned device can not find any channels and I can not figure out the reason. It just says, no channels found...

 

[pgh13]

How are you connected to the dish? Is it a dual or quad LNB or is the cable somehow split to give two connections? You say their system is old.....is it digital or are they still using an analogue receiver?

 

[Topper]

Well, the dish may not be pointed at ASTRA 1 ideally, since the signal quality is almost always near 70-80% and not 100%, but all other satellites give a signal of about 30% and less quality.

Whoa right there, unless you have mulitiple lnb's or a monobloc lnb in place you can only receive transmissions from one satellite cluster at one location as you appear to have no motor capable of turning the dish to another satellite location on the arc. You cannot therefore receive transmissions from other satellites. What you may be getting is channels that appear to be coming from other satellites because they share the same frequency polarity FEC and SR settings which many channels do right across the arc.

To talk with the neighbours is unfortunately useless. They are very nice old people, keen to chat and friendly, but they know nothing about the stuff (as well as other modern technologies), they had invited some guy years ago to install the dish and configure their receiver. What I surely know is that they do receive the channels that I want.
Apart from that, as mentioned before, I do receive about 10 german channels (including, e.g., Das Erste, BR, Phoenix, etc.) in a very good quality from the ASTRA 1 satellite. But these seem to be rare exceptions. On most of other transponders this god-damned device can not find any channels and I can not figure out the reason. It just says, no channels found...

Unless there was a major bug in the firmware when the stb was released for general sale which is preventing a user from doing a complete search of all horizontal and vertical channels available on 19.2 East then re-flashing the firmware will not gain you anything.

The small number of channels listed do not really help in diagnosing your problem which is further complicated since the channels you have mentioned are tranmitted in analogue as well as digital.

As pgh has suggested you need to see what is coming from the lnb to know how the signal arrives in your appartment, for all we know the signal you receive is looped from the stb in another apartment which would severely limit your viewing to the polarity that they were watching. I suspect that the only way round this is to borrow the stb from the neighbour or friend and see what you can receive then.

 

[davygora]

Whoa right there, unless you have mulitiple lnb's or a monobloc lnb in place you can only receive transmissions from one satellite cluster at one location as you appear to have no motor capable of turning the dish to another satellite location on the arc. You cannot therefore receive transmissions from other satellites. What you may be getting is channels that appear to be coming from other satellites because they share the same frequency polarity FEC and SR settings which many channels do right across the arc.

Oh... Well... what I meant with the signal quality from other satellites was the following: when I enter the menu and go to the page where I can scan specific transponders, I can not only choose the transponder characteristics (frequency, symbol rate, polarization) but also choose a satellite (Astra 1B 19.2E, Hotbird 13E, Türksat 42E, Sirius2 5.0E, AMOS\ATLANTIC4, EUTE\W3A, A\BIRD3\WES). In the bottom of the screen there are two bars which indicate the signal strength and its quality. For ASTRA they are both near 75%. For other satellites, the strength is near 35% and the quality is near 10%.





Unless there was a major bug in the firmware when the stb was released for general sale which is preventing a user from doing a complete search of all horizontal and vertical channels available on 19.2 East then re-flashing the firmware will not gain you anything.

The small number of channels listed do not really help in diagnosing your problem which is further complicated since the channels you have mentioned are tranmitted in analogue as well as digital.

Well, they are digital and the receiver is a digital one. I can give you the full list of transponders where the receiver does find channels, if it helps. For example, the most german channels (Das Erste, SWR, BR, BR-alpha, WDR, etc.) I receive from transponder with frequency 12687 MHz, rate 27492 KS/s and horizontal polarization. According to the channel list from ASTRA-SES website, the parameters for these channels should be 11836 MHz, 27500 KS/s, horizontal polarization. This is a little strange to me that the frequency seems to be quite different. What is also strange that the receiver calls the satellite ASTRA 1B, although the 1B should have been shut down in 2006 and now they are supposed to be 1KR, 1L, 1M and 1H.

I also can, for example, receive Al Jazeera (english) on 11509 Mhz, 22000 KS/s, V. As said, if needed, I can do a full scan again and look up the transponders that work for me.

As pgh has suggested you need to see what is coming from the lnb to know how the signal arrives in your appartment, for all we know the signal you receive is looped from the stb in another apartment which would severely limit your viewing to the polarity that they were watching. I suspect that the only way round this is to borrow the stb from the neighbour or friend and see what you can receive then.

In my appartment it is just a typical coaxial slot just like for normal cable or antenna, i.e. with only two phases. I used an adapter to connect my receiver to it. How the signal comes to me, I don't know and asking the neighbours probably won't help at all, but I'll try. Too bad that I myself know almost nothing about the stuff. I think the best way will be indeed to borrow their receiver and see what it does when connected in my appartment. As I understand it (correct me, please, if I'm wrong): if I still don't receive the channels that I'm not receiving, then the problem is with the "wired", otherwise it's a problem with my cheap anonymous receiver.

 

[davygora]

Sorry, it seems that I can't edit my messages here. What I wanted to say in my last paragraph with "wired" was "wireS", i.e. the cables which bring the signal into my appartment. And then there was another paragraph starting with "Unless there was a major bug..." - of course, it's a quoted one, I have just misplaced the quote tag.

P.S. Why can't I edit my own messages?

 

[Channel Hopper]

P.S. Why can't I edit my own messages?

You can,but only for 30 minutes.

Anyhow it does look as though you are pointing towards the right satellite as the German channels mentioned are correct for Astra 1

Carry out a full firmware upgrade and leave the machine alone for at least an hour, as from memory, writing to the processor is slow after erasing, and the receiver hasn't had any previous upgrades. You may need to set to factory conditions after.

 

[pgh13]

How many cables connected to the LNB? That's the thing attached to the arm that sticks out in front of the dish.

 

[davygora]

2 Channel Hopper

The problem is that the firmware upgrade via satellite does not work (see my very first post). And though the manual says, an upgrade via serial port is possible, I don't know a) where to get the new firmware for my anonymous receiver of an unknown manufacturer, b) where to get the flashing tool.

2 pgh13

I shall look at it tomorrow, now it's already too dark

 

[davygora]

All right, now I can surely say, there are TWO cables going out of the LNB.

Apart from that there is another interesting issue. There are three connection slots for the TV there. The one is for the aerial antenna, the two others are labeled "SAT" and "TV", respectively. My stb was connected to the SAT one. Today I have tried to attach it to the TV one, just for the lulz. It turned out that it works too, however, all the channels that were found previously wouldn't work. After a full rescan, it would fine some of them on different transponders. But:

1) Those 10 german channels which I had when connected to "SAT" were not there anymore when connected to "TV"
2) International channels channels like "BBC world", "Russia Today", "Al Jazeera", etc. were found on two different transponders when connected to "SAT" and on five different transponders when connected to "TV"

Tonight I shall borrow the neighbours' stb and see what happens.

 

[pgh13]

Could you also try your STB at neighbours/friends with a known working system?

 

[davygora]

Good idea. Will do that tonight as well.

And at the moment there is yet another funny observation. In one of my previous posts I told that the signal strength and quality for ASTRA was around 75%. Well, this seems to change from transponder to transponder, at least if one believes what my stb displays. For example, for the transponder 11954 MHz, 27500 KS/s, H (where, for example, the ZDF channel should be), it shows 37% strength, 11% quality. At the same time for the transponder 12687 MHz, 27492 KS/s, H, it shows 75% for both of the quantities. This is odd!

 

[Channel Hopper]

Different transponders do have differing signal strengths, but probably not to the extent you have on the indicator.

Just out of interest, how many channels in total does the receiver get after a full scan, and do you have a 'network' option you can enable ?

 

[davygora]

All right, so I have just tested my connection with my neighbours' stb and it worked. All the channels: ZDF, Eurosport, Sat3, etc. - all of them. So the problem is definitely with my stb.

2 Channel Hopper: it receives around 120 FTA channels and around 700 channels altogether (including the encrypted ones).

Btw, I noticed that when I try to do the upgrade via the ASTRA satellite, it first shows the signal strength of 75%. After the upgrade has failed after 10-15 minutes, it shows the signal strength below 30% until I exit the menu and enter it again.

 

[Topper]

Well it would seem your only choice is going to hurt your pocket I am afraid as finding a flash file for a completely non descript would be an uphill task to say the least

 

[davygora]

Sorry for a late update: the neighbours' stb is an analogue one!

Is it possible that the dish is not compatible to digital satellite TV? Well, it seems not be the case, since I can receive some digital channels...

 

[davygora]

FINALLY I'VE FOUND THE MODEL AND THE MANUFACTURER!!!

Due to pure luck I have found the model of my stb: Comag FTA GMI RG405 DS1