New QUAD LNB - advice needed

[zzmystique]

Have just had a new 90cm satelite dish put up, initially with a dual LNB.

Had so many problems getting it to work with my hauppauge hvr4000 and nova-s plus that i got it changed for a single LNB. The single LNB works but requires I use a loop through on a STB. I was trying to turn off my STB's, so not what i wanted at all.

Has anyone got sage working with a dual or quad LNB using either a hvr 4000 or a nova-s plus?

Would really appreciate some advice?

Thanks
Anne

[Lucas]

Anne,

can you clarify what you are trying to do. The purpose of dual and quad LNBs is to feed corresponding numbers of receivers.

I have a dual LNB which feeds 2 DVB-S cards in my SageTV server. To sageTV this looks like each DVB-S card has a single LNB each with its own dish pointing to the same sat.

For 4way LNBs clarify if it is a quad or a quatro.

A quad is 4 LNBs in one which is what we want whereas a quatro is 4 LNB each handling a specific frequency range and polarisation feeding a multiswitch for distribution installations.

With a quad, you have one dish pointing at your sat of choice and 4 coax cables from the LNB going to 4 DVB-S cards.

[Kiwi_Tim]

Hi Anne,

I'm down on the Kapiti Coast. I have not yet tried SageTV, but am thinking about it. I got around using a dual lnb by adding a splitter between the LNB and a DisEqC switch. So I now have 4 LNbs connected to two 4 port Diseqc switches via 4 splitters, which are then each connected to my 2 TV tuner cards. Mostly it works just fine, as I seldom need to access 2 channels on the same lnb that are of different polarizations.

A question for you: How do you find Sage TV with multiple tuner cards? I have XP Pro SP3 and am having trouble finding DVB software that works with multiple cards at the same time. Tried GBPVR and MediaPortal but could not get them to work with my set up (Nova-S-Plus, HVR-3000, WinTV-CI).

Many thanks,

Tim

[zzmystique]

Thanks for the responses guys.

I have been a SageTV user since version 2, have tried most of the others including GBPVR and MediaPortal, just to see if it still was the best and in my opinion without a doubt - it is. Multiple DVB-S cards do work well with sage, have been using it with 2 dvb-s card for a year or so.

My setup initially was a single dual throated LNB (sky), split 3 times. 2 for DVB-S cards and 1 for the SKY STB.

I had a second dish installed as I wanted to separate the freeview from the sky, add more dvb-s cards and to setup another pc for me to experiment with. (My family were also getting frustrated with my constant tinkering)

The strange issue I experienced was with the new dual LNB is that sagetv/dvbe4sage couldn't change between frequency ranges, it could change to vertical but not change back to horizontal - so would get stuck. I am guessing that the cards weren't sending the 22ghz signal to the LNB. The only way round it was to use the loop through on a STB which was capable of changing between the ranges. (capable but not actually do it)

Could anyone recommend a dual or quad LNB (preferably quad) that is known to work with sagetv and both the hauppauge hvr4000 and nova-s plus.

If I split the signal should i use a splitter with all power ports passed or one power port pass and the rest passive?

Ideally I would like a quad lnb using one feed per card no splits and no DisEqC switches.

Thanks

[houliNZ]

zzMystique,

I understand where you are at. The problem appears that the new Sky installations are using the quad LNB with two single wires coming into the Sky STB. I'm assuming they are doing this with a view to supporting Optus D2 (launched behind C1) because it has HUGE capacity and will likely take the majority of HD TV we get here in NZ.

So the million dollar question is how are they doing this. From what I can understand, the actual quad LNB has 4 seperate LNB's and some switching built in using the 22Khz tone. So I understand your desire not have a DisEqC switch but I think its been thrust upon you anyway.

My answer
- use my own dishes and LNB's (leave sky alone)
- use a multiport DisEqC switch (4 in and 4 out)
- bring the feeds in through HVR4000's and LAN based STB's

Having said that, I can't get SageTV (6.6) to recognise the DVB-S capabilities of the HVR4000 card in Win7 Ent 64 bit

[Lucas]

Originally Posted by zzmystique

Could anyone recommend a dual or quad LNB (preferably quad) that is known to work with sagetv and both the hauppauge hvr4000 and nova-s plus.

You must be pointing at Optus 160 East. I see that it has transponders from 12.331 to 12.734 GHz.

Any dual or quad lnb of the universal variety should do. You would always be using the high band(11.7 - 12.7) on these anyway.

Something like this should work:

http://www.dvbshop.net/product_info....ium-0-2dB.html

This is from a sat-shop in Germany. They do ship worldwide. I couldn't find anything in your neck of the woods

This should get the signal to your cards. In sagetv it's fairly straight forward to configure this.

Your biggest challenge, if you want to watch the encrypted channels of Sky NZ, would be to use a CAM for the Sky videoguard card. But I guess, you already know how to do this.

You DVB cards(if they have CAM/CI) may not be supported by SageTV.

[Lucas]

You should also read this thread

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28147

for tips on how to get your existing LNBs working with SageTV since they may not be of the Universal variety.