I'm in Australia and got one of these digital satellite PCI cards last week (Nov 2003) for $219 delivered. I'm still unable to get it to receive anything, but I'm making progress so I thought I'd start a thread to make my life and others a little easier. As well as the AverTV DVB-S, I also got myself all the basics I'm going to need to get started. 65cm Ku Offset Dish $65, Universal LNB $30, Wall Mount for dish $30, 30 Metres RG6 Quad Cable $25, 6 Twist-On RG6 Connectors $0.60 each, Wall Plate with 2 sockets $10, Satellite Finder (needle meter & audio) $78, To find my co-ords, I used a world atlas cdrom and zoomed in to an intersection of 2 roads near me. To find the co-ords of the satellites near me I went to this website; http://www.satsig.net/ssazelm.htm It has a great calculator, which you can save legally, and a photo of the satellite finder I got, if your in the southern hemisphere like me, swap the magnetic north & true north answers around. Assembling and mounting the dish was easy. But that's about where my luck has run out. I'm fairly confident I've correctly lined up a satellite, the finder does all the right things but the AverTV DVB-S doesn't. This is probably my fault, but the software doesn't make life easy. You have to select your satellite from an incomplete list. I'm after 3 Optus satellites B1, C1 & B3. The Aver software doesn't have C1 on their list and has B3 listed at it's co-ords instead. There seems to be no provision to change this either. I'm not entirely sure which satellite I've lined up, it's too far west to be one I just mentioned. So if anyone can help me out or has any useful info about the AverTV DVB-S, please post here.
Your satellite finder meter should peak up each time you move the dish past a satellite. Simple satellite meters just measure power, so it is easy to line up on the wrong satellite. The azimuth angles, relative to true north and magnetic north should work OK in the southern hemisphere. So, if you have magnetic compass use the magnetic bearing as it is. If you can work out how to set the tuning frequency and symbol rate on the PCI card you have some hope of it locking up on the wanted signal successfully. It may take several seconds to lock up, so be patient. For each satellite it will be necessary to rotate the feed to optimise the polarisation. If you accidentally start with the feed wrong by 45 deg, then inteference between the signals on both polarisations will make any reception impossible. Turning 45 deg will clean up both two signals from each other. With a universal LNB you probably need to set the PCI card to tell the LNB which polarisation to use and what block frequency band to use. If you still have problems send me an email at eric@satsig.net Good luck, Eric.
Yep, my mistake the calculator does work fine. I see i did some subtracting from 360 and messed something up._X_X_X_X_X_[small]http://mp4.iwarp.com[/small]
I was looking at a diagram which showed magnetic north west of true north, but if you turn the globe around it becomes east of true north. Silly me. Thanks very much for correcting me, it could explain a lot of things.
Okay, I know where true north is now! The software that came with the AverTV DVB-S lets you specify the frequency range for the LNB and select the satellite you want from a list. I found a little piece of compatible software here; http://www.progdvb.com/ which does a little more, it lets you specify polarisation, frequency and symbol rate. To find out what settings needed I visited; http://www.lyngsat.com/asia.shtml you still have to select the satellite from a list which lacks many of the ones listed at lyngsat. Moving my dish around today I'm certain I found 3 satellites (in different locations), but still no picture, maybe I'm aiming at satellites not listed in the software, the satellite finder needle peaks and makes noise whereby I turn the dial on it down a little so I can find the optimum position, then I go back to my PC, enter what I believe are the correct settings for the most likely candidate(s), press the scan button, wait and nothing. I'll try and find some different satellites tomorrow, unless I'm aiming at unlisted sats I have no idea what I'm doing wrong.
Well I reckon I must have been aiming my dish at one of the many unlisted satellites. Today I finally lined up Optus C1, selected Optus B3 from the software list and it all worked, kind of anyway. I run the Aver wizard and it fails to lock on to any of the free-to-air stuff but it does lock onto one called Austar/Foxtel Package and one called Optus Aurora Package, unfortunately these don't offer much free-to-air. Currently I can look at a black screen on a channel called C1T20 or I can look at a picture of waterfalls on a radio channel (ABC FM SA), but I can't hear any sound. Here is a list of all the stuff on C1; http://www.lyngsat.com/optusc1.shtml There's lots of free-to-air stuff, but for some reason I'm still not getting it.
Aiming my dish at Optus C1 I was getting TV on C1T20 today, "an important notice from Austar & Foxtel" basically some guy talking about how pirates cost consumers money. The picture is great, software decoding and using the TV out on my video card to send the picture to my TV. Recording is sweet also no frames dropped. So at least I know it can work. Getting the FTA channels is still a bit of mystery. I've had my dish on Optus B3 and Panam 8 also but the FTA TV channels the Aver wizard finds when I scan for channels are still all blank and the radio channels on the Optus satellites are displaying the waterfall photo.
Well I haven't changed anything since yesterday, but today I turned on my computer, ran the Aver wizard and I'm getting 14 TV channels and 16 radio channels all coming through beautifully. I'm aimed at Optus B3 for more info click below; http://www.lyngsat.com/optusb3.shtml Special Thanks to Eric Johnston (my apologies for posting totally inaccurate, not fully thought through information). http://www.satsig.net/ and all the lads at http://groups.google.com.au/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=alt.satellite.tv.australasia So the AverTV DVB-S is fantastic once you get setup. If you've already got a dish setup and you know what your aimed at, installing the AverTV DVB-S should be as simple as installing a PCI card. If like me, you don't and you install your own dish it might be a little more difficult but you'll get there eventually. Read what Eric said, he summed up all the problems I had in one go. One last thing, I can't make ProgDVB work and the best way to find channels on the sat your aimed at is by using the Aver wizard. http://mp4.iwarp.com
Well, that didn't last long. Under XP I kept getting the blank screens again, no picture at all. I have Win Server 2003 installed on a separate partition and the AverTV is working under that except I have no video overlay support, so the picture is seriously degraded. I've just done a fresh install of XP with SP1 and DirectX9b, the AverTV is now once again working under XP, but occasionally crashes my system. So, if you keep getting blank screens but you think your dish and everything is setup ok, try doing a fresh install of your OS, it could save you a lot of headaches.
I think the crashes were when the screen saver came on. The last time my screen saver came on my computer froze, I turned off the screen saver and haven't had any serious problems since. It looks like it was all worth while in the end. One good value piece of hardware.
