Trying to get DTT trials on a UK Daewoo DS608p Freeview box in Dublin 6

esmonde

Trying to get DTT trials on a UK Daewoo DS608p Freeview box in Dublin 6. I have line of sight view of Three Rock. Should I be able to get the DTT trials from an indoor aerial? Are the trials only on at certain times of the day or is there a permanent test signal. Did a quick try at lunchtime but a scan got no signal.

DigiDec

You should be able to get a signal with an indoor aerial but an outdoor would or course be better, the trial is on 24/7, check alll your connections and try again.

esmonde

Thanks DigiDec.

Tried until I was blue in the face but no channels detected. Checked with DVB-T trial office and they said signal was 24/7. But I understand that some UK boxes are 'country' locked to a specific network and can't deal properly with non-UK networks. Some posters with similar issues suggest there may be a hack or key combination that will allow this 'lock' to be overridden, but I can't find it anywhere in the manual.

At one stage I did get a signal display showing high Strength, Quality, and Data Quality, but no picture, and even that seems to have disappeared now. At the time I had input Channel 64 from the remote since I understood that to be one of the trial channels.

Still trying thoiugh ......

DMC

Does your receiver have a country choosing option?

byte

What were your analogue pictures like with the indoor aerial plugged into the TV?

lucernarian

I'd say Ch 54 is the one you'd want to try for the publicly available channels. In my living room at the window, a simple aerial made out of lighting wire (half-wave dipole without balun) can pick up a signal 70% up the bar here in south Louth (three rock Mux). If 54 doesn't work, I have a feeling that the receiver simply isn't compatible.

esmonde

The Daewoo does not have any 'country' option. It's set up for foolproof scanning of the available channels. When I scan it doesn't find any channels, even though I'm in a good location and my analogue signal off the same aerial is excellent. As for trying Channel 54, I'm not even sure that it's possible to select a channel until some have been found during a scan. If I key in a channel number I just get the message 'invalid channel number'. I'm waiting for a technical person at Daewoo UK to come back to me, and hoping there's some 'engineering menu' that willl allow me to manually add channels.

egal

Can you set it to scan for encrypted channels? Just a thought...

SimonMaher

Im having a similar problem at the moment with a Goodman box I picked up in Belfast last week. It picks up the other Muxs fine but won't even register a signal on CH54. No option to change country and it has a loopthrough that looks soldered shut on the back! Shame too, because it has a nifty little 80GB hard drive too and only cost 70 Quid! Open to suggestions.

Cheers,

Simon

Booms

I have a similar Daewoo. ( it's a setpal box, exact same as triax and labgear ).

At the beginning of the trial, once the box was set to " wide " pilot frequency range, it received and displayed all four Irish channels perfectly. now it doesn't even see them - it will detect the dvb-h signals on channel 25, but only shows a blank screen. Obviously some parameters were changed in the course of the trial, and rendered the signal invisible to setpal. Have tried this on two setpals, with the same result, and connecting a wharfedale box will show all unencrypted channels, and display blank screen on the encrypted ones.


To set the "Tuner Pilot Frequency Range" to wide, you need to go into the engineering menu. Be careful if you're doing this.

On remote press: Status. Select. Text. Text. Select. in sequence, and you wll get the red engineering screen.

"Right arrow" will go to controls 1.

"3" will change TPFR from narrow to wide and back again.

"cancel" will exit.


You don't need to change anything else, that i know of. There's a big warning on the first page that you can seriously mess up the box if you change some of the settings.:eek:

You'll need to rescan after this, and should see the tuning bar stop at ch25, and chs 54 and 58 ( i think ).

If you get anything to view, do let us know. my software version is 126, not fully up to date.

The box will still pick up any UK channels that are present, especially during extended propagation conditions.

cheers.

watty

Well folk can't say I didn't warn them about spending money on gear for the elusive irish DTT!

SRB

I know you've made it clear from the start that it's a trial Watty and as such there are no steadfast rules as to what will and won't work, but it's human nature that if you stumble across this board and read on the threads that people are watching "Irish DTT" you may be tempted to give it a go.

My In Laws in the North, have a Freeview box and get RTE and TV3 analogue from Kippure, now since Three Rock's tests came on, as far as they are concerned, RTE is now part of the Freeview lineup, they've nice clear pictures and haven't spent a penny. I've lost count of the number of elder folk in the town who've asked me to "tune in the RTE on our freeview box as well"..........

watty

Enjoy while you can.

My Dad is Shielded from RTE & Divis by Cavehill, so he has Carnmony for Analogue, Sky without Sub (but card) for Digital and NTL cable for RTE/TG4.

Booms

it's an interest, Watty. I've had my setpal since they came out, and had lots of fun with it, found that there's no UK DTT signal available where I am in Dublin, except when weather conditions are right. Having Irish DTT, even as a trial, is a bonus, even if it does block a lot of the muxes i used to (occasionally) get. Beats watching television!

MACHEAD

After reading 'Booms' post, I 'dug out' my old Daewoo STB and tried the engineering 'fix' described above but not a banana, UK muxes only. I think there were 2 or 3 revisions of the DS680P and perhaps only the more recent ones will pick up the irish muxes. Unfortunately mine is revision 1. Those of you in fringe reception areas will find that DTT is very easily 'corrupted' by local electrical signals, (I'm on the southern edge of the Divis service area). I was 'field testing' a DS680 prototype about three years ago and in the winter months it seemed to work perfectly, only occasional break up, no more than 2 to 3 times during a night's viewing. Most of us could live with that, but come the spring/summer and all the DIY and gardening gear got going not to mention the quads, racing carts, tractors et al, it was bye bye DTT and hello satellite!

maxg

It looks like some UK freeview boxes are scanning in the first round only for so called pilot frequencies with network information tables. In the second round they scan the frequencies found in the network information table.
The network table for the irish trial currently doesn't include the pointer to the frequency for the free channles.
The free channels are only findable with devices which offer a manual or band scan.

esmonde

Apologies to all for this really late reply and thanks to 'Booms' and 'Watty' for their contributions.

I can't remember now why I didn't check back after the intitial replies to my question, but I gave up in frustration and presumed I'd bought a bad box. The Daewoo came highly recommended in the class of Freeview box with an RF modulator, and that's the reason I took a chance and bought it.

Now it looks from 'Booms' and 'Maxg''s info that my box is probably working fine but just not compatible with the Irish trials. I've since got a Humax box and get a terrific signal with a simple circular aerial. I tried the Daewoo again tonight and made the 'wide' change suggested by 'Booms' but no channels. The only change I noticed was that the scanning indicator stopped for about ten seconds in and area where it had never stopped before. But at the end the channel count was still '0'.

I don't suppose anyone knows of any 'hack' that might get my Daewoo paperweight to work with the Irish trial? I don't mind opening the box and having a go.

Thanks.

maxg

What do you get in scan results if you press STATUS?

watty

The Irish Trail may end in a few months anyway. It was only political window dressing.

Solair

Picked them up no problem with a Sony HDTV with a built in tuner. I'm suspecting that the integrated tuners are possibly a little more flexible as they're sold across a wide range of markets, particularly higher end TVs.

It looks like we could end up with a similar UK/Ireland tuner divide as we've had with analogue when it comes Digital TV though.

Really the EU should be ensuring that these devices can cope with a broader range of DVB-T standards. Although, I suppose that might increase the costs.

maxg

Solair wrote: »

Picked them up no problem with a Sony HDTV with a built in tuner. I'm suspecting that the integrated tuners are possibly a little more flexible as they're sold across a wide range of markets, particularly higher end TVs.

It looks like we could end up with a similar UK/Ireland tuner divide as we've had with analogue when it comes Digital TV though.

Really the EU should be ensuring that these devices can cope with a broader range of DVB-T standards. Although, I suppose that might increase the costs.

The problem is not the tuner. The problem is the brain dead coded software at some uk boxes.
I bet the number of services for the irish trial are listed in the scan results but the Daewoo soft don't accept channels with active bit for scrambled.

John32c

I was under the impression only certain boxes worked to pick up the DTT trials..One is a Digilogic DSTB1500 and the other is a Matsui DTR3A from . They are both basically the same guts only difference is that the Digilogic has L and R audio outputs.

From an earlier poster on this subject see below........
I thought first that both boxes were not going to work after going through the "first time installation" and got "No signal", so I searched through some forums and found a solution.
What you have to do is cancel the "first time installation" go into the "Configuration" menu and select "Yes" for "Scan Encrypted Chans" and then select "find new channels" - "automatic mode". This found all the channels and worked on both boxes.

maxg

The problem is there is no such option at a Daewoo box. Simply brain dead coded.

esmonde

Sorry maxg, I've taken down the Daewoo setup, but will try it again shortly and see what 'Status' does.