Atention Fortec Mercury II Owners...New Firmware Upgrade

[IA6Newspath]

I was checking Fortec's website this afternoon and noticed that they've posted a new firmware upgrade for the Mercury II receiver (the update is v1.09 and dated June 27th). It was mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Fortec may start including revision notes with its firmware upgrades, however there doesn't seem to be anything other than the .bin file in the download. I probably won't have a chance to upgrade my receiver for another couple of days, but I'd be interested to hear input from Mercury II owners who have installed the upgrade. Specifically, I'm curious as to whether or not the firmware revision fixes the power scan bug which was discussed a couple of weeks ago.

Also, if anyone happens to have access to revision notes for v1.09, we would definitely be interested in seeing them!

 

[SatelliteAV]

The current firmware download now has revision notes included. The current revision addresses "Channel Find and Satellite Delete function".

Fortec is looking at the Mercury II Power Scan data to see if an improvement could be made in the data processing for the TP's noted without sacrificing the sensitivity of other bands and TPs. Here at Satellite AV, we have done extensive testing of the Mercury II with various LNBFs and have found that while a given TP might not be found with one setting, it usually will be found by modifying one of the user defined parameters. The ability to log a specific TP will vary with LNBFs (harmonics, amplification noise, etc.), atmospheric variations and terrestrial interference. We have found that like most other receivers there are certain TPs that can only be received with the manual input of the channel parameters. This usually is the result of the broadcaster transmitting non-compliant DVB streams.

The reasoning behind the user adjustable scan parameters is that often signals will be processed with one parameter setting, but not found with a different combination. Fortec tests thousands of various paramter scans to determine if a change that might increase that receivers ability to locate one TP results in the loss of a different TP. For example, the adjustment to receive a certain KU-Band TP could result in the loss of a C-Band TP.

The development of Power Scan firmware is the result of thosands of scans and the review of the data to determine what settings produce the best results over many frequencies.

FYI .....
Step - the frequency range that the receiver will search (I.E. 6 = 3MHZ above and 3MHz below)

Detail - the amount of time the receiver spends analyzing a found symbol rate to extract data.

Hope that this additional information is helpful and be assured that your comments and concerns are very important to the manufacture and distributor!