8PSK USB adapter for PCs

[HokieEngineer]

Not necessarily or at least that's my understanding. My understanding is that some of those signals listed as FTA may be fixed key and some recievers, like previously authorised 4dtv recievers, may recieve those signals "free" but those signals are actually encrypted. If that's the case then this adapter may lock those signals but you wouldn't be able to watch them. I believe that in order to actually watch, or listen to in the case of audio channels, they would have to be what's called "zero key" and I've been told there are very few zero key DCII signals up there. I can't say that for certain as I don't have a DCII reciever and haven't really looked at any of these signals but that's what trustworthy sources have told me. So the bottom line is that unless you know form a reliable source that the signals in question are zero key DCII then don't count on it.

Good writeup! Thats pretty much the jist of it with DCII.

 

[iammike]

This may be a dumb question, as I don't know what all is involved, but since you're able to receive DCII combo mode is there any potential this could be developed into a full stb? I know NPS has tried to get Motorola to develop one, without any luck. It would seem like a good opportunity for a small business. There's a lot of bud owners that would love to be able to subscribe to some of the programming that's out there in combo mode.

 

[HokieEngineer]

That would be an interesting project. I'm not sure how the licensing goes for the Conditional Access modules and such. That might limit who can actually design a subscribable receiver.


Well, the website is up! www.dvbtech.net. I'll add some more pictures and a how-to later.

 

[Claude Greiner]

BTW, we used to have hundreds of 8PSK adaptors for the 6000, but the supply has really dried up.

If necessary I can still get them from DISH, but they raised the price and the cost would be around $100 each, compaired to before I was able to sell them for around $60

 

[BrettTRay]

does anyone know how many channels or wild feeds are actually shown in either 8psk and/or 4:2:2? Do you all think that we will gradually start seeing more FTA channels going to 8psk? My dream set top box would be MPEG4/8psk/qpsk/4:2:0/4:2:0/ and high def capable. It would have a hard drive for recording with two satellite inputs; a +5v skew control like the pansats; blind scan; HDMI, 1394A, 5.1DD outputs; 36v actuator control; ethernet, RS232C, and usb interfaces for software upgrade; uhf remote; I know this would never happen but it would be great if it could do the DCII channels that are in the clear. Why can't someone build something like this!!!!!!!!!! I would gladly pay!

 

[Stefan]

does anyone know how many channels or wild feeds are actually shown in either 8psk and/or 4:2:2? Do you all think that we will gradually start seeing more FTA channels going to 8psk?

Well, one big thing you have to keep in mind is there are at least 2 different flavors of 8psk and they're quite different. There's tubo coded and there's trellis coded. The dish tuner module does not do trellis coded. It only does Turbo coded which is primarily used by dish network. Also trellis coded 8psk requires a much better signal at the recpetion end for the receiver to be able to reconstructed the data. Noise from adjacent satellites can be a problem. This necessitates a rather large dish (like 15' or greater). Most people will not have a dish large enough to recieve these signals. Now my understanding is that 8psk is part of the newer DVB-S2 spec but I've heard some say that turbo coding isn't. So, if there are feeds and FTA channles in the future that use 8psk the question is will they be turbo coded or trellis coded. Based on the current things we see happening with some of the major networks it looks like they seem to prefer trellis coded which is bad news for us unless you happen to have a huge dish in your back yard and a commerical receiever that cost around $4000.

I know this would never happen but it would be great if it could do the DCII channels that are in the clear.

The problem there may be that many of the so called "in the clear" DCII feeds are actually encrypted. It's just that they're "in the clear" or free if you have a suscribed 4dtv reciever. If you want free DCII, your best bet might be to get a 905 sidecar and subscribe to a few a la carte channels at the yearly subscription rate. Then you might be able to get a few "free" DCII channels. This adapters ability to lock DCII signals could still be useful but mainly for analyzing signals. For example you might use this in conjuction with a spectrum analyzer and whenever you locate a signal on the spectrum analyzer you could determine if the signal were DVB or DCII by attempting to lock it with this module.

 

[BrettTRay]

Thanks for the info. There are just to many damn different standards. Wouldn't it be nice if there was just one.

 

[HokieEngineer]

Yea Stefan is correct, lots of different formats out there. The broadcom chip inside the upgrade module will only do 8psk turbo encoded. ST had demo'd a chip that would do both turbo and trellis, however it never made it to market.

I'm not sure why one of the bigger dvb card makers has not made a product with one of these chips. The market is obviously small, but I doubt it would take a lot of work to modify one of their existing products.

BTW, I have updated the zip file on the website to include one driver that I had forgotten to include. Thanks to the people that emailed me! If you have ordered one of the boards, be sure to download the new zip file. Also, the installation instructions have been modified to show where to stick the additional driver file.

 

[stone phillips420]

looks very interesting and intriguing

 

[Stefan]

I receieved my adapter today and tried it out a bit. It does indeed tune and lock DCII signals. I locked several DCII feeds. The problem is just about all of them, even the ones listed as FTA on lyngsat, are actually encrypted. Anyway, as a tool to analyze signals, which is my intended use, it's still quite useful as it can lock the signals even though they are encrypted and you can't watch them. If your going to buy one of these adapters this is the one to get as the other guys adapter doesn't lock DCII signals.

Also to anyone who also got one of these, if you keep getting a message about being unable to open the firmware file, download the drivers again from the website. The firmware file was missing from the previous zip file.

 

[goaliebob99]

Im actually going to get one of these... Right now I have to wait untill my funding from school kicks back in as im inbetween semesters.. Hopefully I will have one by the end of april

 

[genpix]

I receieved my adapter today and tried it out a bit. It does indeed tune and lock DCII signals. I locked several DCII feeds. The problem is just about all of them, even the ones listed as FTA on lyngsat, are actually encrypted. Anyway, as a tool to analyze signals, which is my intended use, it's still quite useful as it can lock the signals even though they are encrypted and you can't watch them. If your going to buy one of these adapters this is the one to get as the other guys adapter doesn't lock DCII signals.

could you please give me some more info about Sat/TPs you were looking for?
I'd like to point my dish there to see DCII.
Who knows, I might get "lucky" and start to do analysis with my cripple board

 

[Stefan]

could you please give me some more info about Sat/TPs you were looking for?
I'd like to point my dish there to see DCII.
Who knows, I might get "lucky" and start to do analysis with my cripple board

So, I take it I should download the latest firmware for your adapter and give it a try?
Anyway, no offense was intended. At the time I wrote that your board didn't support DCII. If it does now that's great. After all, I'm one of your customers also. : ) So, now I've got 2 DCII usb tuners.

 

[genpix]

non taken
Actually, there is no DCII support yet, you were absolutely right.
I did not have time to focus on that. In addition, I still need to install a motorized dish to jump from one Sat to another (and play with different modulations).
I used my spare time to get better performance of what's already working.
If you download latest DLL/firmware you would be able to use my hardware's ability to align TS packets and strip them down to 188 byts/packet.
It was done in hardware from very beginning.
But, I was able to implement this feature (without crashes) only in latest DLL.
Now, CPU load should be 5-20% less on real-time watching of high bitrate HD channels (like 16mbps).
This is on average machine - 3GHz P4, simple video card (like nVidia FX5200).

Since you have two adapters, you are one of the lucky guys who can do an unbiased comparison.

 

[BrettTRay]

have you locked any FTA 8psk channels or feeds yet. I'm interested in whats up there in that format. I still can't beleive there isn't a company out there that hasn't produced something like this already, preferabley in a set top box.

 

[rocksahead]

have you locked any FTA 8psk channels or feeds yet. I'm interested in whats up there in that format. I still can't beleive there isn't a company out there that hasn't produced something like this already, preferabley in a set top box.

There are next to no FTA 8psk signals that can be received by anyone, so there really is no demand for a consumer box.

Rocksahead