Got my adapter from jtag yesterday and got the registration code tonight (ridiculus that they still have people out there doing this nonsense). You need to get a USB cable to use it. Anyway, I hope to play with this stuff in the next couple of days.
The Official 4DTV Maps Experimentation Thread
- Thread starter tvropro
- Start date
- Latest activity Latest activity:
- Replies 95
- Views 22K
- Status
Fun with Generics after the HITS conversion 
Hey all, since the conversion over to HITS, I decided to have a little fun with my 922. Now my setup is a little different than most in that I only use the 922 for Digicipher programming. I use a GBOX to move the BUD (C-band only w/ BSC621), and a SG2100 to move the KU dish. The dishes feed through a disec to an Openbox which in turn feeds a Pansat (no power pass through). The Pansat feeds a splitter which in turn is connected to both inputs on the 922.
Yup it's pretty rube goldbergish and in truth, the Pansat is superfluous at this point but the wiring is just to tangled up to mess with
With the 922 setup this way I am able to use any channel mapped into the 922 as a "generic" by using the Openbox to control polarities and dish positions. I also have found the reduced number of channels in the 4160 data stream has made it possible to pull the channel maps and satellite tiles from Shaw Direct on Anik F1R without maxing out the memory.
I haven't gone through and documented all the various generics available by doing things this way but I have found a couple of additional channels as follows:
GAL17 HORIZONTAL X4 tile channel 219 North West Cable News
GAL17 HORIZONTAL X4 tile channel 263 COLOR BARS
GAL17 VERTICAL A5 tile channel 202 CCTV News English
GAL23 VERTICAL x4 tile channel 372 ENLACE
GAL23 VERTICAL X4 tile channel 203 LIQUIDATION CHANNEL
GAL23 VERTICAL X4 tile channel 282 JIMMY SWAGGART???
GAL23 VERTICAL X4 tile channel 316 TV CHILE
GAL23 HORIZONTAL A5 tile channel 950 AUDIO only
There is also the Access channel (351) and the BC Legislative Assembly (393) on F1R
and yes I know I've obviously got wayyyyy to much time on my hands but what the heck....
One last note, I did a full master reset and had a total of 24 satellite tiles available afterward (before allowing any signal in to the 922) so it seems to me that those who are worried about losing the ability to move their dish after a reset are worried about nothing. Having said that, I'm sure that some folks out there managed to lose all their tiles somehow, but for the life of me, I can't see how since those 24 tiles appear to be hard-coded into the 922. BTW, I now have 29 tiles after pulling in the Shaw Direct maps.
The 922 is running on version EC.
Hey all, since the conversion over to HITS, I decided to have a little fun with my 922. Now my setup is a little different than most in that I only use the 922 for Digicipher programming. I use a GBOX to move the BUD (C-band only w/ BSC621), and a SG2100 to move the KU dish. The dishes feed through a disec to an Openbox which in turn feeds a Pansat (no power pass through). The Pansat feeds a splitter which in turn is connected to both inputs on the 922.
Yup it's pretty rube goldbergish and in truth, the Pansat is superfluous at this point but the wiring is just to tangled up to mess with
With the 922 setup this way I am able to use any channel mapped into the 922 as a "generic" by using the Openbox to control polarities and dish positions. I also have found the reduced number of channels in the 4160 data stream has made it possible to pull the channel maps and satellite tiles from Shaw Direct on Anik F1R without maxing out the memory.
I haven't gone through and documented all the various generics available by doing things this way but I have found a couple of additional channels as follows:
GAL17 HORIZONTAL X4 tile channel 219 North West Cable News
GAL17 HORIZONTAL X4 tile channel 263 COLOR BARS
GAL17 VERTICAL A5 tile channel 202 CCTV News English
GAL23 VERTICAL x4 tile channel 372 ENLACE
GAL23 VERTICAL X4 tile channel 203 LIQUIDATION CHANNEL
GAL23 VERTICAL X4 tile channel 282 JIMMY SWAGGART???
GAL23 VERTICAL X4 tile channel 316 TV CHILE
GAL23 HORIZONTAL A5 tile channel 950 AUDIO only
There is also the Access channel (351) and the BC Legislative Assembly (393) on F1R
and yes I know I've obviously got wayyyyy to much time on my hands but what the heck....
One last note, I did a full master reset and had a total of 24 satellite tiles available afterward (before allowing any signal in to the 922) so it seems to me that those who are worried about losing the ability to move their dish after a reset are worried about nothing. Having said that, I'm sure that some folks out there managed to lose all their tiles somehow, but for the life of me, I can't see how since those 24 tiles appear to be hard-coded into the 922. BTW, I now have 29 tiles after pulling in the Shaw Direct maps.
The 922 is running on version EC.
As long as the SR, FEC and Service ID are the same for an X4 channel as some other channel you can trick it to see channels with those parameters. The DC don't care as long as the specs line up. You may even be able to mess with the manual tuning on the Shaw maps and change that to C band, hit tune and see what you can get.
The way I'm set up, I do not need to change the settings over from KU band in order to use the Shaw maps for C-Band since both inputs to the 922 get exactly the same signal. The IF frequency does need to be within about 5 MHZ in order for the receiver to lock, i.e Shaw tile A5 channel 202 is mapped as KU service#2 with an IF of 964.75, signal rate of 19510 and FEC of 3/4 while CCTV News English on GAL17 is on C-band with an IF of 970 with a signal rate/FEC of 29270-7/8. It does take awhile for the 922 to lock the signal - sometimes only a few seconds but can go to several minutes- however it seems that as long as the IF is fairly close, the 922 can correct both the signal rate and the forward error correction settings. You can actually keep diagnostics screen C up while it's doing this and watch it adjust S/R, frequency and FEC. Finally I also noticed that while in diagnostics screen C, the receiver will continue to range between the various settings even after it has gotten a lock so if you want it to stay locked onto a channel, you probably don't want to keep this screen up.
Now that you brought up the "tune" button, maybe you can shed a little bit of light on the situation. Again, my rig is a little different than most but I have found that as soon as I hit the "tune" button, even when I am already locked into and viewing a signal and have changed nothing on the screen, the DG lock is momentarily lost and I am unable to view the (DG) station I am tuned to until I exit out of the screens and change channels normally. Of course, once I change the channel in a normal fashion, any changes made in the manual tuning screen are lost and the channel reverts back to what the 922 has mapped. In fact, the only thing I have found the manual tuning screen useful for at all has been to manually tune for a data stream only as it will lock a DG signal when using the tune function, just seems to prevent DG video/audio from coming through. I did notice that the tune function does not block analog video though as the Classic Arts analog feed comes through just fine using the tune function.
Now that you brought up the "tune" button, maybe you can shed a little bit of light on the situation. Again, my rig is a little different than most but I have found that as soon as I hit the "tune" button, even when I am already locked into and viewing a signal and have changed nothing on the screen, the DG lock is momentarily lost and I am unable to view the (DG) station I am tuned to until I exit out of the screens and change channels normally. Of course, once I change the channel in a normal fashion, any changes made in the manual tuning screen are lost and the channel reverts back to what the 922 has mapped. In fact, the only thing I have found the manual tuning screen useful for at all has been to manually tune for a data stream only as it will lock a DG signal when using the tune function, just seems to prevent DG video/audio from coming through. I did notice that the tune function does not block analog video though as the Classic Arts analog feed comes through just fine using the tune function.
Good goin' Stips. I had thought of this in the past, but since my 922 does move my dish, it wasn't practical for me.
You're right about the C/Ku not mattering because of the IF being the same. It's just hard to get used to thinking along those lines. But the IF is what really matters.
In fact, those who still have all the tiles & don't use the 4D to control position & polarity can take it one step farther. Any tile with DCII channels mapped could be tuned in any position. If one were to make up a list in ms excel that showed all the channel params, it could be sorted by freq (IF).
I would imagine that a list of DCII channel settings from all tiles would cover a lot of ground.
Even someone who uses the 4D to move the dish could take advantage of this technique. But we'd better have a complete list of all our dish position numbers first. That way, it would be easier to put a tile like G1 back where it belongs after playing around with it.
This wouldn't be a substitute for replacing/adding missing channels in the map. We'll still need 4play (or equivalant) for that. But this does open up more opportunities to tune in channels that aren't mapped on the tile for that position.
Cheers
You're right about the C/Ku not mattering because of the IF being the same. It's just hard to get used to thinking along those lines. But the IF is what really matters.
In fact, those who still have all the tiles & don't use the 4D to control position & polarity can take it one step farther. Any tile with DCII channels mapped could be tuned in any position. If one were to make up a list in ms excel that showed all the channel params, it could be sorted by freq (IF).
I would imagine that a list of DCII channel settings from all tiles would cover a lot of ground.
Even someone who uses the 4D to move the dish could take advantage of this technique. But we'd better have a complete list of all our dish position numbers first. That way, it would be easier to put a tile like G1 back where it belongs after playing around with it.
This wouldn't be a substitute for replacing/adding missing channels in the map. We'll still need 4play (or equivalant) for that. But this does open up more opportunities to tune in channels that aren't mapped on the tile for that position.
Cheers
Excel?
LOL, I actually started on a spreadsheet yesterday (open office though, since I like bill less than charlie) but got tired after the first 600 entries or so. I agree that 4 play is a much better solution if it gets off the ground since I seriously doubt that I'll ever find a map with service ID 151
Having said that, for me at least it's not really so much about actually watching the channels, more of the challenge in getting DG channels that the FTA receivers can't tune. Don't suppose you have any insight into what's up with that dang "tune" button by any chance?
LOL, I actually started on a spreadsheet yesterday (open office though, since I like bill less than charlie) but got tired after the first 600 entries or so. I agree that 4 play is a much better solution if it gets off the ground since I seriously doubt that I'll ever find a map with service ID 151
Having said that, for me at least it's not really so much about actually watching the channels, more of the challenge in getting DG channels that the FTA receivers can't tune. Don't suppose you have any insight into what's up with that dang "tune" button by any chance?
I've been watching ebay for a couple of weeks and it looks like people are beginning to "unload" their DSR922's. I think I'll buy one for experimentation rather than risk bricking my 922.
The dump is .bin file, there are many unknowns about this output. I can decipher some of it, and would be willing to modify it and upload to a spare box if I only had one. It amazes me that there are probably thousands just sitting around and people not willing to donate -1- box for testing purposes. I am not willing to test on my own box, for fear of losing generics, have done this in the past, but was able to "recover" by going to G1-3, which is no longer possible. So again, I ask if someone has a spare or unneeded dsr922 IRD, I am willing to reimburse all shipping charges if you send it to me for testing. You will be helping the entire community. And... I am willing to ship if back to you if that's what you want after all tests are complete.
I have an old brain dead 920 that I haven't used in years. It started having some video problems displaying bright scenes and I replaced it with a 922. I read somewhere that the problem could be defective capacitors, so I started replacing them. I guess I replaced one in circuit with the battery and the unit ID changed. I recently plugged it back in and it boots fine and shows analog fine. I got DCII lock on W5/X4 and got the new X4 maps. However, the ZK music channels don't work. I get US instead of ZK. Shouldn't a brain dead 920 work on ZK channels? I was thinking of messing with 4play again, but if it can't even do ZK, why bother.
Once the data is lost in the brain XC chip that is run by the battery the unit is toast as far as any DC-2. GI/Motorola in there great wisdom designed it like this because they figured it would prevent anyone tampering with the critical data contained in the brain. It has worked for them but not the consumer. They probably figured the life of the 4DTV would have been over years ago and most receivers battery's would have died of old age sitting in a closet.
4Play as the old program stands will not work with the maps or anything else. Motorola updated something someplace that render's garbage if you try to use it. This is why the new 4D Map Master team is working to fix the issues so we can get our pre 1/4 maps back. 4Play The Next Generation | 4D Map Master
4Play as the old program stands will not work with the maps or anything else. Motorola updated something someplace that render's garbage if you try to use it. This is why the new 4D Map Master team is working to fix the issues so we can get our pre 1/4 maps back. 4Play The Next Generation | 4D Map Master
Thanks for the info. This 920 is going back in the junk pile with the Primestar receiver, Pansat 100a, Spectrum Saver CLI, and Satcruisers.
If and when this happens, is this something that is only going to be useful if a MR takes place? Perhaps I'm missing the point, but I still have all the generics. But I don't see what good they're doing, since all the free chs I used to get, the ones I liked the most, these are now OC. If this 4D Map Master could get our access back to the free chs that are now OC , that would be a totally different story. But if not, then I don't see the point, unless one does a MR or something.
If your talking about the 4096 U channels they are not part of the 4160 universe. If you made a program do that to open up U from a different universe it would be a very grey area with Motorola I'm sure. Another senario would be to try to refresh working keys with a current active key to spoof 4096 U channels. I'm not saying it can't be done but then you would be hacking and that is frowned upon talking about at Satellite guys plus is illegal. We are not trying to circumvent any legal encryption system, U channels are encrypted with a special key. If you want that you will have to hack the DC-2 yourself since we are not going to do anything illegal. We want to assure that when you need to do a MR and all 4D's eventually need them you can recover. Actually I don't know if you know this but if the memory gets corrupted the 4D can do a MR by itself and your current maps are gone. Then your stuck with a brick, we are working on preventing this, plus some already were forced into bricks and would like to recover.
I never thought of it like that I guess. We definitely don't want to do any hacking of any kind. Thanks for explaining. Those chs that went OC, they are gone forever no doubt. Since I don't have a commercial receiver, I wonder if any of them can be tuned with one of those? As in legally of course.
No the commercial receivers won't get those channels, unless you can subscribe the box for them. They are nothing more than a glorified DC2 that can actually tune very little at a time. I know people liked things like NFL Net that was in U on 4096 (actually I think some uplink engineer did that so he could watch it at home free) But since the 4096 working keys cannot get updated anymore (since the consumer SAC 486 is probably in the dumpster now) there is no legal way to refresh with a current key that would open it up.
Last edited:
- Status
