Skystar 2

[fergiz]

Originally Posted by mship

I've just ran a cable from the loop out on my TM for now so I can only use it when the TM is switched off.

When The Technom8 is on you should be able to get other channels (From the same satellite and are the same polerisation that the TM is tuned into, ) on the SS2.

I think.

[Mship]

Originally Posted by fergiz

When The Technom8 is on you should be able to get other channels (From the same satellite and are the same polerisation that the TM is tuned into, ) on the SS2.

I think.

Thanks for that fergiz When I switched the TM on the Skystar picture just froze so I took it that it would only work when the TM was switched off. But as I say I should have something a bit more permanent in over the holidays

Cheers,
Kev.

[Analoguesat]

Theres 4 possible polatities on the lnb:

high band V
high band H
low band V
low band H

you can only watch one at a time, but you can watch any channel in the band the TM is set to.

Actually its more complcated than that, but thats the basic idea.

[BGonaSTICK]

Ooh, I like complicated. Tell us more

I thought it was simply the 4-way split you listed above.

[Analoguesat]

One polarity is controlled by a 14v voltage the other is controlled by 18V.( And I can never remember which way around it is!) Therefore it holds that if you have both receivers on whichever one switches to an 18v state has to win.

The hi/lo switching is controlled by a 22khz on/off toneburst so whichever receiver supplies a 22khz toneburst will switch the lnb. Therefore if you have one receiver watching a channel that has the 18V/tone on state , no matter what the second receiver does it cant get to any other state.....

:?

[jontydog]

Still not tried messing about properly with the loopthrough so can't really comment but one thing I did notice is that the signal to the ss2 is terrible compared with the technomate. Anyone any idea why that should be?

[BGonaSTICK]

Originally Posted by Analoguesat

One polarity is controlled by a 14v voltage the other is controlled by 18V.( And I can never remember which way around it is!) Therefore it holds that if you have both receivers on whichever one switches to an 18v state has to win.

The hi/lo switching is controlled by a 22khz on/off toneburst so whichever receiver supplies a 22khz toneburst will switch the lnb. Therefore if you have one receiver watching a channel that has the 18V/tone on state , no matter what the second receiver does it cant get to any other state.....

:?

OK, you've convinced me

I think there are probably one or two more oddities too, but the 'slave' receiver (furthest from the LNB) should always get the equivalent 25% of transponders to the type tuned at the 'master'.

I understand that some receivers don't allow the 22kHz tone through the loopthrough, so where you have such a receiver as master (i.e closer to the LNB) the slave can never switch up to high band, even when the master is in standby.

I might be wrong on this last point, but I have a feeling that's true. Certainly some in-line devices mess with the 22kHz tone.

I would test some of this out, but I'm not keen on stuffing/mixing any kind of voltages into various untried orifices of my beloved satellite gear.

As far as the SS2 reporting a lower signal, I've found this to be a rather unusual phenomenon. My SS2 reports signals as far stronger on the powerful sats (let's say Hotbird shows 85% on my Dreambox, but 98% on the SS2) but far weaker on the low-power sats (Eutelsat W2 - Dreambox says 60%, SS2 says 25%).

I actually find this super-sensitivity very handy, but hopeless when comparing against other receivers.

I can watch TV on the Skystar with some signal strengths as low as 3-4%. Depends on SR etc. but ultimately the only thing that matters is Signal QUALITY.

[jontydog]

hmm its the quality I am talking about stick. I get 70 to 80% on hotbird and get a signal for art etc but on the skystar i have never been able to get any sort of signal but always assumed it was a weak signal for that transponder. Getting the TM has certainly opened my eyes will have to look into it properly over the holidays.

[BGonaSTICK]

In that case, I feel that something's not quite right there m8. I find the Skystar to be a very good receiver for weak signals.

[jontydog]

Wonder if it could be a driver problem as I have noticed a few blue screens occuring "bad_pool_caller" or something like that when I was last using it. The drivers are the latest Technisat jobbies. Might try and find an older set of drivers or could wait til I have installed the latest linux over christmas