Knowledge Network on Anik F1R

[colbec]

I'm fishing for KN on Anik and not having much luck. I'm sure that Anik is H/V and not L/R so I have the right LNB. Motor seems to be on the arc pretty good.

Detail blind scan on 107.3W gives me 4 channels, FTN-1,3 and ETN-1,2. One of these has poor audio from the Canada Houses of Parliament (Federal) but bad audio on the others, and washed out video on all of them.

It is almost as if I have one setting not quite right, but I can't think what that might be? I have very solid green bars on some TPs so I think I am on target. Maybe the satellite has an issue?

The specific channel for the Knowledge Network (12050 V) returns nothing on manual scan.

 

[Mr Tony]

Almost all the channels on AnikF1 are Digicipher II (DCII) which our DVB boxes won't get.

 

[colbec]

Agreed. However according to Lyngsat there are a few which are FTA. It is these that I am trying to land in my net. Normally when the Coolsat comes across a scrambled channel it is very quick to display a black screen with "Scramble channel" and I move on.

I did try a full blind scan and did not come up with the expected scrambled channels. Does this mean that the Coolsat can detect some types of encryption and not others?

 

[Mr Tony]

All of the channels that show "in the clear" according to Lyngsat on AnikF1 are DCII coding/encryption. Those are StarChoice (Candian satellite provider) channels (same with CKUA, Access and a couple others) and our boxes will not get them.

When there are multiple channels on a transponder, the first row of the Transpnoder on Lyngsat tells if its DCII or DVB

The only free stuff on AnikF1 is C-Band. There may be a couple CBC feeds on KU but those are 4:2:2 which the Coolsat will not decode

 

[colbec]

Thank you for your kind clarification.

 

[BabaLouie]

If you really want to get the free channels (Knowledge, Access, CKUA, Voiceprint) listed for this bird, get yourself a previously subbed Starchoice box. They can sometimes be purchased for not much $$ on eBay.

 

[MotleyFool]

If you really want to get the free channels (Knowledge, Access, CKUA, Voiceprint) listed for this bird, get yourself a previously subbed Starchoice box. They can sometimes be purchased for not much $$ on eBay.

Hmmm, really? I have a couple of starchoice receivers gathering dust I picked up from a canadian snowbird.

 

[Mr Tony]

try it out. Worse thing is you get the dreaded "please wait while we process your request" on the screen

 

[schlever]

try it out. Worse thing is you get the dreaded "please wait while we process your request" on the screen

I hooked up my previously subbed box to my lnb aimed at 107.3 and got that same message. any idea if it goes away or is there something I can do?

 

[Mr Tony]

If you get that message then Starchoice might have figured a way to not show the channel for the box. No way to really get around that.

I know when I cancelled one of my SC boxes I had the channels for like a day after that then the dreaded "please wait" screen

 

[updatelee]

the only unencrypted channel Ive found on SC birds was the SLN, the rest labeled as 'free' on lyngsat are encrypted with subscription keys or fixed key, unsure as I have no way to tell.

 

[Anole]

I thought I'd read a few years back, something about (at least Starchoice) Digicipher receivers needing to be refreshed over the bird periodically.
This would suggest that if they were stored for a few months, they might no longer work 'till they'd been properly addressed over the air.

I don't know if that's true, but the FUD certainly did discourage me from subscribing to any such system.
Can anyone contradict that idea?

 

[SatPhreak]

My formerly subbed SC reciever still gets all the free channels on both anik birds after a year of being unsubbed. SC does send a hit once a month to every subbed box but that is only to update the authorization for the subscription channels.

 

[Anole]

Oh, then it was just the subscription that got refreshed.
That's reasonable.
I thought the whole box locked up without the refresh.
Thanks.

In the past, I've seen TV and cell phone systems which needed to be deactivated over the air.
There is less traffic, if you don't need to constantly re-enable your customers.
The down side is that if you aren't receiving when the turn-off command is sent... well, you get the idea.

I used to have a sim card for a cell phone that I used for handset testing.
It never got deactivated when it should have.
Of course, I never made any actual calls on it, so maybe that kept it under the radar.