Tvheadend

So some further updates now that the kids have gone out.

1) The Triax doesn't appear to like my passive multiswitch, removed it and went direct connection and had far more success in adding new channels.
2) The Triax doesn't appear to be able to power the LNB, turning of the sky receiver and unplugging the coax stops the satip unit from being able to get a signal. Leaving it for a while and then reconnecting the STB brings power back to the LNB and the unit can then lock on.
3) A number of transponders are still not being received, despite the PCIe DVB-S2 cards and Sky receiver being able to access them.

I'm wondering whether the inability for the unit to power the LNB is going to be the issue, can a powered multiswitch bring power to an LNB in the absence of STB supply?

Best thing to do in these situations is use one tuner only.

If your input can receive all freqs, I think you can get away with just one cable in the box, or so I've heard.

I've now dropped it to one cable only, on a dedicated drop from the LNB itself... Will see what happens. It was weird that as soon as the STB was switched off, the power to the LNB went and didn't reconnect itself... Also, with all the transponders I need running on the same polarity as the STB, I'm not sure why it couldn't scan a particular FTA transponder either... just kept failing.

For refernece, I booted up the old Dell R310 with the TBS cards in, got them running and it scanned all transponders with decent signal quality and strength, as well as running through the passive multiswitch etc.

I'll give it a few more weeks of tinkering and waiting for responses from Triax and others before deciding what to do with it :-(

DISCLAIMER: I'm in Europe and know that our standards occasionally differ to the US (i.e. LH and RH polarisation being back to front on ka LNBs) - not sure how they compare with New Zealand!

Regarding the LNB "not working" - Horizontal polarisation requires 18V and Vertical 15V - on my (non MKII) TSS400 I've noticed that on one of the LNB outputs that it seems to be a bit more temperamental than the others - e.g. scanning the Freesat home transponder 11425H would in-fact scan in services from 11426V. This was especially apparent when using a passive splitter (i.e. trying to share 3 cables between the four inputs with two of the inputs "linked" in TVH.

Trying that same LNB output on a FTA STB shows the same effect unless the cable is screwed on tight (and even then it occasionally drops to No Signal and back) - no big deal as we mainly use the Freesat box for the Catch Up Apps and PBS America (on 11426V!). Alas, looking at Lyngsat you've no Vertically Polarised transmissions to help you test.

(Both nominal frequencies - AIUI both are 11425.5 with the AGC coping with the slightly off centre frequency).

The other thing is I've found the Triax can be a bit fussy on some transponders - needing the Modulation and FEC set manually. For DVB-S2 it often wants the Pilot too. Once set up it's been working fine though.

To help with your Sanity disable the 2-4 tuners shown in TV Headend and only cable the TRIAX LNB-1 Input. You might find it's trying to use an uncabled input for the second transponder

e.g. on each of the yellow folders below the top Triax folder ensure the "Enabled" box is unticked.

Actually - just had another thought - have you by any chance connected to LNB1 V/L assuming that it will use Vertical Polarisation on all inputs?

If so the Triax might only be putting out 13V expected to be connected to a "Quattro" LNB (Not sure what you'd call these in NZ where you don't do 22kHz tone switching) - one cable always provides low band vertical, one cable always provides low band horizontal, one cable always provides high band vertical, and the final high band horizontal. A European Quad LNB will allow the receiver to switch between Horizontal and Vertical (and low/hi band) independently.

When connected to a regular Horizontal/Vertical switching LNB it may be stuck at Horizontal - or at a slightly higher voltage somewhere between Horizontal and Vertical leading to undesired effects.

Hi Kev, thanks for the replies.

New Zealand operates quite similarly to Europe except we only have 12 transponders on Optus D1 that are pointed in NZ's general direction and so we only need a single LOF for the LNB rather than the 22Khz switch on the universal to receive all channels. All of NZs channels are on the horizontal polarity and do not require switching to the vertical polarity. Only tuner 1 is connected with the other 3 disabled in TVH, same as your suggestion.

To give some cable context the whole system is setup as follows:

Quad 10750Mhz LNB (single LOF) > Output 1 > Sky NZ official STB
> Output 2 > 2 input (H/V) 4 output passive Diseqc compatible switch (proper switch and not just a splitter) > Dell R310, dual
TBS 6981 cards
> Output 3 > direct connection to Input 1 of the Triax TSS400
> Output 4 > No connection, not cabled.

So the issues

1) The LNB not being powered when either the STB or the Dell is switch off is an issue.. If that is down to the lack of voltage out of one of the tuners, that could obviously be an issue. Is there a simple way to check the voltage being sent?

2) Scanning of transponders is poor and doesn't complete on all of them, perhaps that could be linked to 1) above the passive switch is making it worse? Would a powered switch help here? I'll try entering transponder details manually in to TVH and see if that helps.

3) Quattro vs Quad - We don't use quattro here, as effectively each output is V/H compatible and we only have a single LOF. The Triax is set to Quad in the settings so unless there are some issues with the quad side I'm not sure if Voltage is an issue.

4) Errors - So when the triax does work, TVH produces endless amounts of continuity errors, in the 10,000s on scanning. This is clearly a tuner issue as the Dell with its PCIe cards is rock solid and doesn't have any problems.

I haven't gone live with my system yet as I'm waiting for my Mi Box Android TV unit to arrive to replace my cumbersome HTPC... Triax themselves are not even answering my email questions regarding the unit and the supplier doesn't have a clue... I can't really sent it back as shipping is expensive from NZ and it does actually work, I just can't sort out the connections correctly.

Anyway, thank you for the thoughts, any views on what I've written is appreciated.

Cheers

Chris

See point 4A first...

1. Can't help with the voltage - one possible test - Tune to 12483 V on the Triax, then through a passive splitter tune to 12483 HORIZONTAL. If the STB scans in channels you know it's working correctly (i.e. the Triax is sending enough voltage to switch it to vertical)

2. You're directly connected to the LNB from the Triax so shouldn't make any difference.

4. I wonder if the signal strength is a little on the low side (hard to compare 50% from one box to another but I've never had successful reception that low and the Triax does like a strong signal). That has reminded me of two things

4A. Login to the Triax unit, On the Diagnostic tab ensure the tuner is set to Dynamic and change the LNA settings - this was set to off on my unit - for the direct attached feeds I have mine set to 12dB and for the extended feed it's set to 16dB. This turns the internal Low Noise Amplifier on! When you then tune to a channel you'll also see some diagnostic information - "Signal locked: Strength -51dBm, Quality 15dB, BER 0x10-7 (average 0x10-7)" giving you an idea of what the signal that the Triax is seeing. The System Status tab gives you even more information.

4B. One of my three satellite feeds is actually extended by about 5 meters over where it ended and I've needed to use an Inline Satellite Amplifier on both an ancient Sky Digibox (circa 1999) and my Triax. My Freesat box copes without.

So in a general sense, the unit is now scanning the satellite and able to scan all transponders. I'm still getting errors like this:

2017-09-10 21:17:34.876 mpegts: disabling service SkyNZ/12421H/{PMT:0} [sid 26BA/9914] (missing in PAT/SDT)

which I do not get on the other machine with the pcie cards... but its scanning.

with 4A, I don't have any LNA settings, what is this and do you have a screen shot?

The LNA Settings - Remember mines the Mk1

Ok thanks, don't have that... I wonder what the differences are between the Mk1 and II? I'm going to see if I can source a DVB signal tester to check H/V voltages.

Looks like there isn't a single plugin solution that can read the voltage... Will have to go the multi-meter way with the case off and directly read the voltage from the outputs as they're tuning on the H polarity and see if they're sticking out 18v... The LNB 'could' be busted too as it probably has drifted away from the 10750mhz frequency due to age, heat etc. from the NZ environment... luckily the bloody big hole above us has pretty much closed!

Right so it might be starting to come good. Its scanned all the channel as above, created a new set of channels from the official SKY NZ HD bouquet so matches Sky box.... Now setup my OSCam access and currently watching Oz Supercars live in HD. Only one tuner connected so doing this gently.... From this stream I've only got 2 non-continuity errors which is so much lower than before...

Next question to deal with is signal strength/quality. Currently the Sat>IP interface is telling me that the strength is at 40% while the quality is at 100%. The PCIe cards are telling me that its 70% strength and 100% quality.. Same original Sky install cables and 4 way passive splitter is on the pci-e cards... Why the difference and does the strength really matter if quality is 100%?

Question 2) I need a 4 way split in order to feed the four tuners, lets assume high quality cables from the LNB to the Sat>IP unit, am I ok with a passive based splitter with V/H inputs or amplified? The distance is no more than 5m from the LNB so loss over cable shouldn't be an issue? When I tried the splitter, I had an issue with the tuners not locking which could have been a strength issue; would an amplified one help? If I was to go 8 or 12 tuners eventually, would I need an amplified splitter then?

I haven't focused on the LNB power yet as I want to deal with some of the other things first!

Thanks again for everyones help!