Blind Scan Quirk on 127 W.

[wvman]

I've been trying for some time to get Hallmark back in, but for some reason, I can't get it back. I discovered something that may explain the problem. Friday evening, I decided to re-scan 127W to see if there are any new channels on it, and to try to get Hallmark working again. I discovered a quirk with the V8 Golden. If I do a full scan, it will scan all the way through, but a blind scan will hang up at 51 percent and never moves forward.

I let it sit there for over 30 minutes to see if it would resume scanning. Nothing. I tried it several times and it always hangs up at 51 percent. I got curios to find out if it was going to do this on all satellites, but the blind scan worked fine on 5 other satellite. As far as Hallmark, I've entered all the PID info, and it still won't come in. Is Hallmark still there? FYI, three other receivers won't get Hallmark either. (Freesat V7, HDVR1200 and an HDVR3500?

 

[norman881]

I've been trying for some time to get Hallmark back in, but for some reason, I can't get it back. I discovered something that may explain the problem. Friday evening, I decided to re-scan 127W to see if there are any new channels on it, and to try to get Hallmark working again. I discovered a quirk with the V8 Golden. If I do a full scan, it will scan all the way through, but a blind scan will hang up at 51 percent and never moves forward.

I let it sit there for over 30 minutes to see if it would resume scanning. Nothing. I tried it several times and it always hangs up at 51 percent. I got curios to find out if it was going to do this on all satellites, but the blind scan worked fine on 5 other satellite. As far as Hallmark, I've entered all the PID info, and it still won't come in. Is Hallmark still there? FYI, three other receivers won't get Hallmark either. (Freesat V7, HDVR1200 and an HDVR3500?

I'm getting Hallmark at 3820 H 30000. The name shows Pope.

HTH

 

[Lone Gunman]

Welcome to cheap China junk! And you're lucky if you only have ONE satellite that does what 127w is doing because the P. O. S. V7HD I have chokes on about 4 on my last count! Only positive note on mine is that I only spent $21 buying it, which proves again that "cheap" usually means just that!

 

[wvman]

I'm getting Hallmark at 3820 H 30000. The name shows Pope.

HTH

When I first installed this receiver, it scanned Hallmark in under the heading Pope also. For some reason, I lost it, and even entering the PID info, it won't come back in. I even tried a GeoSat Pro HDVR 1200 & A 3500 and it won't come in on those either. I've had channels before that wouldn't show up on a scan, but they always came in by entering the information manually.

 

[wvman]

Welcome to cheap China junk! And you're lucky if you only have ONE satellite that does what 127w is doing because the P. O. S. V7HD I have chokes on about 4 on my last count! Only positive note on mine is that I only spent $21 buying it, which proves again that "cheap" usually means just that!

How many USA made receivers are there in the FTA market? I'm up to purchasing another receiver, but I'm not certain which is the best one to buy, or which ones are made in the USA. When I got into FTA, I originally did it to get only one channel we watched that was forced to go digital. For much of the 30 years we sold satellite systems, there was an industry standard regarding equipment manufacturing. If there's an industry standard regarding FTA, I must have overlooked it somewhere along the line.

I agree that most stuff made in China is junk. I also realize there may be several channels I may not be receiving because of that, and this kind of proves it. If you know of a top line, USA made receiver, please tell me which one it is. I look for USA made on most products I purchase, and from what I've seen, there are not a lot of them out there. Even the GeoSat Pro's have "Made in China" on them. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[norman881]

How many USA made receivers are there in the FTA market? I'm up to purchasing another receiver, but I'm not certain which is the best one to buy, or which ones are made in the USA. When I got into FTA, I originally did it to get only one channel we watched that was forced to go digital. For much of the 30 years we sold satellite systems, there was an industry standard regarding equipment manufacturing. If there's an industry standard regarding FTA, I must have overlooked it somewhere along the line.

I agree that most stuff made in China is junk. I also realize there may be several channels I may not be receiving because of that, and this kind of proves it. If you know of a top line, USA made receiver, please tell me which one it is. I look for USA made on most products I purchase, and from what I've seen, there are not a lot of them out there. Even the GeoSat Pro's have "Made in China" on them. Any help would be appreciated.

My Linkbox 9000i Local says Made in Korea on the box.

 

[Shicks4]

Well there are different levels of "made in China". The problem is that now (not trying to be political here) we have outsourced nearly all electronics to a point it isnt fiscally reasonable to manufacture electronics stateside. Nearly all items are manufactured someplace in Asia. So American company A wants to make a high end receiver. They go out and find a manufacturer and have a list of minimum specs that the product must meet. Usually they also have a QC person on site and have some sort of percentage the QC people check to make sure the product is in spec. But here is where things get interesting. Some one some place in the company "steals" the prints and specs and sell or manufactures themselves out of out of spec parts the same item. Used to be these things were mostly kept in china, but some one realized they coult market these things globally and make $$$ and did so. I realize this is a fairly simple explanation but the fact of the matter is China doesnt operate business anywhere near like we do here in america. Some of that comes from low pay for the workers and they do these things to supplement income.

That being said I have a freesat v7. Its the worst receiver i have ever bought, with one caveat, it receives the problem tp on 101 and does so pretty well. Again i paid like 20 bucks for it and i mostly got it to see how well it worked. Well in my experience its was pretty dismal. I managed to get it working again by taking it to my daughters house and using the tv they brought with them from England since i couldnt get it to switch back to ntsc after I installed the new firmware. Wound up having to reflash the firmware before the unit would switch over to ntsc from pal default. Currently its hooked up and only on h&i since my servo motor went out on my dish stuck on vertical and I havent had the time or appropriate weather to change the servo motor out. Mostly its not an issue since work is in full swing and i have virtually no time to "watch" tv where the dish is installed. At this point Ill continue to use it for movies and H&I until a newer receiver solves the problem with these tp and then it will collect massive amounts of dust as in my opinion is more or less worthless. Personally I like the linkbox 9000I local the most (even though there are plenty of things i dislike about it) over any other receiver I have. I use my X2 box for my motorized ku dish as i had issues with it on c-band (again another cheep Chinese receiver). And ive decided i wont buy another receiver until either something better comes out (and i wait until several others try it out) or what i have dies and ill replace with the same thing.

 

[wvman]

My Linkbox 9000i Local says Made in Korea on the box.

I've thought about a 9000i. From what I've seen about the specs, it looks like a good choice.

Shicks4

I also have a V7 which turned out to be a disappointment. The V8 Golden however is a much better receiver except for the blind scan quirk I mentioned, and the unexplained loss of Hallmark. Over all, it works well, and the problem with the Hallmark channel is not exclusive to it. I have a Geosat Pro HDVR1200 & a HDVR3500 that won't pick up Hallmark either. Even manually scanning the TP it won't receive it, even if you scan the PID info. Odd one of them won't receive it. The dish has a new Titanium dual output LNBF on the 12 footer, and it won't come in on my 7 1/2 footer either. NASA and all the rest will come in, but not Hallmark.

 

[armadillo_115]

Hopefully the following doesn't bend forum rules too far.

First about the Hallmark channel: I have noticed at times that it doesn't scan in on either of my boxes, even though it is playing fine from a previous scan. Something in the transponder parameters, maybe? IDK. Once I get Hallmark working, I'm careful not to delete 3820/H/30000 in the future. (Normally I delete all transponders and do a fresh blind scan)

For problematic Sats:
1) Try blind scanning for tv signals ONLY. Radio channels cause hang-ups on some Sats.
2) Try single polarity scans. Hopefully at least one polarity will fully scan.
3) Manually enter any missing transponders.
(Scanning FTA Only doesn't seem to overcome the freezing problem)
No matter what I have tried, there are still 2 or 3 Sats that don't fully blind scan.

I use my junk box specifically to scan for new transponders. If anything new is found, then I manually add the transponders to the 9000i. Keeps my main box clean and organized. I also figure that repeated blind scans are hard on a receiver... even a good one. I'd rather wear out the junk box than the 9000i.

A big problem with cheap receivers is heat buildup. I removed the screen from the top of the case.... glued on a 3" cpu fan ... and power it with an old cell phone charger. Everything plugs into a power strip, so when I turn on the strip the fan runs as well. It looks odd with a fan as large as the receiver but works fine. Enough so that I never bothered to replace the on-board heat sink.

Btw: There is an easy fix for the annoying 'Dish Moving' message on the V7. Menu > System > Other > Device POP Message. Turn it OFF. Problem solved. Repeat this after an update since the default is 'ON'.

 

[Lehman bud farm]

No receiver I know of will scan it in.

Back in February of this year they removed the info to keep it from scanning in.
It's not in the SDT, nor PAT so it won't scan in.
the pids are: VPID 510, APID 500..
If you can not get it in manually then try this workaround.

"edit the tp from 3820 H 30000 to 4120 V 30000 then scan that tp and then change the tp back to 3820 H 30000.
The 4120 V 30000 tp has the NFL encrypted channels but they have almost all the same pid/sid numbers as the channels on the 3820 tp."

 

[bpalone]

Might try the following PID's:

Vid 510
Aud 500
PCR 510
PMT 5005

If that doesn't work or you can't enter the PID's, head over to Rick's website and read the thread under Networks> Hallmark Channels – New Muxes. There is a work around that worked just a little while ago.

 

[Jason S]

There is a work around posted in wvman's 'Programming Change' thread in WUT on Satellite Guys.

 

[bpalone]

The work around I mentioned doesn't require a satellite change. Same idea, just a little less hassle. Had thought I had read something here, but didn't remember the thread name. Either way, a bit of a pain, but for the price I guess I can live with it.

 

[wvman]

Thanks everyone for the information. I tried a lot of it before, and didn't yield any results. I will try the work around to see what happens with it. If and when I get it back in, I am going to download the flash for that receiver to my stick drive and if I lose it again, I'll reinstall the flash. When I purchased 2 of the HDVR3500, I programmed one receiver, saved the flash and installed it on the other receiver and it saved me a lot of time programming the 2nd one.

What's odd is the fact that 2 of my receivers found Hallmark the first time around. I've entered the PID info, frequency and other information several times and it just doesn't recognize it. Gives me something to play with on the weekends.