zhrodague

As it turned out, the linear LNB that I was using had its pin snapped from the circuit board -- no wonder it didn't work so well! Took me long enough to secure some steady employment, and as a bonus, I picked up a ULN2 from Sadoun.com. They've supplied me with a spool of coax, angle-meter, sat finder, and an lnb holder in the past.

So Gus stopped by, and we aligned the dish, figured out some of the cryptic dvbscan parameters, and had no luck. We get a hot signal with szap, but MythTV doesn't seem to care. After a bit of searching, I found some updated parameters for the transponders on Galaxy 10R, the satellite we're trying to get. This isn't proving to be all that helpful.

I am also wondering why this sat finder doesn't pick up this satellite. I'm aiming mostly blind.

Otherwise, after Zap2It shut down the MythTV and other users, I've had to resort to the sky to try and get some reasonably free television viewing. The satellite television idea is definitely interesting, especially if I can get at least a couple of UHF-style channels. Aye got my fingers crossed.

Schedules Direct has certainly piqued my interest, especially since I've lost good guide data. Their pricepoint of $20 is just about right for a service like that. I was content to use a not-so-great scraper (for Windows, even!), but I think I'd rather have an appropriate XMLTV provider. This solves my immediate problem with the TV listings, and I'm hoping to have the Canned:Movies search working again.

On the plus side, Gus has helped me through some of the issues, but all he did was a bunch of Google searches on specific keywords relating to our problem. No C wizardry this time. That's okay, though, because we've gotten further along.

I aligned my dish a bit more the other nite, a fabulous last bit of Summer to sit on the roof looking at a screen, instead of inside. I checked the two diseqc switches, made sure the wires weren't moving too much. Maybe I should have cranked the nuts down on the thing.

Further along, as I spend my evenings working on it, I now get a wonderful new error message, which I am not sure how to figure out, except for a few searches on specific keywords relating to our problem:

2007-09-21 14:26:03.109 DVBChan(0) Warning: Your frequency setting (8544457) is out of range. (min/max:950000/2150000)
2007-09-21 14:26:05.704 EITScanner: Now looking for EIT data on multiplex of channel 207
2007-09-21 14:30:06.861 JobQueue: Commercial Flagging Starting for Life (Part 2) "Language of Aging" recorded from channel 7090 at Fri Sep 21 14:00:00 2007
2007-09-21 14:30:06.884 commflag: Commercial Flagging Starting: Life (Part 2) "Language of Aging" recorded from channel 7090 at Fri Sep 21 14:00:00 2007
2007-09-21 14:30:08.261 Using runtime prefix = /usr
2007-09-21 14:30:08.593 New DB connection, total: 1
2007-09-21 14:30:08.743 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: mythloud
2007-09-21 14:30:08.960 New DB connection, total: 2
2007-09-21 14:30:08.964 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: mythloud
2007-09-21 14:30:09.119 Connecting to backend server: 10.66.6.246:6543 (try 1 of 5)
2007-09-21 14:30:09.189 Using protocol version 34
[mpeg @ 0xae7950]Parser not found for Codec Id: 94210 !
0: start_time: -9223372036854.775 duration: -9223372036854.775
1: start_time: -9223372036854.775 duration: -9223372036854.775
2: start_time: -9223372036854.775 duration: -9223372036854.775
stream: start_time: -9223372036854.775 duration: -9223372036854.775 bitrate=2192 kb/s
0: start_time: 0.036 duration: 161.657
1: start_time: 3103.968 duration: 161.668
2: start_time: 0.017 duration: 161.603
stream: start_time: 0.189 duration: 36284.645 bitrate=99 kb/s
2007-09-21 14:30:10.434 AFD: Opened codec 0x88bf320, id(MPEG2VIDEO) type(Video)
2007-09-21 14:30:10.438 AFD: Opened codec 0x88c06c0, id(MP2) type(Audio)

I payed some attention to the wiring of the satellite stuff. There are two separate computers, each with their own DVB-S satellite tuner. Each one plugs into this patch thingy that DirecTV left us with, which leads to the roof using the 2x2 coax cables. On the roof, I have each of the tuners plugged into its own DiSEqC switch. Both switches have Port 1 plugged into the Sadoun ULN2 Universal LNBF, via its two ports. Port 2 on the switch for the first tuner, is plugged into the old DSS dish.

The first tuner is a Hauppauge Nexus-S, which is supposed to be a supported and working satellite tuner for GNU/Linux. The second tuner is a Twinhan Visionplus dohickey. I haven't mucked with it much, but MythDora isn't working properly to detect it.

I have told MythTV about my DiSEqC switches, and LNB types. I have been able to scan the transponders and get a bunch of channels using scandvb, and I have received a LOCK singnal with szap. MythTV will even add the channel names, but it doesn't pick-up the EIT guide.

Also, this weekend, I decided to point to Galaxy 25, which I wasn't able to properly find. I am using this satellite finder dohickey, which definitely squeals alot, but some of the satellites are much louder than others, and it makes it difficult to get the right satellite. This, and the ultra-crappy compass which, while definitely points me in the right direction, makes it difficult to pick out the proper satellite from a 2^o difference. I'd rather have a precision adjustable mount, with big metal adjustment screws, and compass calibration, but that is a totally ridiculous to not have motorized, and I'd want three of them.

When I went to point the dish back at Galaxy 10R, I figured that I would move the whole thing to a different part of the roof, away from the windows. It does fit there nicely.

I may get giant rubber feet for the platform the dish is mounted to. The flat wood on the roof tiles does not sit as flat as I want.

Since my last post, I did end up moving the dishes to one side of the house. DirecTV left their giant AT-9 dish with me, which I've removed. The mount is two inches in diameter, and larger than all of the other mounts I have collected. The two dishes sit outside in their appropriate places, except that the wind blew-over my FTA dish, so it lays on its back in the snow. No biggie. I'm waiting for the weather to break before I sit outside aiming. I will totally use cinderblocks this time.