Random chat, Lamedb confusion, 10 bit H.265, Multistream what?, DVB ts streamer apps, and utter geekery.

[ArloG]

Mid winter free time and side interests compels me to finally ask. Google hasn't been a great friend lately.

1: The lamedb thread kind of went stagnant here. A discussion on Satelliteguys on the NOAAPORT transponder on 89W Galaxy 28 4040V got me interested.
Using the sat charts and trying to get a lock is spotty at the least. I can use my osmio4k to scan the tp. But a channel scan gives nothing obviously. It's a data channel.

If my dish needs a tweak to fine tune it for a lock, I'm sol. I don't have a signal meter. Hauling a receive outside with monitor and extension cord across the tundra is not an option.
Phone apps which I've always used wont work because they simply don't let you tune a tp unless a channel is mapped.

I haven't figured out how to get dvbsnoop to stream a continuous signal reading when I use the Signal Finder in setup on my receiver.
Sat charts give little of the tp info. But.....
A blindscan does. Frequency discrepencies and all.

<transponder frequency="4038000" symbol_rate="30002000" polarization="1" fec_inner="0" system="1" modulation="5" is_id="18" pls_code="1" pls_mode="0" />

Cool, right? Dvbsnoop gives me pid info. If i knew more about how to use it I might even get enough to build a channel in an editor. I use E-Channelizer. Tried Dreamboxedit.
But. Everything gets quite fuzzy after that. Understanding multistream heads me to the Advil.
How in the heck would I build a lamedb entry with transponder information if it's not radio or tv?
Which brings us to.....

2: I've signed up with NOAA for data access. It's kind of cool. I've been catching APT sats and grabbing images since I got my first SDR and bent a QFH antenna. For years.
Then made an L band patch antenna and used a spare dn dish to grab GOES images.
(Oh yeah. When you bounce a circularly polarized signal off of a dish, you gotta' build your antenna to reverse the polarity).

This morning I read how to get tp pids' using dvbsnoop. Then got it to stream raw data to my pc using putty.
A little Wireshark and a filter for the mio4k's IP and trying different pid's got some interesting data streaming.

It appears that data streaming in packets with pauses may be why Signal Finder shows a lock, then no lock. When there is a long stream of data showing on dvbsnoop, signal is locked at 90%. then it just.....poofs....for several seconds. Data pauses and catches up where it left off. From what I can see.
My first rodeo on this stuff.

There are several Novra IP dvb-s receivers on eBay right now. DVB-S2 is now recommended for the best experience. I understand that I can use a Twinhan, TBS card to capture 89W NOAA data and send it to the pc software.
DVB-S2 is now recommended by NOAA and those eBay Novra ip>data receivers are a bit pricey and are the TBS DVB-S2 cards for me right now.

Anyways. So It appears that the Novra receivers (and others) take pis'd like 0x066, 0x067, 0x068 (for example only) and turn them into an IP address and port assignment and
send the data out of the LAN port. The pc software is tuned to grab the several IP address packets and insert it into usable GUI format such as general info, bulletins, images, etc.
Cool!
Which brings me to.

3: The Webif lets you watch your receiver on a pc. You can't do a lot with it or get info about the channel you're watching unless you use something like VLC.

I've tried a few of the ts reader apps in the past with little or no user joy. I'm under the impression that all of them are designed for an internal DVB tuner card.

Yesterday I tried out TSReader and ProDVB. Not for long. Tried to get my channel list into them from the mio. Got channels to play in them as long as the mio was tuned on the the same transponder.
Even managed to get NASA UHD to play brilliantly. More on that too.
A channel scan turned up zilch using them. Trying to display channel data didn't work out so well.

Do ANY of the DVB programs actually work with an external receiver like the osmio4k and the like receivers? That has confused me for a long time.
What next? Oh, yeah.

4: There aren't really many FTA 4K UHD programs on. So NASA UHD on 127W went to 10 bit H.265 'something'. And it so far will only play on a PC, and Android device whether Fire TV or in the case of a TV. My Sony Bravia Android. Yeah. It's only one channel so no biggie that the mio4k (and others) won't display on a TV directly.

But. If a silly codec is all that is needed to make VLC and other media applications work on external devices. What gives?
Satellite receiver drivers I 'kinda get'. in the case of a blindscan.

"Lets spit the tuner a sweeping voltage until it grabs a signal on a frequency."|
"Once we detect a spike in signal lets then stop and examine the parameters of the signal and it's content"
"If it's valid for our purpose, let's log it first as information in a file (satellites.xml) and if the dude on the outside wants us to let's proceed with finding out if there is a TV or radio channel contained in it."
Then, so he doesn't have to bug us again, lets log the channel information in another file (lamedb).

That I get. What I don't is that I see packages mentioning gstreamer in updates and package list do-dads.
So I don't have a block diagram of how out receivers work.
Do we tune a signal, the processor does all of the work, and feeds it out to a port like HDMI to our display?
Or does the processor get the signal. Do a bit of manipulation to it then send it to another program running internally like gstreamer?

I mean. We have Windows, Mac, Linux with Gnome and KDE. If all it takes to get a media file to play and display on screen and speakers. Is a stupid little piece of software called a....codec.
What gives?

I saw El's (or is it EB) reply on the openatv forum this morning. I guess I just don't get if the receiver itself is doing audio/video decoding or if an additional program is doing the work.

Oh one other thing. The forums here are hard as hell to catch up on. Latest posts on the right is cool. It's very difficult to catch up on the latest gossip. Like looking for latest posts in the navigation option is kind of....dead. What's New kind of isn't.

Anyone? Be nice now!

Save paper. If you do print this, at least make sure you at least have a Parakeet or new puppy

 

[el bandido]

1. I think you will find any receivable transponder can be assigned a fake or dummy channel to use for dish adjustment. A correctly set dish should not really need such as fine tuning the weakest receivable transponder would automatically give the rest of the transponders the dish antenna is capable of receiving. Most C band dishes used in fta satellite systems will be 30-40 years old, and have some sort of warp-age or deformities that were not present when the dish was new. LNB Skew and the correct setting of the lnb are also important, but are usually not too precisely set in fta system. These are some of the reasons why a dish has to be moved or adjusted a bit to get different transponders on a single satellite. Anyway, a dummy channel on a transponder of interest should not be hard to do.

2. A plugin can be built that will allow different services besides satellite tv and radio to be received and played. One example is the Software Defined Radio (SDR) that was created by the SatDreamGr team a few years ago. I have used this plugin to tune local Atlanta radio station, and also to tune police, fire and ham radio repeaters on the 2 meter band using the Edision fta receivers. So you have to go outside lamedb if you want other services, but it is "doable".

3. WebIf is for satellite tv and radio. It was really designed for that and nothing more. The programs you mention are for cards and will not work well (if any) with fta receivers that have internal tuners. You may have some success with a fta receiver by gutting the Linux operating system to the point where these programs think it is a card. But just buying a decent card would be easier if you actually need what these programs provide.

Seems the format on the uhd channel for NASA has changed. What changed or what is different varies, depending on what you read. But something changed. Enigma2 images such as OpenPLi and OpenATV only provide a basic interface with features for the fta receiver's internal tuners. Anything that has to do with tuning of a particular service is the job of the receiver manufacturer. There are exceptions to this, but pretty much a tuning problem is a manufacturers problem.

A couple of suggestions if you want to get more serious about other satellite services would be to invest in a good pair of lnbs and ditch the lnbf's. The easiest way to get more signal in the fta world is to get a bigger dish, providing it is in good working order when it is installed. A pair of good lnbs will give better sensitivity, and more precise tuning when compared to lnbf's. But a good pair of lnbs will cost a bit and a feed will also need to be purchased. LNBf scalar rings are usually cut for 6-7 GHz when our satellite bands run from 3.7 to 4.8 GHz. How much the cheap scalar rings effect the signal is debatable, but a correctly designed scalar ring Is Important for more than one reason!

The second area of concern is the coax feed. Many fta systems are fed using coax purchased form WalMart, Home Depot or similar cheap outfit. Good coax costs money, and you get what you pay for. You can expect a length of RG11 to have a better noise figure than a smaller coax. The noise figure in a satellite antenna system consists of several things such as dish, lnb, and coax feed.

Also, ditch the Windows Operating system and focus on Linux. Almost all of this stuff is Linux based or Linux driven. Ubuntu is a good one to learn, but others are available. Washers, Driers, Refrigerators, and many other things we use everyday are powered by Linux. I doubt you find a refrigerator that uses a Windows operating system, but one may exist. All of my computers are dual boot as there are things Windows is needed for. But it is a heck of a lot easier to run some of this stuff if you have a Linux operating system.

As for what the tuners do and how they do it, read. There is a lot of information online, but you have to hunt it. And reading it can be boring.
Here is a Google Example: https://www.google.com/search?q=sat...IAbADkgEDMC40mAEAoAEByAEIwAEB&sclient=gws-wiz

 

[el bandido]

For the NASA problem,
Edision MIO receivers use a decoding chipset made by Broadcom. Broadcom has excellent products in the commercial world, but the same cannot be said for fta products. It has been suggested that Broadcom may leave the fta market and only provide commercial services. At any rate, Broadcom is a poor performer in fta products.

Once the chip shortage ends, you will probably see many new fta receivers using the HiSilicon chipset instead of Broadcom. These chipsets seem to have better features and performance in the fta world as compared to Broadcom. Case In Point: HiSilicon receivers are able to "see" the Nasa UHD channel without issues. Receivers Sf8008 and PULSe 4K have no issues receiving the new NASA UHD channel, but almost all if not all Broadcom chipped receivers are having problems with the current UHD NASA channel.

HiSilicon chipped receivers are not perfect and most fta receivers with this chipset could use some work. But most likely, HiSilicon chipped receivers will be the norm in new fta receivers for the foreseeable future. New Broadom chipped fta receivers will probably be hard to find or disappear altogether. We sill see...

 

[ArloG]

Because electronics is my forte. I believe that even Broadcom chipsets would do more if the manufacturer's software developers had access to source code.
In other words. And I may be wrong because you had a direct involvement with the tuner drivers for the Edision AVL tuners.
In the FTA world there must be a lot of "Back Door" swapping of non disclosure documentation.
Broadcom offers source code for may of their chipsets. Take routers for example. Tons of different flavors of firmware for them. Even the VPN vendors offer their own firmware for them.

But look up a data sheet for any of their DVB chips and all you get is a photo and a rundown of how great they are. A product brief.
Granted the Edision Osmio series is the cat's ass for the USA market I believe. And they must have sold good here. Plus as you know, as well as I do for the tuner issues. They respond quickly to folks like us who ask "can we please?". And ask for a report on how a modification performs.

So. In the case of the Osmio series. I wonder if it is 10 bit capable but at the time the software writers coded for it. It wasn't a consideration.
Or if 10 bit is just one step beyond what the chipset is capable of.

(oops didn't mean to hit the KMA button. lol)

 

[el bandido]

With fta receivers, you usually have one manufacturer and several distributors. Octagon for example is a distributor. Someone else actually makes the receiver and puts Octagon name on it. This is why you get several receivers that are almost identical. Octagon sf8008, Gigablue Trio, Ustym 4K pro...etc are all the same receivers with different names. Octagon again as an example, can ask the manufacturer to fix something or change something. The manufacturer may then supply the requested changes directly to Octagon or make the changes available to every receiver in the distribution group.

Anyway, the answer(s) you are looking for will be with the 72604 chip information. I doubt you find any useful information on it.
Here is a snippet from osmio4kplus.conf:
#@TYPE: Machine
#@NAME: Edision OS mio+ 4k
#@DESCRIPTION: Machine configuration for the Edision OS mio+ 4k

CHIPSET = "bcm72604"

Pretty much, it was a "given" that Hiilicon receivers would outperform Broadcom in certain areas. Looks like the NASA UHD is one of those areas. Give it a couple of weeks to see if a solution for the MIO appears. Also, is the UHD channel problem 10 bit or however many bits or is the problem 60 frames per second? Or is the problem something else??? If you know the correct answer, then how did you derive it? In a way, I think the actual cause of the UHD problem is somewhat of a mystery. Yes, someone knows, but not us.

The fta market is set to be flooded with Hisilicon chip receivers in the next few months. These receivers can be expected to all have the same bugs and performance issues because they are from the same manufacturer that is selling to different distributors. Watch and see...PULSE4K, HD66SE, Qviart Dual 4K, Maxytec MultiboxSE...etc.

 

[ArloG]

I really didn't derive much. A little reading. I guess I could hit NASA up directly and ask. NOAA has been pretty friendly to me, which is cool.
Chips without a pinout or functional description in "my world" are a bit. I don't know. Like your neighborhood iWhatever fixit guy. Test resistors and capacitors until you find a failed one and replace it.
And let's face it. When the OSMIO was released, the Broadcom chipset was way older than that. By years.
Anyway. VLC gives me this. Not that it makes 100% sense to me. But still.

There's more. I'll do a little bit of dvbsnoopin' and get a list of pids for 89W NASA tp. Lamedb is really hard to grasp to build a channel that you know info for but "isn't there".
Take a tangential view. A channel that broadcasts only once every day randomly. You have signal finder looking at a normally off tp. It becomes alive and the broadcast starts.
By the time you get to scan it. It's off air. Dvbsnoop was monitoring the traffic and you have the info in a file ready for you with all aspects of it.
Build a channel, record it like a 7-11 surveillance camera. Go to work. Come home. Zip through the recording and find the 3 minute transmission of Greg Duzledorf picking his nose before giving the daily winning lotto ticket numbers hot off the press.

 

[lme]

"Lamedb is really hard to grasp to build a channel that you know info for but "isn't there"."
With Dreamset (2413 is latest, latest version!), you can alter/change Lamedb in any ways you want.
I did on 89w/4040v, what you want to do: manually added the tp on the tps area, and the channel NOAA with all the info from here:

But as you said being a data ch is not to much i can do for scanning.

hope this will do any help for you.

 

[ArloG]

"Lamedb is really hard to grasp to build a channel that you know info for but "isn't there"."
With Dreamset (2413 is latest, latest version!), you can alter/change Lamedb in any ways you want.
I did on 89w/4040v, what you want to do: manually added the tp on the tps area, and the channel NOAA with all the info from here:
View attachment 17446
But as you said being a data ch is not to much i can do for scanning.
View attachment 17447
hope this will do any help for you.

Hey Thanks!
I breezed over this last night and said wow.
Because knowing the info in your images was something I did have. The 'brakes' got put on when I got to the Reference line.
Thought it was something that needed 'built' instead of just putting in the tp information. I've been using E-Channelizer.
Of course assuming that the reference line was also needed to make the lamedb entry, things got balky for me. A bit confusing.
Certainly will give it a whirl.

There are multiple SID's on this transponder. Having one hell of a time learning and understandng multicasting and getting it to stream the SID data stream over Ethernet and multicast I.P./Port.
Reason being is the portion of the external pc application called Data Ingestion that receives the multicast data from the receiver depends on those I.P. / Ports.

Yeah. It would be so much easier to just go to eBay and buy a dedicated decommissioned DVB-S2 receiver that was used for this purpose. The IDC Novra receivers.
Or other IP data receivers. Such as those from International Datacasting that are functional pulls. I've even gotten a bit of info from IDC on the different receivers.
They would like to sell me a new one. Which is WAY out of my budget.
What sucks? Passwords set on the used units.
The eBay vendors verify that they do turn on. But when I ask them to power one on and see if they can cycle through the menus. Sure enough. Password prompt.
That's on the ones with a front panel display. Models with terminal or GUI interfaces over Ethernet.....too much for them to handle. But, "They Turn On".

And IDC? No factory reset and so far no reload the firmware and start from scratch. Unless I'm the original owner. No support. Even from asking if it cost me support fees.
Crap!

Still trying though.

 

[ArloG]

I'm back. Good or bad. Next inquiry. Multistream.
I'm guessing that the multistream transponders we can get are all encrypted. And that's all good.
But...
It's a spotty and not-so-clear covered subject. I've searched. Running OpenViX right now. And doing tons of blind scans, adding tp's to my xml.
I've skipped adding the multistream ones because, well, I have no clue what to do when one is added.
Like, well for example:
121W 3979V 32729 FEC Auto DVB-S2 QPSK MIS 1.
That's how it shows in a blindscan result. I guess the good old Titanium C2W is showing some drift. Or the Osmio4k.

Granted. Some scans pull in DCII channels and other encrypted ones. Sometimes not. Some only show the tp, SID in the channel list. Sometimes the correct name.
So Lyngsat, and the fat man's charts come in handy. I keep the DCII channels because they sometimes go itc for promo week. They just get pushed around in the channel editor and FTA channels are listed in order. You get it.

ViX has a MIS/PLS LCN Scan function in Tuners & Scanning. Provider is listed as Italia MIS SW and the other Fransat MIS 5W.
Nothing is documented that I can find about updating or "massaging" the listing. What about that? is there a provider listing for the USA? What about importing one if there is? And absolutely nothing found on how to use the scan. Is it for the whole satellite you're currently on? Clueless.

Just really interested. If the multistream channels were to go ITC occasionally. Still nothing on how to find what channels are in them. Or the configuration "how-to".
I suspect that there would be more than one.
Does TNAP do 'something different', or better, or assist in finding what channels are in a ms tp?.
Or is multistream capability in our receivers like a 1920's radio with 47 knobs and only 3 actually do something?
Links would be cool. A conversation of how to get my feet wet would be better.
Good questions?

 

[el bandido]

DVB-S2 Multistream is not normally used for North America fta or encrypted satellite channels.
The website shown below gives a good idea of what multi-stream is:

Multistream is a main advantage of the DVB-S2 standard that allows users to aggregate a number of independent transport streams or IP streams into one satellite carrier in a fully transparent manner, maintaining the integrity of the original content.

At the transmit side, the individual input streams are divided in User Packets. The User Packets of one stream are all part of baseband frames which have the same Input Stream Identifier (ISI) in their header. The baseband frames of all streams are merged and transmitted after encoding.

At the receive side, streams are reconstructed by separation based upon the ISI values in the baseband headers.

https://www.idirect.net/products/multistream/
More information about multis-tream may be found by searching the internet.

Transponders found in a blindscan are automatically saved in the /tmp folder of the receiver files (see attached). These transponders may be added directly to the satellites.xml file if you have a reason for wanting to do that.

TNAP images provide a detailed scan report and list all of the channels or services that were found (see attached). These scan reports are made after a blindscan or service scan. The default location for this file is also /tmp, but there are other places they may be stored if the user desires.

Any MIS/PLS LCN Scan function would not be useful for North America because there are few if any services that are on transponders setup like this. Multi-stream is used some in North America for data services. Shown below is a screencap of some of the multi-stream listings for Europe.

A receiver capable of blindscanning multi-stream transponders should also find or scan any services on these transponders that would be video or audio. This is not "etched in stone" as pretty much anything is possible. You are welcome to post any multi-stream transponders that contain video or audio, but I doubt you find any above 61w. today or in the near future.

 

[ArloG]

Here's an interesting one. At one time in the past I found actual satellites.xml formatting info.
Doing not exactly an exhausting search came up with nothing. Sites with make-a-xml, the Russian site with Saturn in your face.
But "hey dude, here's how to and why the format is what it is". Fuhgedditaboutit.

If I had a dvb card. And that opens a whole can of beans as to which one to pick. That does a very thorough blindscan. 1 or 2 ports. And most importantly does what it's advertised to do. Most every format handled. Most is not all of the acronyms (CCM / VCM / ACM) supported. And isn't dated like the beloved osmio series. Which I find is a dandy receiver.

But. Also. A question comes up. DVB cards are supported by Linux and Windows. Supposedly it's hinted to get all of the "gook" from a transport stream in a GUI you need a card.
Dvbsnoop is pretty cool if you're good with command line. Looking at some of the programs such as TSReader and ProgDVB. Which "want" to use a card. There are options to use a TCP/IP stream from a STB like the mio. Config dialogs are crazy. Getting satellite info and pid's imported, even after online xml>csv file conversions and such. No joy so far.
Perhaps enroll in a university course?
IF the Linux/E2 world had a BDA driver fork available. Life may be easier. I mean. Streaming to a PC and to VLC and then to your display du jour is easy enough. To get those channels that the mio and others simply can't handle. Maybe there is a way or application that plays nice to display what's in a transport stream without recording it first.
But then again. You have to have a channel in the first place to record. Right?

Oh.Yeah. I was in a conversation with a guy having signal comparison "issues" with his osmio4k. His dish is a little smaller than mine. So with the same TS C2W lnbf that I also have his signal strengths were a bit lower. But then he showed me screen shots of the same ViX signal meter on his VU+ (something) receiver. Moly mackerel! Quite a bit "hotter".
And he touted that no matter the image he had on the VU+. It blind scanned tons better than the mio. And had no trouble with tp's spaced 2 MHz apart. With ANY image.
I called bs. He proved me wrong. Pluggable tuners. We're stuck with a soldered in one or using an external USB tuner.
I was pondering getting a VU+ at some time in the past. But, correct me if I'm repeating myself, nobody could give me tuner, or tuners choice. Or rate the blind scan capability of the receiver(s). And from reading all over. The VU+ receivers did a crappy job of blind scanning. I guess that dude set me straight. Unless he's a good image editor.

I'd like to get right down in a transport stream content. Just because. I really want to grab the NOAA data on 89W 4040V. So far my mio signal meter goes nuts when I zero in on it. Even though the signal covers the US and TVRO charts say 80%. I can klunk around with dvbsnoop and sniff the pids for data streams. Some are in plain text.
I have the full PAVE package and NOAA credentials that I applied for. Yeah. I'm an electronics nut and a ham radio guy.

 

[el bandido]

Looks like the satellite transponders you attached for 95w-ku are data garbage. Any channels or services you get out of that mess will probably not work and will be missing pids when you check them individually. Typical data garbage or tuner garbage, whichever the case may be.

DVB cards are not the great things they are advertised to be. Yes, there are some things that can only be logged with a card, but for watching tv or listening to radio, a card has little if any advantages when compared to some of the newer fta receivers.. It is not uncommon for a card blind scan to take 20 minutes, and it is not uncommon for cards to have bugs that are not fixed due to poor support from the manufacturer. Try one for yourself so you can experience the card feeling. You may enjoy it!

Around 10 years ago, cards in general had some tv channel advantages over most fta receivers. Starting around 2016, improvements in fta receiver tuners closed the gap, and cards lost most if not all of their advantage to watching tv. Things like transport stream analysis still has to be done with a card for the most part, but stream analysis is not very useful for the average fta person.

Vu+ is currently dead as a fta receiver company. I have Vu+ Duo2 (4 internal tuners), Vu+ Zero, and Vu+ Zero 4K. The Zero 4K was the last fta receiver that VU+ produced with a somewhat working DVB-S2 blindscan. The idiots that coded the Zero 4K blindscan left out 22KHz tone control which made blindscanning with universal lnb nearly impossible. The c band blindscan worked pretty well in the Zero 4K, but it is not nearly as good as the MIO receivers or even the Octagon SF8008.

Tuner signal values in fta receivers may be manipulated to read anything a person wants. Vu+ only had concerns for subscription services and did not give a rat's ass about fta services. So things like DVB blind scan and transponder signal strength levels either did not work at all or did not work correctly. But don't take my word for it. Buy a fabulous VU+ receiver for yourself and enjoy the experience!!! They make great subscription boxes.

I would agree the MIO receivers are dated, but they still work very well. Unfortunately, there was a thing called a Pandemic back in 2020 that ended up causing a chip shortage. The chip shortage still exists, and Broadcom seems to have left the fta market completely.

The only new fta products released since 2020 have more or less been repacked products that were released some years ago. For example, the AB-COM PULSe4K fta receiver that was released recently is nothing more than a repackage of a 2015-2016 receiver. FTA Cards are in similar shape. There may be some new products in 2023 that are not outright repacked units, but it will be most likely 2024 or even 2025 before the chips return to a pre-pandemic level.

 

[el bandido]

Below is a link to a thread at Rick's showing DVB cards do have problems with simple things sometimes.

https://rickcaylor.websitetoolbox.com/post/cbs-testing-hevc-11818703?&trail=90