Programming receivers scroll down

Programming BEC 6600+ receivers and Coship 3000 series receiver Zinwell and StarPro (Programming the Coship 5300 click here)

PROGRAMMING THE BEC 6600+ RECEIVER also CI

Note, one distributor has been able to preprogram BEC receivers for over 1000 channels that are scanned in memory. The receivers are ready to play when plugged in. Go to mpeg2fta homepage button ln left of this page for further information.

Disregard much of what the owners manual says, this unit does not have a USA type actuator controller or polorizer control. It will voltage shift polarity. There is a model made for moving small dishes like the ones they have in Europe and that is what the manual refers to.

Your best bet is to either slave the BEC to an IRD which will move the dish and control the polarity or hook it to one fixed antenna.

LET US USE THE FOLLOWING AS AN EXAMPLE; I have 4 satellite dishes in my back yard. Three of them are horizon to horizon mount movable dishes aka antennas. One 12’, one 10’, and one 7.5’, the other is a .9 meter pointed at Telstar 5. The three movable dishes are controlled by a couple of Chap. Monty IRDs and one 4DTV, hereafter referred to as the IRD’s I use high frequency one port passing splitters to connect the BEC to the IRDs input line from the dish. One splitter for C and one for Ku. For now lets say we change dishes by changing wires to their respective IRDs and their dishes. NOTE; most people have 1 dish and use Dish 1 from the dish menu. This is the way our receivers are programmed, even if you have a C Band and a Ku feed. You can even program a switch to go to another dish, say one for Nimiq and still use Dish 1.

HOW TO SET UP YOUR SYSTEM

Select; "Menu", "Installation" and "Dish Setup"!

Line 1 in the menu , "Dish", use "1" for our 12’ C Ku dish.

Lets program the 12’ first. Line one should read "1"

Line "2" must read "DiSEqC 1.2. (It might better say "multi satellite" or "moveable dish"). This is necessary to enable programming of more then one satellite. Same with dish 2 and 3. For Dish 4 select "fixed" for Telsar 5 only. Ignore east limit and west limit. Note LNB type, press "menu" and you can add switches, for say "C" and "K" Line 3. Scroll to line 3 and press select, go down the list and check all of the satellites you wish to program into Dish 1. Select use "Newsat xx" for the birds that you don’t see listed. You can come back and add birds later.

Let us continue with our setup of Dish "1’ the 12’ dish controlled by a Monty IRD. In my case I have the IRD powering the dish and the BEC slaved via a splitter with the non power leg going to the BEC.

Back out of all the menus by using the "Exit" "uppercut arrow" and let the receiver save the info you just programmed.

Programming the birds: Select "Menu", "Installation", "Transponder Setup"

LINE One should read "DISH 1". This is for the 12’ Dish. Don’t let this change!

LINE Two should list all of the available satellites. Go back to "Dish Setup" to add new satellites.

NOTE; press menu and you can Change the name of the satellite, add "PID" numbers when the programmer doesn’t transmit them. Etc.

Now you can start programming the transponders, scroll right for a new Transponder or bouquet Frequency and Symbol Rate are a matter of entering the information on a new transponder.

Picture below may not reflect examples below

Important; above HOW TO FIND THE SATELLITE; Start by going to a known active channel on the bird that you want to aim your dish for. Press "Menu" scroll to "Transponder Setup" then press "select". This will open up the above screen1 Now you can move your dish according to directions shipped with your equipment. When you find the bird the bars at the bottom will turn yellow indicating that you have locked onto that specific transponder, that is group of stations.

Below you see the Dish Setup menu which controls the aspects of the LNB. The top two are both C and Ku. LNB 4 is for DBS. LNB 1 sends 12 volts to an external switch. In the "Transponder Setup" menu you will select "LNB" on line 4 and the associated information on the right side of the screen.

NEAT BEC FEATURE;

IF you program a freq and symbol rate (sr) that the receiver sees, you will observe the signal bars at the bottom of the screen turn yellow even before you scan the info into memory!!! You can enter the information you are looking for and move your antenna and when the BEC locates the satellite the bars will turn yellow. I found Intelsat 605 by entering freq 3730 and sr 9000 and moved the dish to the bars turned yellow. I then scanned the transponder, bottom right on screen, exited the menus. The receiver added Thai TV, TRT Turkey, and VTV 4 Viet Nam. Don’t forget to press "Enter" after entering each freq. or sr.

Next I went back into the transponder setup menu, went to dish 1, and scrolled right on TP1 to TP2 which said "New" and I entered freq 3880 , "enter", and sr 3400 "enter". It floaded Teve Andina and City – TV.

Note; be sure that the signal can be reached from your location, East Beam means Europe only etc. See Http://www.lyngsat.com for details.

NOTE, when scanning be sure that you don’t scan the satellite more then once or the BEC will load the channels into memory more then once. Use "scan tp" scan new channels. The BEC will first scan all the C-Band transponders then the Ku transponders on a bird.

Use "Channel Edit" from your main menu to get rid of unwanted channels or channels that are repeated.

NEXT , Program a New Satellite! I chose a new name, "Nextsat 21" I then entered the info for Canal Sur from Lyngsat which was freq 4000 and sr 4450. Don’t forget to hit enter or the numbers won’t "stick". I made sure that polarity was Right Hand (vertical works on my system) and moved the dish until the bars turned yellow. I then scanned the tp. I then renamed the bird I709-4275,usethe mune button,. the last numbers being the actuator count on the controlling IRD. Memory is full on my IRD so I use the BEC to tell me where some of the little used satellites are. Canal Sur was operating in non-scrambled mode at the time.

I haven’t begun to program this receiver for the domestic birds but you will find that many of the domestic birds have frequencies preprogrammed in waiting to be scanned in.

Press "Menu" while in Transponder setup for advanced functions like setting PIDs

NOW FOR SETTING PIDS

Go to Galaxy 11. You should see a bunch of Fox Stuff including some Nascar. Check and see if the frequencies are already in memory. Scan the satellite and see what you can see. Some of the feeds use alternate audio, Press the audio button until the receiver brings up audio 2. This will also select left or right if the broadcaster is sending say two languages.

Look for the WB feeds, the receiver will scan the info but not lock on because the PIDs are not being broadcast. No problem! Go to "menu", "installation" , "Transponder Setup". Be sure you bring up Dish 1 and Galaxy 11. The first TP should be freq. 3721 sr 26700. Go to the www.lynbgsat.com chart and find Galaxy ll. On the left is freq, at the top of the bouquet is symbol rate. Press "Menu" and "Set PID". From Lyngsat enter VPID of 101 under Video PID and PCR PID and 102 under Audio PID. Video and PCR PID are usually the same. Do a TP scan. Go back and repeat the same process for 201 and 201 for the second feed. If you don’t like where the BEC stores the channel go to "Channel Edit" and move the channel. WB has an excellent picture in part due to the high Symbol Rate used. For

Note TP-2 is transponder and the number a to right is frequency and polarity, 3841 Mhz Horizontal. 3700 to 4200 is C-Band and 11700 to 12200 Mhz. is standard U.S. Ku Band

Further information on the BEC go to http://www.mpeg2fta.com

PROGRAMMING THE BEC FOR AUTORACING OR OTHER FEEDS ON GALAXY 11 (G7 on some receivers) This advisory applies to 2001, we don't know what they will do for 2002

FOR FIXED DISHES ONLY Turn on BEC receiver by pressing the Northeast button on the round part of the remote hereafter (NE)

Press menu button (SW)

Highlight “Installation” then “Transponder Setup” then “enter” (center button)

Note, Autoracing has gone from G11 for the re,er of the season but may return in 2002.

You should now see the “Transponder Setup” screen

Highlight top selection “Dish” and scroll to “4”You should see “Galaxy 11 “on line 3

You have now programmed the receiver to receive Galaxy 11 on a fixed dish. To program additional satellites you will need to go back and “Dish Setup” and add them. See multi satellite directions.

To check to see if you are on G11 go to line 5 “Transponder” and scroll until “frequency” reads 3800 and “symbol rate” is about 28346 Horizontal. The “Strength” and “quality” bars at the bottom of the page should be YELLOW indicating that the receiver is locked onto G-11. If not move your dish and / or adjust polarity until the lines turn yellow. THE BEC AUTOMATICALLY FINDS THE SATELLITE, when freq. and SR are shown in menu.

If you want to add additional frequencies, scroll “transponder” until the “frequency” line reads “New”

NOW GO TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE and highlight “Scan 1 Satellite”. Your receiver will scan all the c-band then Ku band frequencies in memory for the satellite. Be sure to adjust polarity if you are slaving the receiver. You may want to scan with the dish on horizontal first then go back and scan vertical. You can use “Channel Edit” from “Main Menu” to get rid of unwanted or duplicated channels later. To add one freq choose “Scan TP”. Note all of the frequencies are not preprogrammed into the BEC for G11. You may want to add Golf at 3824 mhz. H at 4444 sr. For WB you will have to manually add PIDS which are 101 102 and 201 202 the second number being Audio. See http://www.lyngsat.com and additional information on this page.

Use the “Exit” button (SE) to get out of program mode.

PROGRAMMING THE BEC FOR RTPi IN 10 SECONDS

Turn on BEC receiver by pressing the Northeast button on the round part of the remote hereafter (NE)

Press menu button (SW)

Highlight “Installation” then “Transponder Setup” then “enter” (center button)

You should now see the “Transponder Setup” screen

Highlight top selection “Dish” and scroll to “5”. You should see “Panamsat 5/9” in line 2

You have now programmed the receiver to receive PAS 5/9 on a fixed dish. To program additional satellites you will need to go back and “Dish Setup” and add them. See multi satellite directions.

To check to see if you are on RTPi go to line 5 “Transponder” and scroll until “frequency” reads 4000 and “symbol rate” is about 27600. The “Strength” and “quality” bars at the bottom of the page should be YELLOW indicating that the receiver is locked onto PAS. If not move your dish and / or adjust polarity until the lines turn yellow. THE BEC AUTOMATICALLY FINDS THE SATELLITE, when freq. and SR are shown in menu.

If you want to add additional frequencies, scroll “transponder” until the “frequency” line reads “New”

Use the “Exit” button (SE) to get out of program mode.

PROGRAMMING FOR MULTIPLE SATELLITES

To program the BEC for customers who are going to use the receiver on more then one satellite, first bring up the “Dish Setup” menu (Menu, Dish Setup, enter)

In line 1 choose a Dish type. In the above example we used Dish 5 because it went right to PAS-9.

It is important that you use ONE dish number and stick with it. In this case we will again use Dish 5.

You can use any dish number but when going into other menus be sure to stay with that number.

Now scroll to line 2 Dish Type and select DISEqC 1.2 and press enter. This will open up the “Sat List” in line 3. Highlight line 3 and press “enter” Go down the list of satellites and check the ones that you want to program. Use “Newsat xx” for satellites not found. Back out of the “Dish Setup” menu “exit exit” (SE) button and save. Go to “Transponder Setup” and start programming in the birds to memory. Note; highlight the name of the Satellite AND PRESS MENU, you can change the name of the satellite or change PIDs or get HELP or perform other functions.

Note, after doing a “restore to Factory default” from the option menu, the receiver will restart in PAL mode, the picture will be “scrambled”, press the UHF button on the remote then right arrow several times to restore to NTSC.

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Programming the Coship receiver with 3000 software upgrade- CDVB2000B/CDVB3000/CVB3188a

Step 1 for most users will be to enter "menu", "Antenna Setting", then "install Antenna". To the right the user will see "UserSat-C" for standard C-band antenna and UserSat-Ku for Ku band satellite. The user may also see Telstar 5.

For most Coship Customers, who only want T5 programming, they can select the number corresponding to Telstar 5, press "Autoscan Satellite" and they are done. T5 has been preloaded into some of the receivers. For this to work the dish must be pointed to T5./

Others may want to back out now and just use UserSat-C or Ku for all of their channels. If the user wants to have the satellite name beside each channel he will have to choose satellite names from the preprogrammed list. To do this, the user will choose a number from the "Install Antenna" bar that is not already taken, press enter. This will bring up "name" Scroll left or right to choose a satellite name, say GE-1. This will open up a window with all the info for GE-1. This bird is preprogrammed as a C-Band bird as the LNB or LNBF (that is the electronics piece at the antenna) has a freq of 5150. Ku is 10750 and DBS is 11250.

If you are using the receiver to choose between different feeds or antennas, you can scroll down to DISEqC and choose the input, i.e. coaxial cable, you want the receiver to choose. We sell both DISEqC switches and 12 volt switches 12v. out). Do not use a Dish Network switch, it won't work.

Turn off the "LNB Power" if you plan to hook up another receiver such as a IRD and allow the other receiver to power the LNB. You can use the "Loop Out" port for this.

Programming Transponders and Channels

Our next step will be to enter new stations into the receiver. Exit the previous menu and select "Transponder setting" Here you will enter typically a frequency and symbol rate which allows the receiver to receive one ore more channels. This is called a "bouquet". Now choose "Transponder setting" and "Add Transponder". At the top of the "Transponder Setting" page you will see Satellite-----. Use the arrows to select the name of a satellite that you programmed in your Antenna setup or choose UserSat C or Ku. I chose UserSat-Ku in my example. Select "Add new transponder". I have my receiver hooked to a dedicated Telstar 5 dish. I could have chosen Telstar 5 for my example. I have gone to www.lyngsat.com and brought the Telstar 5 information up on the screen. I will scroll down the page until the Ku information appears, that is frequencies over 11,700. Let us choose the Globecast bouquet which includes several Arab stations including Iran and Syria. After I make sure that I am programming a Ku bird, top right, I will enter the frequency, 12,152 on line 2 and the symbol rate 20,000 on line 3 Line 4 should be Horizontal polarity. Since my dish is pointed at T5 I now see a red bar at the bottom of the screen and the bar graph and red light on the front of the receiver come on indicating that the receiver sees and has locked onto that frequency. If the dish has not been pointed at the satellite, the dish can slowly be moved until the receiver locks onto the signal. (Red lock light and/or red bar at bottom of screen. ). Now go to the bottom of the page and perform a search (yes). The receiver will now search for channels on that bouquet and then tell you the results. My scan yielded 10 programs and 2 radio. Don't forget that you can always select between video and radio, the button above the up arrow. You can now exit out of the menus and watch t.v..

PID Entries and other Advanced Entries

Let us say that you have programmed a bouquet and you have several blank stations. Most of the time there is noting being broadcast but occasionally programmers will not broadcast Package Identifiers or PIDs. If you go to a station on your receiver and press info and no PIDs are listed yet you know there should be a station there you may want to enter pids. About the only place you can get PID information is from http://www.lyngsat.com or http://www.satcodx.com or if you are an approved user, from the programmer.

To enter PIDs enter menu, channel settings, and "Edit Channel" if you are changing an existing channel or "Add Channel" if you are adding a new channel within an existing transponder, note info on right. Scroll down and add Video PID, say 101 (it may be any number) , then at least one Audio PID say 102, then enter PCR PID which is the same as Video PID, 101. TX PID is not used in North America. Exit out of your menu's and see if you have added a new channel by entering the PIDs.

Note additional features such as delete channels, move channels etc. as well as additional features under Transponder or Channel setup that you can use to customize your Coship receiver.

NOTE; Users should consult the Taylor Enterprises web page to learn about MPEG2fta receivers and use. Taylor Enterprises web page is at http://www.mpeg2fta.com .

Electronicsinventions dotcom

The following information has been placed back on our web page to help owners of the original Zinwell to program their receivers. Both the Zinwell and Starpro have been replaced by newer products and the information below should be used for programming help only.

For current information go to http://www.mpeg2fta.com and http://www.electonicsinventions.com

NOTE, Many of the early Zinwells are beginning to fail. It the receiver locks up or the display says "0000" , the receiver likely has a bad processor. Call 850/356-9666 and replace the receiver.

See explanation of MPEG-2 FTA reception at end of my web page!!!!!scroll down to end

ZINWELL MPEG-2 FTA RECEIVER
MODEL ZDX-9111
This is the easiest to operate, most bang for buck receiver that we have seen. It comes with Telstar 5 channels loaded into the receivers memory.

This is the easiest to operate, most bang for the
buck, receiver we have seen. It comes with the
Telstar 5 Ku MPEG 2 FTA channels preloaded. Easy to program!

SIMPLE TO PROGRAM
Press "menu" on remote;

Highlight "Transponder List" press "Select"

Now select "Add" to add new "bouquet" of channels
You may also "Edit" or "Delete"
The "Add" menu is simple;

Highlight the line and enter frequency "FREQ." and symbol rate "SYM". "LNB" will always be 5150 for C-Band and 10750 for Ku band. Scroll down to bottom and enter "select" on the remote. You will see the picture come up behind the transparent menu.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
CONTACT TOM AT TAYLOR ENTERPRISES AT <tomt@iglou.com>
Land line (859)356-9666 EST

SPECIFICATIONS

If input;
Frequency           950~2150
Bandwidth           36 MHz
Channel Coding   QPSK
Input Level          -25~-65dBm
Symbol Rate        2~45 MS/s
Connection           F Type
Video Output;
Formats                 Mp@Ml
Aspect Ratio          4:4 16:9
Picture Resolution   720 x 0576
Output                    NTSC/PAL
Connect   SVHS/SCART/RCA
Audio Output;
Formats      MPEG2 Layer 1,2
Sample Rate     32/44.1/48 KHz
Mode              Mono/Stereo/Dual
Connect           SCART/RCA
RF Modulator;
System      NTSC/Pal-I/D/G/B
Channel      3/4
Return Loss 6d/b max (75 ohms)
LNB Control
Polarity              13/18 Volts
Band Switch        0/22 KHz
Multi LNB Control 0/12 volts
DiSEqC       option
Front Panel;
IR Receiver                      Yes
Function 7 Key                 Yes
Channel Display 4 digits     Yes
Rear Panel
RF-In
High Speed Port IEEE-1284 Yes

Low Speed Port   RS-232        Yes
RCA Audio L/R                        Yes
RCA Video                              Yes
Scart Port                                  Yes
RF-Modulator 3/4                     Yes
S-Video                                      Yes
Power Supply
Input       90~260 VAC 50~60 Hz
Consumption       30 W

Master Code for Zinwell: ZDX-9111 original (E version ?)

Delete password LRUDSUUUDDDUDUDUDLUDRE You must press above master code in front of PASSWORD screen on TV left right up etc

Version of software 5979050 Press code in front of MAIN MENU screen.

L=Left arrow R=Right arrow U=Up arrow D=Down Arrow S= Select arrow E= Exit

GLOBAL password 159357 RECALL

Delete all Transponder Information: 123PU654PD7890 PD=Page Down PU=Page up Main Menu Screen

Note 1: If you find the receiver will not accept any additional transponder data, you will need to delete some transponders. This receiver can only store 100 bouquets

Note 2 If the picture rolls in black and white, the receiver mode is wrong. Press MENU and DISPLAY to correct it. You may have to press Display several times

STAR PRO

StarPro Master Clear try 5889!

SCPC/MCPC & DVB COMPLIANCE
SELECTABLE NTSC/PAL IN/OUT
OSD-BASED FRIENDLY DIALOGYE FEATURE
RS232 PORT
FAST POWER ON (3 SECONDS)
TUNES CHANNELS QUICKLY
LAST CHANNEL. FAVORITE CHANNEL MEMORY
GREEN POWER FEATURE (3 WATT STANDBY)
40 STEP VOLUME CONTROL
STORES 180 CHANNELS WITH LIST
FULL FEATURE REMOTE CONTROL
S-VIDEO OUT
CH 3/4 OUT
2 SETS RCA JACKS OUT

More on Programming Receivers   BEC   Coship etc
.....................................................................................................................................................
WHAT MPEG2-FTA IS ALL ABOUT ? KEEP ON READING?

            MPEG-2 FREE TO AIR;   A BRIEF PRIMER
                              By Tom Taylor <tomt@Iglou.com> and <http://mpeg2fta.webjump.com>

Zinwell, Pansat, StarPro, Satvision, KBS, ProSat, Strong, and the list goes on and on!
Where did all of these receivers come from? While the U.S. and Canadian Cable industry distributes their programming largely via products made by General Instruments, which they own part of, the rest of the world chose the MPEG-2 format. Granted, even though, the GI Digicipher II has some MPEG-2 attributes, it nevertheless remains a totally proprietary platform. Who has chosen MPEG-2 as a platform? Dish Network, Scientific Atlanta, and the rest of the world. Even DirecTV is an early version of MPEG-2. MPEG-2 is a digital platform that allows several digital broadcasts to be compressed onto one frequency or channel. Without MPEG-2, Digicipher, or other compression platform, it would not be possible to have direct broadcast television services like DirecTV or Dish Network.

What does MPEG2-FTA mean? MPEG stands for Moving Picture Experts Group. Is is a method for compressing data. FTA stands for "Free to Air"- meaning that the signal is not encrypted with a conditional access module. Smart Cards are generally used for this purpose.

MPEG-2 is not a encryption method although ecryption can be added. Dish Network uses the Nagra system, DirecTV uses a News Data system and cable primarily uses the Digicipher or Videocipher system. Transponder time has become so expensive that with the exception of the preachers, the porno channels, and the home shopping networks, it doesn't make sense to place only one channel on one frequency. With HBO, and Discovery Networks planning 25 channels each, it would take over two C-Band birds to air their material the old fashioned way.

WHAT CAN BE SEEN ON MPEG2-FTA?

FTA or "Free To Air" simply means that the signal is not encrypted. Most cable programming is encrypted. Occasionally programmers may turn the scrambler machine off and you can see a channel or two with an MPEG-2 receiver. The barker channel can occasionally be seen on Dish Network. You will never see Time Warner cable programming, i.e. CNN, HBO in fta mode in the U.S.. CNN, and other international news channels, are available to viewers around the world in free to air mode, but not to the U.S..

In the U.S. there are a number of channels that are available via MPEG-2 FTA receivers that have indicated that they plan to remain in the clear or are believed to intending to stay clear. These include Saudi TV, Abu Dhabi, Thai TV,Asian TV, Kuwait TV, Syria TV, Taiwan, Iran, and as we go to press, Bloomberg TV all on Telstar 5, ku, which can be received on a 30 inch dish. The list changes now and then but these and more can be seen today.

On Anik E2 look for CTV and CBC. CBC-East is already testing on Nimiq at freq 12730, with a symbol rate of 20000 I am told. GE-1 is the home of a bouquet of channel from Paxton Communication's PAX TV. PanAmSat 5 at 58 degrees west is home to the Latin American Weather Channel, RTP, EWTN, WACC-Am Miami, CCTV China, NHK, Deutche Wella, another major English language news service from Europe which I won't mention by name for fear of seeing it scrambled,,,, shhhhh, an Arab bouquet, and Caracol from Colombia. MPEG2 FTA feeds are numerous and more and more are being added every day. The economics of compression, allowing more than one service on each frequency dictate that we will see more. Every time another satellite fails, and they are failing, we see the prices of transponder time go up. A couple of thousand dollars an hour for a better bird are not unusual for part time use.

WHERE DO YOU FIND LISTINGS OF WHAT IS AVAILABLE

The answer is simple, you find it on the Internet. There are two sites that are very good. Every day Christian Lyngemark spends a few hours updating loading information from every satellite in the world from his office in Sweden. His site is supported by advertisers. He relies on information from the programmers and satellite owners plus an army of volunteer spotters located around the world. His lists aren't always up to date or totally accurate, especially since many of the services go to great lengths to hide their feeds, but he is a very good detective. Christian's site is <http://www.lyngsat.com> and he lists everything from HBO to Solo Tango. A competing site is <http://www.satcodx.com> and has similar lists.

WHAT IF YOU ARE NOT ON THE INTERNET?

Today, unless you live in an area with no Internet phone access, there is no excuse for not being on the Internet. DirecPC is available through DirecTV. Unfortunately most DirectTV dealers don't sell DirecTV or want to fool with the special larger dish or special selling arrangements. Got 4DTV? By now you should have received messages inviting you purchase a DirecPC computer card that works with your 4DTV, and the hardware price is right.

Dish Network has just introduced their new Dish Player 7100 and it has WebTV Internet built in. It is really a slick machine. I have one playing on a big screen TV across the room from me and I can read the Internet without my glasses. I am sitting here with lyngsat.com listing on the screen as I write this article. The system is a combination Dish Network receiver with all of the Dish Network programming, plus Web TV. The user only has to hook the system up to a standard 18 inch dish and a phone line. This machine has features that Rube Goldberg wouldn't have thought of. Its price is only $199 for the system and that barely pays for the 8.6 gig Seagate hard drive that is in it . If you wish to purchase a Dish Player and are not a Dish Network dealer you can call me. I sell both Dish Players as well as MPEG-2 FTA receivers and can be reached at (606) 356-9666.

THE SECRETS OF PROGRAMMING AN MPEG-2 FTA RECEIVER

Most receivers come programmed with just a few channels or a couple of satellites. Since most receivers are made for the Asian markets it is not unusual to see satellites such as AsiaSat programmed into memory. Fortunately, all receivers come with the ability to delete programming. The PanSat 200a is an exception. Mr Kim and the folks at Panarex, see their advertisement in The Transponder, program many of the usable programming into the receiver at their facilities in California. Unfortunately, not one of these receivers has a Windows type program that will allow the user to operate their receiver from a computer. There is no Windows for MPEG,,, yet. . With our MPEG2-FTA receivers, programming is done via the remote control. Fortunately, one the information is entered, the information is stored into the receivers memory.

All MPEG-2 FTA receivers require information to be loaded into memory. All that the receivers require be placed into memory in order to program a channel are the L-Band tuning frequency, which must be calculated, the Forward Error Correction, The PID rate, and the Symbol Rate. It has only been a couple of years since most of this information had to be calculated and entered. Today the receiver manufacturers have programming a lot easier.

Most modern receivers require only two items be entered, the frequency, and the symbol rate. I am going to program a bouquet on T5-ku to illustrate how most MPEG-2 FTA receivers work.
I have gone to <http://www.lyngsat.com> on the Internet. There I clicked on the map of the U.S. and then selected Telstar 5. I have scrolled to the next to the last entry which is a group, we call them a bouquet, of channels that can be programmed as one. This group includes channels from Abu Dhabi, SaudiTV, Kuwait, Syria, Thai and Taiwan plus some radio stations. All of these channels are compressed onto one transponder. I know that I can receive this bouquet because column five indicates that the signal is MPEG-2 and no scrambling system is noted. The entry above is NTSC which is the standard analog U.S. TV system. Viaccess and IRDETO listed above are scrambling methods. PowerVu is a Scientific Atlanta system and can sometimes be received with MPEG-2 FTA receivers. At the bottom of the page we see that all MPEG non scrambled listings are highlighted in a light yellow color. The last column is also of use. The listings on this page say beam which doesn't tell us much but if you see " East Hemi", you know the signal is pointed at Europe and, sorry soccer fans, I don't care how big an antenna you have you can't see it from that Sports Club in New Jersey!

Typically most receivers start with the downlink frequency. Looking at the Lyngsat chart we see that is 12152 Mhz and this frequency is programmed into the first line in our example. This is simply the downlink frequency or transponder 24. The next item that is typically required to be entered is the LNB L.O. freq. This is the local oscillator frequency of the LNB, which is located out at the antenna, that allows the received signal to be converted into a usable signal within the receiver. Domestic U.S. C-Band L.O. frequency is 5150 and Ku band is 10750. In our case T5 is ku so 10750 is entered. The receiver uses these two frequencies to calculate the L-band frequency that all receivers use to tune the channel. The next figure entered is the Symbol Rate. This is the rate the size of the digital package transmission, akin to a modem bit rate. This figure can be anywhere from less than 5000 to over 30,000. This figure is entered but be sure that you get the numbers in the right place. You may have to begin the entry with a 0 to make it work right, i.e. 6000 may have to be entered as 06000. In the case of our T5 example we can see from the forth column that the SR is 20000. The 3/4 is the FEC and is automatically calculated by most receivers. It is always easiest to manually enter the symbol rate manually but if the number is not known, receivers such as the KBS-2001,see article, and some Nokias will attempt to find it for you. To see how a specific receiver is programmed, the Zinwell, take a look at my web page at <http://mpeg2fta.webjump.com>.

The PID rate, package identifier, and the FEC, Forward Error Correction, which corrects bit errors, are automatically calculated by most receivers. Some receivers also allow for manual PID entry allowing some signals with incomplete data stream information to be watched. .
For further information on this subject I highly recommend Rod Hewitt's " DVB North American MPEG-2 Information publication which can be found on the Internet at <http://www.coolstf.com/mpeg >.

Vistar, Visionetics 2000, ProSat, ETC. These are some of the first receivers that we sold. Many of them can not manually enter pids, or do not have software that will support many of the channels that are out there. No software upgrades are available. Call 859/356-9666 and replace.

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