Cowan A3 and DVB-T tuner: Some tests (kinda long and photo-heavy)

This post should be of interest to all you Cowan A3 owners out there. Last week I picked up the optional DVB-T tuner in Pixmania, and proceeded to run a few tests to see if it would work in the Irish DTT regions.To those who don't know, there is currently a trial being run in Dublin and Louth, and while many of the channels are encrypted, it is possible to pick up the four terrestrial channels, as well as about ten radio stations, in digital broadcast form. For more on this, there are a couple of excellent stickies over on the Terrestrial forum.


So the Cowan tuner: It's designed to pick up 1-SEG (Japan), DMB-T (China), and DVB-T signals; for Europe, DVB-T is the accepted standard. For any tech-heads, here's the spec, and a picture of the tuner:






Here's what it looks like connected to the A3:





First test: Blanchardstown
Some background first. I'm currently able to receive the Irish DVB broadcast in the Blanchardstown area using a basic Hauppauge HVR1100 Digital/Analog tuner card and a bog-standard €15 indoor antenna from Maplins. The transmitter for the Dublin area is situated in Three Rock (Dublin Mountains), although it's relatively low-power at only 25kW ERP. But even with this low(ish) power transmission and cheapo equipment, I can receive the digital broadcast perfectly.


So my first test was obviously to see if I could receive the same signal using the Cowon. Doing a channel scan using both the Cowan-specific “Ireland Region” and “UHF8 Mhz”, I was able to pick up some of the encrypted channels, as shown below, but none of the four terrestial channels. But on a better point I could occasionally listen to one of the radio stations (Phantom FM, thankfully!), although these were being listed on the player using transmission-specific codes (2830, which I think is the Service ID number transmitted in the DVB packet for Phantom). So at least I had some confidence that the tuner was functional, and compatible with Irish DTT broadcasts.





Second test: Sandyford
To do a better test of the Three Rock mast, I headed to Sandyford which is within 2km of the transmitter. Unfortunately, still no great success: I was able to pick up more signals but I couldn't view any of them properly. Also, they were displayed in Service ID form, and I was picking up 2901 to 2906; 3901 to 3906; 4901 and 4902. Incidentally, 4901 was interesting as the player returned an error message complaining about not having the right H.264 CODEC for the signal, which makes me think this was the special MPEG4 test signal.


Third test: Clermont Carn
Clermont Carn is the transmitter near the NI border in Louth, and is much more powerful than the Three Rock mast, at 300kW ERP. So I was much more optimistic that I could get a signal from this mast. I just did one test, about 15km from the mast on the Castleblaney road, and finally saw some success. This time, the channel scan returned a mix of Service ID and proper channel names (see picture below), and I was able to view the four terrestrial channels on the service ID's 1901 (RTE1), 1902 (NET2), 1903 (TV3), 1904 (TG4).



However, the reception wasn't perfect. Sometimes the sound wouldn't play, and other times the playback would slow-down to about 1FPS. But when it was stable... Wow! The reception and sound were awesome, absolutely crystal clear. Below are a couple of screenshots I took, and the playback was as clear as shown in the shots.


Screenshot 1:



Screenshot 2:



So my conclusions so far are that the tuner won't currently work with the lower-power Three Rock mast, so it's a waste of time for Dublin A3 owners. But it may be worthwhile trying it out nearer to the Clermont Mast to see if operation improves, as in fairness I was about 15km away from the mast and only did some limited testing.

I'll also probably take the tuner apart soon anyway to spec it out and see if any mods can be done to improve it.