Terratec cinergy dvb-s pci-sat card

Sparky

I got this card from komplett, and installed it in the pc, works ok except for one problem, it only auto tunes 50 fta channels, where as there should be way more including bbc2 and channel U etc etc.

Ive checked through the software and the low and high band is ok and the 22khz tone comes on to change polarity, i decided to manually install bbc2 but it only has 20% of a signal whereas in the digibox its full.

Any help would be great, thanks.

Ronan|Raven

Are you using a loopthrough from the reciever or a direct feed of cable from the dish?

Sparky

its a direct feed to the LNB.

Zaphod

Just to isolate the problem, does the DVB-S card have its own LNBF and coax cable or are you just swapping the same coax between the digibox and the DVB-S card?

Are all the other channels at around 20% signal strength, or is it just the BBCs?

Is the BBC2 picture breaking up or pixellating at any time, especially during rain?

Sparky

i just took the f connector from the input 2 of the sky+ and put it into the card, just 50 fta channels pop up and its not just the BBC that are missing
I get BBC1 ci and w
and get itv3 but nothing like BBC 2,3,4 all the other FTA channels.

I have this setting in the config menu
low band
9750000
highband
1060000
switch point (whats this mean?)
1170000

Zaphod

If the picture isn't breaking up, and the signal strength is in or around 20% for all the channels, then it's probably the case that the drivers for the card are a bit iffy and the level reading appears low, when in actual fact it's fine.


For one thing you can't compare the signal levels on one receiver with another. Even with the same DVB-S card, the Skystar range of card for example, one set of drivers may give a level of say 30% for a channel, while a different set of drivers gives 70%, despite it being the same input in both cases.

I reckon the most likely problem is that
1) Your list of transponders is out of date and doesn't have the frequencies for the relatively new TPs on Astra 2D where the majority of the BBC channels reside. So you need to obtain a more up to date transponder file (usually a *.ini file) for your viewer software or enter the TPs yourself.

2) If you're doing a FTA search only, the card/software is mistakingly assigning channels as being encrypted instead of FTA. A full search (FTA + encrypted) should sort this out.


The switch point is the frequency above which the the software tells the card to send out a 22KHz tone and thus switch the LNBF to the high band.

Sparky

in channel search im doing it by step size of 1000khz with a border of +/- 2000khz

would this affect the finding of any channels?

Zaphod

Can you check the signal strength of the other channels on the card in comparison to BBC2?

I gave a look at the manual for the Terratec, and unlike 95% of the receivers and DVB-S cards on the market, it doesn't seem to use a list of TPs to search (autosearch), but instead attempts to sweep across the Ku-band (blindsearch) and detect active TPs itself. The manual doesn't specify whether it is true hardware-based blindsearch (good) or some software-based kludge which checks against a list of common symbol rates (bad).

I'd have said that a 1000KHz (1MHz) step size is overkill tbh, as it would probably take it a few hours to sweep the entire band 10700MHz-127500MHz if it was searching thouroughly. How long does it actually take? Can you limit the search range e.g. between 107000-11000MHz?

I think it's a case that if the card doesn't find the channels by itself, then you'll simply have to look up satcodx.com or lyngsat.com for the TPs and do a manual search. 10773, H, 22000; 10787, V, 22000; 10803, H, 22000 are the main ones for the BBC channels.

Sparky

dont worry lads, i found the problem.

It was the transponder file for Astra 2a,b,d
The freq were all over the place, so i spent 40mins retypeing them in and to my delight the bbc channels and regions came up.