Blind Search Term ????

[cactusman]

I have been looking at a STB on a web site and could you please
clarify for me (as a beginner in the satellite free to air )when the term
blind search is listed ,does this mean that once locked onto a
satellite ,the STB will search for all available channels ,which ever satellite
I aligned to.Or Does the STB come pre programmed with all the channels pre installed
for each satellite that is available?
I would appreciate your advice to assist in the choice of which STB
to purchase.

[Analoguesat]

Blind search is commonly used by feed hunters looking for transient / short term broadcasts. The receiver will search between two frequencies and display everything it has found if its fta or at least list it.

Its implemented better in some receivers than others- the early Technomates are hopelessly slow (taking many hours to finish a big satellite cluster like 28E)

Before we can recommend any receiver we need to know what your interests are.

[cactusman]

Thanks for that,
I am mainly interested in searching for available channels to see what I can get free to air as perhaps they come on or go off and enjoy the scanning etc .I did not want to have to tap in any numbers etc to search ,as with my inpatients ,and banana fingers on the buttons I bound to get something wrong.I suppose something that will scan for me which ever satellite I point at...would be great.
Cheers

[nanochickin]

From what i've heard the Vantage range of receivers are supposed to be the fastest atm for doing blind Scans. :? As Analoguesat said before avoid the early Technomates. If you go for either a 1000D or 1500 CI+ make sure its one of the TM 1000/1500 CI+ Super receivers.

Don't let a shop con you into buying a TMS 1500 CI+ because it is painfully slow at blind scanning. Some people think the S in TMS means super, it doesn't it means it has a more sensitive tuner and it also means its still painfully slow.

A few people here have been conned by sellers stating the S means super, if they try to give you a TMS tell them to stick it where the don't shine :spite:



Nano

[cactusman]

Thanks a lot ,Nano , the sort of info that helps to keep the enthusiast going in little rip off Britain these days.
Nice one appreciate it

[BGonaSTICK]

Blind scan is pretty neat, but maybe not as useful as it may at first seem.

A good blind-scanner will walk through the whole frequency spectrum in small increments. Really good ones let you define the size of those increments, and the limits of that spectrum too.

It will obviously also check for vertical and horizontal polarisation. Most receivers will auto-detect FEC, but the big difference with a blind-scan function is that it doesn't need to be fed the Symbol Rate - the fourth part of the transponder definition. It works it out itself, which is a smart thing indeed.

So that's great. No more fiddling with your receiver then.

Well, maybe. Blind scanning will find all the temporary and transient stuff which you may well find will quickly clutter up your receiver to the point where it will run out of memory.

A good channel editor which runs on the PC and uploads the results to the receiver is an excellent tool to have in your armoury too. Manufacturers also tend to release regular wholesale updates to the transponder and channel lists for loading straight into their STBs.