jamesjay
23-03-2010, 02:35 AM
There aren’t many post for the premium plus yet...so I thought I would give my findings based on my reasons for buying the receiver, firstly I wanted a 4.2.2 receiver for Badminton tournaments that are not covered by UK Satellite providers, they are nearly always transmitted via a 4.2.2 feed, the premium plus does not disappoint when used for this purpose. My second reason was for feed-hunting but with the present software and problems when attached to my DiSEqC positioner it is not so good.
I have 2 tuners in my premium plus and my intention was to use it via the loop out of a Technomate 6900 super+ but it seems to have problems being used as slave unit or even the master in a multi-receiver setup. I use a Gbox V3000 positioner and the premium plus doesn't like being attached to it, surprisingly I used the earlier standard premium which was fully compatible with DiSEqC 1.2 commands but the plus is not, it is more than likely a software issue, but it could also be a compatibility issue with the Gbox, so another make of positioner could work more reliably.
Even when using the plus as a standalone receiver something is not quite right when I connect the receiver cable from the Gbox to the plus, the Gbox is automatically turned on (Sat position illuminated), even when you put the plus into standby mode the Gbox stays on, I need to disconnect the Lnb cable from the plus to get the Gbox to go into standby, I have tried various setups, settings, and connection methods and none have worked. Another example is that I programmed into the plus 8 Sat’s that are good for feeds, but the plus lost them without any logical reason when being used as a standalone receiver, maybe another Gbox issue.
There is another problem when using the 2 tuners, my LNB is a single output universal and I am using the loop from tuner A into tuner B, when I tuned into BBC World News on Hotbird with both tuners, the A tuner was showing a 99% signal quality while the B tuner showed 68%, if I tune A into a different transponder with the same polarization in this case (V) you lose BBC World on the B tuner, but if you tune A into a (H) polarization transponder you get BBC World News back on B, but the B tuner was still showing a 30% loss of signal. I have done the above test on a number of transponders on various Sat’s and strangely some transponders work and others don’t, but I nearly always lose about 30% of signal quality on tuner B. Obviously if you were using a twin output Lnb then the results may well be different.
It appears to me that the blind scan is not much use in its present form because it should have a Maximum Symbol Rate not a Minimum, a large amount of feeds are below 7000, and in order to scan a number of Sat positions quickly to look for feeds, you need to have better control over the Symbol Rate at the lower threshold, an example would be if you were looking for say a football feed, by the time you had scanned all the usual Sat’s the feed would be over, therefore it would be far quicker to go to a feed-hunting site rather than trying to find the feed yourself.
I am not trying to put people off the premium plus just reporting my findings, it would have been nice to be able to scan for my own Badminton and sports feed, but the blindscan would need to be improved before I can do this, I am happy to get 4.2.2 transmissions which this time last year was not possible. Some good news is, I was able to continuously record for 8 hours without any issues and the recording was not segmented.
Regards James.
I have 2 tuners in my premium plus and my intention was to use it via the loop out of a Technomate 6900 super+ but it seems to have problems being used as slave unit or even the master in a multi-receiver setup. I use a Gbox V3000 positioner and the premium plus doesn't like being attached to it, surprisingly I used the earlier standard premium which was fully compatible with DiSEqC 1.2 commands but the plus is not, it is more than likely a software issue, but it could also be a compatibility issue with the Gbox, so another make of positioner could work more reliably.
Even when using the plus as a standalone receiver something is not quite right when I connect the receiver cable from the Gbox to the plus, the Gbox is automatically turned on (Sat position illuminated), even when you put the plus into standby mode the Gbox stays on, I need to disconnect the Lnb cable from the plus to get the Gbox to go into standby, I have tried various setups, settings, and connection methods and none have worked. Another example is that I programmed into the plus 8 Sat’s that are good for feeds, but the plus lost them without any logical reason when being used as a standalone receiver, maybe another Gbox issue.
There is another problem when using the 2 tuners, my LNB is a single output universal and I am using the loop from tuner A into tuner B, when I tuned into BBC World News on Hotbird with both tuners, the A tuner was showing a 99% signal quality while the B tuner showed 68%, if I tune A into a different transponder with the same polarization in this case (V) you lose BBC World on the B tuner, but if you tune A into a (H) polarization transponder you get BBC World News back on B, but the B tuner was still showing a 30% loss of signal. I have done the above test on a number of transponders on various Sat’s and strangely some transponders work and others don’t, but I nearly always lose about 30% of signal quality on tuner B. Obviously if you were using a twin output Lnb then the results may well be different.
It appears to me that the blind scan is not much use in its present form because it should have a Maximum Symbol Rate not a Minimum, a large amount of feeds are below 7000, and in order to scan a number of Sat positions quickly to look for feeds, you need to have better control over the Symbol Rate at the lower threshold, an example would be if you were looking for say a football feed, by the time you had scanned all the usual Sat’s the feed would be over, therefore it would be far quicker to go to a feed-hunting site rather than trying to find the feed yourself.
I am not trying to put people off the premium plus just reporting my findings, it would have been nice to be able to scan for my own Badminton and sports feed, but the blindscan would need to be improved before I can do this, I am happy to get 4.2.2 transmissions which this time last year was not possible. Some good news is, I was able to continuously record for 8 hours without any issues and the recording was not segmented.
Regards James.