HELP!! Tuning Thomson Digibox 4212

[Barney101]

Hi All

Very new here so go easy on me!!

I have just moved to Southern Spain(near gibraltar) and brought with me a Thomson Digibox 4212 and an 80cm dish which i now know is not big enough to receive Sky but I cannot pick up anything. I have bought a basic satellite meter which when I move the dish picks up a number of different satellites and shows a full gain on the sat finder, however when I go to the setup screen on the digibox it just says no signal. I have tried finding the signal then powering down the box (at the socket) for 30 seconds but no joy.

What am I doind wrong, do I need to go into the engineers menu which I think is 401? I am looking to pick up anything at the moment and if I could get BBC world for a bit of news it would be better than nothing!

Any help would be really appreciated!!

[Analoguesat]

Hi barney, welcome to the forum. Yoyu should be able to get some of the channels, but your receiver is looking for its "default transponder" which is on one of the north beams and probably too weak for you on that size dish. You need to change it to a south beam transmission.

Go to www.satelliteforcaravans.co.uk - its all explained in great detail on that site, so no point me rewriting whats already been written.

Note you will need to reset the south beam default after every power failure.



Edit for typos

[BGonaSTICK]

Yes, trust your meter and not the reading for the default transponder in the digibox. This can be changed by keying:

Services
4
0
1
Select
Then option 2 -Default Transponder.

Change it to something you know you should be able to receive from Lyngsat.com

[Barney101]

Thanks All

Just picked up Sky News

I have a Sky FTV card should I be getting Sky 1 with that or it that a pay TV channel?

Once again thanks

[BGonaSTICK]

Hey, good news Barney

No, Sky1 is a pay channel. You can see a list of all the channels you can get with an FTV Sky card at www.ftasat.co.uk, our FTA/FTV listing site, but most of the channels on 28.2E will probably be out of footprint in Spain without a huge dish.

Which satellite are you getting Sky News from? What does the Network ID say in the signal test menu of your digibox?

[Analoguesat]

Ahah, you are making progress. well done.

The card will only give you Channel 4, channel 5 and sky 3.

To find out what channels you should be able to get have a look here, and mark off the ones you can see.Anything on the south beams should be ok, but you are going to need a bigger dish to get anything on the north beams, the Eurobird steerable beams, or astra 2D.

[Barney101]

Hi

Network ID says 0002 and the transport stream is 07fd

Is there any way to pick up BBC World on a Digibox by moving the dish to a different satellite, the only program I miss is Topgear!!!

Once again thanks for all the advice

[Analoguesat]

0002 is indeed 28E.

BBC World is free to air on 13E and 19E

[Barney101]

So am I right to assume to get these different satellite's to pick up BBC world I Need to change the transponder number again by going into to the 4 0 1 process?

Once I have done this do I need 'add new channels' as I will not have the SKY guide anymore, and if so can I use the manual tuning in the 4 0 1 setup screen to add the channels or do I need to come out of that screen and return to the original Set up screen?

Cheers

[BGonaSTICK]

You don't have to do anything with the default transponder as defined in the digibox. It's only there to tell you that the dish is aligned (and provides other services such as the EPG etc - I think). If you know that alignment is OK because you've used a meter, then you don't need to alter it in the digibox

You'll need to 'add new channels' as far as BBC World is concerned.

Not sure I quite understand the last bit. If you move away from 28.2E, then as you say, no more Sky guide. 'Add new channels' will be your only option.

You won't need the installer menu (see point 1) unless you want to alter the default transponder. Altering the default transponder will allow you to use the standard 'signal test' function in the services menu. If you don't do that, then no 'signal test' function.

STICK